Event: Telling Tales Out of School #1
Oral History Project Interviews
Location: Old Lyme Town Senior Center
Date: November 15, 2009
Interviewees: Andrew and Marianne Pfeiffer
Interviewer: Alison Mitchell
How long have you been Mr. & Mrs.?
67 years.
What made it work?
A – Good question.
M – Patience and also he’s a very good guy.
And this lady, is she ok?
A – Fine!
Tell me how long have you been living in Old Lyme?
A – Since 1946.
M – We’ve been living here since 1946, but we’ve been around longer than that.
A – Together since 1946
Were you born here?
A – I was born in Fort Washington, LI in 1917. Makes me 92 working on 93.
World War I was going on then.
A – WWII, oh 17 yes, we were playing around in World Wars.
And when did you two meet?
A – We met about 1940.
M – We met in 1940 at McCullough’s Farms right here in Old Lyme.
Were you horse people?
M – No. At that time it was a regular farm not a horse farm and I was there because I was the same age as their eldest daughter, or close to it, and they wanted some other children there because it was kind of isolated and they wanted companionship.
A – And I was visiting, I believe, the McCullough’s have been our family friends for many, many years.
So then after that, where did you come from Marianne?
M – I was born in Germany, I lived in New Haven and the reason that I was invited to
McCullough Farms is that my father was a professor at Yale and Dr. McCullough was also working at Yale at the time and they were looking for a child to come and I got to be the one.
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So you grew up in New Haven?
M – I grew up in New Haven from 8 years on; before that I was in Germany.
So you were both here and you met in 1940. Was it love at first sight?
M – No! Well, it might have been. At the time I was 15 when I first met him and I was overwhelmed. He was wonderful because every night we’d get together, the whole group, there was a big group of us at the farm at that time and we’d play guitar and sing songs and went on all kinds of outings together. And of course I was concerned that he was that wonderful older person.
Did you serve in WWII?
A – I was with the Westinghouse Lamp division in the research department and worked on the Manhattan Project. It was very serious work.
M – Actually you should mention that you came to the farm quite a bit earlier because that used to be a children’s camp.
So you’d come to McCullough’s Farm as a camper?
A – I was a camper when their first camp was in New Jersey.
M – You were 7 years old at the time.
A – I was trying to think whether I was a camper here or my second visit here was as a junior counselor – swimming counselor.
So then you said you’ve been living here since 1946, so when were you married?
M – We were married in 1942 in New Haven at which time I was 17, which may sound strange to kids to today, however, that was the year after the war started and young people got married because they knew it might very well be their last chance. It turned out not to be that way for us, but it was for many others.
After the war, you were living here full time?
A – At the end of WWII. I was with the Research Dept at Westinghouse. Westinghouse went on strike. When they went on strike, I quit. I came up here to CT and started my own business.
M – Wait a minute, we came back and we lived at Rooks for a year. We took care of the
McCullough Farm for the first year when we returned.
A – Then we bought property from them and built our own home.
M – …with our own hands.
A – In those days you went down to the Town Hall with a drawing of the outside of the building that you wanted to build. They looked at it and said $5 please and you did everything…electrical…plumbing. Septic System, we had someone come up with a machine and do, but everything else we did by hand.
M – We bought 60 acres for $1,200. That was considered normal price. $25 an acre.
But for you that was a stretch.
M – It was a huge sum for us.

Why did you decide to go for so much acreage?
M – Well, first we decided to come to Old Lyme because we wanted to be near the
McCulloughs. They had been friends of Andy’s family since he was a very young child and, of course, I’d been there several years.
A – Dr. McCullough decided that we should have this acreage, which was also across what is now the CT Turnpike (Interstate 95). At that time the CT Turnpike was not there.
M – They cut us right in half. You know, the gentleman who came to buy the land from us. He saw us living in a way you can’t even imagine living, and offered us $25 an acre for the land that they were going to take from us. And of course it never even occurred to us that we should bargain or anything. However, I did ask him, “well, what happens if we don’t want to sell?” And he smiled at us and said, “we would offer you more money and I’m going out now to the car and get my books and you talk it over.” So he gave us
$5 more per acre. That was a wonderful thing for us because we got that money and
Andy was able to buy the first machine tool that he needed which meant that he could start a business of his own.
And Andy, what was that business?
A – I used to design and build medical research instruments used in the field of neurological research for work on the brain, spinal cord— stuff like that.
Really, and you got contracts from hospitals?
A - Mostly research centers. The people that I designed these instruments for were not interested in any particular disease; they were interested basically in the wiring of the nervous system. And they’d tell me what they wanted and I’d translate what they said into an instrument.
Did you have patents on these?
A - I had patents on them and these instruments were sold all over the world – my competition being Bausch and Lomb, American Optical and a couple others.
M – Yes, while Andy was working in a little 14 x 16 shop on his own property – during that time – we had 3 children and I ran a little farm. I raised dairy goats and chickens and ducks and a sheep or two and grew a garden and grew most of our own food.
Did you do any bartering?
M – No, we did sell eggs once in a while, matter of fact, to a number of people but that was it. I’d like to go back to this building of our house, which we did with our own hands. We were living at the McCullough farm that winter and Andy would come over in the morning and start to work. I took care of the animals at the farm because the
McCulloughs were living in Chicago at that time and we were taking care of the farm for a year and I went and milked the cows and whatever else needed doing and then I would put my child on a pony and we’d walk over to our property and tie the pony to a tree and let the child run loose and help build the house. Her name was Merrily. She was our first-born; she was born in New Jersey. When we moved here she was already 3 or 4 years old. Incidentally, even though I got married at 17, I was not pregnant.
You then had two more children? One of whom is John, and who is the other?
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M – Diane, Diddy we call her.
A – She’s out on the west coast.
M – She went into my kind of business because years later, I was a craft person and I did cloisonné enamels. Andy made the silver outlines for it and we sold them. I did my own designs. All my life I’ve done arts and crafts and even during the early time – from childhood – and was trying all kinds of different kinds. You used to go to New York and bring back little gifts for Merrily and the other two and you brought back this terrible little gadget for making enamels. A little stove and some stuff you could sprinkle on it.
And then you put it on the stove and it melts.
A – Let me interrupt by saying, when she goes into something . . . oh boy.
M – Anyway, we looked at what the kids were doing and thought, “that’s got real possibility.” And Andy got on the phone and called a local society of craftsmen and asked where we could learn more about enameling. This person sent us to a gal who turned out to be like the Rembrandt of cloisonné. She lived in Westport – it was just luck that she was there. Anyways we went. It turned out she was German. She loved to teach people and we had a wonderful time with her. And she told us all kinds of wonderful things and then she mentioned that she was a teacher at a state college – each summer they had a craft workshop and she gave one of them. We got the brochure and it turned out that they also had a course in beginning enameling and since I was a beginner I said
I’d take that course first. The girl that taught it was a wonderful high school teacher who knew how to fix up every mess you made. And when I said, “you know I’d like to do cloisonné enameling” and she said, “oh dear don’t do that, it’s much too difficult” – that’s all I needed to hear. Then I came home and I practiced and practiced and I said,
“no human being can do this, its absolutely impossible.” So Andy brought out the microscope and various other tools and he’d look at what I was doing and say, “here’s your problem and there’s your problem and this is what’s not going right and we’ll call up such-and-such-a-company and they’ll give us the right tools” and so on. And it ended up we made up our own wires and everything and the problem was solved and I got really good at what I was doing. About that time the Vietnam War started and Andy’s business went way down hill because the government was not interested in making people healthy, they were interested in killing people. So his business went. So he said,
“let me set your jewelry for you and we’ll see what we can do so for the next 12 years.”
That’s what we did and we did all right.
A – I made all the settings, silver infused. My belt buckle is something else I made. It’s the one piece I did completely by myself. The only piece.
Could you describe the piece of jewelry?
A. – It’s a belt buckle.
M – It’s silver and it’s lay puce, which is beading it from the back in order to make it.
Are you still doing this?
M – No. Eventually I got arthritis in my hand and, as you say, in order to do cloisonné enameling, it’s very fine work. You really need the dexterity. So my pieces would have been worse and worse and I didn’t want that.
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Do you ever exhibit them anywhere?
M – Well, we have, but we don’t anymore. We still have quite a few of them at home that will be going to our children and so on in time.
Would you consider having an exhibit of your work?
M – Well, I suppose, yeah.
A – We have had them in town at the jewelry store at the Shopping Center but it didn’t go too well.
M – The problem with cloisonné enameling is. . .
A – You need to explain it. Otherwise people look at these and say why is it so expensive and when you start explaining what it is they realize how cheap it is.
M – It worked fine in Boston and New York because there were knowledgeable people there. We sold some here. Matter of fact, Cartier was fantastic, they claimed (they have no proof) that they even sold them in London and Paris and someplace in Florida.
Wouldn’t it be fun if you were flipping through a magazine somewhere and came across your own?
M – Yes, it would.
Tell me, we have a short time to interview, and I obviously could enjoy talking to you for days.
M – Tell you what, what else did I have on here. I’d like to say a few words about
McCullough Farm.
Let’s hold that thought for one moment. I just have to flip the tape.
M- I wanted to say a little bit about McCullough Farm because that was such a prize thing in my life. Mrs. McCullough, her name was Rook.
We’re going to be interviewing Jean Vasiloff the next time we do this. She’s selling a horse today.
M – It’s just that Rook was such a wonderful person. I came there to be a friend to the children, but for the rest of my life – for the rest of Rook’s life – she was my heroine.
There was no place at the farm. She had come from a very wealthy background in New
York City and had given up that entire lifestyle in order to work on the farm. And I mean work. We did everything by hand. She’d cook for 10 or 12 people on an old wood stove in a hot kitchen, then go out and take care of the animals and milk. Of course, I loved farming. I always loved animals. I wanted to be a vet. And so she was my heroine in a million ways, but, on top of that, she was such a wonderful person. That farm was always open to every person that came by that needed help. During the few years before
I got married, in the late 30s, and Wolcott at that time must have been in her late 30s and
I was 15 or 16 and that place, there was always people there that were in some terrible need or another. I remember there was a young family man there with his family and he was dying of a . . .
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A – Do you remember Mac Lipkinton. He was a doctor. A Jewish doctor who had the highest marks in the test they take and he was discriminated against because he was
Jewish and he completely folded up. He came to the farm. They took him in there, and he rehabilitated himself and got back on his feet. He became a very famous doctor.
M – There were lots of people like that who just needed a place where they could relax and have absolute time out. We hayed in the old fashioned way with pitch forks and horses pulling the hay up to the top of the roof of the barn and it would slide in and somebody had a puller rope and it went up or down and it would come back down again.
A – Very healthy lives.
M – And I had learned how to milk cows there. And I would have been in heaven if she
[Rook] had been my mother.
Tell me before we run out of time, do you think Old Lyme has changed a lot from when you first came?
M – Maybe we should remember that Andrew is known as the (oh I can’t remember, it will come later) of Whippoorwill Road.
A – My main contact with Old Lyme of course is with Stanley Davis -- a master designer and builder of reproduction furniture.
M – I interviewed him and wrote out a paper. Do you have the paper to leave?
I heard that Stanley Davis never got the credit that he should have as a furniture designer.
A – I think that’s wrong because there was a great demand for his stuff. One of his workers named Lora [Laura?] Dean used to drive and deliver his furniture to New Jersey and New York and also states in New England and I used to accompany him. There was a great demand and he was a fantastic worker.
And what was your role with him?
A – I was an apprentice to him and he was a very difficult gentleman to work for. Very tall. Let me say that he was terrifically strong physically and well coordinated – quite a handsome man. He had no sympathy for the young, because as a youngster he worked
12-14 hours and that colored his life. But, a master craftsman. I remember 2 of the people that worked for him – Joe Door who lived on Mile Creek Road and Walter Dean on Sill Lane. There were others – I don’t remember the names. But his work was unbelievable.
So this was another career for you?
A – That’s right. This was my first job and this was in 1934 early spring.
M – And he was living with the McCulloughs at the time and he used to bicycle down to the gift shop.
A – The shop was on Mill Lane on the Mill River. And he had an overshop water wheel that powered equipment and pulleys and belts that drove the machinery for the lathes and milling machines; the saws and the belt sanders. Next to this place was the Finnegan
Farm and I would bicycle there and there was a little girl named Jessie Finnegan and I could see her playing in the back yard. She became Jessie Smith and ended up as the
Town Clerk.
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Well, I’m so sorry we’re going to have to stop. And I’m going to ask ,would you be willing to be interviewed again because we barely scratched the surface?
M – Of course, incidentally the word that was missing – Andy today is called the Hermit of Whippoorwill Road because you don’t see people. This is the first time he’s come into a social position in I don’t know how long.
Wow, well we’re honored. You’re a lot of fun to talk to. Thank you.
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