Old Friends

Marion and Dan Gerow, Dan's sister Emily Gerow and her husband, 1943.

photograph by Croswell Bowen. 

      My father described Marion and Dan Gerow as the Salt of the Earth. Last summer, my sister Molly and I visited them, and heard how my father photographed their double wedding. On this visit I heard how he  wondered onto their dairy farm and introduced himself. Dan's father invited him in. Marion says " It was his Irish charm. We loved him. Everybody loved Croswell." He loved them, too. He's buried in their Quaker Cemetery across the valley, looking down on their farm. My sister Molly and I feel the same.

     I have a surprise for the Gerows. I've brought copies of the old "Maple Glenn" column that speak of Dan and his sister Emily's youth. Dan and Marion had never seen them, and their knowledge of the history of the area is vast. The mystery of who wrote them deepens. Over the next few days, Dan puzzles it out, talks to Emily in Albuquerque, NM, and finally announces that it must have been Mrs. B. , over in Putnam County, who shared a party line with her Great Hollow neighbors, and Dan suspects, listened in. The place name, "Maple Glenn," remains unsolved. 

     The Gerow's farm has been in their family for many generations. When I contemplate "Nutmeggers," as Connecticut folk are sometimes called, who stayed, and did not yield to the lure of Western land, the Gerows seem an obvious example. I will learn that it is not so simple.