“All the rivers run into the sea;
yet the sea is not full…”
~ Richard Brautigan, “The Return of the Rivers”
We are on our way to New Haven, Connecticut to eat pizza and see Yale University, not necessarily in that order…oh wait yes, precisely in that order. I note on the map that there is this large barrier blocking our path to Connecticut, something called “New York City”. Google is once again in charge and tells us that it would be a good idea to avoid the George Washington Bridge through NYC proper and head up the Jersey side and attack Connecticut from the west. All of this sounds vaguely like an army preparing a battle plan, which I guess in a way we are.
For some reason I always thought of New Haven as a little rural college town like Chapel Hill. It is actually closer in size to Raleigh which is the big city down in these here parts of Carolina. New Haven is surrounded by, or maybe comprised of, the municipalities of East, North and West Haven. I wondered if there was a *South* Haven but if so it would have to be in the ocean and be called Atlantis.
Anyway, the entire Haven family is collectively a pretty cool place and beside being the home of Yale University it is also the city with arguably the best pizza in the USA. The locals refer to these pies as “apizza” in deference to the source culture and language of Naples, Italy. Another oddity is that the mozzarella cheese topping is referred to as “mootz” by long-time residents. I am pretty sure if foreign interlopers such as ourselves attempted to use these words, the local linguistic police would descend, whisk us away to some drab cellar and force us to listen endlessly to Dick Van Dyke painfully attempting to mimic a cockney accent in Mary Poppins. (In the previous sentence I almost wrote “linguine police” which would have been a mondo cool typo).
Pepe’s and Sally’s are the two legendary New Haven pizzerias most sought after by tourists and locals alike, so we head there to see what all the fuss was about. 3:00PM on a Sunday in October and the lines are out the door in both places! Who knew?
We settle for a place with NO waiting lines which I, Mr Literal, have named the NoLinesNewHavenPizzaPlace, or NLNHPP for short. The pizza at NLNHPP was out of this world – it’s hard to describe how good this thing was — although to be fair I didn’t try the white clam pizza because, guck. If I lived in New Haven I would eat pizza exclusively and weigh 300 pounds. Hello, the name is Mootz, MIKE Mootz.
We are here not for the pizza but because the Fenton clan has Yale connections. My father graduated in 1939 with an MA in Forestry, and my grandfather received a Law degree in 1901. The kids and I wandered about the campus in New Haven, mingling with students and tourists alike. I guess I should not have been surprised at the tourists; after all they were watching us as we were watching them. We stood outside Yale Law School where my grandfather attained his law degree.
I suppose it might be said that there is a sameness about university campuses, but the great institutions like Yale carry the weight of history in and among the buildings. It is a palpable presence, the ghost of past discoveries clinging like intellectual ivy to the sandstone walls. It has been 117 years since my grandfather walked the halls and grounds of Yale, nearly 80 years since Pop did. We came here to pay our respects to the University and to those in our family who were part of it.
Tomorrow we drive west to my place of birth to try and find Granper’s house in Willimantic, Connecticut. Then to Providence, R.I. and up to Portland Maine.
whoisfenton 