Home is where the line forms for cheeseburgers

MANCHESTER - Most Nutmeg Staters know this town as the highway exit to the megastores of the Buckland mall. True, for one day a year, Thanksgiving, more than 10,000 long-distance runners come here for the Manchester Road Race, 72 years old this year and the last hurrah of the New England race season. Mostly, though, visitors are people like me who grew up in this Hartford suburb and former textile town.

Thomas Wolfe to the contrary, you can go home again. You had just better bring a sense of humor, as I learned when I stopped by the Lutz Children's Museum in late October. To the soundtrack of the Beatles' "Octopus's Garden," Paige and Casey Simpson of Wallingford crawled through a mini-submarine and clambered aboard a replica of a fishing boat. "Dad's out fishing," explained their mom, Lynette. "This is our first time here."

The kids were having such a great time that I told Lynette that I had fond memories of visiting the museum when I was growing up. "Oh, I didn't realize it was that old," she said and then laughed with embarrassment. (She insisted that she was just joking, and I believe her.)

The museum's Animal Room (with opossums and ball pythons, African pygmy hedgehogs and Flemish giant rabbits) draws the tykes. But displays about fishing on Long Island Sound or farming in the fertile Connecticut River Valley offer a quick summary of local history for children or adults.

Manchester was settled in 1772 and by the time it was incorporated in 1823, most of its residents were farmers. The town's fortunes took a dramatic turn in 1838, when scions of a local family converted a grist mill into a silk mill. They continued to build towering brick mills until Cheney Brothers was one of the largest silk manufacturers in the country, recruiting workers from throughout the United States and Europe. In the 1920s, about a quarter of Manchester's roughly 18,000 residents worked in the silk mills, including my grandfather, who immigrated from Northern Ireland.

Although the Cheneys sold the mills in 1955 (manufacturing limped along until 1984), Manchester folk still speak of the family with the familiarity usually reserved for celebrities and country squires. In 1978, the town secured federal recognition for the Cheney Brothers National Historic District, a 175-acre area in South Manchester dense with handsome red brick mill buildings, workers' homes, and a cluster of Cheney family mansions that share a sweeping "great lawn." Scattered throughout the area are such Cheney-built amenities as a fire station (now a seasonal fire museum), social hall (home to a local theater company), and public bath house.

"The Cheneys were ahead of the times," according to John Dormer, president of the Manchester Historical Society, which offers a walking tour brochure of the historic district. "They lived near the mills and didn't build tenements. At one time, they ran just about everything in this end of town." In fact, the historical society's Old Manchester Museum occupies the two-room schoolhouse built by the Cheneys in 1859 for their own and mill workers' children.

"It's not an extravagant museum," said Dormer, pointing out one of the chalkboards from the original school, "but we like to represent different phases of Manchester history." Predictably, much of the museum concentrates on the Cheney mills, exhibiting everything from a silkworm pupa inside its cocoon to examples of Jacquard cards for the looms and richly colored textile samples. I know local history museums are often of strictly local interest, but Manchester seems to have had more than its share of noteworthy moments, all recalled in modest displays.

One presentation, for example, tells the tale of Christopher Spencer, who was superintendent of the Cheney machine shop when he patented his design for a repeating rifle in 1860. "It gave the North an advantage in the Civil War," said Dormer, noting that the Lakota-Cheyenne forces also employed Spencer rifles to defeat Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of Little Big Horn.

In November, the museum mounts a temporary exhibit about the Manchester Road Race. The 4.7-mile race is the largest in the state and one of the largest in New England. It began in 1927 with 12 runners, went into hiatus during the Depression and World War II, was revived in 1945, and first topped 10,000 runners in 1994. (This year there were 10,421 official finishers.)

When the weather is good, about 20,000 people tear themselves away from stuffing their Thanksgiving turkeys to line the race route. The prime viewing spot is in front of St. James Church downtown on Main Street, near the start and finish line of the circular course. But others congregate near the 2-mile point at Highland Park Market (317 Highland St.).

"It's fun to see runners get to the top of the hill," said Tris Carta, race committee president, referring to Manchester's version of Heartbreak Hill. "It's a 7 percent grade uphill for a mile." Manchester also has its own Johnny -Kelley-like inspirational figure: Charlie Robbins, who ran barefoot in more than 50 consecutive races. "He claimed he just felt more natural that way," said Carta. "He was quite a Manchester legend."

Yet another museum display features Shady Glen, the town's iconic burger joint where no doubt some of the runners go for cheeseburgers and fries instead of attending the big Wednesday night carbo-loading spaghetti dinner. Manchester also boasts one of the top French restaurants in the state, but when those of us who have moved away come back to visit, you'll probably find us at Shady Glen, not Cavey's.

Dairy farmers John and Bernice Rieg opened Shady Glen in the still rural east end of town in 1948. The Riegs made ice cream in the basement, but soon became locally famous for the "Bernice Original" cheeseburger.

"She was looking for something unusual and she found it," said Bill Hoch, who began working with the Riegs in 1954 and now owns Shady Glen. "I don't know if it was an accident or not," he said of the patty, which is topped with slices of cheese that are allowed to drape over the edges and sizzle on the grill until they're crisp. Once the bun is added, some say the burger resembles a crown. Diners, who have included James Cagney and Paul Newman, dress their burgers to taste from a round condiment tray of ketchup, mustard, relish, and onions.

Shady Glen has been expanded twice to add booth seating, and the Riegs opened a second store in a newfangled downtown shopping mall in the 1960s. But hard-core Shady Glen devotees patronize only the original site - and never sit at the counter beneath the cheery mural of elfin children picnicking in a landscape dotted with spotted mushrooms. Many regulars line up along the wall to wait for a vacant booth, while stools remain unoccupied. Finally seated, diners enjoy a leisurely meal of cheeseburger, fries, and small hot fudge sundae.

"It's just not ladylike to sit at the counter," John Dormer of the Historical Society had agreed when we discussed this local custom. So if three ladies with short white hair and bright blue eyes are waiting behind you for a booth, they might be my mother and aunts. Go ahead, let them cut to the head of the line.

Patricia Harris can be reached at harris.lyon@verizon.net.