Old Man's River

Blindly inquiring about the Rooster River to someone in the town's Conservation Department wasn’t one of my smartest moves.

Apparently the river, which has a tendency to flood backyards and basements, is a source of great stress and headaches to many Fairfield residents. I’m guessing the folks at Town Hall have their hands full with inquiries and accusations, so my quest for some background information was met with a big sigh. But things weren’t always so bleak. In fact, once upon a time, the river was a source of great joy.

Just ask Philip Barske. At 94 years old, Barske has a lifetime of memories that revolve around the river that ran through his backyard.

“I was born in 1917, about 150 feet from the Rooster River,” said Barske. “I spent my early years enjoying the gifts and beauty of a better-than-average community brook.”

Barske was the son of Fannie Barske, the old woman who lived on Valley Road and ran what many people remember as a candy store out of her house. “Our home was located on a rise above the river bed and a flood plain existed between the house, the barns and the river. Directly behind one of the barns, the river had been dammed and a two-acre ice pond existed,” he recalled.

When Barske speaks about the river, you get an almost "Little House on the Prairie" vibe. Clearly the Rooster played a large role in the lives of the people who lived around it.

“As a youngster, I knew the river like the back of my hand, particularly from Stratfield Road to Park Avenue. There were two great swimming areas along the stream: One below Park Avenue and the second below and just beyond Unquowa School, near the fifth hole of the Brooklawn Country Club.”

Can’t you just picture Laura Ingalls and the gang hanging out there on a summer day? But wait. “This was a skinny dip pool,” said Barske. “It was nature-made with a large pool and an old tree trunk that served as a diving platform. This pool was formed by the junction of Rooster River and London’s Pond Brook.”

So maybe Laura Ingalls wouldn’t have been caught dead jumping into the river in her birthday suit, but, just as Albert might go down to the river to catch something for Ma to fry up for dinner, so did Barske.

“The one secret fishing area that I had was a stretch of overgrown river bank that extended from Wilson Street north to Park Avenue. There were brook trout in this section and only a few of us knew this. Suckers, sunfish, pickerel and minnows were the general fish population, but only a few of us knew about the trout.”

Barske offered another fish tale about the Rooster River. “I had a friend, Douglas Humm, who lived on Churchill Road and whose dad was an engineer at the Singer plant in Bridgeport,” he said, referring to Singer Sewing Machine, which opened a factory in Bridgeport in 1907.

“Mr. Humm was an ardent trout fisherman and he attempted to stock London’s Brook from the area of Stratfield Road and Fairfield Woods Road upstream toward London’s Pond,” Barske said.

Humm also busied himself by making bamboo fly rods and violins. “The violins are directly connected with my mother’s candy store, in a way,” said Barske. “Directly across the street from the old home, there was a giant sycamore tree—a big one. When it started to die, I told Mr. Humm and he immediately had to see the tree to check the condition of the wood. He used aged sycamore for the bodies of his violins, and this tree fit the bill.”

But all wasn’t perfect in the land of the Rooster River. Just as there was always some drama happening in Walnut Grove, so too was the case in Fairfield.

“The greatest disaster to occur to the Rooster River took place in the summer of 1935. I was working at the DuPont Rubber Works and on the night shift, so after returning from work, I had breakfast and then went to bed. On this certain day, about mid-afternoon, my mother awakened me and suggested that I go out back and look at the river. It was solid white."

“That started it,” he said. “Every day, early in the afternoon, the river turned white. I implored town agencies, the state agencies and anyone whose ear I could get. By the second summer, the pollution became so severe that the river looked more like a river of mayonnaise … and the smell.”

And so, the problems with the Rooster River began.

“To remedy a situation, one must know the cause, and it wasn’t much of a trick to follow the river and one’s nose.” And that’s just what Barske did. He went north to Park Avenue, then further north to Madison Avenue. “Lo and behold, under the bridge at Madison Avenue, there was a pipe imbedded in the concrete that pointed toward the Dewhirst Dairy plant just beyond.”

At this point, Barke’s story takes a decidedly mischievous turn. “Years later, sometime around 1950, it is reported that someone plugged up the illegal sewer outlet, backing the polluted waste back into the dairy plant,” he said.

Barske promises he knows nothing about it.

Certainly things are much different around the Rooster River today. There are no impish children splashing in its pools or men using pulleys and cables to collect ice. Pollutants and flooding are factors that have plagued residents for years, and probably will continue to do so. “Rooster River faces many challenges in an attempt to just exist,” said Barske.

Only time will tell what the future will look like for one man’s favorite river.