SHARON — Todd Golden came home from work after a nightshift March 7 at 3:30 a.m. — and found the basement of his Modley Road home flooded with 3 feet of water. The area had been drenched with heavy rain and had been hit hard by an ice storm. Many homeowners had trees down, driveways and dirt roads washed out and had to seek help from the town to get the water out of their homes.Golden, who works for the state Department of Transportation, feels the flooding could have been prevented had the drainage systems of the town’s road been better prepared and maintained. He believes the town’s road crew is at fault and he intends to raise accusations at a meeting of the Board of Selectmen scheduled for April 12 at 5:30 p.m. at Town Hall. He claims the drainage ditches along the sides of Modley Road had deteriorated to the point where they were no longer ditches, and the pipes that the water was supposed to run into were blocked by large pieces of ice. Golden said he made a complaint to First Selectman Bob Loucks, who is in charge of the road crew and road maintenance, asking for the crew to come and dig out the ditches and free the pipes from the blockage. The road crew did come, bringing with them their equipment, but Golden says the job was not done properly. “They had a grader, two backhoes and three dump trucks, but they never opened up the ditches and they claimed that they couldn’t move the ice,” he said. Loucks says that the road crew did the best that they could given the situation. “We can’t bust every snowbank out. It’s unfortunate, but a lot of basements were flooded. We had washouts all over the town. We lost culverts — we even had a landslide on Sharon Valley Road,” he said. Regardless of the amount of damage that was done to the roads and the amount of flooding there was to deal with, Loucks said he still tried to fix the problems on Modley Road. “My road crew went up there and tried to satisfy [Mr. Golden]. They tried to scrape the ice out of the roads. They were pressing down so hard with the grader that the front end got lifted right off,” he explained. Golden believes that the work on the roads should have been done before the winter storm. “You don’t just wait for something to happen and then do the work,” he said. “[Loucks is] doing it, but he’s not doing it fast enough.” The drainage pipes near Golden’s house on Modley Road were eventually dug out by Florien Palmer of Palmer Construction LLC. “It was done by a 68-year-old man with a shovel, and they’re going to tell me they couldn’t do it with that machine?” Golden asked. Golden said he will make a request that he be added to the agenda of the selectmen’s meeting for April 12 so he can present his complaints in a public forum. He said that other town residents who are concerned about the condition of the roads will attend as well.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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