Old Greenwich Cove waterferont

195 Shore Road, $8.495 million purchased for $8.5 in December ‘22). The tax card shows it as being in the AE and VE flood zones, but Sotheby’s listing agent Daphne Lamsvelt-Pol says that the house itself is above the flood zones. Daphne knows her stuff, from cheese to fending off the North and Zuiderzee, so I’d take her word for it, wooden shoe?

Speaking of that wet land, it suffered a catastrophic flood in 1953, and it took years, and a huge amount of money to rebuild. In 1958, my father flew over there as part of an international consortium of bankers that was arranging financing. Family lore has it that somewhere over the Atlantic he opened his briefcase and discovered that I, worried he’d grow bored during his flight, had slipped in a copy of my favorite book, Yertle the Turtle for him to read. I’m sure that the lending negotiations went more smoothly because my father hadn’t arrived bored and peevish, so in some small way, I helped in that rebuilding process.

You’re welcome, Daphne.