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I drove by the old Torrington Company factory today...

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Ghosts... in Torrington, more likely hobos hanging out inside the building. My brother worked there back in the late 1980s, but it wasn't on bike parts. Torrington's economy slid downhill during the course of the 90s and 2000s. It still has some industry, but kind of a shell of its former self. Back in the 1930s, as a child, my grandfather used to get paid a few cents each day to run out and pick up lunch for some of the guys who worked there. He also used to take scrap that would come out of the plant and take it down to the local scrap yard for a few cents per run. The 1930s were a tough time, even with the factory in place in Torrington. But I doubt it had the industrial "rust belt" feel that the city has gradually taken on now.
 
I can remember making a special "detour" with another bike buddy some 20 years ago to see the old plant. We actually wanted
to try and sneak on to the property and look around....it was all fenced off literally with guards around the place...
Would love to see what's in the old buildings.. even the furnishings... man o man!
 
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I can remember making a special "detour" with another bike buddy some 20 years ago to see the old plant. We actually wanted
to try and sneak on to the property and look around....it was all fenced off literally with guards around the place...
Would love to see what's in the old buildings.. even the furnishings... man o man!
Think of the signs that could be in that complex!
 
When I graduated from high school, each member of our class (all 130 of us) received a Torrington Company paperweight, which was a clear plastic pyramid with a bearing or other small part made by the plant inside the pyramid. The Torrington Company logo with a dragon on it was printed on the bottom of the paperweight. These were produced in the 1990s, while the plant was still going but long after the heyday of its bicycle parts production. The father of a friend of mine was a fleet manager for Torrington Co., so he got paperweights for everyone who graduated that year.

The plant touched every family in the area in some way or another. My brother worked there briefly in the 1980s. Several of my friends had fathers who worked there. My grandfather had done odd jobs as a kid around the periphery of the plant, getting lunches for workers there, getting scrap from there, etc. It was one of the last surviving heavy industries in the area when it went out some years ago. The loss of Torrington Company and Aerospace Industries in Bantam, Connecticut, and New Departure in Bristol were big losses in this area.
 
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