Woodlands - East Coast Greenway

Executive Director’s Message
A road different from all other roads
By Adam R. Moore
Aparkway. Not highway, not freeway,
not turnpike, but parkway.
The Merritt Parkway is an apt
name for that landscaped stretch of shaded
road, undulating hills, and graceful bridges
that winds through the woods of southwestern
Connecticut. The Merritt is no
broad boulevard, with traffic speeding and
braking from one stoplight to another. The
Merritt is no interstate, with eight lanes of
traffic, eighteen-wheel trucks and offensive
billboards. No, the Merritt is a parkway.
Both park and way, it is both destination
and route, and different from all other
roads in Connecticut.
The back seat of a brown Dodge station
wagon is where I began my lifelong relationship
with the Merritt Parkway. I was a
kid, and that station wagon must have
been 20 feet long. It had a rear-facing,
fold-up third seat, a perfect perch for bored
children to make faces at approaching drivers.
It had a space between that seat and
the regular back seat that could also fit a
couple of kids. It had a tailgate that folded
down or swung out to the side. On the
sides of the tailgate it had handles, and if
you hung onto the handle, and stood on
the bumper, you could actually ride on the
outside of the car while the wagon was in
motion. These handles were present, presumably,
in case the station wagon had to
double as a fire engine or garbage truck,
which doubtless it could have.
As a child I traveled the Merritt to two
destinations. The first destination was the
Trumbull and Bridgeport area, the home
of my grandparents and great-grandmother.
What I recall about those childhood
trips are the landmarks we saw on the
approach to the Merritt: the stone-lined
West Rock Tunnel (actually on the Wilbur
Cross Parkway), a green and brown, rustic
tollbooth, the steel grate bridge over the
Housatonic River, and leaning over my sisters
to look at the Sikorsky helicopters
below.
The second destination was visited less
frequently, but it made up for that in sheer
excitement, and it required driving the
entire length of the Merritt Parkway. The
place was New York City, and our specific
destination in the city was anticipated with
the drooling delight of a seven year-old kid
whose parents had, the night before,
repeatedly played Peter, Paul, and Mary
eight-tracks with songs about being swallowed
by a boa constrictor. That destination
was the Bronx Zoo.
With age I began to appreciate and
admire the Merritt Parkway as a destination
itself. I gazed at the trees lining its
shoulders and median. I studied the
bridges, each one unique, and marveled at
the artistry of each. I recoiled at the site of
the Route 8 overpass. I took note of the
wooden guardrails, an award-winning
design from the engineering firm Milone
& MacBroom. I saw the signs - forest
green with zigzag patterns on the sides –
and, other than the Mobil signs at the
quaint service stations, saw the utter lack of
advertising and billboards. I noticed the
sweet gum and persimmon that emerge in
Stamford and Greenwich, southern trees at
the very northern end of their range.
I also came to respect the Merritt as a
road for drivers. It takes both hands to
drive the Merritt Parkway. The Merritt tolerates
no fiddling with the car radio. It
does not tolerate cell phones and sometimes
not even conversation. Pulling onto
the Merritt in a four-cylinder stick shift
makes one appreciate a six-cylinder automatic
as no other road can.
So is a Sunday drive with a picnic basket
and a motorcar a thing of the bygone
1940’s? Phooey. You and I have a parkway
in Connecticut, a beautiful Merritt
Parkway, with great places along and at
either end of it. If you live in Fairfield
County or New York City, take a ride up
the Merritt to New Haven this spring, eat
pizza at Pepe’s, and then take a sunset
stroll among the cherry blossoms of
Wooster Square Park. If you live elsewhere
in Connecticut, take a ride south on the
Merritt Parkway. Visit the Olmsteddesigned,
lovingly maintained Beardsley
Park Zoo in Bridgeport. It’s just off the
Merritt. Or go to New York City. Cross
onto the island of Manhattan on the
Henry Hudson Parkway, ride along the
Hudson River, go underneath the great
gray George Washington Bridge, and sip
an iced tea in Bryant Park in the shade of
the New York City Public Library and the
London planetrees overhead.
As for me, I am going to buckle the kids
into a silver Chevy minivan, that must be
about 20 feet long, with sliding doors on
each side, and seats that fold up and down
and come in and out, and a swinging tailgate
in the back, in case it has to double as
a garbage truck or school bus, which
doubtless it can. And we are going to the
zoo. We are going on a Sunday, on a parkway,
for a picnic. And I am going to time
that trip for what, to a little kid, is the
most wondrous thing about the Merritt
Parkway of all – that if you drive south on
it, on just the right Sunday in April, you
will drive from bare gray branches to light
green leaves. On just that right Sunday in
April, you will drive the Merritt Parkway
from winter right into spring.
And the night before, we are going to
gather the kids around the stereo, put in a
CD, and sing a song about being swallowed
by a boa constrictor.
4 Connecticut Woodlands Spring 2004