Custard and Ice Cream: Milo Mead Responds to Solomon S. Mead About the Roads of Greenwich

Source: Greenwich Graphic. July 11, 1903

Editor of the Graphic:

I have read ___ several articles that have appeared in the GRAPHIC both in the SOUTH and those respecting the roads of this town written by our worthy friend Mr. Solomon S. Mead. I do not know about the South, but I am supposed to know something about the roads of this town for I have traveled many of them twice over, in collecting the taxes of the town, and still others one hundred times over. 

It is very easy to talk about good roads for men who have plenty of money and no farm work to do, but is the talk that we hear about good roads really practical to the working farmer? If a man has plenty of leisure time and money to spend good roads are very nice, but if he depends upon the working of his farm by raising crops upon it, he will as they ___sed to say have to try to make two ends meet, and instead of the ends meeting there would be but one end, that would be bankruptcy.

“I know the ___es” as the sailors say, for I have been through the mill. They seem to have the wrong impression of what it would take to put the roads in apple pie order. Take Weaver street, and the roads ___ Dumpling pond and Dingletown and Gognawog and the Exard, it would last as much as the land would sell for.

He seems to think that we do not know how to work the roads. There are lots of men in the town who know how to work the roads as well as the Road Commissioner in the north east corner of the state, who gets perhaps ten dollars per day (____ do not know how much) and roast beef and custard pies in winter and ice cream in summer.

How many thousands of dollars has the town of Greenwich spent on the four hills from Greenwich to Port Chester, Cl. Thomas Mead’s hill, the Toll Gate hill, the Nigg__ _ole hill, the by ram hill, and the ____ are there yet. Our friend must have traveled back towards Stanwich and Banksville by the impression he has of the width and grading of the roads.

After the New Lebanon dock on the Sound is finished let him come to, the village of New Lebanon and see the different steers in that locality beginning with the ___ road until it joins Sound View avenue, the whole length to Charles Mallory’s gate. Let his hours have a walking, wait, and view the buildings adjoining the shore of Long Island Sound, the shrubbery and the well kept lawns, and he will not have such a sneaking opinion of the roads of New Lebanon, Byram Shore, and the Town of Greenwich; and if he continues his journey through to Water Street from Byram Point to Byram Bridge also Mead avenue from the New Lebanon market on the north end to Water Street on the south end he will see what a fine bridge we have across the Byram River at New Lebanon, with the trolley track from Main street in Port Chester through the village of New Lebanon to the village of Greenwich. ____ there it is rather difficult to tell how far it extends.

I will not write anymore about New Lebanon at present, for it might be an unwise policy; it might incite jealousy in regard to out prosperity in the other part of the towns of Cos Cob, Stanwich, the south part of Banksville, and North Greenwich, _____ the district of New Lebanon on the ____ land.

MILO MEAD