As big Family Guy fans, we just had to take a trip to Newport, Rhode Island and the surrounding area. Add to the fact that the Newport Folk Festival of 1965 was the place where the controversial ‘Electric Dylan’ first happened, and it was a must visit for us.
Dex kindly agreed to pick us up at 3pm, as I had to do a call with the West Ham Fan Advisory Board and couldn’t get out of it. Fortunately, that call was well worth the time as the new regime at West Ham is bringing the changes that we all have wanted for so many years. We planned to meet up with Sam and Mark who had made their own way there, so we could all meet up for the Scotland vs Brazil game.
Newport is a pleasant 50 minute drive from Providence crossing two massive and highly impressive bridges to get into the town itself. The water is chocked full of boats of varying sizes and price tickets and the houses are all of wooden construction and incredibly pleasing on the eye.
As we winded into town we passed The Tennis Hall of Fame Tennis Centre, home to a Real Tennis court and one of only four grass courts used on the pro Tennis circuit globally. We also passed by Cardines Field, one of the oldest and most classic baseball stadiums in the US. It is home to the Newport Gulls who play in the New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL). Cardines Field is on America’s Cup Avenue, reminding us all that Newport was the spiritual home to The America’s Cup from 1930-1983.
It was clear that there was real wealth in this town and it reminded me of the famous quote by Alistair Cooke in his ‘ Letter to America’ series, ‘One hundred years after the declaration that all men are created equal, there began to gather in Newport a colony of the rich, determined to show that some Americans were conspicuously more equal than others.’
Newport is that living definition of ‘Old Money’ alluded to by Cooke. The Astors, Vanderbilts, Dukes, Kennedys, Berwinds, Belmonts and the Morgans (of JP Morgan) all owned huge properties dating back to The Gilded Age. We drove around Bellevue Avenue, Ocean Drive and Ocean Avenue, and yes it was all very impressive, think Wayne Manor meets The Great Gatsby. Carter Pewterschmidt, Peter Griffin’s father in law from Family Guy would have lived here of course. Which explains a lot.
Maybe Mark Twain summed it all up rather more tersely than Alistair Cooke felt he needed to. Very much American Direct vs British Understatement?
“Newport, Rhode Island, that breeding place–that stud farm, so to speak–of aristocracy; aristocracy of the American type.”
We found a great bar on the waterfront called The Smugglers to watch the Brazil vs Scotland game. A terrible disappointment littered with errors saw the Scots lose 3-0 and with that, most likely exit the World Cup, although the wait for the teams who finish in third place who play early is a real design fault on the part of FIFA geniuses who wanted a 48 team World Cup in the first place.
The following day we visited Matunuck, had a delicious meal in the Matunuck Oyster Restaurant and then headed up to the Brenton State Park to fly a kite, knock a football around and have some iced lemonade. We were rubbish at kite flying and playing football, but the lemonade and scenery were off the scale. We said our sad farewells to Dex and headed back to Providence to watch the Japan vs Sweden game (2-2) and the USA vs Türkiye game (3-2). It was a couple of long days and nights, but very, very good ones.
As I reflected on our time in Newport and its history, it reminded Milton Friedman, he of the American economist and statistician from the Chicago School of Economics, who rejected Keynesianism in favour of monetarism. He advised Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and as they say, the rest is history.
“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither.” – Milton Friedman
To which I would proffer, ‘really?’…
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