Were it not for the hurricane of 1938, we might have been known as the Banjo Capital of the World, instead of the more macho Submarine Capital of the World, as the story of David Ilvento can attest.

Ilvento was rummaging through his mother’s Groton home for holiday decorations after his father’s death when he spied an unusual object, and pulled it into the light.

It was a musical instrument case, mysterious, since his father was a mechanic, not a musician. Inside, he discovered a renowned Bacon Banjo, a collectible today.

Crafted in the 1920s and 1930s by the Bacon Banjo Company on Thames Street, Groton’s world famous banjos can still turn up in unexpected places.

Ilvento’s father, David Sr., had been a well-known businessman who owned Dave’s Mobil at Mitchell Street and Poquonnock Road in the city of Groton from 1964 until his retirement in 1983. He was a diverse man – Army veteran, mechanic, businessman, cook, gardener, woodworker, and landscaper in retirement. But he was no banjo player.

Frederick Bacon, on the other hand, was a virtuoso, billed at Carnegie Hall in New York in the 1800s as “America’s greatest banjo player.” Seeking high quality banjos, Bacon started a company in Vermont, later moving his factory in 1921 to the booming Thames Street in Groton.

But Bacon & Day, as it came to be known after Fred Bacon teamed up with David Day, couldn’t survive the double whammy of the Great Depression and the hurricane of 1938, selling out to guitar maker Gretsch in 1940.

Years later, Bacon banjos remain valuable. Some are kept in the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C., and prices can reach $3,500.

Sources say that an acquaintance of Ilvento’s, now deceased, found the banjo while renovating a Groton home and gave it to him. His son reminded me that his father, old-school Italian, would never refuse anything, because “you never know.” He may have never known what he had.

Or maybe he did. I spent a summer working for Ilvento, back when gas stations were like social clubs. I can easily imagine the instrument coming up in conversations, with someone revealing its worth.

Ilvento’s banjo is a Bacon Blue Ribbon model, a version of which currently sells on Ebay for $1,895.

Local historian Jim Streeter has heard from collectors and people who have discovered Bacon banjos in their family.

If a Bacon banjo can journey from 1930s Thames Street to Dave Ilvento’s attic, they can turn up anywhere.

You never know what’s lurking in attics. After all, we were almost the Banjo Capital of the World.

John Steward lives in Waterford and can be contacted at tossinglines@gmail.com or visit www.johnsteward.online.