Tobor in Torrington

PHOTOGRAPHER’S JOURNAL - This bit of civic sculpture comes slowly into view along Summer Street as one climbs the sidewalk up to High Street. I don’t know what it did with so many arms reaching in all directions nor where they reached nor what its funnel shaped abdomen digested, but it doesn’t take much for me to imagine it coming alive and reaching across the barbed wire of its pen to snatch women’s hats off their heads and the pipes from men’s mouths.

Putting aside questions of gender, it has the look of a perpetual cynic. I’m sure it has its story to tell, but I’ve never heard it. It sits eying passers-by from the roof of one of the buildings where the Hendey Company used to make precision tools in Torrington, near the top of Brass Valley. I’m sure others who pass it, see it only as old junk, and others don’t see it at all. To me, it is a landmark, the Sentry of Summer Street.