Looking Back: Growing up in Queens versus Rutland

A column that I wrote awhile back compared growing up in the city to growing up in the country. Reading that column caused a friend of mine to take her own trip back in time and she shared her memories with me.

As I was reading her email I realized that my early years in the city of Rutland actually seemed like “country living” in comparison to her life in Queens, New York.

The friend I am referring to is Diana Fellows. She and her husband, Bill, were our long time neighbors until they moved to Massachusetts a little over a year ago. Diana reads my column and tells me that she did many of the same things I have written about, only they were done differently.

Diana grew up in Queens, New York, in the ‘40s and ‘50s. Her family lived on the third floor of a walkup. If you wanted your laundry to dry in the fresh air you hung the clothes on the roof of the building. That same roof was also a spot to sunbathe for Diana and her sisters. In my family the wash was hung on a large clothes line in our back yard. There were four lines of cloth rope and each one was 8 feet long. Sunbathing for me was done on the grass of our back lawn. However, roof sunbathing did occur in my college days on the roof of Trinity College. We folded record album covers and lined them with aluminum foil to tan our faces. No wonder many of us “senior citizens” need regular visits to a dermatologist!

Diana went to Girl Scout Camp in Bear Mountain and loved being outside among the trees and grass. I was also a Girl Scout and our troop spent one overnight each summer at the scout camp on Notch Road in Mendon. Even though it was just a short distance from Rutland it gave us the experience of being in the woods. We had bunk beds and I remember being in the top bunk and spilling hot chocolate on the head of the girl under me.
Unfortunately, she stuck her head out of the lower bunk as my mishap was occurring!

Diana won a scholarship to a Catholic high school in Brooklyn and had to take first a bus and then a train to get to school. She told me, “The train from Queens to Brooklyn was like the school bus in Vermont. Every stop we made was for another school so we saw the same kids everyday on the way to our individual schools.”

I also went to a Catholic high school, Mount Saint Joseph Academy. We either walked to school or got a ride from our parents. There was no bus and we certainly didn’t need a train to get us there. It was about a 2-mile walk from my house. Going to school in the morning was an easy walk but carrying all of our textbooks uphill over River Street Bridge on the way home was quite strenuous at times. Nobody used backpacks. We carried all our books in front of us.

The manner in which Diana met her future husband sounds like something that belongs in a movie. They met while riding on the Brooklyn-Queens subway every day to get to school. Although they attended different high schools their time on the train as well as studying together at the local library was enough to spark a romance. They attended different colleges after high school and eight years from the first time they met on the train they were married. The year was 1962 and they had their wedding reception at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Diana said it was a small restaurant back then and not “glitzy” compared to later years.

I met my husband, Peter, the old fashioned way. Someone played matchmaker and introduced us. My late relative, Loyola McDonough and her husband, John, would sometimes go to The Carriage Room for a drink after work. Peter was often seated near them and Loyola always chatted with him and thought he was a really nice guy. So she told him there was someone she would like him to meet — me! The rest is history. We were late bloomers compared to Diana and Bill as we were in our 30s when we met. Our wedding reception was held at the Pico Base Lodge on the mountain. Pico was Peter’s home away from home back in the day! Not quite Tavern on the Green but locally it was considered a great place for a reception.

So how did Diana and Bill end up in Rutland? They were ready for a change from city living and since Diana had a sister and cousins who lived in Rutland it seemed like the perfect place to call home. Bill purchased Jim Muscatello’s accounting business and Diana taught in the Rutland City school system. They called Rutland their “home” for over 50 years before moving to Massachusetts.

Good neighbors are always missed when they move but thanks to emails keeping in touch is easy. Plus, Diana and Bill come to Rutland in the summer to visit friends and Diana and I can catch up over lunch or coffee. You can bet that we will take a look back when we do!