24 October—On my matutinal trip to the post orifice one day last month I noticed a Connecticut Department of Transportation crew hustling to grind down the stump of a big Norway maple another ConnDOT crew had cut down on state right-of-a-way on South Street a few days earlier. For those readers not acquainted with inner-city Litchfield (i.e., The Borough), South Street is one of the photogenic thoroughfares that comprise what the great unwashed who don’t live on it affectionately call The Axis. (That appellation may well predate the abominable Germany-Italy-Japan Axis of World War II. But maybe not.)

The Axis—South, North, and Prospect Streets—is where the right people live in their impressive, mostly white-with-Black-shuttered, mostly Colonial and Colonial Revival manses that tourists come to Litchfield to gawk at. And that must be why the folks at ConnDOT alacritously ground the stump only a few days after the poor tree had been cut down.

Because, as you may recall from a disquisition last summer, a less industrious ConnDOT crew cut down some moribund trees on less photogenic East Street in August 2023 but never got around to grinding the stumps. East Street used to be known as Irish Hill because many of the Hibernian servants who worked on The Axis lived in more plebeian housing on East Hill.

So on the sunny summer day last month, after picking up my post and rummaging through the recycling bins, I casually ambled down South Street and buttonholed the grinding-crew chief. Since the grinding crew was in town, I suggested, why not drive around to East Street and grind down the stumps of the few trees that had been cut down last summer?

The chief had no idea what I was talking about. Why wasn’t I surprised? He checked all the pages on his clipboard and shook his hard-hatted head. No work order to grind anything on East Street. He didn’t know any trees had been cut down. He asked when the great felling had been executed. When I told him it was last summer, he wasn’t surprised.

So the good crew chief diligently wrote down the information I gave him and told me he’d look for the stumps on his way back to the ConnDOT garage in Thomaston. And evidently he did. Because yesterday a ConnDOT crew started grinding at the bottom of East Hill and worked its way up in only a few hours. I couldn’t tell for sure if it was the same crew that had ground on South Street because all ConnDOT stump-grinding crews look alike. But it probably was because the men got the job done efficiently and effectively.

So ConnDOT ground down the East Hill stumps—and only 14 months after it had cut down the trees. Don’t ask if the stumps would still be there had an East Street busybody not buttonholed the crew chief . . .