Putting Around the House

Drive along Route 53 in Wilton on some Saturday afternoon this summer and chances are good you’ll spot Neil Robertson’s van making its way through another weekend circuit, regular as clock-work. Saturday may be a day of leisure for most everyone else in town, but for this longtime Wiltonite, it’s just another day at work – his busiest, in fact. Success can be a cruel mistress.
A generation ago, Robertson’s vehicle might have carried milk bottles or Fuller brushes. But this is twenty-first-century Fairfield County, and the back of his van is stocked with rolls of knitted green nylon fused to a thin rubber base, the kind of stuff that lines football stadiums. Some call it ”artificial turf”. Just don’t call it that when Robertson is within earshot. Like many a craftsman, he has his pride and prefers the term ”synthetic grass”.