Nows and Forevers

Another year where I don’t live in any of the top 10 “Best Places to Live.” But I have lived in what one of those high-profile rankings called the worst.

At least when it came to another annual outlook, from Money magazine.

Waterbury, Connecticut, received the bottom-ranking, No. 300 out of 300 cities ranked, not once but twice when I lived there: 1991 and 1992. That was an affront to the city of 110,000, which is tucked away in the hills of Connecticut between Boston and New York City and has a large place in history. The Brass City, as it was called, was deeply upset by this indignity.

As The New York Times put it in an article after the second ranking: “Wounded Waterbury: No Place to Go But Up.”

I was living in Waterbury at the time and was an editor at the daily newspaper, the Waterbury Republican-American. It was, in fact, my first professional newspaper job. I remember how angry people were, in and out of the newsroom. There was a front-page reaction story, and an editorial about how wrong Money was. As I remember, it fed stories and the editorial page for a long time.

I thought then, and now, that Waterbury was getting a raw deal.

It was easy back then to dump on the industrial cities and towns of Connecticut, not only Waterbury but also Bridgeport, Torrington, New Britain, Naugatuck, Danbury and Meriden. The de-industrialization of the United States in the ’70s and ’80s left a lot of empty buildings and economic pain in its wake, and I saw it firsthand in Connecticut, which is my home state and where, between Connecticut and New York, I’ve spent half my life.

So it was easy to say that Waterbury had seen better days, especially in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Drivers passing by Interstate 84, which cuts through Waterbury, probably had three overwhelming impressions back then: The big yellow cross of Holy Land USA that overlooked the eastern part of the city, the clock tower (modeled after Sienna’s and part of American literature, mentioned in “A Death of a Salesman”), and then the sprawling ruins of the brass plant that took up so much acreage in the middle of Waterbury.

Yet few people would have given Waterbury higher marks over Bridgeport, about 20 miles down Route 8 and along the coast. Bridgeport had filed for bankruptcy, had been hit by crime and economic decline, and was an even more inviting target. (Bridgeport’s woes even made a laugh line or two in “Cheers,” where Cliff Clavin was played by a Bridgeport native, John Ratzenberger.) Yet Waterbury came up at the end of the line in the Money magazine rankings, not just once but twice.

I’ve thought about Waterbury every time I see a “best/worst” cities ranking. I don’t have a problem with calling out the “best” of the many ways to look at a city or metro region. That’s a point of pride for many people, and it’s boring just to name San Diego No. 1 all the time. But the “worst” ranking, for Waterbury, was the worst, in my book.

I’ve got a fond spot in my heart for Waterbury. It’s near where I grew up and I drove by there a lot, before and after I worked there. Waterbury doesn’t loom as large for me as New Haven does, but that’s because my parents both worked in New Haven and it’s where we naturally gravitated.

I gained a better appreciation of it when I worked there, and got to know many of its people and understood its place in history. It was a great news city, then and now. The Waterbury Republican won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1940 covering mayoral corruption, of which it unfortunately has a history. Lots of stuff happened, good and bad, in Waterbury. And a colleague and friend of mine told me long ago that just about everything that happened in the world had a Waterbury connection. (He was right, but that’s another story.)

I moved out of Waterbury and then the Naugatuck River Valley a few years later, and I have to say I haven’t been back as much as I would like. But Waterbury has often shown up in my life, even today, where I often professionally run into people who either were born and grew up there or have it on their resume. That’s not just where I live and work now, but all around the country. It’s amazing where you find Waterbury people.

Waterbury itself has changed, too. The former manufacturing plants, which would sometimes catch fire and were almost always something people remembered about Waterbury, are long gone. They’ve been replaced for more than 20 years by a retail and entertainment complex known as Brass Mill Center that makes Waterbury a place people go.

And in the end, more than 30 years later, I still don’t understand why Waterbury struck the bottom of the list two years in a row. I’ve traveled all over this country and found places that you would want to live, and others that maybe you wouldn’t. Things that you can’t necessarily find in a ranking or an algorithm. Just about everywhere has its good points and bad points.

Waterbury was just being kicked when it was down.