In Waterbury, a sip of Conn.

Statehouse of Connecticut in Hartford. (Connecticut Architecture)

Next Wednesday I’ll be visiting Waterbury, Conn., for the first time in a great many years, and even then I did not visit but passed through. For a New Englander (by choice, not by birth) I have relatively little experience of the Nutmeg State, most of it whizzing by along the coast from the windows of Amtrak. Its countryside has always charmed this urbanist more than its big cities. Its smaller cities, Waterbury, Danbury, Bristol, New Britain, and towns such as Putnam, Pomfret and others along Route 44 and roads beyond I am more familiar with from trips long ago to see relatives in Springfield, Mass. My editor at the Providence Journal, Bob Whitcomb, once dragged me to Stonington, across the Pawcatuck from Westerly. He figured he’d surprise me with its beauty – and he did. It was lovely. I was…