Between January of 2001 and November of 2006 I met pretty often with Denise Bessette (introduced here), who was by then my partner and VP of Application Development. I found a folder of Microsoft Word files for the agendas that I wrote up for these strategy meetings. Starting in 2003 the meetings became more regular. They occurred on many if not most Wednesdays, the day that I was most likely not to be at a client’s.
We generally ate lunch together at an order-at-the-bar restaurant on the west side of the river. It had picnic tables near a small stream. I can’t remember the name of the place. I took a drive in the area that my memory associated with its location, but I could find no trace of it. I suspect that it closed, and the land was bought by a developer who put it to another use, perhaps condominiums.
The following summaries are mostly in chronological order. Almost every AdDept client is mentioned at some point. Separate blog entries with much more details have been posted for each of them. They can easily be found using the 1948 Project’s master index program, which is available here.
Many items on the agendas are repeated on subsequent agendas. A few of them persist over years. These were issues for which we never found solutions. The most obvious examples were the efforts to find additional uses for AxN that would benefit newspapers and/or advertisers.
By 2001 the nature of and name for AxN1 had been decided. Our focus was on how to roll it out to the AdDept clients and what we could do to make it more attractive both to the advertisers and the newspapers. We also discussed potential support issues and how the new model 170 that TSI had recently purchased could handle the load of handling the traffic from AdDept clients and newspapers. Occasionally we talked about personnel and other business-related matters.
By 2002 the business environment for large department stores had changed dramatically. Before listing the agenda for one of the meetings I wrote, “We need to change our attitude 180 degrees. Previously we had excess demand and were struggling to increase our capacity to meet it. Now we have excess capacity, and our customers are frugal.”
I had used Net.Data2 extensively for AxN. At the time it was the only thing available on the AS/400 that could interact with the database. By 2002, however, IBM was telling people not to use it. However, it was several years before IBM provided an equivalent tool. Java3, which I had studied extensively and had concluded was not suitable for what we wanted to do, was IBM’s solution to everything.
I was surprised to read how uncertain we were about the willingness o AdDept clients to use AxN. The meeting in March mentioned the need for a second installation. Before reading this I was pretty sure that Belk4 was the first, but maybe someone else had used it on a limited basis.
In 2003 Denise and talked a lot about what kind of programming was marketable to our clients. We investigated quite a few products that claimed to make it easier to make native AS/400 programs web-based . We also talked about what features could be added to AxN so that it would be more valuable to advertisers or newspapers. Usually one of the last items on the list was whether we should spend time converting our code from BASIC to RPG or something else.
In May Sue and I took our first vacation in Italy. I wrote a journal about that adventure and posted it here.
The meeting of November 5 was the first mention of Bob Wroblewski, who has been introduced here. The next few agendas mostly consisted of the same items.
In January of 2004 Bob and I flew to California to visit Robinsons-May and Gottschalks. Bob then started enrolling Rob-May’s papers. After that the process of getting newspapers to subscribe to AxN snowballed for several years. At about the same time our long courtship of Dick’s Sporting Goods finally paid off with a contract for AdDept. So, in only two years the outlook for TSI had improved greatly.
In February it occurred to me that there might be one dominant software company for the newspaper business. If we could create an interface with their system, it could advance the AxN project tremendously. However, I later discovered that each paper, if it had anything at all, had developed its own software or paid someone to do it. There was no uniformity. Fortunately I discovered that this was a blind alley before I wasted a lot of time, money, and energy on it.
The agenda for the February 18 meeting made it clear that the AxN project was about to take off. Most of the long-time AdDept users had at least been contacted. Stage Stores was enthusiastic, and they had just acquired another chain named Peebles. Finally, Dick’s Sporting Goods had finally signed the contract to purchase AdDept. To deal with the expected increase in use of the Internet by the newly subscribing newspapers Denise was arranging for installation of a T-1 line from AT&T with the Cox Cable connection as backup.
The March 3 agenda closed with a mention of the NAA, which was the abbreviation for the Newspaper Association of America (changed to News/Media Alliance in 2016). I eventually talked with someone at its headquarters, but I foresaw that it would take a lot of time and effort to build a productive relationship with the organization. It might have been a good project for Doug Pease (introduced here) or Jim Lowe (introduced here), but at that point they were in the rear-view mirror. I never thought that this would have been a good fit for Bob. Besides, he was busy talking to newspapers, or at least soon would be.
It took me a few minutes to decode this entry on the entry for March 24: “Robinsons: Lower price for LANG?” LANG was the Los Angeles Newspaper Group,.5 a company that printed and distributed tabloids in Los Angeles and its suburbs. Advertising for all those papers was managed from one central location. TSI agreed to send them one bill. We treated them like one large paper with several editions.
In April we were waiting for Dick’s to begin the solicitation for AxN before we approached Macy’s West and RadioShack. The April 21 entry contained positive news about Filene’s use of AdDept for accounting, including the monthly closing process. The next week Denise and I discussed the proposed trip to talk with Hecht’s main paper, the Washington Post. I ended up visiting them on May 14. It gave me quite a thrill, but I don’t think that they ever agreed to use AxN. Apparently we also considered a press release about being in business for twenty-five years, but I am pretty sure that we never did it.
The agenda for May 26 poses this question about Filene’s: “Have they made a big mess?” Bon Ton agreed to send letters to its newspapers about AxN.
In June we discussed various methods of emailing claims. I don’t recall that we ever took any action on this. There was ominous news from Federated that they put all quotes on hold. The total number of orders in AxN exceeded 100,000. The June 30 agenda announced that Dick’s was moving into its new building over the subsequent weekend.
The first item on the July 21 agenda was “Denise’s three issues”. I wonder what they were. Item #10C talks about a follow-up meeting with the Washington Post that never happened. The next week’s agenda explained that they did not respond to my email. A second e-mail was sent on August 4. On August 25 (my dad’s eightieth birthday) I called the Director of Advertising Services.
Something distressing was evidently going on at Parisian, but I don’t remember what it was. That disclosure was somewhat offset by the following good news: “RadioShack: 34 active; 39 testing; 22 Macy’s West; 15 L&T; 4 Parisian; 56 other.” RadioShack did one of its four geographic divisions at a time. The last two entries brought up new subjects: “How can we make better use of my time and Lucia’s6?” and “5-year plan”.
The August 4 agenda was the first to mention SQL7. I used SQL for all of the AxN programs, but the AdDept programs mostly created temporary indexed output files that were populated by one program and read by another using IBM’s recommended approach, ISAM (Indexed Sequential Access Method).
Marshall Field’s (introduced here), the last big installation of the May Co. version of the AdDept system, was first mentioned in the agenda for September 8. We were very excited about the meeting scheduled for September 16 at Hecht’s advertising department in Arlington VA. By this time the work for the Peebles installation at Stage Stores was operational enough that we were ready to solicit their newspapers for AxN.
I was serious enough about contacting companies that sold software for ad agencies that I spent $35 to buy the booklet from the AAAA. I questioned whether we should write to each of them to propose an interface with their system and AxN. I don’t remember ever doing so.
The agenda for November 1 mentioned that Field’s used an ad agency for both broadcast and newspaper. My recollection was that they started using AxN almost immediately and dropped Haworth, the agency that bought newspaper space. However, later entries seem to contradict this. The same agenda mentions that TSI was carrying $55,000 in questionable receivables in the last month of its fiscal year.
I never had to make an onsite visit to our AxN client in Guam.
The November 10 agenda mentioned that—after months of foot-dragging—Federated Systems Group was finally going to “cut over” to their new AS/400 system. During this period we were worried about providing support for AxN for Macy’s West’s newspapers in Hawaii and Guam. This was needless. The papers subscribed for years without any problems. This was also the last agenda that included a mention of a press release about TSI’s twenty-fifth anniversary.
A major issue early in the year was how to handle the process for installing changes that Dick’s had forced upon us. There were other issues, too. The first agenda of the year ends with the question: “How can we get this installation on the right track?”
Two minor enhancements to AxN for the advertisers had been completed: custom emails and downloading of email addresses. However, I had apparently given up on the possibility of interfacing with computer systems used by the newspapers. There was also a process for reconciling the orders on AxN with the schedule on AdDept.
By March 10 we had a big programming backlog because of the large number of difficult jobs for Marshall Field’s. Denise controlled this process. I simply asked, “How can I help?” In the same meeting we discussed for the first time what, if any thing, we should do to forestall Macy’s from replacing AdDept with the system known then known as FedAd that had been developed by Burdines. Our contact at Macy’s West stated that “it did not exist”.
At the March 25 meeting we talked about Macy’s East for the first time in many months. For the April 28 and May 4 meetings there is separate agenda for AxN. For some reason I seemed worried about using it at Foley’s and Stage Stores.
The first item on the regular May 4 agenda was one word: “Lucia”. Lucia was able to handle much more challenging projects than our other administrative employees. The problem was trying to come up with things for her to do. Another issue on the same agenda posed some interesting questions:
We never mastered the trick of Cloud Computing.
How could we set ourselves up to manage systems for our small clients? Bon Ton, Gottschalks, Neiman Marcus
IBM (like Federated)?
TSI
Dedicated high-speed line for each user?
On the net?
Telnet? How would they print? Pdf?
VPN: AS/400 to AS/400?
VPN: PC to AS/400?
High availability?
Disaster recovery?
A third party?
We did not spend a great deal of effort on trying to provide “cloud” computing for our customers. It would have involved a great deal of expense and risk. Just seeing that term “disaster recovery?” item gives me the chills.
Later in May Sue and I took our second Italian vacation with our friends Tom and Patti Corcoran. I wrote a journal again, but this time I had a camera. The results are posted here.
The agenda for June 2 began with the surprising news that Chuck Hansen at Marshall Field’s had asked me to back off on AxN. It also mentioned the agenda for a meeting with Macy’s Marketing on 5/17. It probably intended to say “6/17”. The next agenda, dated July 8, only stated, “Follow up with …” I must have forgotten the name (Robin Creen) of the lady with whom I met at Macy’s Corporate Marketing. There is also a reference to Bloomingdale’s. I suspect that this was in response to information from Tom Caputo, who worked with AdDept at both Lord & Taylor and Saks Fifth Avenue, that Bloomies had never taken the FedAd software out of the box.
The July 11 agenda has some detailed information about a proposed newsletter publicizing how AdDept handled inserts. Some of these enhancements were done for Dick’s.
The August 26 agenda has a new and somewhat mysterious major topic called “AdDept ideas”. The two subtopics are “SpooliT8 ($9K) or other Excel” and “Service Bureau”. I think that SpooliT made .csv files out of spooled output files. It may have had a few other features.
Throughout this period there were references to The Oregonian, the major paper in the Portland area that stopped paying invoices for AxN without canceling and never responded to attempts to find out why.
The agenda for September 14 mentions the long letter that I sent to Robin Creen. Its contents are posted here.
The agenda for October 12 had several tantalizing references. It began by stating that IBM’s VPN9 product, which TSI used for communicating through the Internet, with clients’ AS/400s would be activated on the following Saturday. It also reported that a newsletter had been sent out.
Robin Creen topped the October 24 agenda, but there were no details. The second item referred to renewal of iSeries News, a magazine.that catered to the AS/400 community. It had undergone many name changes, and the content had also evolved. We kept all of the back copies in the shelves that in 2023 are in my office. When we closed down the company (details here), I threw all of them away.
The third item was “SBC Contract”. I don’t remember SBC, but I suspect that it was an IBM Business Partner that had sold more systems than we had or had somehow managed to deal directly with IBM. During this period TSI was not allowed to quote or sell any IBM products. We had to go through a Super-VAR.
The fourth item was “Lucia” with no details. The fifth was “AT&T Global: do we need it?”. I am pretty sure that this product allowed me to get my email when I was on the road. In the days before Wi-Fi I had an AT&T product installed on my laptop that allowed me to use a phone line in my hotel room to sign on to AT&T and look at my email.
We must have received an inquiry from Sport Chalet10 a chain of stores in California that was similar to Dick’s. Until I saw this entry again I had completely forgotten about them. Evidently I wrote them a letter and sent them a newsletter, but nothing came of it.
The last agenda for 2005 was dated December 6. The #1 item was the blitz to get an AdDept system for Macy’s South up and running in time for the season that started at the beginning of February. The second item was an inquiry from Circuit City11. This was another dead end.
The “My disk recovery” entry brought back some really bad memories. I think that I recovered everything on my computer’s hard drive, but it was costly and painful. The best part was that I got an external hard drive12 that made it very easy to back everything up.
There are no entries for 2006 until June. I remember being under extreme pressure to bring the two huge AdDept installations at Macy’s South and Marshal Field’s up to speed. Meanwhile we received the crushing news that Macy’s and the May Co. had merged, and Macy’s would be the dominant player.
The agenda for June 13 began with the word Corum. I am pretty sure that it referred to broadcast buying software. Based on the date it was probably associated with Macy’s South.
That agenda also contained a major item that simply stated “Modernizing and marketing AdDept”. We never did find a feasible way to transform the AdDept screens into something that looked modern. We made more marketing attempts after this, but they did not amount to much. This was the peak period for AxN. More than four hundred papers had subscribed. TSI’s administrative person spent a good deal of time printing and mailing invoices and depositing checks from newspapers.
The agenda for October 11 was startlingly different. It mentioned two AS/400 models, a 170 and a 270. My recollection is that we did development and ran the business on the 170, and the 270 was devoted to AxN. It also mentions recruitment. I am not sure whether that referred to the administrative position or programming. The agendas have gotten shorter and shorter.
This agenda also mentioned the C compiler for the 270. Denise was upset at me for even investigating the possibility of converting TSI’s code to C, which was widely used in the Unix world.
In the agenda for October 18 the scary term “Macy’s North” appeared several times. It referred to the company that was formerly called Marshall Field’s. Evidently the marketing (never called “advertising”) department there had never bought into using AxN for insertion orders. They may have still been using Haworth.
“Maintenance” was often mentioned in the agenda for November 1. We probably never charged as much as we could have for the kind of service that we provided our clients. I was evidently still spending quite a bit of time at Belk.
I was surprised to see Circuit City mentioned again on the agenda for November 8. We must have received another phone call. The term “Foley’s project” also appeared. I am pretty sure that that was the code name for the long and frustrating effort that Denise and I undertook to sell the company.
The last agenda that I have was dated July 10, 2007. It contained only four items:
Trip to Macy’s West
515
Dick’s quotes
Foley’s
Never even a nibble.
Denise and I continued to meet, but not on a formal basis. By then I had almost given up on selling more AdDept systems. There had been so much consolidation in retail that the number of good prospects for the system had shrunk to almost nothing. Nordstrom and Dillard’s would have looked nice on our client list, but it was hard to think of anyone else that was worth pursuing.
We still did quite a bit of custom programming during the next five or six years, but managing the list of open jobs did not require the juggling act that had characterized the previous decade.
The AxN business decreased for a few reasons. The big stores no longer trusted newspaper ads to bring in customers as they once did. Newspaper readership was way down. Some of the AdDept clients outsourced their buying to agencies or media services. That always meant a drop in the number of papers.
I enjoyed those meetings immensely, and I miss them.
1. The history of the development of AxN is posted here. The system design is outlined here. The description of the process by which it was brought to market begins here.
2. Net.Data was a scripting language written by IBM for the AS/400. It was quite popular, but IBM for some reason decided to drop it in favor of the open source scripting language php, which required implementation of the Zend php engine.
3. Java is an object-oriented language that was developed by people at Sun Microsystems. The company released an open-source version. Java was almost the only thing that IBM talked about at the PartnerWorld convention that Denise and I attended in 2000. It is described here. On the AS/400 applications written in Java required a lot more resources than programs written in the native languages. If run on the same box the Java programs were slower, a lot slower.
4. The history of the AdDept installation at Belk is posted here.
5. In 2016 LANG merged with the Orange County Register and a few other papers. The new organization was called the Southern California Newspaper Group. The third item under the Federated topic was “AxN letter to four divisions”. Since “Bloomingdale’s” was the second item it mus refer to Macy’s East, West, South, and Florida (Burdines).
6. Lucia Hagan was TSI’s administrative person during this period. She was introduced here.
7. SQL stands for Structured Query Language. It was invented by IBM, but the company did not endorse its use on the AS/400 until 2004.
8. SpooliT is still on the market in 2023! Its website is here.
9. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. The Wikipedia entry is here.
10. Sport Chalet was sold to Vestis Retail Group in 2014 and was liquidated in 2016.
11. The sad story of Circuit City ended with its liquidation in 2009.
12. I still have that hard drive in 2023. However, I recently discovered that I no longer can find the cable that was used to attach it to a computer, and the company that made it was no longer in business.
People have often asked me whether I was retired, and, if so, for how long. I have usually told them that I never exactly decided to retire. In 2014, however, TSI’s clients made it clear to me that it was time for me to quit.
That year was definitely a turning point in my own life. I did not rate the events and decisions of the early months of that year as a genuine crisis—unlike the four others that have been detailed in this project. During the previous several years I had seen the trends developing, I had explored every alternative that I could think of, and my financial position was good, at least in comparison with its state before the late nineties.
By late 2013 Denise Bessette, my partner, had moved from Stafford, CT, to Cape Cod. She was working from home with occasional trips to East Windsor. We could communicate by email, telephone, or through messaging on the AS/400. During this period I was 65 years old; Denise was ten years younger.
The cause: The precipitating event was a letter received in late 2013 from one of our contacts at Dick’s Sporting Goods1, a long-time user of both AdDept and AxN. I cannot find a copy of the letter, but it was basically an announcement that Dick’s had contracted with a media buying service to schedule and purchase its newspaper ads.
Other AdDept users had previously made similar decisions.2 At RadioShack (discussed in detail here) the decision coincided with dropping the use of the AdDept system entirely. The advertising department there used it to place, manage, and pay for advertising in hundreds of papers, but it never used many of the other modules. Nevertheless, one of the employees most closely involved confided to me a few months after the outsourcing that she thought that they might have made a mistake.
A few years later Belk (described here) outsourced its newspaper buying. Unlike RadioShack, Belk by that time was using AdDept for a very large number of tasks besides scheduling and purchasing newspaper ads. Denise Podavini, the financial manager for advertising, never considered dropping AdDept. Moreover, when I explained to her that TSI would be losing a large source of revenue from Belk’s newspapers that had subscribed to AxN3, she voluntarily authorized TSI to increase the maintenance charge to cover the difference. That reaction astounded me.
By 2013 most of TSI’s department store clients had been absorbed by Macy’s, which had then consolidated into one office in New York City. At that point that office was using neither AdDept not AxN. Dick’s outsourcing would have little effect on the income from AdDept. It might actually have given us a custom programming assignment or two. However, it would certainly mean the loss of all the revenue from Dick’s papers that had subscribed to AxN. There were over a hundred of them, and losing them would cost us thousands of dollars every month.
When we received the news from Dick’s my immediate evaluation was that this was the death knell for TSI. Denise was quite surprised at my reaction. We had worked together for thirty years, many of which were quite lean, and she had never seen me give up when the company faced a challenge. She spent a week or two manipulating possible projections on spreadsheets, but she finally came to the same conclusion that I had.
The plan: Denise and I met several times after working hours or out of the office in order to come up with a plan that treated our employees, Jason Dean and Ashley Elliott, our remaining clients, our vendors, and ourselves fairly. We began by making a list of things that we certainly needed to resolve:
A termination date for AxN and support for AdDept.
A plan for the employees.
Taxes and other governmental issues.
Our lease for 7B Pasco Dr.
Letters to AdDept clients.
Notifications to vendors.
Disposition of assets.
We scheduled an appointment with our accountant, Tom Rathbun. As it happened, he was planning to retire. So, our news pretty much coincided with his plans. He provided us with a list of items that we needed to do to assure that we fulfilled our obligations to the government. We decided to terminate AxN and software support for the AdDept product on July 31. That would provide four months to whittle down the accounts receivable and accounts payable for the final closing of the books on November 30, 2014.
The employees: Even before we met with Tom, Denise and I had decided to let the employees work until March 31 or to terminate as of January 31 and receive a four-week severance package. They both took the severance option. Denise had expected both of them to stay, but I was not too surprised when they resigned. I was amenable to either option. The severance option was actually a little better for TSI. We saved money on payroll, and it offered an immediate opportunity to sell more of the office equipment sooner.
We wrote letters of recommendation for both employees. Here is the one that Denise wrote for Jason Dean:
To Whom It May Concern,
TSI Tailored Systems, Inc., is a small company that has provided intricate and extensive software systems to businesses large and small since 1980. Jason Dean joined our staff on October 15, 2007 as a programmer analyst and quickly became an integral member of our programming and support team. In 2010 he was promoted to lead programmer analyst. Jason worked on the development of new systems and the modification of existing systems in free-form RPGLE, SQL, BASIC and CL on IBM midrange business systems. Development was focused on a comprehensive data base system for retail advertising clients. His responsibilities also included program testing and documentation, client support, and a myriad of in-house support tasks.
Jason’s performance on the job has been uniformly excellent. He is well-organized and has extremely high standards for the quality of work produced. You can depend on him to consistently deliver sophisticated applications that meet those standards, and within or well in advance of project deadlines. He quickly and easily comprehends new strategies and technologies. He is an outstanding quality control tester. His methods steadily test both the functionality and logic of the program with robust data sets. His diligence has called out a number of subtle issues during the development cycle. Jason also had the opportunity to train and impart those standards on a new programmer, the results of which were outstanding.
Jason’s ability to handle client support is impressive. He is very adept at posing the necessary questions to extract information required to resolve client issues. He consistently maintains a positive, professional and helpful attitude even when dealing with a difficult caller. He won consistent praise from our clients.
Jason’s termination had nothing to do with his job performance. Business conditions necessitated that we take steps to close the business.
I unhesitatingly and without qualification recommend Jason Dean for any similar position. I would be very happy to talk with any prospective employer about his work at TSI. I can be reached at Denise_Bessette@cox.net or 860 386-0700 (through July 31, 2014) or 508 760-2847 (home).
The letter that I wrote for Ashley was posted here.
The clients: I composed a short letter to the AdDept clients and mailed it on February 28, 2024, at which point I was the only person left in the office. Here is the text:
Denise Bessette and I have worked together for almost three decades. During this time we have taken great pride in our ability to provide first-class software and service to our clients at a reasonable price and first-class treatment of our employees and vendors. We have changed the business radically a few times to respond to various circumstances, but we have never sacrificed our basic principles.
Recent events now necessitate another change, one that we definitely regret. Two factors have made it impossible for us to continue doing business in the way that we have in the past. The first is the consolidation of the retail business. In one case thirteen of our installations collapsed into one and then, ultimately, none. The second is the trend toward outsourcing. The latter has led to the collapse of our Internet insertion-order business, on which we have come to rely. We were already running a very lean operation. There is nothing left to cut.
Therefore, we both feel that we have no choice but to shut down TSI as of July 31, 2014. We will do our best to provide the very best support of the AdDept system’s day-to-day operations through that date and even implement whatever programming changes are required on the same basis that we always have. We are definitely willing to act as consultants to help design a transitional process and to fill whatever other roles you feel are appropriate. If you wish to use AdDept beyond the above date, you are, of course, free to do so, and if you want one of us to provide some kind of support, it may be possible to make arrangements on an individual basis.
We both think that TSI has had a great run. We wish that it could continue forever because we really have enjoyed working with our clients to provide a system that provided them with what they needed to prosper.
Best wishes for the future.
As far as I know, no one asked for help designing a transition process. Some users may well have asked Denise for help. I have occasionally wondered how they coped with the situation.
Hundreds of papers received the orders for ads like these through AdDept and AxN.
After receiving the letter someone from Dick’s called us to assure us that they had not intended to drop the AdDept system. We explained that the problem was not AdDept; it was the imminent loss of revenue from the many newspapers that had subscribed to AxN. Evidently no one at Dick’s had ever considered this ramification.
I have no information about how long any of the companies that were still using AdDept in 2014 continued to use it after July 31.
I did not write to any of the newspapers, but I did stop billing them for the subscriptions to AxN after July 31. I was still receiving checks from a few of them through November. At that point I wrote off everything that was outstanding.
The lease: We had arranged with our landlord, Rene Dupuis (introduced here), to stay in his company’s building until July 31. Because a lot of equipment and furniture remained in the office in the middle of July, I asked Rene if we (i.e., I) could stay one more month. He said that because TSI had been an ideal tenant for such a long time, he was happy to accommodate us. Our section of the building was empty by August 31.
During the last month or two Rene brought one or two people up to TSI’s office to examine the property. I do not remember the name of the company that ended up renting it, but the lease was signed while I was still working there.The company even purchased TSI’s antiquated telephone system for $500.
Tax issues: TSI had been paying sales or use taxes to several jurisdictions. I found a copy of the Letter of Good Standing signed by a machine for Deborah Chandler, the Tax Collection Supervisor of the Compliance Support Unit. It stated that TSI owed the state of Connecticut nothing.
I also found a copy of a letter that I wrote to the state of Mississippi that stated that we had done no business there and that TSI was closing. No one replied to the letter.
I was not able to follow all of the dealings with the IRS, but in June of 2015 I definitely received two checks with income tax refunds for payments that TSI had previously made.
Tom provided me with all of the forms that I needed to file with state and federal agencies. None of them were difficult or time-consuming.
Furniture and equipment. I wore many hats in my time working at TSI. The most ill-fitting was probably the last one: used furniture salesman. I took photos of everything and placed ads on Craig’s List. To my great surprise I rapidly disposed of nearly everything. I probably should have charged more, but we had bought almost all of it second-hand many years earlier.
I found a list of the major items that I sold and their prices:
The desk in my office with one of the phone units.
Item
Price
Conference table
80
Black cabinet
50
Kitchen table, chairs
80
Three cabinets
133
Sales office desk
25
Twelve side chairs
125
Four trash cans
2
Cabinet
40
Black desk
25
Cubicles
100
Denise’s desk
25
Phone system
500
4-drawer cabinet
125
Denise’s desk.
The biggest coup, aside from the sale of the telephone system, was the fact that I was able to get rid of the five-foot high4 dividers that were used to form cubicles. I was thrilled when a man whose wife (or maybe mother) was opening a dance studio in Windsor Locks almost directly across the Connecticut River from TSI’s office in East Windsor offered me $150 for all of the hardware. On a Saturday he drove a pickup towing a very long and flat trailer to the office. He and another fellow came upstairs, disassembled the cubicles, carried the individual sections down the stairs, and strapped them to the trailer. He thought that he got a bargain. I was afraid that I would end up needing to pay someone to take the dividers away.
The total that I received was $1,310, which I split with Denise.
I also remember giving out two very large plants to one of the guys who purchased the trash cans and some other mundane things. He took the plants that Eileen Sheehan-Willett had nursed from near-fatal neglect to monstrosities and put them in his truck. He was thoughtful enough to wait until he was out of sight to throw out the plants and save the pots.
I found the following notes in an Excel spreadsheet called equipment.xls:
The 515 server was sold to Saks Inc. for $2500 on 7/31/14.
The 270 server, color printer, Dell PC, scanner, and backup hub were taken by Mike on 7/31/14. The 270 will be scrapped when the company is closed. It has no market value.
The black & white laser printer was taken by Denise on 7/31/14.
Fax machine and copier were donated to a local church on 7/31/14.
Two dot matrix printers with no market value were donated to the New England Bridge Conference on 8/31/14.
All other equipment was scrapped on or about 7/31/14.
The 270 and 515 were iSeries (i.e., AS/400) models. The 270 and the other equipment were transported to our house at the end of August (not July) in a truck that my wife Sue borrowed from her friend and bridge partner, Jan Bailey.5 The equipment resided in my office for a few months until TSI’s books were closed, and I was pretty sure that I would not need the server. It, the backup hub, a twinax display, and a snake’s nest of cables have rested peacefully in the basement and are still there in 2024. The color printer, which supported two-sided printing, the scanner, and the PC lasted for quite a few years before they were scrapped or recycled somewhere.
A few other things made their way to our house. The kitchen at 7B had a microwave and a small refrigerator. The former is still in use in 2024, but the circular plat no longer spun around. It was due for the junk heat. The latter was given to David Basch, the grandson of another of Sue’s bridge partners, in exchange for doing the heavy lifting in the move. A small shelf and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase were moved to my office at the house in Enfield. A good many smaller items also made the journey back to Enfield.
The largest item that I neither sold nor brought back to Enfield was the Uninterruptible Power Supplu (UPS). The UPS was a large battery with outlets for several power cables. Our AS/400 and a few other devices were attached to it. The UPS could provide enough electricity to last for a few hours.
Power failures were not unknown in Connecticut. Denise and I discussed purchasing a generator, but we could never justify the expense. We only experienced a couple of power failures in the nearly fourteen years that TSI’s headquarters was in East Windsor, and the UPS was sufficient to to get us through them.
The UPS was very heavy. I carried it out to my car and transported it to a nearby dumpster. It was all that I could do to lift it to shoulder height and drop it in.
The one-man show: From February through August I drove into East Windsor every morning. Every evening I drove back to Enfield. When I arrived at work I checked to make sure that all the equipment was working. I encountered absolutely no hardware problems. Once a month I sent out invoices for software support and for AxN subscriptions. I usually ate lunch in the office by myself.
The highlight of the day was when the mail came. If there were any checks, I processed them in our home-grown accounts receivable system and then deposited them in the bank. I was often amazed that newspapers that I was fairly certain were no longer using AxN continued to pay for the service. I attributed this to the fact that so many newspapers had outsourced their processing of accounts payable to an outside service. TSI’s bills seemed to slip through the cracks of the approval process.
I spent most of the rest of my days sitting at the PC. I already had a pretty good command of HTML, JavaScript, php and MySQL. I did a lot of work on the NEBridge.org website, and it was also during this period that I got the idea of maintaining a database of ACBL members who resided in District 25 (New England). Allan Clamage (introduced here), who served as the editor of the website, told me how to download roster files from the ACBL and set it up so that I had the authority to do so. The details of the database are described here.
Don’t ask for Ben 9 at B&N.
The other major project that I worked on was my historical novel about Pope Benedict IX. The story of its genesis and why it was posted on Wavada.org but was never at Barnes & Noble is described in some detail here.
In some ways I wished that I had been a history major and gotten a PhD. Then I probably would have found someone with whom I could discuss my ideas about eleventh-century papal politics. On the other hand, I should remember that I only became interested in the popes in the twenty-first century, and I finished grad school in the seventies. Moreover, my interest in the eleventh century was a byproduct of a rather random introduction to a somewhat obscure ninth-century pope named Formosus.
I did not take a vacation in 2014, but I did go to quite a few bridge tournaments. This was the period during which I implemented a system of posting photographs of winners of regional events on NEBridge.org webpages. I called those pages “Winners Boards” because the background that I used looked like boards. I kept that feature up through 2021.
At about the same time I also began sending emails promoting the regional tournaments in New England. At first I composed the emails myself and sent them through my Wavada.org account. When I got blacklisted as a spammer, Bob Bertoni came to my rescue. That harrowing situation was described here.
The regional tournaments in 2014 were the first to include meetings of a committee that was known as “The B’s Needs”. It was initially chaired by Ausra Geaski, the president of the district. I attended every meeting.
The initial purpose of the committee was to recommend ways to make the tournaments more enjoyable for Flight B players, those with too many points to play in the “Gold Rush” events that were limited to less than 750 masterpoints. These people found themselves up against people with many thousands of points and years of experience. It was not generally a pleasant experience.
Over the next few years the committee produced a large number of suggestions for making the tournaments more attractive to B players and to everyone else. Many of them were implemented, and there is very little doubt that they had, for the most part, a profoundly positive effect on the tournaments. I took great pride in what we did as a group and what I personally implemented. This activity provided a purpose to my life at a time when I really needed one. It made me feel that I was using my time and skills to make life more enjoyable for people who shared one of my principal interests. Most of my contributions were cast aside in the post-Pandemic environment, and it saddened me greatly.
I found some materials about this committee. I have posted Ausra’s minutes of the meetings in Newton, MA, in January (here), Cromwell, CT, in February (here), and Nashua, NH, in September (here). I have also posted here the notes that Allan wrote up about the group’s first few ideas.
The version with a possible career in mining was the best.
While I was occupied with closing down TSI Sue had knee-replacement surgery on both legs. Afterwards she spent several days getting rehabilitated at Suffield House. I went to see her every evening. On one evening my friend Tom Corcoran joined us, and we played a game of Careers. Sue had to remind me of this event while I was in the process of writing this entry.
September.through December: For the last three months I ran what was left of TSI from my office at the house. I still received payments from newspapers almost right up to when I closed the books for good at the end of November.
I still had some communications with Tom Rathbun in December of 2014, but after that TSI has been nothing but a source of incredible memories. The process of closing it down was somewhat complicated, but I don’t remember making any serious mistakes.
1. Details of the installations at Dick’s Sporting Goods have been posted here.
2. I am not sure why these companies made the decisions. It is possible that the media buying services claimed that the fact that they represented several large advertisers would give them more clout in negotiating with newspapers. They may also have been able to claim more expertise in choosing between papers in the few markets that had more than one.
3. In theory it would have been possible for TSI to construct an interface that could be used by media buying services. We had written many interfaces to both send and receive records in other modules. However, the information that AxN required from AdDept contained four different types of records: headers for ads, special instructions at the header level, individual ads, and special instructions for individual ads. Could we persuade the buying service to send records in that format? I considered it unlikely in the extreme even if we did not charge them for using the service. Even if they were persuaded, we would have had to devise foolproof ways of dealing with errors in their files. Moreover, the process of fixing errors would need to be very efficient. Time could be of the essence. It appeared to me to be a nightmarish situation.
4. I am pretty sure about the height because I remember being just barely able to kick my right foot up and rest my ankle on the top of one to stretch my quads before running.
5. Jan Bailey, Ginny Basch, and Sue were regular participants in an unsanctioned bridge game that was held on Thursday evenings in Somers.
An interesting, if spooky, place to exercise during the pandemic. Continue reading →
For decades the big attraction of living in Enfield has been the easy access to almost every variety of retail store and restaurant. The concentration of these establishments in Enfield began with the construction of the Enfield Square mall and eventually spread out a few blocks in every direction except east, where I-91 blocked further expansion. As far as I know, no one celebrated the the fiftieth anniversary of the mall in 2021. Frankly, there was not much left to celebrate.
History: The potential of the property occupied by the mall was first appreciated by the May Co., one of TSI’s biggest clients and the parent company of the Hartford-based chain of department stores, G. Fox. The area attracted the company’s attention because it was between two exits of I-91 and there was little retail competition in the area north of Hartford and south of Springfield, MA. Furthermore, although Enfield itself was not a particularly wealthy town, the towns bordering it to the east (Suffield), west (Somers), and north (Longmeadow, MA) were quite prosperous and lacking in retail.
The three original anchor stores are indicated in red: G=G. Fox; P=JC Penney; S=Steiger’s. All three extended well into the parking lot and had external entrances.
This view is from the west. I cannot explain where all these cars are going. There is no exit on the west.
The May Co. purchased the land and developed a mall with three anchor stores and a very large parking lot. G. Fox occupied the prize spot—the two-story space on the western side with its own entrances. Steiger’s, a much smaller department store based in Springfield, leased the large one-story area on the eastern end. The two-story space located in the south-central area was leased to JC Penney.
This arrangement persisted for more than two decades. In 1994 Steiger’s went out of business, and in 1997 its space was leased by Sears. In 1993, the May company folded the G. Fox division into its Boston-based division, Filene’s. In 2000 the JC Penney store closed. Filene’s eventually took over the lease and closed the second floor of both of its locations. In 2006 Macy’s purchased the May Co. and rebranded Filene’s. Both Macy’s stores closed in 2016 and were never again occupied. The Sears store also closed in 2016 and was never reoccupied.
The doors on the left lead to the mall’s corridor. The ones on the right lead to Target. Few Target shoppers go to the mall area.
A new Target store was constructed and opened in 20011, but for some reason it was not really integrated into the mall. It had only one entrance—on the north side. It was next to one of the mall’s three side corridors, but there was no way to enter Target from the center of the mall without walking almost all the way down that corridor. So, it did not serve to draw traffic to the rest of the mall. It also occupied a considerable amount of parking space. For years parking was abundant on three sides of the mall and difficult on the north side.
Preparation: In January of 2022 I had been searching for an indoor location in which to walk a few miles four or five days per week. I had no interest in joining a gym, but I did investigate using a treadmill at the Enfield Senior Center. Then I thought of the mall. My dad had walked there for a while when Enfield Square was still a hive of activity. I sometimes picked him up there when we ate lunch together at Friendly’s on Wednesdays. I never asked him what it was like; I did not consider what he was doing as serious exercise, and in those days I still was in possession of a working treadmill and ample cartilage in my knees.
It occurred to me one day that I could walk in Enfield Square. I made a reconnaissance trip to gauge how many laps I would need to walk to reach my goal of five miles. I was a little surprised at how empty the building was, and some of the changes disoriented me. I was pleased with my discovery that one complete lap—including the side corridors—would constitute a hike of about half a mile. I decided to start with five laps and add one additional lap each Monday until I reached ten.
There were a few false starts. On the first hike through the mall I remembered my Bose head phones, but I forgot to bring my MP3 player. The second time I remember both the player and the headphones, but I found that the headphones trapped in too much heat. By the end of the walk I was uncomfortably hot. After that I used earbuds instead of the headphones.
On both of those first two hikes I left my winter jacket and hat in the car. I parked as close as possible to the door to the western corridor, but I still faced a fairly substantial walk in the frigid winter air from my car to the door. The next time I decided to try parking on the other side of Target near the door to the north end of the western corridor. The only store in that corridor was GameStop. I correctly figured that I would easily be able to locate a good parking spot there. In fact, the only difficulty that I encountered was with the nearest light in the parking lot. It did not seem to work, or maybe the landlord2 had disconnected it.
On my way to the mall I drove past the huge two-story western anchor store that had last been occupied by Macy’s until 2016. I remembered that for a while Lia Honda, which is a block east of Enfield Square had parked dozens or even hundreds of brand new vehicles in the western parking lot. When I drove by the former Macy’s the entire parking lot was shockingly empty. I noticed a sign on the side of the building that indicated that the building was available for lease or purchase. I feel certain that the property managers would bend over backwards to get a tenant there, but who would want it?
Come on inside and take a lap with me. We will be walking counterclockwise, which means that we will keep to the right. Some of the shoppers walk on the left side of the corridor, but I have yet to see a walker do so.
I’ll point out the sights. I’ve never actually set foot in any of the establishments at Enfield Square except for Target and the cinemas, but I’ve done a little research on some of the obscure ones, and I have made mental notes while hiking the corridors.
The western corridors: On the immediate right (west) of the northwest entrance is the GameStop store. It has been open every time that I have walked by it. Seldom has there been a potential customer within, but I can always hear or see some kind of activity.
A full-length mirror with five diagonal grey stripes has been positioned between the entrance to the store and the door through which I always enter and exit. When one is walking in the corridor towards the door it appears for a second that someone is walking up a hallway from the left. Actually the grey stripes make it appear that they are ascending a staircase.
The rest of the northwest corridor is totally uninhabited. There still is a large sign for Liberty, the tax consultants.. Liberty, which is, of course, a seasonal business has another office nearby. I am pretty sure that they have abandoned this office and just left the sign. If they intended to resume operations in the mall, I think that there would be more activity there by February 6. I, for one, have already received most of my 1099s.
Liberty’s office was on the southwest corner of the corridor in which we entered. At this point we bear to the right toward what was formerly the grand semicircular entrance to the G. Fox/Filene’s/Macy’s store that served as the western anchor store. Some walkers walk right along the wall, but I usually follow the diagonal checkerboard pathway.
I was quite shocked to discover that the entrances to two of the three of the former anchor stores had been walled up and decorated with unimaginative art work. At left is a photo of the one on the west end of the mall. I think that the artists meant to depict things that one could purchase in the mall. Not so in 2022. If the hamburger makes you hungry, you must go outside to Wendy’s or Friendly’s or across the street to McDonald’s or Burger King to get one.
As we pass through this area we can see overhead a huge wreath that was, I assume, left over from Christmas.
We haven’t encountered any humans in this area yet, but people are usually visible on the left in the main corridor. From this distance it is hard to say whether they are walkers or shoppers. All of the shoppers and most of the walkers wear at least a light jacket. I wear a sweatshirt over a tee shirt. I feel a little chilly during the first lap. After that I am happy that I left the coat behind in my Honda.
On the south side of the walled-over entrance is a large location that was for decades the location of a Waldenbooks store. I visited it often to purchase paperback books or calendars. This store was one of many that closed in January of 2007.
The space is now occupied—sort of—by the Lia car dealerships. I have walked past here at least thirty times, and I have never seen anyone. I don’t know if it was ever actually used by Lia. I doubt that anyone has been here during the pandemic. A sign in the window touts some Hyundai models from 2019.
Inside some tables and chairs are visible, as well as small displays of merchandise featuring the brands of the four Lia dealerships in Enfield The lights have never been on when I walked by, and I have never seen anyone inside of this office.
They don’t rent bowling shoes, and you need to bring your own ball.
I am fairly sure that at one time there were stores on both sides of the mall’s southwest corridor. In 2022 a couple of bowling lanes could be inserted here, and neither the retailers nor their customers would be disturbed much. There are no businesses at all on the north side of the corridor. In fact, there are not even doors or display windows. The impression given is that beyond Lia to the door at the end of the corridor is an outside wall. I am quite certain, however, that something is behind it.
We make the loop at the end of the hallway, but we are careful not to step on the carpet. Some kind of pressure sensor beneath it opens the door at the southwest ext. The first door on the right (east) after the turn was for many years a RadioShack that I frequented when I needed a particular type of cable, converter, or other piece of electronic gear. At Christmas time the store featured remote-controlled miniature cars. That spot is now empty.
In 2022 the only merchant on the entire corridor is one that I had never heard of: Rainbow. The store has been open only a few times when I walked by, but I have yet to see a customer or a salesperson.
The company’s official website states that they sell “water-based cleaning systems” for purifying the air and various surfaces. Somehow I have survived for seventy-three and a half years inhaling and exhaling dry dirty air,
There are some curious items concerning Home Helpers in the display windows on the right, but there are no active stores until we make the turn onto the main corridor.
South Side of the Main Corridor: Just around the corner is a very interesting store. The shelves are still clearly visible through the window, but they contain no merchandise. By stepping a few feet into the middle of the courtyard we can see the store’s sign. It says GNC. The G is lit up, but the NC is still dark. This must be a message of some kind, but what is it?
Perhaps it could be read as an admission that the users of GNC’s vitamins and supplements were unable to deal with the Covid-19 virus. Maybe, but perhaps the real message is that, like the G, a spark of hope remains, and soon people will be able to fortify their immune systems with over-the-counter nostrums, thereby avoiding the treacherous vaccines foisted on them by George Soros and Bill Gates.
The next store that is actually operational is the only one with its own entrance from the parking lot. It is also the brightest and largest of all of the stores except, of course, Target. All sides of the mall’s gigantic parking lot have signs with arrows indicating the direction to Party City.
The above picture was taken on a Saturday afternoon, the only time that I had ever seen anyone manning the cash register on the mall end of the store. Most customers enter and exit through the doors to the parking lot. I have, however, noticed a few people entering from the mall.
There is an empty store between Party City and the next retailer, Pelley’s Sports. Their Facebook page says that they “specialize in NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL clothing, merchandise, memorabilia, pictures, and other sports paraphernalia.” I have passed this store many times, but I have never seen anyone inside except on Saturday afternoon. They have a lot of stuff piled up near the entrance. I could easily have missed some shoppers.
Pelley’s has purchased some of the display space of the adjacent vacant store to the west. In it are displayed large photos of some local teams and famous players. The photos are on sale for upwards of $150. One framed photo of Tom Brady is offered for $2,699! They also sell jerseys that look very authentic.
The next occupied space is occupied—at least occasionally—by the North Central Connecticut Chamber of Commerce. I don’t know why the C of C maintains an office here. However, I once saw three people sitting at a table here discussing some papers. So, evidently it is occasionally used for meetings, at least.
The next space that is sometimes open is Claudette’s Consignments. I had seen people in this store only a few times. However, despite what the photo on the right shows, on Saturday there was quite a bit more activity there. I could not find any information on the Internet about this store. I am not sure whether it is associated with the shop in the Hamptons of the same name.
Claudette’s occupies a corner space. The next area is a large two-story structure that formerly was occupied by JC Penney and then part of Filene’s and Macy’s. It has been walled off and decorated with paintings. If the picture of a slice of pizza makes you hungry, you are out of luck, but you can probably buy a cappuccino at the Starbucks inside of Target.
I think that this area must have been used as Santaland during the Christmas season. The photo only shows two huge wreaths, but the first time that I walked by in January, oversized candy canes and fake snow were spread throughout the fenced-in area. It was actually a very depressing sight.
I walk along the edge of the small fence. Some walkers choose to walk straight across from Collette’s to the store on the other side of this alcove—Bath & Body Works. By the way, on Sundays numerous people bring their dogs with them on their strolls through the malls. I am pleased to report that I did not witness any canine misbehavior.
For me the most interesting thing about BB&W was that two employees were usually visible. They almost always outnumbered the customers. I think that this place sells smelly stuff that I would never consider purchasing.
Next door is one of the newest shops. It is called SSUPhoto Designs. I have only seen one person within, a short young man who seemed chained to his computer. On chilly days he wore a stocking cap. The store has a fairly impressive website, which you can visit here. I am still not quite sure what product or service is being offered, but apparently they have the equipment and the expertise to produce designs on the computer and transfer them to many different objects. They also sell “tumblers”, dozens of which are on display.
I also found a website for a website for SSUPhoto (without the Designs). You can visit it here. It explained that the SSU stands for Snapshots Unlimited. I suspect that the store is an effort by the proprietors to expand their reach in a period of lower demand for professional photographers.
After another unoccupied space the New Life Church appears on our right. Its services are at 10AM on Sundays. I have never been in the mall at that time, and so the few people whom I have seen in this location were setting something up for the service.
Across the corridor is another space that is apparently leased by the church. Its windows display biblical quotes, and the word “Annex” is in a sign over the door. A third space on the eastern corridor also apparently belongs to the church.
The church has a rather professional-looking website, which you can explore here. I need to dispute one portion of the website that states, “Most of all, we believe you’ll find people just like you …” I seriously doubt that anyone who attends regularly is even vaguely like me. In truth I found the approach described there as just this side of terrifying.
Pastor David and Lisa.
In total, a NEW LIFE service is about 90 minutes in length. Services begin with the NEW LIFE worship band leading the church in music – song lyrics are projected onto the screens so you can sing along and/or engage with worship however you feel most comfortable. After the music portion of service is complete, our pastor will come up to share both a challenging and encouraging, hope-filled message from the Bible.
I assume that the phrase “the pastor will come up” does not imply that he ascends from the basement. If he had a trap door with a small elevator, he surely would never mention it on the website.
Next to the church is Crystal’s Fun Spot, a large space filled with objects meant to attract the attention of youngsters. On my weekday walks I seldom saw anyone in here except for the woman sitting at the desk with a large roll of paper towels at the ready. I took notice of the towels because on one occasion I neglected to bring some of my own. If I had the sniffles or a sneezing fit, I planned to enter the Fun Spot and offer crisp dollar bill to the lady at the desk in exchange for one of the towels.
On Crystal’s website (here) I learned that she charges $7 per hour for infants and $15 per hour for kids who are two and older. On weekdays I had only seen a couple of kids in here with their parents, but on Saturday afternoon there was actually a line.
Next to Crystal’s were three window displays that feature mannequins dressed in clothes with patches that are oddly arranged. There is also a pile of suitcases. I had never actually seen anyone inside, but one day the light was on, and there was some equipment visible. One window is signed by Justin Haynes, and it prominently features the name of the place: Just10 H.
Looking at the website (here) solved the puzzle for me. It said that Justin Haynes was a fashion designer who was planning a big show for February 16. There was even a countdown clock. That was only two days ago, but the website’s home page has been totally revamped. It says that Jus10 H’s label is called ONYX (the luxury label). Don’t ask me what occurred in the interim. I never have been able to keep up with fashion.
Before the pandemic the Enfield 12 Cinemas were the spot to be in this sleepy town. The mall’s website even calls them an anchor store. In the last few months I have been there twice for Metropolitan Opera Live in HD performances. There was one other person attending the first showing, Boris Godunov. Ten of us showed up for the second, Rigaletto. That is not shockingly low for opera, but I saw practically no one at all anywhere in the theater either time.
Previously there was always a line for tickets. Several times when I passed by while walking I saw no one who was even selling tickets. They don’t even promote their shows. The sign that is visible from the corridor says that the schedule is posted on the Internet and at the one-user kiosk!
Next is a booth used by the company that provides security for the mall. The last two afternoons that I walked by this spot there were two men behind the counter. A guy with a shopping cart brought at least one of them supper in a styrofoam container. He took a seat on the civilian side of the counter and ate his own supper from a similar container.
I have seen this guy every time that I came to the mall to walk. On every occasion he wore black leather shoes, black pants, and a white undershirt with shoulder straps à la Clark Gable. He did not resemble Clark much in other ways. For one thing he was grotesquely obese. He also seemed to need to use his shopping cart as a walker.
The first afternoon that I walked in the mall he had parked himself and his cart at the abandoned kiosk that once was used by nearby Asnuntuck Community College. He had some kind of strange machine sitting on top of the counter. It was plugged into an outlet on the floor. I never have figured out what he was doing then or why he seemed to spend so much time in the mall.
One day I saw him entering from the narrow corridor leading to the restrooms, the mall’s offices, and an entrance. He was wearing a thick flannel shirt-jacked, which he doffed as soon as he was settled inside. He waved to me as I passed on that occasion and on several others. Since he does not wear a mask, I give him a wide berth.
The southeast corner of the mall is operated by Cindy’s Food for the Soul. I don’t know who Cindy is; I have never seen a female in this establishment.
I did not see anything that looked like a menu posted somewhere. I expected to find a menu somewhere on the Internet, but I was disappointed. Evidently this was formerly a stand-alone deli somewhere in Enfield. Cindy evidently specializes in soul food and Jamaican food. I don’t think that anything hot is available, but I could be wrong.
At the end of the corridor we turn left in front of the old Steiger’s/Sears store. For some reason it, unlike the other two anchors, has not been walled up. Since the lights are almost never on, it might as well be. However, on one magical afternoon the interior of the abandoned store was lit up, and I got to peek inside. I could see all the way to the exterior doors on the east side. There was absolutely no furniture or debris. I saw eight or ten columns that presumably held up the roof. The floor was clean and polished. The owners of the property must have been showing the space to a potential lessee or purchaser.
At the end of the alcove where we must turn left there is a bench on which I have often seen seated a young man in a reflective vest playing with his phone. I assume that he collects shopping carts from the Target parking lot, and rests there on his break.
Eastern Corridor: We then make a right turn up the eastern corridor, which is really dead since Panera moved east to a building constructed for them in the Home Depot parking lot across Freshwater St. We make a U-turn at the door, after which we pass the door to Ruby Tuesday, which closed in 2016. It seems strange.that two very nice windows—one with stained glass panes—have been sitting there for six years.
Next is an area belonging to the church. I have never seen it open, but occasionally a light is on. I saw a foosball table in there a couple of times.
On the corner is the Kebab House. Sue and I had been planning to go there until the owners decided to close the place until the middle of February. I am pretty sure that their signs and printed menus must hold the world record for misspellings. They even misspelled kebab once!
I still fear that the restaurant may never reopen. I have walked past it many times, and I have never seen more than one of its tables occupied. Since there are always at least three employees, it is hard to see how it could survive.
Over the years his site has housed many short-lived restaurant ventures, including a McDonald’s3 and at least two different pizza joints. Its spot across from the theater with its outrageously priced food items might seem ideal, but no one has been able to make it work. Obviously prospects are worse in 2022.
North Side of the Main Corridor: I consider the turn at the Kebab House to be the halfway point in the walk. If you are thirsty, there is a machine nearby that dispenses Coca Cola products and other beverages. Be prepared to shell out $2 or more for a 20-ounce bottle.
After the turn back onto the main east-west corridor we pass an amazing number of dark stores. There are four of them before we reach Relaxation, a place that features a “Chinese Massage” for $20. In the window is a television screen showing a silent (!) description and demonstration of the technique. The good news is that the video, which is on a looped, is captioned. Unfortunately the captions are in Chinese.
The inside of the store is very dimly lit. I thought that I saw someone getting a massage once, but I could not be sure.
The nest space to the west is the church’s annex. It has always been dark when I walked past.
Then there are three more empty locations before we come to our next turn to the right around Furnari Jewelers, which is always brightly lit and always has at least two employees within. Once or twice I saw other people between the counters. I could not gauge their interest. I noticed that a sign that assured passersby: “No Credit Required.” To me it said a lot about the current state of the mall.
We are now headed north up the central corridor toward an exit and the entrance to Target. On the right is another vacant storefront that once housed “Hair in the Square.” The other storefront was abandoned on January 31, 2022. A second video games store called Stateline Video Games had been there for a short time. It had a lot of interesting stuff in its display windows, including quite a few WWE action figures that were clearly marked as “Not for Sale”. A week after the posting of many signs explaining the closure there was still quite a bit of equipment in the store. The company still operates a store in the Holyoke Mall.
By the time that we had reached the exit, we passed two other places of note. They were both in the middle of the corridor. The first, which is called Playtown, was designed for kids and their exhausted parents. The latter can take advantage of the softest of the many benches in the mall. A goodly number of very sturdy and colorful objects are provided for the youngsters to climb on and slide down. The green caterpillar at the entrance indicates that everyone must be at least 42″ tall. I have seen about ten children in here. One was close to that height, but all the rest were much shorter.
The other active location was the kiosk devoted to CM Repairs and Accessories. According to a map that I discovered on the Internet, this kiosk was once located outside of Cindy’s Fun Spot. The new location would seem to be optimal, but I have only seen one or two potential customers here. The last few time that I walked by this location the booth was not manned. There were lots of phone accessories on display and signs for calling India for $19 per month and something called Lyca Mobile, a wireless network based in England.
I looked at the CM Facebook page for help in understanding what CM stood for and what the significance of the circle around the C was, but I found nothing. It sounded like a one-man show with a Massachusetts phone number.
The only open business in the central corridor is Tranquility Day Spa and Salon. I frankly have only the vaguest idea of what services and products are offered within this establishment. I don’t think that you can just wander in. The desk at the entrance is almost always manned by a guy in a lab coat. A sign warns that if you want a manicure you must wear a mask.
The most popular product appears to be nail polish. They have dozens of choices on display near the entrance. I have witnessed quite a few women checking out the selections there.
The Lyon and Bear is to the right of Claire’s.
The corner space is unoccupied, but after we are return to the main corridor we pass by four consecutive occupied (at least occasionally) stores. The first one is the most mysterious. Two 8½ by 11 signs taped to the window identify it as “The Lyon and Bear”. I don’t understand the name. A very large lion toy hangs from the ceiling, but no bear was visible. Its Facebook page mostly promoted beard oil and trimmers when I looked at it.
The C of C welcomed the store in October 2021 with an article that did little to explain its purpose. You can read it here.
Claire’s, on the other hand, has been in the mall for decades. I seem to recall that it was formerly in the southeast corridor. I have never dared to enter. I have seen several moms with quite young girls who were apparently there to take advantage of the free ear-piercing. Apparently this is an accepted right of passage.
Next on the right is the brightly lit T-Mobile store. Although it is featuring “iPhone 13 on Us”, I have almost never seen a customer in this store. I remember that Jason Dean4, one of TSI’s programmers, told me that he and his wife had switched to T-Mobile to save a little money. Unfortunately, his new phone did not work at all inside his apartment. The signal was too week. He switched back to his previous carrier, but it involved a major hassle.
The cleanup hitter in this murderer’s row of retail is LensCrafters. It has been located in the mall for a very long time. Sue bought at least one pair of glasses there. It always seems to be busy when I passed by, which I found a little surprising. Target has its own fairly large optical department, and so LensCrafters is one of the few retailers in the mall that directly competes with the only real anchor store.
The last stretch of the walk is the most depressing. The last seven spaces on our right are unoccupied! A few, like Dollar ‘N’ Things and inField Research, still have signs, and the windows of others are decorated with advertising. One of the windows strangely promotes Dollar ‘N’ Things. Google thinks that inField Research is still in business in February 2022, but the office is empty.
Here is another map of the entire mall. I have enclosed in green the names of the entities open in February 2022. New ones I have identified with abbreviations in green and explained in the caption.
If you click on the image, a much larger and more readable version will be displayed. N is the location of the North Central CT Chamber of Commerce, CC is Collette’s Consignments, New Life is the New Life Church with the Annex across the hall., J10H is Justin Haynes, C is Cindy’s Food for the Soul, K is the Kebab House, and LB is the Lyon and Bear. The big arrow shows how CM’s Kiosk has moved.
Machines: The corridors also contain quite a few vending machines. The largest one, by far, dispenses acne products from Proactiv. I have never seen anyone within ten feet of this one. For one thing malls are no longer where teens hang out. I would think that if one suffered from really bad acne, one would not want to advertise one’s condition in the middle of the mall, but what do I know?
Numerous machines cater to the needs of hungry and thirsty denizens of Enfield square. Three machines sell ice cream products called Mini Melts. One is near Playtown. The other pair are back-to-back near the east end of the long corridor. I have never seen anyone buying or eating ice cream in the mall this winter. I did not get a photo because I did not really notice the machines while I was doing my photo lap.
There are six machines that dispense Coca Cola and Vitamin Water beverages. The placement is a little weird. Two are back-to-back near the southwest entrance. Two pairs are side-by-side on the western end of the main corridor and near the exit at the end of the north-central corridor. I have never seen anyone buy anything from either one, and I have noticed no one with a 20-ounce bottle of anything.
Two fairly large collections of gumball machines are on display in the long corridor. One is near Party City and Pelley’s Sports. The other is in front of Jus10H.I don’t know if any of the dispensers actually work. I have never seen anyone try to purchase anything from them. At least two of the glass globes were empty in both collections.
There are at least four ATM machines if you count the one just inside Tranquility. I have never seen anyone use one, and it is hard to imagine why they would. All of the machine—except perhaps the gumball machine—take credit cards. Cash is so pre-pandemic.
A machine near Party City takes three strips of photos. I had my doubts about whether such an old-fashioned machine actually functioned, but I once witnessed three people enter the machine and pull the curtain shut. I must assume that they had their photos. Since everyone in 2022 has a phone with a pretty good camera in it, I don’t think that this type of machine has much future.
Another area near LensCrafters features the twenty-first century’s answer to the mechanical horses that kids could rid for a quarter. This one contains a one-seat train that might be Thomas, a large red dog named Clifford with a seat on his back, and two fairly large ceramic cars. Each car has a figure sitting in it, but there is room for a child to act as driver—on the right side! One passenger (in a taxi) is Paddington Bear. The other car is labeled “Fetch the Vet”. Evidently the company who created this diorama is British.
I have seen kids climbing on these vehicle, but I have never seen any adults pony up the money to make them do anything. The train costs three quarters. I did not examine the other rides.
There are three sets of machines that to me seem out of place. A pair of machines are back-to-back in the main corridor. They sell stickers and tattoos. I did not examine them too closely.
The second weird collection is near the Mini Melts that is between Tranquility and Target. To the right of the Mini Melts machine are two adjacent machines labeled Prize Cube and Winners Cube. I don’t know any more about them. On the other side of Mini Melts is a set of machines that look like gumball machines, but they actually contain little plastic containers with prizes inside.
Closer to the exit by Target is the traditional machine that lets kids try—mostly in vain—to snatch attractive looking toys by manipulating a large claw-like implement.
Conclusion: I am glad that I had the opportunity to become familiar with the pandemic version of the mall. I don’t see how it can possibly last long. I therefore feel sympathy for the entrepreneurs who have bet on it. The owners of the mall want to split the site into thirteen parcels.
I expect that I will need to find a new place to hike in the winter of 2022-23.
Updates Throughout 2022
Celebrity spottings: I am pretty sure that I saw two of the mAll-Stars in person. On consecutive Fridays I have seen Pastor David getting things ready for the Sunday services at the New Life Church. On February 27 I saw Justin Haynes changing the window display for Jus10H, sweeping out his space, and chatting with the security guard. Later the lights were on in his space as he made a presentation to two ladies dressed in black.
March 3, 2022: Tranquility Day Spa and Salon, which enjoyed one of the very best locations in the mall, has closed. It has apparently merged with another salon in the strip mall south of Hazard Avenue that contains ShopRite.. Maybe it was purchased by the other company, which is called Modern Nails & Spa. The ATM remained in the old Tranquility location, but it was unplugged.
The Kebab House, which promised to reopen by mid-February, is also apparently closing. Two men were in the restaurant. I could not tell precisely what they were doing, but the older of the two left the building carrying a sign that was used to advertise the restaurant.
I noticed for the first time a third set of gumball machines near the Playtown. There are two racks of six machines. The other two locations have eighteen machines. I counted.
Fashion news: the guy with the grocery cart apparently has at least three colors of undershirts with shoulder straps and no sleeves—white, gray, and black.
March 4, 2022: There was quite a bit of activity in the mall. The Red Cross ran a blood drive in one of the vacant stores near the middle of the main corridor. In addition in the very middle of the mall (near Furnari) a couple had set up some tables where they sold jewelry. I think that they store their inventory in the space that is across the short corridor from Furnari. I have seen stuff in there.
The only remnant of Tranquility was a table outside of the barred entrance. On it were business cards for the new location in the Brookside Plaza shopping center. I picked one up. The back of the card keeps track of visits to Modern with this offer: “After 10 visits get one FREE Eyebrow or FREE Basic Manicure.” I am not sure where people would place the third eyebrow.
The big news was that people were working in the kitchen of the Kebab House. The sign that said that it would return in mid-February had been changed to promise a reopening on March 5. So, my previous assessment that it seemed to be closing was erroneous.
I have encountered two pairs of women who were walking clockwise laps. How could they not notice that everyone else was walking clockwise? I almost smashed into both of them several times. Maybe they were from Great Britain, Japan, or Australia.
For the first time I saw someone eating a bowl of Mini Melts with a spoon—like cereal. So, at least one of the machines must work. A bowl costs $4 or $4.50 if you use a credit card.
March 9, 2022: The Kebab House is definitely open. I noticed a few patrons.
The fenced off area in the center court where the entrance to Penney’s used to be5 has been removed. This must have been where Santaland was placed during December. Evidently the Easter Bunny will not be getting the same treatment.
Some of the window coverings at the space that housed Panera have been removed. For the first time I could see inside. Although it has been abandoned for months, the booths are still there.
On the other hand the mysterious corner space in center court has been curtained off on the east side. Two large stepladders were visible from the south side as well as the tables that contained all the unsold merchandise.
A couple of kids had skateboards, but the mall was empty enough that it was not obnoxious.
March 13, 2022: There was quite a bit of activity today. Almost every store had customers, and there was a line at the kiosk at the cinemas. I saw two sets of customers dining at the Kebab House, and the food looked delicious.
A stage was set up in front of the old entrance to Penney’s, but I could walk behind it. It must have been for the Girl Scouts’ event on the previous day. On one of my laps I observed two young ladies who appeared to be rehearsing putting one hand on a hip. Off to the side one of the doors was open. The opening was mostly obscured, but I caught a glimpse of a fully decorated Christmas tree. Evidently, the Christmas stuff is stored in a little room behind Collette’s Consignments.
For the first time ever I saw two people buy something from gumball machines. So, I guess that they actually work.
April 1: The guy in the CM phone repair booth is back. There is also a kiosk next to his booth that has at least 100 sunglasses on it and a sign that says that you can buy three for $10. No one is near the kiosk.. Maybe you pay the CM guy if you want to buy some. In my nine laps I saw no one who showed any interest in either sun glasses or phones.
A guy with a bag was standing outside of Rainbow on my first lap. On the next four or five (a lap takes me about ten minutes) he was busily demonstrating a vacuum cleaner of some kind to a lady with a mask. I assume that he was trying to persuade her to market the vacuum that he represented.
April 3: I did nine more laps, and I still saw no one show the slightest interest in CM or the sunglasses. Someone had apparently tried a few pairs on and left them on a shelf.
For the first time ever someone stopped me to ask me a question—three times! The first time it was a black guy whom I had seen walking laps quite a few times. He asked me how old I was and how many miles I walked. He then informed me that he was also seventy-three. A little later he stopped me again and asked me if I had gotten my second booster shot.
At the other end of the court on that same lap another guy asked me something while I was listening to Maria Callas singing an aria from from Il Pirata. I took out one earplug, and I heard him say “… how long …?” I answered, “An hour and a half.” He asked, “A half hour?” I repeated myself and went on. A few minutes later I realized that he was actually asking me how long an entire circuit of the mall was.
May 30: On Memorial day the mall was almost completely empty. The movie theater was doing a reasonable business. The Kebab House had at least two occupied tables every time I came around, and my circuit takes me an hour and a half in total.
I wore my Michigan Debate shirt while I was walking. Someone stopped me and asked me if I taught at Michigan. I explained that I had attended U-M twice. He then asked me that a friend of his was interested in vintage clothing—tee shirts and sweatshirts. He wondered if I had any. Although I actually do have a few items that are so disgusting not even I would wear them, I told him that I did not. This occurred on my last lap. If it had been earlier, I might have been more receptive to his request.
I moved my car over to the northeast side and stepped back in with my camera to take a photo of the huge two-person virtual-reality game that is parked just outside of the cinema. It looks really impressive, but I have yet to see someone try it out.
July 25: Another one bites the dust. Lens Crafters has moved to Enfield Commons. The store is between Starbucks and Jersey Mike’s, next to Olive Garden. This sounds to me like the death knell for the mall.
October 17: Bad news first: A sign has been posted that Collette’s, the store that specialized in “new and lightly used” clothing. was in the process of closing. I also saw a sign announcing that one of the two restaurants, Cindy’s,was “relocating”. It did not note the new location.
The most positive news was that Stateline, the store that sold video games and other things, has returned to the same location near Target that it had abandoned in February. I thought that it was peculiar that so much stuff had been left in the store when it closed the first time. In other areas of the mall there were also some new window displays that highlight Stateline’s products.
SSUPhoto was in the process of moving its operation across the main aisle of the mall. The new location appears to be somewhat larger. The store was not open when I walked by it, but I judged from what I could see through the windows that they seemed to have expanded the number of items that they are selling.
There were four new large massage chairs near the cinema. I did not inspect them closely, and I did not see anyone try them out.
For the fist time I saw someone purchase some gum or candy from one of the many gumball machines.
I should not that I did not see the fellow with the shopping cart/walker and the sleeveless shirts. However, on one of my outdoor walks I did see him in the parking lot of Holy Trinity Episcopal church on Hazard Avenue. I could not tell what he was doing.
This was the first time that I walked in the mall without a mask.
December 1: The mall was decorated for Christmas, but there were only a few shoppers, and the corner near the old Penney’s that was reserved for the absent Santa was a little pathetic. I have not seen the hefty gentleman with the Target shopping cart for several months.
The office across from GameStop is now occupied by Skyward Family Therapy, but it is not open yet. I noticed that one of the tiles close to its door is partly the wrong color. I had never paid much attention to the tiles, but after making that discovery I realized that in several other places broken tiles have been replaced with tiles of a different color. Near Target were two signs warning about tiles needing repair.
A new store named “Tree”-mendous has opened between Pelley’s Sports and the corridor that leads to the restroom. Three women were inside behind a long table surrounded by fully decorated artificial trees. According to the signage the are also having a drawing for a tree. More trees were visible in one of the empty stores.
Claudette’s has reopened. The store is offering all jeans in the store for only $5 per pair.
The Jurassic Park virtual reality game that arrived in May has been removed. For the first time I saw someone sitting in the massage chairs. For approximately thirty minutes a man sat in one and a woman in the other. When I passed them they were each busily working their smartphones.
Jus10H was open, and Justin was inside! He was putting the finishing touches on new window displays. The inside, which was fully lighted, was also rearranged, and there were displays of fabric. He must be about to make a presentation to someone.
For the first time I saw a woman sitting in the security office.
The business at the Kebab House seems to be picking up. Sue Rudd told me that she ate there, and the food was good.
I can still walk nine laps with no discomfort whatsoever.
December 14: On my first lap I noticed a woman who was leaning against the window of the old Liberty Tax store that is now used for blood drives. On the next lap—ten or fifteen minutes later—she had moved across to the corridor that led to the south exit that is west of Party City. She was now sitting down. During the next three laps she was still sitting, but she appeared to be sleeping with a cellphone in her hand. On the sixth lap she was standing up and leaning against the wall. He seemed to be attempting to make sure that she was all right. On the seventh lap she was seated on a bench near Game Stop with a different man who placed his hand on her shoulder—evidently to comfort her—as I walked by. Policemen entered as I passed the southwest door, but they turned toward the central court. On the eighth lap I saw the two policemen talking with the woman. She was still sitting on the bench and seemed about to cry. On my ninth and last lap none of the people mentioned in this paragraph was still around.
“Tree”-mendous was already closed.
December 18: Santa was in the mall! I am pretty sure that this Santa was told not to touch any children. They sat on little chairs next to Santa’s big one while someone photographed them.
December 19: Very strange. Santa was on duty again, but he had clearly gained thirty or forty pounds overnight. Also, he was wearing a different set of glasses. Someone must have told him to be more friendly with the kids. They still sat on the little chairs (as opposed to his lap), but he put his arms around them.
January 14, 2024: The 2023 Santa had a lonely job. There was never anything approaching a line. Sometimes he would go sit on the bench and wave at kids. He had two female helpers who had little to do. Santaland was finally disassembled in the middle of January.
Cinemark closed in early December of 2023. If you lived in Enfield in 2024, seeing a movie required a twenty-five minute drive. Bath and Body Works moved to Enfield Commons on the north side of Hazard Avenue. On Friday, January 24, signs appeared outside of GameStop announcing that all of the employees had resigned. Another sign said, “Closed until further notice.” However, on Sunday the store was open. There were signs that solicited employees and another one announcing the hours as “Sun-Sat 12-6.” Claudette’s has been gone for several months.
New businesses in 2023 included:
Calm Panda Smartshop.
D Gym had irregular hours. It featured an assortment of exercise machines and mats upon which young people performed calisthenics while loud music and a trainer encouraged them. It occupied the spot formerly held by Tranquility.
Second Floor Games also had irregular hours. It appeared to be mostly a snack shop with a few tables. I thought at first that, because it was near the Cinemark, that they might be trying to undercut the outrageous prices at the concession stand there. However, it outlived the theaters by at least a month.
Haven Games and hobbies moved into the large site previously occupied by Jus10H. The store featured a dozen or so tables at which nerdy people dressed in black played games of some sort. A sign on the window claimed that they were open until midnight on most nights. Since the mall closed at 10, that seemed questionable.
Integrity Martial Arts seemed to cater to young kids. Their parents could often be seen in the chairs provided for them or loitering nearby. One day I saw a father dragging his son to the studio. The kid was literally kicking and screaming. That was on my last lap, and so I never found out who prevailed. Smart money was on the kid.
Calm Panda evidently sold marijuana and accoutrements. It was hardly ever open.
After Hours offered to set up, host, and photograph parties or other events. It was open only by appointment.
The Moon Crystal claimed to be a “metaphysical and spiritual shop.” It appeared to have two owners, both female. One occasionally gave tarot card readings. The other claimed to be psychic.
Da Money Pit sold shoes, tee shirts, and the like, but something about it seemed off. On my last walk the lights were on, but the front entrance was closed and locked. As I walked past someone exited by the back door and then carefully locked it. Later a woman entered by the same door. Who knows
A hangout near Target called Wukong Tea opened in December of 2023. It has proved popular with teenagers. They sold concoctions of tea, fruit, milk, and other things. The lowest-priced beverage cost an astounding $5.25. The drinks were made in a back room. Customers, almost always in groups of two or more, seemed content to wait and chat while seated at the modern tables.
Both the Kebab House, with its new Mosaic Cafe across the hall in the area formerly occupied by Panera Bread, and LA Subs seemed to be doing pretty well in 2024.
Jus10H moved to a larger location on the other side of the mall. The interior seemed considerably different on the few occasions in which someone was there.
The rumors that the entire mall would be closed down because of problems in the roof had not come true yet in early 2024.
September 26, 2024: On a walk about a month earlier I witnessed—for the very first time—someone trying to purchase a Coke from one of the three vending machines. He was having difficulty as I walked past. I did not linger to find out whether he was able to make a purchase. I noticed on this occasion that the displayed Coke cans in the machine on the east side of the mall have faded so much that they are almost pink.
I walked for much more than an hour and encountered no other walkers. The most interesting occurrence was at the Jehovah’s Witnesses corner outside of Target. I walked past it seven times. Usually it was managed by two women. On this occasion a woman sat on one of the two chairs and talked to a guy who was wearing a suit, attire that I can never remember seeing in the mall, not even at the Chamber of Commerce. I could not understand why the fellow never took a seat.
The hours for the mall had been changed so that it closed at 6pm on Sunday and at 7pm on all other days. I left at 6:55, and Haven Games still had two tables of players that showed no signs of imminent departure. The part of the parking lot that I always use was uncharacteristically crowded. Prior to the move of Haven Games it seldom had more than two or three cars.
Calm Panda has gone the way of the dodo.
A Virtual Reality place named Quest VR Loung, across the Target corridor from Furnari Jewelers never opened. It seemed bizarre that in the spring it was advertised and furnished with a three-person couch, a two-person couch, and three chairs. The sign and all of the furniture have not been removed.
The small storefront on the corner across from the Kebab House and LA Subs was now occupied by Vicki’s Diaper Cakes. I have not been able to figure out what was sold here.
The caretaker was painting the wall for the old Penney’s store in the middle of the mall. The new color was a flat grey. I had to assume that this was just a primer for whatever the owners intended it to be.
November 23, 2024: It was 48 degrees outside, but a fairly high percentage of the few people whom I saw were wearing shorts. One guy wore no socks either.
It is the weekend before Thanksgiving, but Santa’s Candy Court. as it was now called, has already been completed. It is larger than last year’s setup and much nicer. There are a lot of fake Christmas trees, and Santa’s red throne now has a very homey backdrop with a fireplace and Christmas decorations. It was not open yet. For me it just made it harder for me to walk around because more than 90 percent of the area was cordoned off.
There is a new storefront just west of After Hours and east of Jus10H called the Dionysus Theatre Company. Its website can be reached here. They are presenting a performance called Speakeasy One Acts on December 13 and 14. Tickets are $30.
I may be mistaken, but I think that Playtown had some new items, including a footbridge. The flashing-light board outside of it was different, but no more interesting.
November 29, 2024: One of the regular mall-walkers previously would walk bent over at the waist from one bench to another before resting. On Black Friday she was using a walker. A guy who did a mile or so was also using a crutch under his left arm even though he did not seem to need it.
Santa was on break during my first lap, but he had two or three customers in the subsequent hour and a half. There are tables with form letters and colored pencils where kids can compose their letters to St. Nick.
I judged the success of LA Subs too soon. The space is now held by Moz Pizza and grinders. Rainbow, which sells something to do with indoor air pollution, has moved to the space just south of its previous location. It previously was a “training area” for something.
December 18-19, 2024: Christmas was less than a week away, but the customers were staying away from every store except Target. Santa had very little business. The mall seemed to be employing more security and more janitorial staff, which was a strange reaction to the lack of shoppers.
D Gym has closed. The operator, “Bodies by Davith”, had a tag sale and then moved the operation elsewhere. A sign suggested contacting “Enfield Supports Small Business.” Vicki’s Diaper Cakes has closed. State Line Games was not open on either day, but there are no signs announcing a closure. A sign near the entrance of SSU Photo announced that it would be moving the weekend of February 1-2.
A new store selling oriental rugs appeared to be nearly ready to open. There was no signage yet, but the doors were open, the lights were on, and plenty of merchandise was on display. It was located just north of the Kebab House, which seemed appropriate.
1. I was astounded to learn that the Target store had been in Enfield for twenty years and that for fifteen of them it coexisted in Enfield Square with Filene’s/Macy’s and Sears.
2. In February of 2022 the property is owned by three Long Island-based companies — Namdar Realty Group, Ch. Hakimi Global Inc., and Mason Asset Management. KeyPoint Partners is currently handling the management and leasing of the properties. As of March 2021 the Target store was sold to Steven Dubler.
3. While that takeout location in the mall was operational, there was also a McD’s just south of the mall, and one just north of the mall. Another McD’s is on Hazard Ave. in the Scitico section of town several miles east of Enfield Square. All three of those restaurants were still operating in 2023.
5. In New England directions are often given in terms of landmarks, whether they are still there or not. New Englanders seem to have a much stronger sense of history than geography.
Doug Pease. TSI’s Marketing Director, took the call from Tandy Corporation. I am not sure whom he talked with, but he learned that Tandy had three retail divisions—RadioShack, Computer City, and Incredible Universe. All three were based in Fort Worth, TX, but they placed their advertising independently. They were interested in purchasing three copies of the AdDept system. Doug was salivating at the prospect landing three new prospects at once, especially since Tandy already had AS/400’s with enough capacity to handle all three installations. So, there would be no problems in the IT area, and there would be little or no hardware expense. It was almost too good to be true.
Doug and I flew to Fort Worth to talk with the people about their needs. RadioShack was clearly driving the project. They ran weekly ads in two thousand different newspapers. The responsibility for ordering and paying for the ads was split among four employees: north, south, east, and west. Another lady managed their ads in magazines.
Tandy Center in 20002. The Mall was between the two towers. Computer City was in the tower on the left. I think that this photo was taken after the subway was shut down.
The newspaper schedulers already had two systems, one for scheduling and one for paying. The two systems did not communicate at all. So, each employee had two separate workstations on his/her desk. One of the schedulers, Dolores DeSantiago, showed us how they worked. They had to enter all the ads in each one, and both systems were intolerably slow.
I am pretty sure that I did the demo at the local IBM office. The people who attended were very impressed at how quickly AdDept could build a schedule, and I don’t think that they could believe it when I told them that it could fax insertion orders without any extra data entry.
The subway stop for workers and shoppers.
The primary custom work that they wanted was to devise a way that they could split up the newspapers as they were accustomed to doing. I could think of no good reason why scheduling would require four people using AdDept—they only ran one ROP ad and one insert every week. Most papers got one or the other. I don’t think that we actually talked with anyone from Computer City or Incredible Universe, but we were assured that if it worked for RadioShack, it would work for them.
Dolores and Veronica in Enfield.
I wrote up the proposal and the design document. They liked it. I sent them the contract for all three divisions, and they signed it and sent the deposit.
Four people from RadioShack came to Enfield for training—Dolores, Veronica Anguiano, and a man and woman whose names I don’t remember. He was quite familiar with the Hartford area and asked about some of the girlie bars that were just east of I-91 at exit 33. She had worked at Color Tile (described here) and was an enthusiastic supporter of the AdDept system.
The two people whose names I cannot remember.
We probably went out to eat together, but I don’t remember where. It was December, and so they drove up to Springfield to see the Bright Nights display in Forest Park.
After the training session I and the programmers were working on the custom work specified in the contract. That was when Doug received a disconcerting phone call from Tandy. They no longer wanted to purchase a system for Incredible Universe. Evidently sales were sluggish, and they were closing some stores. In fact, they closed down the entire division in 1997.
So, we had to decide whether to hold Tandy to the signed contract, or to revise it to include only RadioShack and Computer City. If we had done the former, we probably would have had a somewhat bitter client. Maybe we were wimps, but we gave in and rewrote the contract.
Not even one.
The installation was unusual. I went to Tandy’s gigantic data center, where not a single TRS-80 was to be seen. A female employee escorted me to my workstation, where I had access to the AS/400 that would be used for the two systems. She spent the entire day sitting next to me watching what I was doing! Maybe she worked in security. She would not let me take any photos.
When I was finished I went to RadioShack’s offices. They insisted that I spend time with each of the four newspaper schedulers.
RadioShack was famous for being a go-to retailer for new technology. During the early course of its relationship with TSI, its leading cellar was the cellphone. At that time their were many different carriers, and RadioShack had deals to supply phones and technical assistance for many of them. The carriers varied from store to store. So, Veronica asked us to add a field to the pub table to designate the carrier. It was important that the paper got the correct version of each ad.
I don’t have any notes from my work with Tandy, but I do have some vivid memories.
The new RadioShack store in Enfield was less than a quarter of a mile north of the existing store in Enfield Square.
Fort Worth reminded me of a cow town. It was nothing like Dallas, which seemed like a very wealthy oil city. Doug and I found a restaurant downtown. I ordered chicken-fried steak. I asked the waitress if it was low in calories. She admitted that it wasn’t. I said, “Good; I’ll have it.” It was delicious.
On one of my first trips to Fort Worth I was a little late and slipped on some unexpected ice. Because I had my sample case full of program listings in one hand and my laptop bag in the other, I fell flat on my ass. I was not hurt.
Most of the time I parked in a gigantic lot that was near the Tandy Center, a shopping mall that also included the offices. The only privately operated subway in the U.S. transported parkers to station below the mall. It only went underground for a short distance.
The mall had an ice rink, but it did not get a lot of use.
I was in Fort Worth when the temperature exceeded 100 for the fifteenth consecutive day. It was so hot that the asphalt felt spongy. The roads in that area are almost all made of concrete.
On November 27, 1997, I was in Fort Worth and, as I usually did when a college football game was on television, I watched Texas Christian University, which is in Fort Worth and almost universally known now as TCU) play against Southern Methodist University, which is in Dallas and is almost universally known now as SMU. SMU, which entered the game with a 6-4 record, was heavily favored. In fact they had won their previous five games. TCU was 0-10 and considered the worst team in the countries. The game took place in Fort Worth. If I had known about it, I might have gone. The lowly Horned Frogs prevailed over the Mustangs 21-18 and won the Iron Skillet.
One day I saw a list of new stores that were planned. The name “Enfield CT” jumped out at me. Knowing that there already was a RadioShack store in the Enfield Square Mall, I asked for the address. It was a low number on Elm Street. This seemed strange to me because the only strip mall of any size on Elm St. was directly across the street from Enfield Square. Nevertheless, that was where they put the new store, but it was only open for a couple of years.
Veronica had a crush on a singer or actor named Antonio. I assumed that it was Antonio Banderas, but when I said so she looked at me as if I were from another planet. Evidently there was another heartthrob named Antonio.
The attempt of Bruce Dickens to extort money from the Tandy Corporation because the AdDept system used a simple calculation to determine the century was explained here.
Yes, but barely.
Most of my time in Fort Worth was spent in the RadioShack division. Computer City actually went out of business in 1998. Before it did, however, I had several unusual experiences in the CC advertising department.
The first thing that I noticed was that everyone in the department seemed to keep a large supply of food in one of the desk drawers. Maybe this was a widespread habit elsewhere, but I first noticed it at CC.
One of the ladies with whom I worked casually mentioned that she had fifty-three cats. Sue and I had two at the time, and I had always considered that two was the perfect number. I asked the lady if they were indoor cats, and she said that if any of them went outside, a neighbor of hers would shoot them with a rifle if they approached his property. I remarked that this would have been adjudged as bad form in New England.
One day I noticed the VP of advertising spending time at the copying machine. He spent the entire afternoon engaged in copying something. I could not imagine what he could have been doing. I don’t ever recall seeing a VP at any other company photocopy even one sheet of paper. They all had personal assistants or secretaries.
In 2000 Tandy changed its name to RadioShack Coroporation.
Bob Quaglia.
I remember the name of only one other employee at RadioShack. Bob Quaglia2 was the media director, which made him the boss of both Veronica and the lady who managed the magazine advertising.
In 2007 Veronica called us to say that RadioShack had outsourced the buying of their newspaper ads to to an ad agency or media buying service. Since that was the primary use of AdDept, they stopped using AdDept. A few months later she called me for some reason. She mentioned that they thought that they might have made a mistake.
In February 2015, RadioShack Corporation filed for bankruptcy protection after eleven consecutive quarterly losses. It was purchased by General Wireless, Inc., in May. A very high percentage of the stores have been closed. All the remaining stores are franchises.
1. Much more information can be found about Doug here and in many of the entries for other AdDept clients.
2. In 2023 Bob was still in the advertising business with his own firm called Gonzo Media. Its website is here. He left RadioShack in 1998. Incidentally, the reason that I remembered his name is that quaglia is the Italian word for quail.
Enfield is the northernmost town in central Connecticut. Historically it was noted for its two industrial giants, the Hartford-Bigelow Carpet Mill and the Hazard Powder Company, which manufactured gunpowder.1 The town had two claims to fame. 1) Enfield Square was the only mall between Hartford and Springfield, MA. 2) Enfield was at one time home to the great Paul Robeson2, or at least to his family. For some reason almost no one in the area seemed to care about the second distinction.
The Neighborhood: Our ranch house on North St. was much more modest than the Robeson’s stately dwelling, and so were those of our neighbors. I did not really know how to be a good neighbor. In the years following our move to Enfield I only really met one of our neighbors. A man named Fred, who was perhaps twenty years older than I was, told me a little about the history of our property. I never really got acquainted with anyone else in the neighborhood.
Part of the reason for this might involve the house’s peculiar layout. The front door to our house faced North St., but the driveway was on Hamilton Court. Fred was our neighbor on that side. The west side of the yard was fenced to separate it from the driveway and sidewalk leading to Hazard Memorial School. Directly across Hamilton Court from us was a two-story house that was divided into four units. It had dozens residents over the years. We seldom interacted with any of them. On the other side of North St. was Allen St., which had only a dozen or so houses before it dead-ended. There was also a house directly across North St. from ours, but I don’t think that we ever met the occupants.
Every year Fred got out a stepladder and trimmed the bushes that separated his backyard from the western side of our yard, which we thought of as the back yard. He informed me that the line of bushes was actually in his property.
Yard Work: That was fine with me, but when Fred and his wife moved to Florida a few years later, the first thing that the family that moved in did was to install a wooden fence adjacent to the bushes. So, the responsibility for maintaining the bushes fell to me willy-nilly.
Those were by no means the only bushes on our property, There were good-sized forsythias in both the northeast and northwest corners of the property. Large burning bushes flanked the house on both sides. Knee-level evergreens decorated the north side of the garage and part of the front. We had at least one rhododendron and two mountain laurels. There were hollies in the front side of the house, but I think that Sue put those in later to replace something else. A hedge of some kind that was about eight feet long, two feet thick, and four or five feet high was positioned fifteen or so feet in front of the door leading to the entryway.
I suspect that the power hedge trimmer might be in this box.
I was well aware that grass and weeds grew, but it had never really occurred to me that these bushes would keep growing all spring and summer, as well as most of the winter. Keeping all of these bushes from overgrowing the house was a task that I had not reckoned on. I bought a power hedge trimmer, but it was heavy, and it could not handle some of the thick branches. I used it on the hedges sometimes, but for most of the other bushes it was easier to use old-fashioned hedge clippers and a lopper. Of course, since we had never faced the issue of bushes before, I had to buy those as well.
Then there were the trees. The property had a spindly pine tree on the east lawn and nine maple trees—seven big red maples that encircled the house, one even larger green maple, and one small Japanese maple that really seemed out of place. In the spring the maples shed thousands of those little helicopter seeds, many of which took root in our gutters. In the fall, of course, the trees discharged all of their leaves.
The very best thing about life in Enfield in those days was that the city had hired a company to come around once a year to vacuum up leaves from the curbside. In our neighborhood it occurred a little after Thanksgiving. I bought a backpack leaf blower, but it still took a lot of time and effort to blow all those leaves down to the street. Even though our corner lot provided us with more footage on the two streets on which we lived than any of the neighbors had, it still seemed as if our mountain range of leaves was as lofty as anyone’s.
The leaf blower has rested in the garage for years.
The town eventually discontinued the blatant socialism of this service. It was replaced with leaf pickup days. The leaves all had to be bundled in large paper bags, and there was a limit to how many could be left at one time. I seem to remember that they allowed twenty bags at a time. When the objective was changed to getting the leaves in bags rather than down to the street, the usefulness of the leaf blower decreased markedly. I eventually abandoned it in favor of old-fashioned rakes. Sue insisted that the best way was to rake the leaves onto a sheet and then carry the sheet to the destination. I tried this, but found the extra step saved no time or effort.
At some point Enfield stopped accepting the bags, too. Instead brown tipper-barrels were supplied. Every week a truck came to collect their contents, which could include any type of lawn waste. Well, my yard’s leaves could fill dozens or maybe even hundreds of those barrels. I decided to just chop up the leaves in October and early November using the lawnmower with its mulching setting. I have been satisfied with the results.
I also had to take care of the 10,000 square-foot lawn, of course. When I say “take care of” I actually mean “mow”. I never fertilized or watered it, and I only spent any time weeding it once—on August 17, 1988, as explained here. I probably should have bought a small tractor as soon as we moved in. It would have paid for itself several times over. However, I was a several decades younger when we moved to Enfield, and I actually liked the exercise of mowing the lawn—as long as the mower was self-propelled.
I went through three or four lawnmowers before I purchased in 2011 or thereabouts a really good one from the Honda dealer across the street from TSI’s office in East Windsor.
Gardening: Vegetable gardening was my primary hobby when we lived in Rockville. When we looked at houses, I always tried to imagine where a garden could be located. It was not easy to find a decent spot on a lawn that also featured so many maple trees that became very leafy just when the crops needed sunlight.
My main garden was a square patch—perhaps fifteen feet on each side—of land right in front of the bushes on the north side of the house. It was between two trees and far enough away from the house that it received six or seven hours of direct sunlight during the summer months. This was adequate for most popular plants, but it was a continual frustration for me, especially since I understood that over time the trees would only get bigger.
That small piece of land was thickly covered by a thick mat of zoysia grass. I needed to use a spade to remove the turf during the first spring. It was backbreaking work, but I persevered. Then I borrowed Betty Slanetz’s rototiller to cultivate the soil. That was much easier, but in the process I accidentally punctured one of the hoses for the sprinkling system that lay beneath our entire lawn.3
I planted the usual crops—tomatoes, peppers, beans, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and peppers. I had very little luck with root crops—onions, garlic, and carrots. I never did figure out what was wrong with my technique. My carrots never got more than a few inches long. The onions that I produced were scarcely larger than the sets that I planted in the spring.
In later years I purchased the starters for my tomato plants from Jeanie Smith, who lived at the northwest corner of North Maple and Moody Road. I tried several different kinds of tomatoes, but my favorites were (if I remember correctly) Red Rockets. Unfortunately after a few years of spectacular harvests, they got the blight, and it apparently leached into the soil. Thereafter, my harvest were not very good, and there really was nowhere else on the property suitable for growing tomatoes.
In point of fact, I really was not that big a fan of tomatoes per se. However, the chili that I made with freshly picked tomatoes was just delicious.
My favorite crop was green beans. I tried both bush beans and pole beans. I had some really good harvests, but the Mexican bean beetles, which seemed to arrive en masse in early July were devastating. During the first year I went out every morning and pulled off beetles with my fingers. They always hid on the underside of the leaves. I really did not want to use an insecticide, but I could not come up with another way of keeping the beetles and their voracious larvae from destroying the entire crop. In most other cases I eschewed the use of pesticides in order to protect the cats.
One Christmas Tom and Patti Corcoran gave me a book by Mike Wavada entitled All I Know about Beans and Beetles. Every page was blank.
Since I lived in New England I felt compelled to grow squash and zucchini. Nice crops of broccoli and cauliflower resulted after I learned about bacillus thuringiensis (BT), the environmentally safe way to eliminate cabbage worms. I grew some Brussels sprouts that produced little cabbages well into December. One mild winter one of the plants even wintered over and produced more little heads in the spring!
On the west side of the lawn by the fence I grew some asparagus and strawberries. These plants required an awful lot of weeding and attention, but they both produced nice crops for several years.
I gave up on the main garden after a few years. The growth of the surrounding trees had made it increasingly difficult for the crops to receive sufficient sunlight. I kept up the asparagus and strawberries for a few years after that. At some point I probably just became too busy to pay them the attention that they needed.
The Basement: The house on North St. had a full basement. The staircase down was in the hallway that led to the bedrooms, and the door was directly across from the entrance to the kitchen.
The washer and the shelves. The dryer is long gone.
Two large shelving units were built into the walls of the basement. It would have been a huge undertaking to remove them. We did not even consider doing so. The one on the north side we used for storage of books and games that were seldom used and the indoor side of the landing spot for the cats coming through the cat door. Next to it on one side was the case that held the fuses; on the other were the washer and dryer.
A small piece of plywood served as a ramp from the cat door to the top shelf. From there the cats made a right turn and walked over to the edge, jumped down to the washing machine and from there to the floor.
The sprinkler unit is in here somewhere near the shelves.
Next to the shelves on the west wall was the control unit for the underground sprinkler system. I played around with this enough to figure out that I did not want to use it. I saw two disadvantages: 1) Our water bill would increase. 2) The grass would need to be mowed more often.
For my fortieth birthday Sue bought a ping pong table. Evidently I had once told her that I played some ping pong at Allen Rumsey House in the sixties. It was not one of my better sports, and it certainly was not hers. I set it up near the shelves that held games and books.
We played a few times, but it frankly was not much fun. The area where the table was installed was not really suitable. There was not enough light and room for a good game. Furthermore, Sue experienced a lot of trouble keeping the ball on the table.
I drew a red box around the Mateus bottle on the edge of the ping pong table. This is, I think, the bottle from this story.
At some point Sue became interested in N-gauge model trains. She converted the ping pong table into a small train layout. For all that I know, that may have been part of the reason that she bought the table; I certainly never suggested that I wanted one. She and Brian Corcoran also formed a company for purchasing gear called the B&S railroad. All of that stuff is still down on the table in the basement, but only a trained archeologist could unearth it today.
After we got our new kitten, Woodrow, I found an old door that somehow had appeared in our basement. I converted it into a ramp for him from the top shelf down to the ping pong table. A box was strategically positioned to make it easier for him to reach the table. Woodrow used the ramp to get down for the rest of his life, but he preferred to climb up the bookshelves when he wanted to go out. He also like to shinny up trees when he was chasing squirrels in the yard. However, he did not like to climb down, and I had to rescue him a few times.
The rest of the basement was soon filled with boxes of Sue’s junk. Many of them have never been opened since we moved into the house, a period of nearly thirty-four years!
Sports: My interests in most sports waned considerably after we moved to Enfield. I still watched Michigan football games on television, however. Someone even gave me a license plate holder that celebrated Michigan Football. In 2021 it is affixed to its third car.
I began to take jogging more seriously. Enfield is one of the flattest towns in Connecticut, a distinction that made it rather easy to design a course of almost any length that did not involve hills as steep as the one on which we lived in Rockville. I often took a long lunch break that consisted of a run of a few miles, a shower, lunch, and a short nap before I returned to the office.
I buried Woodrow beneath this burning bush
In good weather I ate lunch at our picnic table and napped on the small mattress that came with the camping cot that Sue had purchased when we lived in Rockville. Rocky, the cat that moved with us from Rockville, would emerge from his favorite sleeping sport in the forsythia bushes and beg for a morsel of human food. The tiniest bit satisfied him, and he returned to his bush. As soon as I lay down for my nap, Woodrow, the trailer-trash cat that Sue brought home from St. Johnsbury, VT, generally ambled over from his napping spot beneath the burning bush and plopped himself next to me on the mattress.
4.25 miles between the canal & the river.
I also found two other very enjoyable places to run. The trail at Windsor Locks Canal State Park, which started in Suffield, CT, and the trail that stretched from Northampton to Amherst in Massachusetts.
I became rather serious about the activity. I tried to run as much as possible, even in the winter, although I never ventured out in ice, snow, or, for that matter, rain. I ran eighteen miles one morning in the fall. I refused to carry water, but I did place water bottles at two places along the route. Those were my only stops. I am not sure of the date, but I do remember mentioning it to prospective clients on the trip that I took to Seattle, and that was in 1992 or thereabouts.
I also remember that I ran a few miles the next day. That allowed me to brag to a serious runner, who was a friend of Sue’s from high school, that my personal best for a marathon was twenty-five hours.
This is #12. Feel free to hum along.
Classical Music: While running I listened to music on a Sony Walkman with headphones. I bought a lot of cheap cassette tapes of orchestral works by an eclectic group of classical composers. I made an effort to become familiar with most of the popular composers. My collection included only a few operas. Cassette tape drives were installed on both my Saturn and the Honda that I bought in 2007.
I remember mentioning one afternoon to someone at TSI’s office that while jogging on South Road I had been listening to one of the Hungarian Rhapsodies. I was startled to find myself leaning so much to one side that I almost lost my balance. Then it dawned on me why it had happened. I had just been Liszting.
Entertainment: I have difficulty remembering what we did for amusement during these years. We certainly visited the Corcorans often, and I attended a number of softball and soccer games that involved my sister Jamie’s kids. We went to a Springfield Indians hockey game with Sue’s dad once.
On March 11, 1988, Sue and I saw Roy Orbison at Symphony Hall in Springfield. The warmup act was a comic whom I had never heard of. This was perhaps the most well-behaved crowd in the history of concerts. People who left the concerts patiently waited for “Walk” lights before crossing the deserted streets.
We also enjoyed seeing Sam Kinison at the Paramount Theater in Springfield. I don’t know the date, but the comic died in 1992.
For several summers after we moved to Enfield Sue’s youngest sister hosted a day-long “Betty Bash” at the house in which she lived with Don and their parents. I really enjoyed these events. I always participated in the volleyball games and the epic croquet games (played with Slanetz rules). The food was typical picnic fare combined with special dishes that Betty concocted. Tom Corcoran always came. I remember that Jamie brought her son Joey on his fourth birthday.
I got to meet quite a few of Betty’s friends. They were all considerably younger than I was, but it was easier to relate to them than to the Enfielders that I knew.
Trips and Visits: Sue and I took two big international vacations during our first years in Enfield. The fortnight in England is described here. The write-up of the Turkey-Greece cruise begins here.
Sue and I almost certainly took some shorter trips, but the only one that I remember was the visit that we made to one of Sue’s high-school friends in Austin, TX. That trip involved a drive in a rental car from Dallas, where I did a presentation of the AdDept system for Neiman Marcus. That successful experience is described here.
My parents made at least one trip to New England during our first years in Enfield. I don’t think that they ever stayed in our guest bedroom. Instead, they stayed at a hotel near my sister Jamie Lisella’s4 house in West Springfield, MA. My recollection is that the hotel was a Howard Johnson Motel on Route 5. I think that this hotel shut down, and in later years they roomed at the Hampton Inn that was built almost directly across the street.
My parents spent most of their time with Jamie and her kids. I remember, however, that Sue and I drove mom and dad to Old Sturbridge Village once. I remember only that it was quite cold, and we ate lunch or supper at the Publick House or the Bullard Tavern. They seemed to like the idea of having a genuine (well, sort of genuine) New England experience.
I am pretty sure that they came to Enfield for a picnic lunch or supper in our back yard at least once during these early years. I don’t remember the details.
A fairly recent view of the mall from the north. The big building in the center is a Target that was added in 2001
Retail: The mall in Enfield, which is now known as Enfield Square, was developed by the May Company, one of TSI’s primary customers. It opened in 1971, just before I met Sue in my first stint in Connecticut. The mall originally housed three anchor stores—G. Fox (one of May’s department store chains), national chain JC Penney, and Steiger’s, a small chain of department stores based in Springfield. Dozens of smaller shops and eventually a twelve-screen theater were housed in the mall.
You won’t make it in less than ten minutes. There are eleven stoplights on Hazard Ave.
Four large strip malls were built on three sides of the mall. A fifth was positioned a block to the east near several auto dealerships and the post office. At least two or three very large grocery stores have been located in them throughout the years that we have lived in the area. Nearly every type of retailer could be found in a fairly small area. All of these stores were easily accessible from I-91 and Route 5. It was (and still is in 2021) the only large shopping area between Hartford and Springfield, MA. For almost two decades Enfield Square was the only enclosed mall in the Hartford area that was east of the Connecticut River.
Great numbers of people came to Enfield to shop in the years after we moved to Enfield, and the people who lived in Enfield felt little reason to go elsewhere for retail therapy. It was very convenient for Sue and me; our house was less than three miles away.
Sometimes individual retailers seemed guilty of very poor planning. For several years there was a McDonald’s across the street from the mall on both the north and south sides as well as one inside the mall. That last one closed when the mall began to deteriorate.
There was also a RadioShack on the south side of the mall. In the late nineties I made numerous trips to the company’s headquarters in Fort Worth. One day someone in the advertising department heard that I lived in Enfield and told me that the Shack was opening a new store there. I told them that there was already a store in Enfield and asked for the address of the new one. It had a low number on Elm St., which is the street bordering the north side of the Enfield Square. Shortly thereafter a new Shack appeared in the strip mall north of the mall, but—no surprise to me—it lasted less than a year. Many more details concerning my experiences with RadioShack’s advertising department, the other divisions of Tandy, and Fort Worth(less) are recorded here.
Restaurants: By the time that Sue and I moved to Enfield a large number of restaurants had sprung up in and around the mall. The former group included Ruby Tuesday’s and a few transitory fast food places. Of the ones on the periphery The restaurant that has lasted the longest is Olive Garden, which was and still is on the edge of one of the strip malls south of Enfield Square. I went there for lunch with clients or employees a few times.
Originally the building adjoining the Olive Garden was occupied by another Darden Restaurant, Red Lobster. When Red Lobster closed a new restaurant called the Hazard Grille5 opened there. Of all of the local eateries it was our favorite. Sue especially liked it when local musicians performed there.
We went to Ruby Tuesday’s fairly often. We liked the salad bar. We picked up fried chicken from KFC on Route 5 with some frequency until its owner retired and closed the store. We tried most of the other restaurants at least once, but we never became regulars at any of them. My dad and I often ate lunch at the Friendly restaurant in the mall’s parking lot. Our orders were totally predictable. He always ordered a senior turkey melt and a coffee. I always got the Reuben SuperMelt and a Diet Coke. Details about my dad’s life in Enfield are posted here.
Among the restaurants that we definitely did not frequent were the other two restaurants with stand-alone buildings on the grounds of Enfield Square. We went to Chi Chi’s once; we did not enjoy it at all. We found the fancy Italian restaurant, Figaro, to be grossly overpriced. I don’t think that Chi Chi’s made it to the twenty-first century, but Figaro is still operational. Sue and I dined there once with my Advanced Italian class.
The Lockes: Sue’s mother’s maiden name was Effy Locke. She had four brothers, three of whom lived in Enfield, as did almost all of their offspring and their offspring’s offspring. So, during the first years of our residence in Enfield Sue and I became much more involved with both her many relatives and the few of mine with whom I had any dealings.
It frankly astounded me that so many people in one family lived so close together. My relatives for the most part spread to the four winds as soon as it was feasible.
I must admit that I had a hard time adjusting to the Lockes. They all had a lot in common and seemed to get along well with one another, but I could not seem to find a way to fit in. I could seldom find anything to talk about with any of the male members of the clan. Most of them drove trucks as part or all of their jobs. The family game was a very simple trick-taking card game called Setback.
The exception in Sue’s family was her uncle Bob Locke, who lived with his wife Carol6 in western Michigan. He worked as an engineer. Their family, which included three daughters named Deb, Wendy, and Sandy7, drove out to Connecticut in an RV at least a few times. Whenever they did, one of Bob’s siblings threw a party that inevitably included a softball game. All the cousins attended. I played too, at least once.
Of all of Sue’s uncles the one whom I knew the least well was Chet Locke, whose wife was named Elsie8. They had two sons. Tim and Natalya live in Stafford Springs in 2021. I never got to know them very well at all. Paul married one of Betty Slanetz’s best friends, Karen Shapiro. Sue and I went to their wedding, which occurred in the early nineties. In 2021 the couple have two grown children.
I knew Charlie Locke because he worked as an electrician for the Slanetz Corporation. I am pretty sure that he and his assistant did the wiring for our office in Enfield. His wife’s name was Gene.9 They had two daughters, Patti Caswell10 and Kathy Stratton. I hardly knew either one of them.
Ted and Judy’s house.
Ted Locke and his wife Judy lived in the house right across the street from the house in which Sue grew up. Since both Don and Betty lived there with their parents (until they moved to Florida), Sue and I saw Ted and Judy quite often. Until she died in 1990, Sue’s grandmother Molly Locke lived with Ted and Judy.
Ted and Judy’s family family included three children. Sue Tkacz is a very perky lady, with whom I have exchanged greetings on a few occasions. Sue and I went to a Christmas party at the home in Somers of Glen Locke and his wife at the time, Sue. The youngest son, Jim, lives in Enfield. His wife Ann worked for TSI for a while.
Almost all of these people—or maybe I should say almost all of the males listed above—were very much into cars and, especially, trucks. So was Don Slanetz. They also knew a lot about who was building or buying real estate or equipment in Enfield and the vicinity. I found it extremely difficult to avoid being a bump on the log at the frequent family gatherings of the Locke clan. My fields of interests are quite diverse, but none of them seemed to overlap the interests of any of these people.
The only exception to the above statements that I can think of was Sue’s Uncle Bob. He seemed different from his brothers. I also got along with Sue’s mother and her sisters and most if not all of the women in the extended Locke family, and I do mean extended. Almost all of Sue’s cousins have at least two children and some members of that generation also have children.
The Slanetz Reunion: Seldom had I ever even met any of the relatives of Sue’s father, Art Slanetz. I have a very vague recollection of meeting Sue’s cousin Diane Davis11 back in 1972 or 1973. We encountered her by chance on the street in Rockville. I don’t remember any more than that. I also have a very hazy recollection of going to the house in Enfield of Art’s sister, Margaret Davis12. I remember being told ahead of time that Art and Margaret did not get along very well. I retain a very strange recollection of having brought her a doormat as a present. I have no idea as to what the context could possibly have been. Other than those two events I had no dealings with or information about Art’s side of the family—with one exception.
Mark Davis and Sue.
I had heard stories about the wunderkind, Margaret’s son Mark. He was reported to be the smartest of all of Sue’s cousins, and in fact the smartest person in his age group in all of Enfield.
I am not sure who came up with the idea of a reunion of the Slanetz family in 1992. It might have been Mark. It was held during the summer at the house in which Sue grew up in 1992. I am not sure why it was held in Enfield. In some ways it was a central location. Carloads of people drove from Long Island, New Hampshire, and Vermont. A few also came from much farther away.
I must admit that I was dreading this event. My only dealing with in-laws13 had been at the get-togethers of the Locke family in which I always felt ill at ease. In point of fact I would have skipped it if I could. However, I did attend, and I was very glad that I did.
The Slanetzes were nothing like the Lockes. Although quite a few had been born in the Enfield area, only Art and Margaret had stayed there. They seemed to have spread out all over the country, and their number included an impressive array of intellectuals, businessmen, and creative people. There was no family business, as far as I could tell. Most importantly, the conversations never approached the twin topics of trucks and Enfield gossip.
I don’t remember too many of the details. I do have a clear recollection of avoiding being included in the inevitable group photo.
Bill Slanetz.
The most famous attendee was Dr. Charles Slanetz Jr.14, a heart surgeon and researcher from Long Island. The most memorable connection that I made was with Bill15 and Norma Slanetz of Keene, NH, and their children Diane Patenaude, Jack, and David16.
Sue and I made several very enjoyable trips to visit with Bill and Norma. Bill was an avid gardener, and his garden was so large that, compared to mine, it seemed like a farm. I liked to wander around in it and examine the produce.
Their house was high up on a steep hill, and it was not easy to reach. Nevertheless, friends and family were always dropping by. The conversations were always interesting, at least to me, and some sort of activity, planned or spontaneous, always seemed to be happening.
Bill also liked to play bridge, and after I took the game up again in the twenty-first century, we sometime discussed the world’s greatest card game. Norma played too, but she was not as involved as Bill.
1. Both companies are defunct. the buildings of the carpet company have been transformed into apartments. Its Wikipedia page is here. Large portions of the powder factory were destroyed by a tremendous explosion on January 14, 1913. Its Wikipedia page is here.
2. Paul Robeson (1898-1976) is most famous for his portrayal of Joe in Show Boat, and especially for his unforgettable rendition of “Ole Man River”. However, acting was the least of his talents. He was a two-time all-American football player at Rutger, and he was such an outstanding student that he earned membership in Phi Beta Kappa and the Cap and Skull Society. He was also elected Valedictorian of his class. While he was earning a law degree at Columbia he played on two different NFL teams and appeared in several professional play productions. He spent much of his life giving concerts and lectures, often speaking about how much better he was treated by Europeans, especially Russians, than Americans. He was blackballed in the fifties and not prohibited from traveling abroad because of his political views. In 1940 he moved his family into a large house at 1221 Enfield St. (Route 5) in Enfield, which he owned for thirteen years during the highlight of his career as an entertainer. He was on the right side of history from start to finish but the wrong side of politics for most of the rest of his life.
3. This was not a great loss. If I had maintained the system over the decades that we have lived in Enfield, the sprinkler system may have significantly enhanced the value of the property. However, I had no intention of doing something so foolish as to pay higher water bills just to encourage the grass to grow more rapidly. So, the system probably would have ceased functioning properly at some point anyway.
4. A lot more about Jamie and her family has been posted here.
5. The Hazard Grille closed without warning in 2013. A couple of other restaurants succeeded it at that location with no success. In 2021 the building was torn down and replaced by a smaller building that is shared by Starbucks and Jersey Mike’s.
6. Carol died in 2018. Here obituary is here. Sue and I drove out to Michigan in the fall of 2008. We saw Bob, Carol, and their family on this trip, which is described here.
7. All three of the daughters are now married. Their names in 2021 are Deb Batts, Wendy Ahearne, and Sandy Mulder, and they all live in the Grand Rapids area.
8. Both Chet and Elsie are deceased in 2021. I could not find an obituary for Chet. Elsie’s is posted here.
9. Charlie and Gene are both deceased in 2021. Charlie’s obituary is posted here, and Gene’s is posted here.
10. Patti Caswell died in 2019. Her obituary is here.
11. Diane has apparently been married a couple of times. Her last name in 2021 is Clark, but her children are named Quinn.
12. Margaret Davis died in 2010. Her obituary is posted here.
13. Sue and I were not married then, but we were in the second or maybe even third decade of our whirlwind courtship. Everyone expected me to be at the family reunion.
Dr. Charles Slanetz Jr.
14. Dr. Slanetz died in 2006. The newsletter of the John Jones Surgical Society of Columbia University published a long obituary. It is posted here. Scroll down to page 11 or search for “Slanetz”.
15. Bill Died in 2017. His obituary is posted here. Sue and I drove up to Keene for the funeral.
16. David Slanetz died unexpectedly at his house on the island of Dominica in 2004. His obituary is posted here. Sue and I attended the memorial service.
