57. The Village of Mystic

As most readers would know, my wife Sue is the editor of everything I have written, including all the blog posts published since July last year. Without her support I would not have been able to undertake this project. I would describe Sue as my soulmate. She and I have been together for a very long time, and, while many of those years have been happy ones, we’ve also supported each other through some very tough times. Next year we look forward to celebrating our Golden (50^th) wedding anniversary.

I feel that it’s therefore time that I introduce Sue to you and tell you a little about her background. Also, in another post, to come out later, I would like to tell you more about the wonderful trip that she and I did together to explore what had been a very happy and formative period in her youth.

Sue was born in Northern India, where her Australian parents had gone to work as missionaries, soon after the end of World War II. Their time in India, which made a big impact on both of them, was then followed, 12 months later, by a four-year period doing similar work in Fiji, before the family finally returned to Australia. In the year that followed their return, Sue and her younger sister (aged 8 & 5) were placed in a boarding school for several terms, as the family had no permanent home and their father had been offered the opportunity to do a 12-months course of study in New York in preparation for continuing study at Yale University. There was a requirement that this study be undertaken alone, unaccompanied by family, so they had to stay in Sydney.

At the end of that period Sue, aged 9, her mother and her three younger siblings, had sailed to America to join him, where the family was to remain for the following 5 years, a period of welcome stability. Sue was 15 years old when the family finally returned to settle permanently in Sydney.

Sue now looks back on those five years in America as the happiest years of her early life. Her father was helped to secure a position as the minister of the Methodist Church in a beautiful New England village, Mystic, Connecticut, on the New England coast, just north of New York city. He was able to combine this role with his study at Yale Divinity School and the family was very grateful to be warmly welcomed there and to be made to feel very much a part of the local community.

The village of Mystic is probably best known for two things. Of greater substance is the Mystic Seaport Museum, which is described as the “leading maritime museum” in the USA. On a much lighter note is the movie “Mystic Pizza” or the “movie that made Mystic famous”. This movie was released in 1988 and told the story of the “lives and loves of three young waitresses” who worked at the local pizza parlour. It was filmed on location in Mystic and neighbouring towns, after this restaurant had “caught the eye of a Hollywood screenwriter who was holidaying in the area one summer and chose it as the setting for her story.” Last, but certainly not least, is the fact that this movie is also remembered for the casting of a very young Julia Roberts as one of the three waitresses.

The Mystic Seaport Museum, which is arguably the leading tourist attraction in the state of Connecticut, covers over 19 acres of land along the beautiful Mystic River. It’s a recreation of a seafaring village (which has included colonial homes, a tavern, a counting house, apothecary shop, firehouse, chapel, schoolhouse etc) and which had its beginnings nearby a century ago. It was founded in 1929, for the purpose of “gathering and preserving the disappearing artifacts of America’s seafaring past” and is perhaps most notable for its collection of sailing ships and boats. These include the only surviving wooden whaling ship, the Charles W. Morgan, America’s oldest commercial ship in existence. In this recreated seafaring community, “the maritime past of America comes to life.”

Both of the above attractions highlighted the appeal of life along the Mystic River, and for that and a whole variety of other reasons, Sue had loved her years in America. She had always hoped to one day be able to go back to New England again, to stay in Mystic and to explore it and the surrounding villages, as well as to visit the high school where she had spent some very happy years. This was the impetus for us planning a trip there, back in September/October 2007, a very successful trip that we did together, not only to explore her past but also to travel through the surrounding states of New England and to see them at their arguably best season, autumn or, as the Americans say, “the fall”.

We spent ten days in Mystic where we were able to reconnect with old friends of Sue’s and her family, to visit the old parsonage where she had lived and to drive to her old high school. At no point in our trip were we disappointed, not even when we had a meal at “Mystic Pizza”. So much did we enjoy it all that there will be a continuing blog post coming up later.

O.P.

P.S. In 2 weeks time, on 27 October, we’ll take you to Iran and some of my experiences there in the 1950s and 1980s.