BETWEEN BOSTON & NEW YORK
Produced, Written & Directed by Kenneth A. Simon
www.simonpure.com
Click here to return to the
browser-optimized version of this page
NARRATOR: More than
three million of us call Connecticut home, but who are we? Who do we think we are?
CHARLES MONAGHAN (Editor, Connecticut Magazine): Connecticut
has always had an identity problem.
We've never known whether to be the big-city sophisticates of New York
or the Calvinist farmers of New England.
NARRATOR: What do we have in common and what divides
us? Do we share a sense of place?
MICHAEL STERN (Connecticut
Author): When people think of Connecticut, they think -- they don't think of
anything in particular and I think that's fine. I mean, there's no reason for us to get chauvinistic and say we
in Connecticut all believe in one thing or another. Ah --
JANE STERN (Connecticut Author): It sounds like a roadside
attraction. Connecticut -- the mystery
state.
MICHAEL STERN (Connecticut
Author): What is it? Who are they?
JANE STERN (Connecticut Author): What is it?
HERB JANICK
(Historian, W. CT State U.): People kind of identify Connecticut with
the white picket fences and the small town, but in reality, Connecticut from
the mid nineteenth century on has been a very urban, very ethnic, a very
industrial place, a varied kind of a place, even though it's small.
NARRATOR: Not entirely New York. Not entirely New England.
Is Connecticut after all just a place between Boston and New York or is
there more to it than that?
CHARLEY DUFFY (Exec. Dir., Council of Small Towns):
Connecticut is the wealthiest state in the country, which makes it the
wealthiest place on the face of the earth.
Now, the economy of this state and the region is crumbling and that may
bring about some fundamental changes.
ELIZABETH SHEFF (Hartford City Council): We are really in most people's minds 169
little solvent states. What I see is a
state that's fractionalized by the tradition that we hold.
NARRATOR: The search
for our shared identity is far from academic.
As Connecticut turns the century, it faces many economic, social and
political challenges that will demand of its residents a shared sense of place
and a common purpose.
JUAN FIGEROA (Connecticut State Representative): There are a
number of issues that I think exists these days that bring to the forefront the
fact that Connecticut today is very different than it was a hundred years ago
or whatever. Income tax is one of
them. Can we have a state that
successfully deals with some of the political challenges that face it, all of
which call for widespread sacrifice and concession and some sense of mutual
obligation when in fact we have no common sense of who we are or what we want
to be?
NARRATOR: Connecticut's financial troubles have been particularly unsettling, because the state has so long been associated with affluence. Until very recently, Hollywood portrayed Connecticut as a place apart, wealthy, well heeled, genteel.
COLIN MCENROE (Columnist, Hartford Courant): You know, you say, "I'm from Connecticut," and they picture you spending your weekends racing at Lyme Rock with Paul Newman and your evenings around the fireside in Cornwall with Mike Nichols and Francine Duplice (?) Grey chatting about literature.
Movie Clip from Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House, 1948: '
HUSBAND: Mary, would you spend
$7,000 to tear out someone else's walls when for a few thousand more you could
find a nice old place in Connecticut, fix it up and have the kind of dream
house you've always wanted?
WIFE: I beg your pardon?
MICHAEL STERN (Connecticut
Author): I came to Connecticut from Illinois and my image of Connecticut before
I got here was extremely vague. I think
when I thought of Texas, I thought of a cowboy in a cowboy hat or when I think
of Iowa I think of a strapping farmer or a brash New Yorker. My image of Connecticut I think was of a man
in plaid pants in a country club sipping a martini.
Movie Clip from Christmas in
Connecticut, 1945:
BUTLER: Pardon me, Mrs. Lane,
but I'm planning on having a farm in Connecticut myself one day. I'd like some good bottom land.
MRS. LANE: Bottom land?
BUTLER: Yes, that's best kind
for farming, isn't it?
MRS. LANE: Oh, some people say
yes and some people say no.
BUTLER: But, what do you say?
MRS. LANE: Ah, I'm inclined to
agree with them.
BUTLER: Oh, thank you very much.
JEANINE BASINGER (Curator, Wesleyan U. Film Archives): I grew up in a movie theater in South Dakota and I had a very clear, very specific image of Connecticut from the movies and that was why I really wanted to come here. When I was offered a job here, I thought, great! I'm going to that place where they have those beautiful homes in the country with tennis courts and swimming pools and those old station wagons with wood that have two matching dogs in the back and they have those kitchens so big you could land a helicopter and everybody wears tweeds and everybody is well dressed and elegant and rather ritzy and at night they put on tuxedos and I thought, this is great. This is for me. I can go live there like being in a Hollywood movie.
Movie Clip from Adam’s Rib, 1949:
MAN SHOWING HOME MOVIE: Pretty
country up there! Tree kissing, a
famous old Connecticut custom. Barn
kissing, a famous old Connecticut custom.
PAUL STACY (Cinema Prof., U. of Hartford): Usually it's a place to escape from. You escape from the City, ugly corrupt New York and you come to the country and you expect the uncomplicated pastoral life.
Movie Clip from Adam’s Rib, 1949:
MAN SHOWING HOME MOVIE: Wife
kissing, a famous old Connecticut custom!
PAUL STACY (Cinema Prof., U. of Hartford): You got the idea that people were aristocratic, artistic, theatrical and they lived well. You look at their homes and you think, well, everyone in Connecticut's a millionaire, but that's the Hollywood image and it's a nice image, but completely false.
JEANINE BASINGER, CURATOR (Wesleyan U. Film Archives): The first thing I noticed when I got here, which I wrote home back to the folks in South Dakota was, guess what, this place is full of pizza parlors. I mean, who knew there were Italians here? You didn't know that from the movies. You really didn't know from the movies of my childhood anything ethnic about Connecticut and now the films that are made about Connecticut frequently focus on the working class as you see in Mystic Pizza.
Movie Clip from Mystic Pizza, 1988:
GIRL: Greenwich, my ass!
BOY: Daisy, look! Daisy, this is Serena Windsor, my
sister. Serena, this is Daisy Arroshuo.
SISTER: Daisy, Hi!
PAUL STACY (Cinema Prof., U. of Hartford): You have the wealthy boy who's thrown out of Yale for being dishonest or cheating on an exam and he has trouble with his father, but his father's extremely wealthy. You should see their home.
Movie Clip from Mystic Pizza, 1988:
GIRL: They were being real jerks! The only jerk at that table was you. They were just being themselves. Bringing home your poor Portuguese
girlfriend for dinner.
PAUL STACY (Cinema Prof., U. of Hartford): So you have
representatives of the upper class and then you have the people who own and
run, who work in the pizza place, so the clash between the classes is a
wonderful opportunity showing you how they work, how they live. It's almost a course in sociology.
NARRATOR: Connecticut's
tourism department affectionately promotes an image that evokes the state's
colonial past. It's a powerful image,
one with which many residents identify.
Commercial, CT Dept. of Economic
Development:
Looking for a special place to spend
your vacation? Come to
Connecticut! You'll find 350 years of
classic vacation ideas.
BARNEY LASCHEVER (Dir., “Classic CT” Campaign): We're promoting Connecticut as quintessential New England. As example, this beautiful New England style church behind me on the Litchfield green, classic Connecticut, the side of New England. We feel we’re very much a part of New England, classic state, classic colonial villages and classic attractions, classic landscape.
Commercial, CT Dept. of Economic
Development:
The coast, the city, the country
-- classic Connecticut -- the pride of New England.
BARNEY LASCHEVER (Dir. “Classic CT” Campaign): Our problem with promoting and selling Connecticut is that people have their own image of Connecticut who have never been here before and a great many of them unfortunately don't associate Connecticut with New England or else they think that we're just a suburb of New York.
Commercial, CT Dept. of Economic
Development:
What's a classic vacation? One that's a sure fire hit.
CHARLES MONAGHAN (Editor, Connecticut Magazine): We've always been between New York and New England, caught between in many ways, and it's been difficult for us over the years to forge our own identity and you can see what difficulty we've had if you just look around. You see that our state song, for instance, is not even about Connecticut -- Yankee Doodle. It's about a person. We've got to be the only state in the nation who's song isn't about itself.
TOM CALLINAN (Connecticut State Troubadour): The purpose was back in early 1977 to establish a state song. They felt that there was a need for a state song to give us identity when the governor and other dignitaries would show up at events, so a hearing was held and many people wrote songs and had all kinds of different people performing them. Some were on recording and some were live and I spent a whole day in the hearing. Some of the songs were great and some of the songs were not so great, but everybody put their heart into it.
Nathan Hale, the Charter Oak, a
history of pride and pain.
Through the years and for all
time, Connecticut, we praise your name.
Hail to Connecticut with a
heritage so grand.
Hail to Connecticut, to the
Constitution state.
Down through Connecticut where
the mighty river flows,
So moves Connecticut as are
mighty nation grows.
Home of the Mountain Loral,
And the robin on the wing,
To you we lift our voices,
And praises we sing.
Hail to your rocky shores,
Your hills and valleys too,
Hail to Connecticut, America
loves you.
NARRATOR: Our
identity today is deeply rooted in our history. Our sense of place over the past 350 years has grown much more
complicated. To really know ourselves,
we need to know our past.
Just two years after the violent displacement of
Connecticut's native American peoples in 1637, the general court of colonial
Connecticut drew up the fundamental orders.
The orders both established a government and defined our first common
identity derived from a central authority.
RICHARD GRIFFIS (Sr. Minister, Immanuel Cong. Church): The state really begins with the coming of Thomas Hooker and a group of people from Massachusetts who came here for economic reasons, but also and very predominantly for religious reasons.
CHRISTOPHER COLLIER (Connecticut State Historian): The Puritan was high thinking and plain living. The Puritans were also very community bound. They weren't always concerned about their community out of a sense of community. They were concerned about the community because if somebody in the community sinned, the whole community was going to suffer.
BRUCE FRASER (Exec Dir., CT Humanities Council): The land of steady habits goes back to old colonial notions of stability and of that Puritan commonwealth, which is very collective in its approach, and every time the Department of Tourism puts a congregational spire on some tourist document, whether they know it or not, what they're saying is -- what they're suggesting is that collective sense of mutual obligation, shared belief of mutual commitment that was the hallmark of Puritans.
RICHARD GRIFFIS (Sr. Minister, Immanuel Cong. Church): They established the commons in the midst of many of the towns, a shared space, very practical for grazing animals, but it also had a symbolic and a beautiful quality to it. The church was put on the green.
NARRATOR: If there
was a time when Connecticut had a clearly defined self-image, it was this
puritan era. Puritan Connecticut was
collective, but it was also suspicious of change and insisted on
conformity. Congregationalism was the
official state religion until 1818.
ELLSWORTH GRANT (Fmr. Pres., CT Historical Society): It was an exclusive society, only God-fearing Congregationalists would survive here or be accepted. If anyone moved in to Connecticut, he had to be voted on by the community to become a citizen and a member of the church.
COLIN MCENROE (Columnist, Hartford Courant): Well, actually, the very first European people who came to Connecticut actually were the Dutch who sailed up the river looking for chocolate and so far no one has ever actually found any in Connecticut, which I think maybe accounts for the sense of blended frustration you feel here. As for the original Puritans, a lot of those were my ancestors and of course they were opposed to fun and we thought to carry on that tradition here in Connecticut too.
CHRIS BICKFORD (Exec. Dir., CT Historical Society): The Blue
Law State, and that was an expression that was coined about Connecticut in the
19th Century, and was to a certain extent true. We still have Blue Laws for Connecticut that
are residue of that Puritan tradition.
People use this expression "banned in Boston", but the fact is
that Massachusetts legalized theater in the 1790s. In 1800 Connecticut banned theater altogether and that law
remained on the books in Connecticut until 1952 which was remarkable. No other state had a law forbidding theater.
COLIN MCENROE (Columnist, Hartford Courant): I can remember a few years ago the Hartford Office of Cultural Affairs was talking about having sort of a law that allowed sort of mummers and buskers and spontaneous street performers out there on the street that would allow sort of street musicians to be around and magicians and stuff on the sidewalks and the City Council voted it down because they thought it would be a little too spontaneous. You can imagine what would happen if things got a little too spontaneous in Hartford. I mean things would just spiral out of control in no time whatsoever.
NARRATOR: The early
19th Century saw dramatic change in Connecticut as a growing
emphasis on the importance of the individual marked the advent of the Yankee
era. Our colonial roots actually
contained two distinctly opposite ways of looking at ourselves. The Hallmark of the Puritan Age had been
communalism. This legacy of this new
era was individualism.
CHRISTOPHER COLLIER (Connecticut State Historian): What happened over time is that this other worldliness, this community sense, this willing to accept the authoritarian, social and political structure, these became deluded and then sharply undermined and the Yankee then becomes a person whom we think of as materialistic. This worldly, out-for-the-main-chance --
BRUCE FRASER (Exec Dir., Ct Humanities Council): We think of the, you know, the Yankee trader -- the Yankee tinkerer -- the individual, the entrepreneur, the self-made man, that sense of ourselves which is organized around entrepreneurship or hard work around seizing the main chance. Those kinds of values are completely opposed to what we inherited from the Puritans. That was a great see-change in Connecticut history was that transition from Puritanism to individualism.
BARBARA TUCKER (Dir., Ctr. for Connecticut Studies): And I think that in Connecticut as well as a practicality, goes the whole notion of the Connecticut Yankee here and the inventiveness of the Connecticut Yankee because again, the terms, "Who is a Yankee?" You always put Connecticut in front of it. It's not merely just New England. It's the Connecticut Yankee for the most part and even Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- terribly inventive person.
Movie Clip from A Connecticut Yankee, 1931:
YANKEE: You got the biggest bad
guy I ever saw on any cop in my life.
Am I -- am I in my right mind?
And if I am, can'st telleth me where in the helleth I am?
KNIGHT: Now I know that thou art
mad. Yonder lies Camelot Castle. King Arthur's Court. Thou art in his vast domain.
YANKEE: One of us is
cuckoo. It -- it can't be you. It -- it must be me, cause that -- that certainly
ain't no part of Connecticut.
COLIN MCENROE (Columnist, Hartford Courant): I come from a family which regards itself as an old Yankee family and I think one thing that is sort of a Litanus test is you have to have sort of a very pinched crab attitude towards money and you have to have a lot of digestive troubles. Usually Yankees because they worry a lot and they're concerned about everything and it's difficult for them to enjoy life.
NARRATOR: It was during the Yankee era that Connecticut acquired one of its more enigmatic nicknames -- the Nutmeg State. Nutmegs imported from Southeast Asia were hard to come by and expensive. Devious Yankee entrepreneurs earned a reputation for themselves and the State by selling fake nutmegs carved from wood. It was clearly not the Puritan thing to do.
JANE STERN (Connecticut Author): The Nutmeg State, I can't think of a less kind of sexy and tough and big image or state as the Nutmeg State. Then when you dig a little deeper into Connecticut history and you realize that it was not because nutmegs were our native crop here, it was because the people in Connecticut were such shady characters that they carved fake nutmegs to sell. And that even sort of brings it down another notch. I mean it's the fake nutmeg state.
CHARLES MONAGHAN (Editor, Connecticut Magazine): To some degree we tried to hold onto the idea that despite how many races and cultures have come to settle here, we still try to hold on in some ways to the idea that we're Yankees and that we somehow embody all the virtues that the old Yankees did -- thrift and industry and self-reliance and we do as individuals. It's just that as a society it's sort of ridiculous at this point. If you look around and examine the old virtues compared to what we have here, it just doesn't hold up.
HERB JANICK (Historian, W. CT State U.): We have lost the unity of the Yankee past, but have we replaced it with another kind of unity? I don't think we have. I mean we've replaced it with a lot of diversity and some it's for economic reasons. You know, some of it's from ethnic and racial reasons.
NARRATOR: Although we think of hard work and thrift as Yankee traits, they are in fact common attributes of immigrants to Connecticut. Laotian refugees, Samay and Chansamone Phomphakdy, moved to Connecticut in 1987.
KEN SIMON: Why did you come to Connecticut?
CHANSAMONE PHOMPHAKDY (Factory Worker): My friend told me that there are a lot of
jobs here and I need a job.
KEN SIMON: How hard
did you work when you got here? How
many hours did you work a day?
CHANSAMONE PHOMPHAKDY I work fourteen hours.
KEN SIMON: Fourteen hours a day.
SAMAY PHOMPHAKDY (Factory Worker) When we first came felt we
cannot have anything like the people had.
They have car. They have
house. They have a TV --
everything. We started to work.
KEN SIMON: Do you know what a Connecticut Yankee is?
SAMAY PHOMPHAKDY (Factory Worker): I don't know ah who's
Yankee? I didn't know. I didn't know. I just -- I just -- I just knew Yankee, Yankee, but I don't know
who was Yankee.
NARRATOR: The Yankee
Era was characterized by rapid industrialization. In top soil poor Connecticut, industry was a source of new found
affluence and a new identity. By the
start of the 20th Century, Connecticut was the most industrialized
state in the nation.
ELLSWORTH GRANT, (Fmr. Pres., Ct Historical Society): Connecticut industry has played a great role in the development of the Country and what Connecticut contributed was really the development of mass production, the idea of the interchangeability of machine parts so that in Connecticut you had the development of mass production successively from guns to clocks, the sewing machines to bicycles, to automobiles and finely to aircraft engines, all of which took place in Hartford and New Haven and cities like that.
CHARLES MONAGHAN (Editor, Connecticut Magazine): And as time
went on, these cities developed very strong identities. You have the hat city. You have the silver city. You have the brass city. You have the rubber city. And people tended to identify with those
industries and to identify very strongly with those cities.
News Reel Footage Connecticut Answers, 1941
Today as new storm warnings are
raised, our country, our way of life must be defended.
NARRATOR: We have
always thought of ourselves as being the front line of our nation's defense,
but here too are self images under stress.
News Reel Footage Connecticut Answers, 1941
Time is short. The all-out for defense has sounded and
there's the youth of Connecticut,
answer the call to arms. The
industries of Connecticut, answer the call for arms. All-out defense means all out production and this is a job that
Connecticut well understands.
CHARLEY DUFFY (Exec. Dir., Council of Small Towns): It's
been very strongly defense-based since the beginning of this country. You know, one of the other names for
Connecticut is the Provision State.
Provisions in that sense means providing for people who are at war. You know, the most sophisticated weapon in
the world is made here, the Trident submarine in Groton, but throughout our
history, we have been a provider of lead for bullets and uniforms for soldiers
and guns for soldiers and that has made us different than the rest of New
England and allowed us in many respects to develop sort of a unique economy
here.
CHRISTOPHER COLLIER (Connecticut State Historian): We have had a tremendous amount of federal government money spent in this state on armaments. Our dependence upon armaments has been bad for the state in the long picture. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s we felt it very, very much as the defense budget began to shrink.
NARRATOR: Since
early in the 19th Century, immigration has been an enormous force in
the life of our state, both enriching it and creating new tensions. By 1910, 70% of the state's population were
either first or second-generation immigrants.
JOHN SUTHERLAND (Dir., Institute for Local History): The Connecticut Yankee really lost his
homogeneity in the mid 19th Century as the Irish and then the
Germans and the Scandinavians later in the 20th Century, southern
and eastern Europeans, Italians, Poles, Russians and others all came and when
they came to these shores, they came to where the work was and a lot of the
work because of the Industrial Revolution was in Connecticut and they came to
mills like these to find jobs.
NARRATOR: Leo
Tetreault grandfather left Canada for Connecticut at the turn of the
Century. His was typical of the
Connecticut immigrant experience.
KEN SIMON: What drew
the French Canadians to this area? was it work or --
LEO TETREAULT (Former Putnam Mayor): Work, no question about that. It was work. Ah, the French people have the hard work culture and of course
the people in charge of the mills recognized that and as a result, of course,
it was easy to get a job. Didn't pay
much -- $2 a week. In fact, I worked
for as little as five dollars and a half a week for 48 hours of work, but the
wages were enough for these families to survive, but they knew how to make the
most of any -- every penny that they had.
HERB JANICK
(Historian, W. CT State U.):
What happened in Connecticut also happened lots of other places. Alright?
Waves of similar immigrants. I
think what happened in Connecticut is maybe a little bit different as it
happened in a very small place.
Alright? And it happened not in
one huge city. It happened in many
cities all over the state. Each one
with its own ethnic mix. To me, it's
the variety in such a small space that is unique to Connecticut.
NARRATOR: For some,
the changes that accompanied immigration seem to threaten the essential order
and stability of community life.
BARBARA TUCKER (Dir., Ctr. for Connecticut Studies): What
happened in the 19th Century, especially the late 19th
Century, as you have immigrants coming into Connecticut, you also have people
in Connecticut becoming very anxious about all the change that's taking place
and what you have beginning around 1876 is something called the Colonial
Revival. The Colonial Revival is an
attempt to look back at what people conceived as a much more stable, tranquil,
peaceful, restful time and they look back to the village and what they did is
not take the village as it was, but as they wanted it to be. They literally built up a new concept of the
New England Village and Litchfield is the prime example.
CHRIS BICKFORD (Exec. Dir., CT Historical Society) I think our image of New England is drawn
from a sort of mythical colonial past.
When we picture a New England town, we think of the common, the
green. We think of white colonial
structures. We think of sort of orderly
existence. This is mythical because
Connecticut was really not that orderly.
There was a lot of contention on the local level, but that is our sense
of our past and I think it's precious to us.
I think we value colonial buildings and small towns.
NARRATOR: This
period of rapid industrialization and immigration was also characterized by
heightened racial and ethnic tensions.
Hostility and suspicion towards those perceived as different had long
been a part of Connecticut life.
BARBARA TUCKER (Dir., Ctr. for Connecticut Studies): Connecticut
has a very long history of racism, beginning with the Indian wars -- the Pequot
wars. We had slavery in
Connecticut. One of the major slave
ports was Newport and the whole area around Narraganset into New London into
Norwich, up even into places like Hebron -- major slave areas. Whenever abolitioners came and wanted to
speak, you had riots -- wholesale riots.
MARIA TORRES (Bridgeport Police Commission): Coming from
Puerto Rico, you don't even think about, oh, they're an ethnic group, because,
you know, there are none, but you tend to feel that everybody's treated the
same when there's no reason white color should come into the picture as far as
treating other people, so I would say that was probably the first thing that
surprised me when I came to this state back then when I was nine years old, is
the fact that because people were black or Hispanic, I found they were treated,
you know, a little bit different and I had a hard time understanding that.
NARRATOR: Today racial
minorities remain concentrated in Connecticut's urban areas. Three of these cities are among the ten
poorest in the nation. Despite our
self-image of affluence, there are two Connecticuts, which rarely come in
contact with each other.
BARBARA TUCKER (Dir., Ctr. for Connecticut Studies): While I
think we're ethnically and racially diverse, we're certainly not
integrated. Our communities aren't
integrated. Our school systems are not
integrated. Various racial and ethnic
groups live in pockets all over the state.
REV. JESSE JACKSON:
It's like Fairfield at the state represents the ___________________
tooth, the ________________.
_____________________________________ in Stamford and New London and
Waterbury and Bridgeport and New Haven and Hartford. Somehow this contradiction must be exposed and it must come to an
end.
NARRATOR: Thirteen year old Milo Shaff goes to school in
Hartford where 90% of public school students are minorities. Just over the border in suburban West
Hartford, the student body is 84% white.
To integrate Connecticut's racially segregated urban and suburban
schools, civil rights groups sued the state in 1989. The suit, filed on behalf of Milo and 17 other students is now
making its way through the courts.
ELIZABETH SHEFF (Hartford City Council): We are moving
toward a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic globally connected world. Our children must be prepared to live in
that world. They can't be prepared to
live in that world if they're segregated -- if all they know as Milo said is
they're own little home town theory.
MILO SHEFF (Hartford Student): You just can't like go to one
school and have all of the same race.
You need to have different races, so we can learn about each other and
instead of saying, well, I don't like this whole race because of one person did
something to you, you need to learn about all the other people.
JERRY WATTS (American Studies Prof., Trinity): And where do
people ever acquire a unifying identity that comes from interacting with each
other, some commonality of interest, right?
Whether there's a member of a -- some labor force—but to the extent that
these things are declining as the sites of occupation, these factories and so
forth, to the extent that our cities no longer are places where there's ethnic
interaction and more kind of ethnic onclays under siege in some sense,
right? We don't have the mechanisms
that generate that type of ah common ah identity.
JUAN FIGEROA (Connecticut State Representative): Who we are is just sort of in a state of flux We're heading towards reality and that is
that Connecticut as most of our folks pronounce the name, is a place -- is a
home for a lot of our folks and will continue to be a home for a lot of our
folks and will continue to sort of be the place where our folks want to bring
up their children, have them go to school, have them get a good job, contribute
to whatever it may be, everything from Desert Storm to working in a
school. This is our place.
CAROL KEUHL: The song
I have written illustrates the fact that people have come from all different
walks of life and from many lands to make our state as great as it is.
I love Connecticut with its
heritage,
It's called the Constitution
State.
Where histories of great proud
men all came to this land so brave.
And then with grace-filled
cities did build where our dreams would be fulfilled.
Connecticut was born to stay the
pride of the U.S.A.
So come Nutmeggers heed the call
to keep Connecticut from harm,
A place where men with hearts
free can share the opportunity.
Let's keep her strong and work
each day so future men will proudly say,
Connecticut was born to stay the
pride of the U.S.A.
NARRATOR: Another
force that fractures our sense of state identity is geographic
segmentation. Although Connecticut is
the third smallest state in the nation, most of us see it as a collection of
several smaller and distinctly different regions.
TOM LEWIS (Geography Prof., Manchester CC): In spite of
the fact that the state is roughly a hundred miles east to west, 60 to
80 miles at its widest north/south extreme, the concerns and the interests and
the focus of dairy farmers in the northeastern part of the state in a town like
Thompson are far, far different than the concerns and the interests and the
focus of an urban/suburban population like what we find at Fairfield County or
in Bridgeport for example.
Tens of thousands every day pass
through the Constitution State,
In their rat race from Boston to
New York.
To them it's just 200 miles of
winding highway snake,
Or the train's along the
northeast corridor.
NARRATOR:
Connecticut has always been deeply influenced and divided by its
location between its two powerful neighbors.
For some, Connecticut has a decided New York vent. For others, a New England flavor.
JIM SHELTON (Reporter, New Haven Register): A lot of people
in this part of the state talk about the Q Bridge. The Q Bridge is a main part of their life. They sit in traffic ah for a long time on
the Q Bridge and it sort of separates New York from New England in a lot of
people's minds. When you're waiting in
traffic on the bridge, you are still stressing out about your job. You are still worrying about what you're
going to fix for dinner. You're still
worrying about whether it's going to rain or snow before you get home. You get over the bridge and the farther away
from the bridge you get, a lot of people tend to relax. The traffic eases up a little bit. The view gets much nicer. The Q Bridge separates New York from New
England for a lot of people.
NARRATOR: The most
often noted border is the one that separates Fairfield County from the rest of
the state. Our image of affluence is derived
largely from wealthy Fairfield County communities.
CAPT. JAMES GLEASON (Greenwich Police Dept.): Greenwich has
a different class of people in many respects in that a large number of our
population earn their livelihood in New York City and they, on a daily basis,
take the train into New York City and are in the City for a good 10 or 12 hours
a day and return here to live.
Greenwich has been known in some cases as a bedroom community for New
York City, which is very true.
KEN SIMON: Do you feel that you are a Connecticut resident?
MALCOLM PREY (Greenwich Car Dealer): I'm a Connecticut resident. My driver's license says so, but ah if you
-- if I'm traveling some place in the world and somebody asks, "Where are
you from?", I say I'm from the New York area. To say Greenwich, Connecticut is unknown. People envision wooden bridges and back
country areas, which Greenwich is not.
Greenwich is basically a suburb of New York, as is the better part of
Fairfield County.
NARRATOR: As some
see it, Litchfield County is on its way to becoming an exurb of New York.
CHARLES MONAGHAN (Editor, Connecticut Magazine): In recent years, you've had a lot of New York
people, as we call them here in Connecticut, ah, moving up into Litchfield
County as well into second homes or just going to live there and really
transforming a lot of formerly utterly unselfconscious farm towns into these
sort of sleek bastions of exurban New York.
You've got fancy restaurants up there now. You've got fancy shops.
You've got a lot of people driving around in fancy cars and those
Litchfield County towns were so quintessentially Connecticut and now they've
got such a strong New York influence that it's changed quite a bit.
ROBERTA SATOW (Soc. Prof., Brooklyn Coll.): They love the
sense of history here and Americana here and rootedness here and this is what
America's all about. They love the
small town rituals and so on that they're not a part of. They're not really part of it, but they like
being in a place where it's happening.
NARRATOR: As a sense
of place just 125 miles on the other side of the state is quite different.
KEN SIMON: There's a
nickname for this part of the state.
ROBERT MILLER (Putnam Town Historian): The quiet
corner. Some people laugh at that. It isn't that quiet, but I think it's well
named. If you fly over here in an
airplane from Washington to Boston, you will find this is still a dark area in
the whole eastern megalopolis.
KEN SIMON: Do you think that people feel that they're in the
same state as say Fairfield County?
ROBERT MILLER (Putnam Town Historian): I think sometimes
they feel they're in Massachusetts, because it's so close to the media there. Even politics -- they're more worried about
who's going to become governor up there about their budget than ours and knew
more about it, but it's sort of a natural thing.
Commercial, CT Broadcasters
Association
You live here. You don't live here. So zap New York and get connected to
Connecticut on Connecticut TV.
LEW FREIFELD (Vice Pres., WTNH): The basic underlying reason
was to get more viewers who were watching outside television stations to start
watching Connecticut television stations.
We have an enormous number of television households that even though
they're physically located here in this market place, are watching New York
television or Providence, Rhode Island television, Springfield, Mass.
It's news about your town, not
the Bronx. It's the weather here, not
in Boston.
LEW FREIFELD (Vice Pres., WTNH): And what we found was that
these people felt for some compelling reason that New York television had
greater authority.
Watch Connecticut TV, Channels
3, 8, 20, 30, 61 and CPTV. Get
connected to Connecticut TV.
NARRATOR: The
influence of both New York and Boston can be seen even in the state's divided
sports loyalties.
SPORTS COMMENTATOR:
The players may say the rivalry is dead, but don't tell the fans.
RED SOX FANS #1: The Red Sox -- Yankees --
SPORTS COMMENTATOR: Face it left field -- for there are
scores --
YANKEE FAN #1: Yankee fan all the way.
SPORTS COMMENTATOR: And gone for a home run.
YANKEE FAN #2: Being a Yankee fan, I hate Red Sox fans.
They're arrogant.
RED SOX FAN #2: Yankee fans are known to talk out loud.
Up the middle and a base hit.
RED SOX FAN #3: I like the Red Sox. I really hate Yankees, but I'm a Giants fan,
so that's kind of a contradiction. I
like post seasons.
SPORTS COMMENTATOR: And a looper to center field and that is
going to be trouble.
SPORTS FAN #1: Well, see, now, that's the problem there,
because Connecticut …
SPORTS FAN #2: There is no Connecticut identity.
SPORTS FAN #3: I think the only -- the longest game that
Connecticut roots for is the Celtics of any sport. Well, ya, you have the
Giants --
SPORTS FAN #1: But as in baseball, your -- you're divided.
YANKEES FAN #3: It's
gotta be the Yankees, definitely.
METS FAN #1: I root
for the New York Mets.
RED SOX FAN #4:
Boston Red Sox, New England Patriots, cause that's where we live.
BOB ENGLEHART: Connecticut, yes, Connecticut. What exactly is Connecticut? Let's see if we can find out. The state can be divided into seven
geographical areas. This area right
here is the New York suburbs. This is
not really Connecticut. They identify
completely with the Big Apple. When they
say the City, they're not talking about Hartford. It's very expensive and exclusive down here. The average price of a home is several
hundred thousand dollars. That's not
really Connecticut. This area is
Litchfield County, the playground of the stars. A lot of artists and celebrities from New York summer here. Many live year round. Lot of money here. Out here people pay high prices for antiques. You can get the same thing cheaper in the
real Connecticut.
NARRATOR: Until the mid 1800s, Connecticut, like other
states was primarily agricultural with most people sharing a rural culture, but
its poor and rocky soil made farming a losing proposition. When the American frontier moved west, many
of Connecticut's farmers followed. Into
the early 20th Century, small town rural values still prevailed as
many Connecticut residents either lived on or had grown up on farms, but by
1950 there were only 16,000 working farms in Connecticut. Today there are 4,300.
ARTHUR MILLER (Connecticut Playwright): When I first came
around here about 40 years ago or more, it was a very different culture. It was agricultural basically and there were
traditions that were carried on from generation to generation. They shared the same work basically. They were farmers and that creates of course
a culture all its own. This is the 20th
Century. What it's done basically is to
root people out of the land and it will more and more.
CHRISTOPHER COLLIER (Connecticut State Historian): You move
into cities. You have vast numbers of
face to face relationships in a day.
Most of these become anonymous.
In the days of the little village, you only saw 20 people a day. You knew all of these people. You greeted these people. You stopped to talk to these people. You cared about them. You hated some of them. You loved some of them. You are probably not neutral about any of
them. You move into cities. You're neutral about almost everybody and
you don't care, so that City living, which comes with industrialization makes a
tremendous difference.
NARRATOR: As
industrialization and urbanization continued, Connecticut' population became
more mobile. With the demise of company dominated towns and the emergence of multi-national
corporations in the 20th Century, the trend became more pronounced,
further cutting us off from a shared vision.
JOHN SUTHERLAND (Dir., Institute for Local History): I think we're standing in a place that reflects
in some ways, in fact a great many ways, what Connecticut's identity has
become. What you're looking at is the
yarn mill at Cheney Brothers, one of the largest silk manufacturing companies
in the country. That yarn mill produced
yarn and therefore produced jobs, thousands of jobs -- thousands of jobs in
this entire mill area. Today, it's
apartments, because today we have moved from being a primarily industrial
economy to a postindustrial mixed economy, much greater alliance in service
jobs.
BRUCE FRASER (Exec. Dir., CT Humanities Council): There is,
I suspect, a substantial number of folks in Connecticut who are here for a few
years and then gone somewhere else. How
many of us stay here long enough to have a sharp sense either of the history of
the place or any sense committed to its future.
ARTHUR MILLER (Connecticut Playwright): I don't see a
commonality in the cultural attitudes, at least in the big middle class, which
is what dominates this state. All that
holds them together is the sunshine.
They are all sitting in the same sun, but not as much, so it lacks
character which comes from a tradition and tradition comes from people who have
lived in the same place for a long time.
NARRATOR: In 1991 for the first year since the boom years of
the 1980s, more people moved out of Connecticut than moved into the state. Many left in search of jobs. Unemployment has risen dramatically since
the recession came to Connecticut three years ago. The state historically's strong economic main stay, manufacturing
and insurance, have both hit hard times. The insurance industry, which once
virtually guaranteed a job for life, continues to lay off workers. Manufacturing, beset by out-of-state
competition and defense cut-backs has been steadily declining. At the Polish-American Falcon's Club in New
Britain, the search for jobs has affected both family and state ties.
GROUP FROM POLISH-AMERICAN FALCON’S CLUB
SPEAKER #1: My son just moved out to Texas. It's the job market. The job market motivates them to go.
SPEAKER #2: My son's out in California. He left for the same reason. The job market was better out there than it
was here and I have a daughter in Florida also who left because of
employment.
SPEAKER #1: When you're young -- when you're 22 years of
age, you don't worry about the state, do you?
No. You know, he's worrying about the job. He can always make new friends and meet new friends. The social
life is there. What else does he need?
NARRATOR: Promising job prospects brought Maria Tores and
her family to Bridgeport in the 1950s.
KEN SIMON: Do you
plan to stay in this state for the rest of your life?
MARIA TORRES (Bridgeport Police Commission): Honestly, with
the budget crisis that the state of Connecticut is going through now and the
bankruptcy issue that the City of Bridgeport is facing, my husband and I are
seriously thinking of relocating. For
instance, I find myself in a very difficult situation, cause I have a son who's
going to be going to college next year and I'm also facing, you know, a very
high mill rate coming up next year, so I would rather spend the money on my
son's college education somewhere else where the cost of living is less than to
spend an additional $300 on my mortgage.
BOB ENGLEHART: The
search for Connecticut continues. This
is the capitol, Hartford. It looks like
a cross between New York, Boston and Newark.
Centrally located, a lot of people like it because it's half way between
New York and Boston. I like it because
it's halfway between Providence and Albany.
The suburbs of Hartford, they're like any other suburb and any other
town in the country. A lot of people
who move here from other states like to live in the suburbs. That way they feel like they haven't
moved. It looks like the last suburb
they moved in, same McDonalds, same mall, same stores. It's familiar. This area, New Haven, is academia -- Yale, Wesleyan University
plus a bunch of other colleges and schools are down here. A lot of analyzing and heavy thoughts are
being thunk down here. These people
talk in a multi-salavic pentrimetricals.
That ain't really Connecticut.
NARRATOR: Clearly Connecticut's identity is fractured,
complex and changing. In the midst of change,
is there anything that can bring us together with which we can all still
identify? Is our identity our lack of
identity?
MICHAEL STERN (Connecticut Author): I enjoy being in a state
that doesn't have a clear identity to the rest of the world. I think because that means we're not
pigeon-holed. We're not stereo-typed
and I think that's -- that's a very good thing. I mean there is something very obnoxious about that image of the
classic tax center or the guy from Missouri who says, show me, or the New
Yorker or the Californian or almost any state you could name has this very
annoying person who symbolizes that and I think we in Connecticut don't. If we do have a person who symbolizes us, he
is an insurance salesman, which can be pretty annoying too, but I think
basically we don't. When people think
of Connecticut, they think -- they don't think of anything in particular.
JANE STERN (Connecticut Author): I mean there are probably
hundreds of Connecticuts. I mean I
think the rest of the world might think of Connecticut as the Martha Stewart
state where everybody walks around in a white linen dress with beautifully
arranged flowers on their table and make goat cheese appetizers and lead this
country sheik life, but when you go to Derby, it's -- you could think Martha
Stewart did not exist and similarly if you go to Greenwich, you have that -- or
New Caanan or Darien or Hadlyme -- I mean, every place has its own take on what
Connecticut is and it's a state that I think in a way reinvents itself every time
you cross a border.
ARTHUR MILLER (Connecticut Playwright): I don't know what Connecticut is. It's a nice place to be and it's a beautiful
day today -- quiet -- here -- and I just hope it finds its way to something
more integral and so it does create great -- more of a character. By the way, the mere fact that we can't name
what it's character is doesn't mean it doesn't have one. It may simply be that we're in the middle of
it and don't see it.
NARRATOR: J. Roy
Grace is a marketing expert and advertising copywriter who lives in
Connecticut. He's made a name for
himself writing ad campaigns that make us think of one thing when we hear
another.
Alka-Seltzer Advertisement
Mama Mia, that's a spicy
meatball.
KEN SIMON: If I name
a state, would you name products --
J. ROY GRACE (Chairman, Grace & Rothchild): Sure --
KEN SIMON: -- that you think might be well associated with
that state or benefit from it.
California.
J. ROY GRACE (Chairman, Grace & Rothchild): Ah, surfing,
sun products, wine, fruits, vegetables, clothing, fragrances.
KEN SIMON: Texas.
J. ROY GRACE (Chairman, Grace & Rothchild): Texas -- ah,
chili, barbecue, beef, boots, cowboy hats, horses.
KEN SIMON: Louisiana.
J. ROY GRACE (Chairman, Grace & Rothchild): Ah, Cajun cooking,
jazz.
KEN SIMON: Maine.
J. ROY GRACE (Chairman, Grace & Rothchild): L.L.Bean,
skiing
KEN SIMON: Florida.
J. ROY GRACE (Chairman, Grace & Rothchild): Sun, surf,
vacations.
KEN SIMON: And Connecticut?
J. ROY GRACE (Chairman, Grace & Rothchild): You got
me. You got me. There's nothing there -- as Gertrude Stein
once said, but I don't mean that.
Connecticut's a great state, but, you know, it's like anything that
doesn't have that high profile. You
know, some -- I'm sure if you did this about New York, you'd have people
talking forever, but nobody wants to live there.
There's something in the name,
That makes us want to stand and
cheer.
It's glory and it's fame,
Have made a story that is grand
and very dear to us.
Rebirth of freedom, a helping
hand,
From this rougher, a gentle
land,
It's Connecticut, Connecticut,
Hail Connecticut, the Constitution State.
What makes an area a good place
to live? A number of things
probably. Pleasant residential
districts for varying income groups.
Good schools, centers for cultural programs, excellent medical care
facilities, recreational opportunities the year round.
Man on the Street Interview (MOS) #1: It's a nice place to
live and it's a good place to raise a family.
MOS #2: Connecticut is a sophisticated, desirable place to live.
MOS #3: It's got a lot to offer and from corner to corner
it's quite diverse.
MOS #4: Money,
money, money. You think Connecticut,
you think money. Um, nice country
living and nice place to raise a family.
NARRATOR: For many, Connecticut is simply a nice place to
live, the quintessential suburban state.
HERB JANICK (Historian, W. CT State U.): I think we lose
sight of a very important element of Connecticut if we don't think of the fact
that very early and maybe much more complete than other states, we invested in
the suburban solution to our problems.
The suburb has the perfect environment where we have all the benefits of
urban life without the disadvantages and we have the benefits of rural life
without the disadvantages. It has lots
of problems too in the 20th Century.
COLIN MCENROE (Columnist, Hartford Courant): I don't know
what it's based on, but there's a sense that, you know, we don't want to go any
place else and we don't want to be any place else and we want everything here
exactly the way it is here and we don't want anything to change.
JOHN FIGEROA (Connecticut State Representative): There are a lot or people here who think,
boy, this is a great place to live because I am able to live in a community
where there's no crime, where my kids can go to school well fed. Ah, everything is taken care of and they're
a lot of people I think who in addition to, you know, have a nice picturesque
surrounding. On the other hand, you may
have -- you have in Connecticut a group of people who's reality and who think
of themselves as, when am I going to be able to get my next in order to cover
my rent. What am I going to do if my
son or daughter gets sick and has to go to the hospital and not only that, but
then there are, you know, there are people who are even questioning even more
basic things than that. Where am I going
to live next week? It is part of what
we are here in Connecticut that we live in two very different realities.
BRUCE FRASER (Exec. Dir., CT Humanities Council): One of the
things about Connecticut that flows from this sense of it as a great place to
live is that it's a great place to live by yourself and to retreat to some
individual agenda.
ARTHUR MILLER (Connecticut Playwright): There are a lot of
people who admire it because it cuts them off from other people and they don't
want to have anything to do with other people and that's one of the attractions
of living this way. You take care of
yourself. And that is enviable for a
lot of people in many places. They’d
love to do that if they could. That is
certainly not the classical idea of
mankind, which was always social.
BRUCE FRASER (Exec. Dir., CT Humanities Council): Other than
a nice yard and access to a wonderful mall, good shops, decent schools in some
places, that's it. Is that it? It can't be it.
BOB ENGLEHART: We're still searching for the real Connecticut. Let's look in this area right here along the Rhode Island border. These people identify with Providence and Boston. Some of them even speak with a Rhode Island accent and eat clam chowder with a clear broth. This isn't really Connecticut. This part of Connecticut is called east of the river. It's rural and very and very quiet, economically depressed, even in good times. It's like Maine. We're supposed to be in the wealthiest state in the Union, so ah, this must not really be Connecticut. So where is the Connecticut you've heard so much about? The Co