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05/30/2018 08:30 AMWhen Marie Anne Heft thinks about the upcoming Huckleberry Adventure Recycled Raft Race sponsored by the Chester Land Trust, she likes to think of herself as the original Huckleberry Finn. Okay, so not the classic character that Mark Twain wrote about rafting down the Mississippi, but a Chester version.
That’s because when she was a child, Marie Anne and her companions floated rafts down the Pattaconk Brook at what is now Carini Preserve behind Chester Main Street.
“We were outside all the time playing in the brook. We sure had fun,” she says.
Marie Anne is one of the Chester Land Trust members involved in the Huckleberry Adventure Recycled Raft Race on Sunday, June 10 at 11 am at the Carini Preserve. The event takes place on the first day of Chester’s popular Sunday Market.
The land trust will provide recycled materials to build the small rafts and the contest is open to participants of all ages. When the raft building is finished, the real test comes: launching the craft and seeing not only which float, but which cover the 50-foot distance the fastest.
Marie Anne’s Chester memories stretch back a lifetime. She lived in the village, “downtown,” she always calls it, where her father operated a gas station. She remembers a special phrase common in her childhood. People said “over street” meaning to go out of the house to do something.
“You’d say I’m going over street to the grocery,” she explains. “That’s what people who lived downtown said.”
The Chester of her memory had two meat markets, two grocery stores, two package stores, two barbers, a dry cleaners, and a laundry.
“Our town had everything—our own plumbers, fuel, gas man, three gas stations, maybe four,” she says.
And she remembers all the places children played.
“We walked to the lake, to the beach, we played in the woods. We skated on Little Jennings Pond and Big Jennings,” she says. “Kids say there is nothing to do today, but it’s all still there.”
Well, almost. Little Jennings Pond, Marie Anne adds, is largely grown over.
As a small child, she remembers riding her tricycle around town. There was no need, to worry about traffic.
“In those days, when I was growing up you could have slept in the middle of the road and nothing would happen. Now the street is full of cars,” she says.
By the time she was seven, she walked to the library by herself and recalls the librarian, Mrs. Foster.
“I loved the library. I loved Mrs. Foster. I would chit chat with her,” Marie Anne says.
As a teen, Marie Anne did a lot of babysitting; one of her charges still lives in town.
“I babysat Bruce Watrous,” she recalls.
Marie Anne graduated from Valley Regional High School, but when she was a freshman and the high school had not yet been finished, her classes met in the building that is now Deep River Elementary School. She worked at Uarco, the large printing company that once operated in Deep River where she, then Marie Anne Parodi, met her husband Louis Heft.
Until Marie Anne, now 81, retired two years ago, she had worked for 35 years at Whelen Engineering.
“Why didn’t I retire earlier?” she responds to a question. “Because I loved my job.”
She left her job in part because Louis was not well, but he died not long after she retired.
Along with their full-time day jobs, for some six years Marie Anne and Louis ran their own shop, The General Store on Main Street in Chester.
“Hardware, garden tools, penny candy, Woolrich clothes—the perfect general store,” Marie recalls. “I don’t know how we did it, but I am glad we did. We went into debt; we paid it off and went on living. We didn’t make a lot of money, but we made a lot of friends.”
Marie Anne and Louis raised five children in the home in which she has now lived for 48 years, Acorn Acres, named for all the oak trees on the six-acre property. One of the kids, Martin, was first selectman of Chester from 1993 to 2005 and went on to become a senior advisor to current Connecticut Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman. Marie Anne’s daughter Paulette also lives in Chester and her daughter Amanda Preble, Marie Anne’s granddaughter, is now a reporter for the Valley Courier.
Marie Anne’s home is decorated with antiques she has collected and baskets he herself has made. She tends the chickens in a coop on her property—“An expensive hobby,” she admits “but a lot of fun and I get lots of eggs.”
She looks forward to the two baby goats she will be getting.
“They’ll keep down the field,” she says.
Now she is debating what to call them. Like Acorn Acres, all her animals have names starting with the letter A.
“The trouble is we’ve used so many of those A names,” she explains.
Marie Anne painted her basement floor last winter and has plans for painting her potting shed this year.
“I do everything myself,” she says.
She would someday like to do painting of another kind. She has bought all the art supplies but so far has done nothing with them.
“Every year I say I am going to take art classes, but then for some reason I get intimidated. I don’t know why,” she says.
Much of the interior trim and some of the furniture of her house comes from lumber on the property that Louis used in its construction. The personal associations make it very hard for Marie Anne to think of leaving.
“If I had to move to senior housing, what would I take?” she asks. “Everything here has a story for me.”
The Huckleberry Adventure Recycled Raft Race
The Chester Land Trust Huckleberry Adventure Recycled Raft Race is on Sunday, June 10 at 11 a.m. at the Carini Preserve, behind the parking lot on Chester Main Street. Recycled material for raft construction will be provided. There is no entry fee and all ages are welcome.