This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.

The Chester You Never Knew

If a young man got a red ear of corn at the husking parties that young people once flocked to in a bygone era in Chester, he was in luck. That meant he could kiss any girl in the room.

That’s only one of the bits of local lore in the new book by Rob and Tom Miceli, Chester Lost, Found, Remembered. The Miceli bothers will talk about their book, illustrating it in a most modern way with a PowerPoint presentation, at the Chester Meeting House on Sunday, Feb. 3 at 3 p.m.

The book has some 100 photographs of a bygone Chester and originally, both Miceli brothers agreed, they conceived of it as a picture book. But as they looked at the photographs, they realized something else: The photographs told stories, stories they feared would be lost if not recorded.

“The book became story driven,” Tom Miceli said. “If we don’t get these stories down, they will be lost forever; the stories just won’t be here anymore. It’s important to get it all down before people forget.”

Tom Miceli thinks that many of today’s residents are unaware of how different Chester was at the turn of the 20th century.

“The cumulative wisdom is that the town hasn’t changed much in a century,” he said.

That, however, he points out is not the case. At the turn of the 20th century, Chester was not a quiet country town known for its artistic community and imaginative Main Street shops.

Instead, it was a bustling industrial hub, with small factories that got their power from the rapidly running branches of the Pattaconk Brook. Many of the factories turned out small metal goods; in fact, Rob Miceli pointed out that at one time the Jennings factory turned out more augur bits (a twisting drill bit used for wood) than any other location in the United States.

“Chester was the augur bit capital of the world,” he said. “The industrial story is a mostly forgotten aspect of the town.”

“It was a noisy, busy, dirty town, full of the sounds of the factories,” Tom Miceli added.

There were some farms, his brother added, but on the outskirts of town.

It was also a much more self-sufficient town.

“When we grew up in Chester, you could get all the things you needed here—groceries, banking, gas, clothes,” said Tom Miceli, who has spent his professional career as an economics professor at the University of Connecticut.

He recalled getting his first pair of sneakers in a Main Street store that today houses a sculpture studio.

Rob Miceli, now a kindergarten teacher in North Branford, has always had a passion for local history, stimulated by his own family’s roots in town. Their own history is a familiar American story. Their mother, born Shirley Bennet, came from generations of local New Englanders; her husband Rosario (Frank) Miceli was the son of Italian immigrants. Shirley and her mother Evelyn, both pharmacists, ran the local drug store where Rob’s father also worked, from 1950 to 1989. The store was where the Pattaconk 1850 Bar and Grille is now located.

“I grew up in the drug store,” Rob Miceli said, and in the process he learned a lot about the town, both from customers and from his own family.

“Lots of stories, lots of anecdotes; from my mother and grandmother, like folklore, some of it, really,” he said. “People say we know stories no one else does.”

Rob Miceli has collected picture of Chester for many years. He said there was even a box at the historical society reserved for pictures he was saving, always planning to compile them into a book. In fact, he started on several occasions but two years ago, Tom Miceli decided he needed to push his brother to finish the project.

“Tom did the prodding. I needed somebody to light a fire under me,” Rob Miceli said.

The Chester Historical Society is publishing the book and all profits will go to the society. The Miceli brothers have volunteered all their time and efforts. And they are not through. Tom Miceli said there is much more material and while they have no specific outline yet, they would like to collaborate on another volume.

Having spent so much time writing about a bygone Chester, Tom Miceli admitted he would love the time-machine experience of going back 100 years to experience the life that people in Chester led for himself.

“But just for a day,” he added.

Chester: Lost, Found, Remembered

Rob and Tom Miceli talk about their new book Chester: Lost, Found, Remembered on Sunday, Feb. 3 at 3 p.m. at the Chester Meeting house, 4 Liberty Street. Admission is free.