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It's time that separates Arthur Longwell and Eric Solomon. A lot of time. Longwell is 74, Solomon 27. That's a couple of generations.
But it is also time that brings them together, time in the sense of a love of the past, of local history.
I talked with Longwell a few weeks ago. He was excited about a discovery he'd made on Rattlesnake Hill, which rises behind Mill Street. We drove past the homes of Wildwood Avenue and up to the rocky, forested terrain of the higher hill. We stopped at the cellar hole of the Hermitage, which was the home of Abel Swan Brown during the last century. Brown was fabulously rich, having founded a trading syndicate that bought goods for stores all over the world. The Hermitage, named after a hermit who formerly lived in the area, was Brown's vast estate. At one point he owned more than 700 acres of Rattlesnake Hill.
"If there's a hill, you can bet someone will try and buy it," Longwell said. "They say it's for the view, but I think men get these feelings about hills."
As we picked our way through the undergrowth, Longwell complained about his age. "I'm falling apart," he grumbled. "One foot in the grave." But he marched unhesitatingly through the poison ivy, and seemed not to notice the mosquitoes that swarmed the moment you stopped.
REMAINS OF ESTATE
Brown died in 1899. Longwell showed me what was left of his once- sprawling estate - the dry well, the foundations of the stables, the ruins of the kennels that once held 50 dogs, the overgrown flower gardens, the now-brackish...