Redding, Connecticut and the Story of a Sub Woofer

Redding, Connecticut very New England.  Originally the village name was spelled the same as in England - Reading, but with much confusion at the Post Office eventually it was decided to spell it the phonetic way Redding.

Salt Box House.

More a building shape than a building style, the saltbox takes its name from a sloping gable roof that gives the house the shape of a wooden box used to store salt in Colonial times, like the reproduction of a 1770s saltbox by Replitiques.

The saltbox house is formed by a one-story addition across the rear of a 1-1/2 or2-story building. Initially an easy method of enlarging a house, it eventually became an accepted building form, particularly in New England after 1680. The style was common in New England before 1830, and it remained popular in other parts of the country until the late 1800s.

A variation of early Colonial or Cape Cod style houses, the practical and simple saltbox was often a single room deep. Given that often a dozen or more people crowded into these early homes, colonists soon began looking for practical ways to expand living space.

The prominent center chimney or a pair of end chimneys also define this style. Materials were simple and functional inside and out. A center entrance with a transom above and 4/4 or 6/6 double-hung windows are common features.

The house above clearly shows a break in the roof line, indicating that this saltbox was formed by adding a shed to an earlier house. Architectural experts caution that the lack of the break in the roof line does not necessarily mean that the saltbox shed was part of the original house.

A house with a low roof line would not have the height for a use able ceiling in a rear addition. Similarly, the slope of the roof of a two-story house might not be flat enough to cover a large, one-story addition. Thus it became common practice to change the roof line where the shed meets the main house to provide adequate ceiling space in the rear rooms.

In most saltboxes, the rear lean-to addition was divided into three rooms: A central kitchen with fireplace and oven, a room reserved for childbirth and nursing the ill, and a pantry.

Thursday morning The Boy comes into our bedroom and says by the way mum I will need your car on Saturday, I have to drive up to Connecticut to pick up a Woofer.  In my groggy delirium, what?

Well I said I did not want him to drive all that way up there on his own.  You have to go right through NYC, and over the George Washington Bridge, the whole area is a nightmare.  So here I am on my day off committed to drive to CT.  Mr B. says look at this as mother - son time together.

We left at 7:45 AM and arrived at about 11:00 AM with one stop, so not bad.  $30.00 in Tolls to get up there over the George Washington Bridge.  It was a lovely sunny day and the roads were good which was a plus, in view of all the terrible weather that we have had.

Redding is commuting distance to NYC but still a country feel, so the houses are very New England; we passed several Salt Box houses which I like.  The town green at Redding is quintessentially New England and that’s about it a town green with picket fence and a church.

The sub woofer we picked up in my PT Cruiser weighs over 100 lbs, but it fitted into the back of my car just fine.  The guy Rob bought it off originally had I think five of them, in his surround sound studio, which we did get to see.  It has more base than his other sub woofer, and definitely is better; even I can tell the difference.

We travelled a little north and stopped off in Danbury for lunch, we ate a buffet at a Hispanic restaurant, Rob said all the food tasted like Auntie Marias' and he was right, so probably more Puerto Rican than Mexican.  It was good.

On the way home we took the more scenic route back, but when we saw all these people exiting I thought, I bet that’s the exit to NYC and it was, but nothing we could do about it, so we came home a totally different way, much longer but across country, into New York state and then come down from the north into PA.  The trouble was we had no map, and Rob’s GPS was out of power, so we were flying by the seat of our pants.  We did save on tolls.  We got home about 5:00 PM but not in time for Rob to go to work; fortunately he had phoned in earlier before his phone died to say he possibly would be late.

All in all some good mum/son time together.

Christy