We met in the morgue.

Chalker & Fenn encircled by my mother who has passed. This print version from 2005 was compiled by Lynne Turdin and appeared in the Record-Journal. My maternal grandfather worked as a blacksmith at Chalker & Fenn; the reason my mother noted this segment in one of her favorite columns.

The newspaper morgue, that is. The late Lynne Turdin at work mining the archives/library files for the rich history contained within the Record-Journal, then at Crown Street, Meriden, CT. She was a most fascinating person and the building is not there anymore.

Never got old, using a swing door to enter into the sanctum of reporters and editors, photographers and sports writers. A warren of offices, nooks, crannies and a listening so intense it could be felt. So many questions. That day it was researching the history of Highland Country Club, a golf course grown up to pines in Westfield. Memories of a long-ago field trip with family to unearth where Highland buried its not wanted stuff, bottles, odd things. A salamander winding its way through the uncovered objects. Decades later that sparked a story pitch and related excursions. Digging of another sort. Stories.

Lynne is gone. Warren Gardner. Dick McBride. Each of these humans, a library of knowledge, deep reserves of history so willingly shared.

“Black ink was pumped in from a tank truck parked on Crown Street, and colored ink came in 55-gallon drums. Huge rolls of newsprint were fed into it from beneath, carried by a trolley system. Alas, the press was scrapped, and the paper is now printed elsewhere; it’s been acquired.

—Glenn Richter (Richter, also gone, but not forgotten; a column by Jeff Kurz.)

This carefully folded print version of “This Week In History” by Lynne Turdin (July 2005) is pinned on the wall over my desk. Imagine a young girl walking from Arch Street to visit her father at Chalker & Fenn, sometimes because of the itch of poison ivy. The water of the blacksmith’s cooling tank was reputedly soothing to the rash, hence my mother’s story recalled of her visits to the shop on Mill Street, Meriden. Looking at the image now; see the technology transferred from equine to vehicles powered by fuel not horses. And the repairs would still be required, the ingenuity of fixing and finding solutions in metal.

Am wandering while writing, bear with me. In a pupating mode of life; change and growth call for energies. And stillness.