Concetta Falcone-Codding

When the lazy days of July began to fade and August was just around the corner, my mother would say, “When you hear the sound of the katydids chanting in the night, summer is saying goodbye.” Growing up on Fitchville Road in Bozrah during the 1960s, I learned to recognize the changing of the seasons through my mother’s eyes. Our family lived beside a pond encircled by a wide dirt path that tenderly embraced the water.

The day he was born, he was like an accident waiting to happen. Yes, babies are a blessing … unless they are not wanted. Anna and Gus Lorentz adopted a beautiful baby boy and appropriately named him Gustave Jr. However, few in the town of Bozrah knew that Anna’s sister had given her baby away. Even long after I came along in the 1950s, I rarely heard my mother mention it, not until I grew older.

In 1968, April Fool’s Day was not just another day for the teenagers at the Norwich Free Academy… It was a rite of passage. It took all year to plan the perfect joke. The victims were the usual: teachers, foes, bossy neighbors (those who did not let us walk across their lawns) and last but not least, the staff at school who gave us detentions for no good reason.