Pound Ridge Elementary School

I attended Pound Ridge Elementary School from about 1948 – 51. So this is entirely a sentimental evaluation, and an excuse for talking about my old home town.
I was a student at Pound Ridge Elementary from grade 6 to 8. My 8^th grade class was tiny — 8 students. There were more families with kids, but many kids went away to school or to New Canaan Country Day. As for HS, this was in the years before Fox Lane HS, so our two options were HS in Katonah and, remarkably, New Canaan, Conn. I chose the latter and had a wonderful, inspiring experience.
My dad was the first winner of the Good Neighbor Award, which my mom (who served as Town Clerk) also won later. (Hence «Landt Lane.») Our first house was on the hill across from what was then referred to as the Hobby Barn on Stone Hill Road; our second was the Lockwood house across from the Pound Ridge Inn, then Emily Shaw’s. My dad, who was in real estate, was the first to refer to that tiny area with the inn, the store, the church, and Conant Hall as «the heart of the hamlet.»
Last fall I visited PR for the first time since the 70’s. When I asked Town Councilman Dick Lyman about what development had taken place, he laughed — «this is the little town that time forgot,» he said.
That pretty much says it. There are a few more stores, even — I gather — a sidewalk or two. There’s Sach’s Park, named for a popular supervisor back in my era, Jimmy Sachs. And a Town House, where the town offices are located. That building and Sachs Park are on on the former property of Justice of the Peace Pep English, who use to go fishing with my dad. Before the Town House,
the Town Clerk’s office was the mud-​room in the back of our house (the Lockwood house, across from the Inn). Folks would line up outside our back door on the first day of the season for hunting and fishing licenses. If they were Pound Ridgers, mom would serve them coffee.
Pound Ridge is still small town America. That means residents get to know the town officials personally, as well as the folks in the stores. And continue to know and bless the wonderful folks in the highway department, who were unbelievably good at keeping the roads open in the worst weather.
Yep, Pound Ridge is – amazingly — still small town America. God bless it.