The 10 Commandments of Waterbury
And on the 8th day, God created the Brass City.
I've long said that Waterbury is the center of the universe. Maybe it's because I've grown up in the shadow of the Mixmaster, which is such a marvel of engineering that it looks like it might have been created by the Almighty.
But it started me thinking about Holy Land, on top of that mountain, with the beautiful cross that shines so bright over our fair city.
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What if Moses had suddenly reappeared, and walked down Ridge Street to Baldwin carrying those two tablets? What would they say? Here are some of my smart ass ideas as to what those Ten Commandments would look like.
The 10 Commandments of Waterbury
And on the 8th day, God created the Brass City. Let's walk through the 10 Commandments of Waterbury.
In 1970, Two Men Robbed a Danbury Bank + Blew Up the Police Station
The story of the Pardue brothers, their connection to Danbury and what happened in the Hat City in February of 1970 came to us from Mike Allen. Every Tuesday Mike joins the Ethan and Lou Show on I-95 for a feature called "The Place You Live" and this week it was a local story unlike any I'd ever heard.
John Pardue was a 27-year-old man in 1970 who lived in Danbury, his brother James was 23, and living in Lusby, MD. Before the story finds its way to the Hat City, and the brothers rob the Union Savings Bank on Main Street, they had already racked up quite the list of astonishing crimes.
Prior to Danbury, they robbed banks in Lewisboro, NY, Georgetown, CT and Union, MO. They also killed their father, their grandmother, two other men who helped them pull off the robbery in Georgetown, CT and had, at minimum, a role in the death of an innocent Bridgeport man that they stole a car from. John and James Pardue were hardened criminals before their Danbury bank robbery.
The Old Howard Johnson's Building in Waterbury Has Been Demolished
The famous Howard Johnson's orange-colored roof first appeared on Waterbury's South Main Street in 1958. The building lasted 63 years, it was recently torn down, so I stopped by this morning and took a bunch of photos of the site