The old Shelton, “Saggy,” Helen, and me!

This is a little snapshot of the Shelton where I grew up. It is the story of a Shelton that was a little different than today – before Bridgeport Avenue was a replica of the Boston Post Road and before there were five story apartment buildings downtown. It brings us back to a time when downtown Shelton was alive with a variety of useful businesses. It is the story of a simple, humble couple and it recounts some nice things the couple did for me when I was growing up. Unfortunately, it isn’t a happy story.

Growing up on Maltby Street, I spent a great deal of time downtown during an era when parents felt safe letting their children wander away from the close proximity of home. As an example, I was struck by a car near the post office a few minutes after going to Kreiger’s department store on Howe Avenue with instructions from my mother to buy our tenant, Pauly, a box of handkerchiefs which I would give him for Christmas. I was in the fourth grade.

the corner of Howe Avenue and Bridge Street

In those days, Kreigers, at the corner of Howe and Bridge Street, was only one of many thriving businesses downtown like the Culinary Shop, a great bakery, Kyle’s, a stationery store, and the Simonetti brothers’ businesses on parallel corners at the intersection of Coram Avenue and Center Street: White Cross Pharmacy and Simonetti’s Cleaners. A few doors down there was Joe’s Variety, and nearby, a shoe repair shop where I often brought shoes whose soles had come undone. Besides White Cross, there were two other pharmacies, Mahoney Drugstore and Kushiner’s, both of which had soda fountains. There was an “A & P” and a “5 & 10.” I remember Husti’s Meat Market and Tomko’s Hardware. There were so many more…but space doesn’t allow. I will mention, though, my good friend Frank D’Angelo’s family owned a small grocer and a fish market near the post office because it was Frank’s Uncle Dut who pulled me out from under the car that hit me and called an ambulance on that frigid December afternoon.

Nestled in this thriving downtown area right next to the Shelton Derby Bridge was the Bridge Diner, also known as “Saggy’s,” a well-known establishment for decades. I think people called it “Saggy’s” because it was the nickname of the owner, John Randazise. Our tenant, Pauly, worked for his brother John at the Bridge Diner. I think people called Pauly “Saggy” as well.

Pauly and his wife Helen had been living in the Maltby Street house for some years when my father purchased the four family in 1952, just prior to my birth. We lived on the second floor, and Helen and Pauly lived above in an attic apartment. They coexisted with their daughter in four minuscule rooms. They were a good decade older than my parents, but the two couples got along famously.

When my brother was a teen and out and about, I often stayed home alone, and I could hear Helen and Pauly upstairs – their footsteps…the sound of the television…Pauly’s raspy voice complaining about one thing or another. The sound was muffled, but I could tell he was grumpy. Their nocturnal sounds comforted me, though, letting me know they were right upstairs.

Helen and me, all dressed up — circa 1960

 I, especially, became close to Helen. She was likely to be having coffee with my mother in our apartment each day when I arrived home from school. Despite that my mother was very beautiful – even glamorous, Helen was a plainer looking woman. But Mom welcomed her into our household because my mother never thought she was better than anybody else. Helen might as well have been my mother’s sister or aunt because Mom treated her like family.

When she came to our door, Helen didn’t knock…but she didn’t walk right in either. As an alternative to knocking, she would crack open our door and call out to my mother in a wavering soprano, “Peachy…peachy…peachkoosh,” her nickname for my mother. I’ll never forget Saturday and Sunday mornings when her crooning would wake me and my older brother Edmund, and he would grumble and repeatedly punch his pillow because he didn’t like being awakened so early.

When I was very small, Helen would call our phone number and play the role of Mrs. Santa Claus. That’s the kind of relationship we had. And every Christmas Eve, before going to visit my grandparents, we visited Helen and Pauly’s attic apartment and exchanged gifts. The only Christmas Eve I missed was that winter when I got hit by the car. My pelvis was broken and I couldn’t walk for weeks. 

I didn’t get to know Pauly like I did Helen. He was often working. Once in a while my mom would tell me some news that Pauly had heard at the diner and told Helen. In fact, once Edmund’s saxophone teacher, an odd and solitary man who lived across the street, told Pauly at the diner that some neighborhood pranksters had called a funeral home and told them that they needed to send someone because the saxophone teacher had died. The kids apparently sold the story because the mortician came – in a hearse, as the story was told. When Pauly came home and told Helen and Helen, in turn, told my mother, Mom knew exactly who the culprit was. Boy, did Edmund ever get in trouble for that one!

But I have a few memories of Pauly himself. He was short with a full head of white hair and a huge, bulbous nose, not unlike Jimmy Durante’s celebrated shnoz. I also knew that, like a lot of people, he drank too much. I could hear it in his nighttime conversations with Helen, and I witnessed him drink one Ballantine Ale after another each Christmas Eve. 

I do have a nice memory, though. One night, I remember arriving home around dusk after hanging out in the neighborhood with my buddies and being locked out of the house. Edmund and I didn’t carry a house key, but one was always supposed to be under the mat for occasions when no one was home and the door was locked. Someone had forgotten to replace it. Not able to think of an alternative, I just sat on the steps, hoping my parents would arrive home soon. Before I knew it, Pauly arrived on the scene. I don’t believe Helen and Pauly owned a car. He walked back and forth to work. 

Ascending the outside stairs, he found me sitting by my lonesome. When I told  him I’d been locked out, Pauly sat down on the steps right near me. “I’ll wait with you,” he said. I told him he didn’t have to do that, but he insisted. So there we were, thirteen year old Gary and sixty-something year old Pauly. I don’t recall what we talked about, but we talked until Mom and Dad finally got home. I knew he was drunk because his speech was slurred, but I was happy to have company. (It may sound funny, but in remembering this story, my eyes have filled up with tears.)

From the Evening Sentinel

When I was a senior in high school, I started to hear stories from friends…stories about how guys I knew would go into the diner late at night on a Friday or Saturday and give “Saggy” a bad time. One night, after a few beers of my own, I went in with the guys. It was well after midnight. Ironically, it was the first time I had ever been inside the Bridge Diner. Pauly was on duty, as I expected. He and I didn’t acknowledge that we knew each other. I don’t remember many details, but the guys gave him a rough time, mimicking his raspy voice and mocking him. One kid kept inching his cup of coffee slowly to the opposite edge of the counter until it hung halfway off and finally fell and shattered on the floor. Pauly angrily shouted, “That’s it. I’m calling the fuckin’ cops.” He appeared to dial the phone (I didn’t believe that he fully dialed the number), and said, “Yeah, officer, we got some punks down here at the diner, and there’s a rumble goin’ on.” With that, the guys howled and finally cleared out of the place. The whole scene sickened me. I should have stood up for Pauly, but I somehow felt paralyzed and didn’t have the guts to do so. I’m not certain if I felt more embarrassed way back then in my cowardice or today, more than fifty years later, in remembering that night. If only we could go back and change the past. I never went into the Bridge Diner again.

Soon after Fran and I married in 1976, the second floor apartment opened up on Maltby Street, and we moved in. My dad had built a beautiful new home but still owned the old homestead. And, of course, Helen and Pauly still lived upstairs. Since they were advanced in years, I didn’t see much of them. But when it snowed, Helen would come out and help me shovel the outside stairs and the sidewalk. Strangely, she used a children’s shovel, so you can imagine how much help she was. It must have been the only one she owned. At that time, Dad told me they were still paying the same rent — $35.00 a month — that they had paid in 1952. Dad said he never had the heart to raise the rent on them.   

Pauly died a few years after we moved into the Maltby Street house, and Helen died before we bought our own home eight years later. It was another era. They were basic people who did the best they could and got by with what they had – and they were good to me and my family. There will always be a soft place in my heart for the memory of Helen and Pauly!