On Saturday, March 24th at 2 p.m., one of Windsor’s favorite native sons will transport you back in time to the 1920’s and ‘30’s and show you what it was like to grow up on Windsor’s Mack Street eighty years ago.   Dr. Dan Mack, one of Windsor’s best loved obstetricians, decided in his retirement to teach himself to paint in order to re-create his childhood memories on a detailed three panel canvas entitled “The Ballad of Mack Street”.  His painting forms the backbone of this Saturday afternoon trip back in time.

 

“I began making sketches of all the things I could remember about the houses and the people from the time of my birth until I went off to college,” Dan Mack said.  “That’s what I have – fragments of experience – some sentimental, some mildly humorous, but all relevant to the people that lived on Mack Street at that time.”

           

Dan Mack’s family has run the Mack family brickyard for seven generations. The founder of the business was Andrew Mack, a Hessian soldier born in 1751.  Young Mack was conscripted into the English army, captured at the Battle of Bennington, sent to Newgate Prison, and eventually released, entering the Patriot army in 1779.   All the Mack boys including Dan and his brother Ed worked in the brickyard from the time they were 11 or 12 years old.  But there was time for fun:  sneaking off to go for a swim in the brickyard cistern, fishing, horse-back riding.  Mack’s paintings include examples of weddings, home births and funerals, and Yankee peddlers who traveled from town to town, selling everything from bolts of fabric to contraband whisky during the Prohibition.  The Mack family was largely self sufficient, growing most of what they needed on their 60 acres in Windsor, and livestock figure prominently in the paintings.

 

This program is the last in a series of public programs associated with the Society’s fall/winter exhibition Windsor Artists: Then and Now, sponsored by an anonymous donor, Rabbett Insurance Agency, the Town of Windsor through its Arts and Culture granting program, and Windsor Federal Savings.   This exhibit will be open to the public before the program.  The exhibition runs through March 31.    Cost for the program is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors and students and $4 for Windsor Historical Society members. 

 

At the request of the speaker, full scale art reproductions of the three “Ballad of Mack Street” panels will be available for purchase on March 24th for $100 per print.  These reproductions are normally sold for $250 per print. Parking is available around Palisado Green and in the Windsor Discovery Center and First Church parking lots.  Reservations for this program are suggested because Dr. Mack often draws standing room only audiences.  Please contact Windsor Historical Society, 96 Palisado Avenue (Rt. 159), Windsor, 860-688-3813.