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I believe where we first experience life, where we grow up,
where we become our individual self is the always thought to be the best place
to have been raised. I know it’s true
for me. The rolling hills and gentle dales
of the Hudson Valley, and the distinctive seasons remain my model for how the
world should be.
The winters were cold and foreboding; I can’t count the
times as a teen I was up at 4 am to help clear the driveway so my folks could
get out of the garage and on their way to work, of course the school had snow
days so I’d go back to bed once they left.
It was a mushy, slushy, time of year.
As I grew we seemed to have ever larger snow blowers to clear the drive
and the walkways of our home. Cars were perpetually
blanketed with salt or mud and it seemed the slush that caked behind the wheels
always needed to be kicked off. The
non-existent curbs and shoulders of the roads left little room for error as you
drove around the ice slickened roads, but I would not have wished for anything
else, for with the cold and the snow came sledding, skating, skiing, and in my
teen years house parties with music and darkened rooms.
We skated on a number of ponds or lakes, and warmed
ourselves with fires we built on the shore of wherever we skated. Occasionally groups we associated with,
either through scouts or church, would have outings to distant places like
Vermont, or over to Newburgh. I remember
one year riding down to Newburgh for skating and perhaps a ride on iceboats. The song that brings that memory back is
Petula Clark’s single “Downtown,” I can be motoring along a hot and humid
Florida road, and if they play that song, I am chilled and can taste the hot
coco. Most of my memories seem tied to
some song or another. For example, anytime
I hear Johnny Horton’s “Sink the Bismarck” I am transported back to the Violet
Avenue Elementary School playground.
Spring brought the renewal of life, with flowers and the
greening of the fields as corn and grass was raised on the dairy farms so
common in the area. Gilbert’s Dairy was
just down the road, but you didn’t need to drive very far to see others. There seemed to be farms all over the
northern county and their presence was reassuring, they had been there a
hundred years, and would be there a hundred more. It saddens me to realize how wrong my impression
was. The county is transitioning from
the agrarian society it was to bedroom communities where work is somewhere else
and the population is perhaps more transitory.
Summer -- ah summer, it was the best of times. It brought the warmth of the sun and freedom
to grow and play, and play we did. There
was so much for the kids to do then, to get out and meet friends, play pick up
ball games on empty fields or even the little league fields that dotted the
community. We played for the joy of the
game, not because some coach or parent was yelling at or for you. I recall a year after college when I served
as an umpire with the little league in Hyde Park. I think the game was on the field behind the
Hyde Park Elementary school. The players
were probably in the 8-10 year old range and by the third inning I had to call
the coaches together and inform them if they didn’t control their parents they
would be ejected or the game would be forfeit.
I then went to both stands and explained it the spectators. No 8 year old deserved to have an overzealous
parent belittle them or the opposition.
We never had that in our pickup games, the older and better players
coached the younger ones, wouldn’t we be better off today if we had this kind
of unorganized sporting outlet? Maybe
they do back in the Hudson Valley?
Summer evenings were magical. I can still see the late afternoon
thunderstorms rolling over the Catskills or to the east over Connecticut. The sun whitened clouds flashing between
themselves sending lightening crossing the sky as if the storms were at
war. In the Hudson Valley the legends of
the original Dutch, as portrayed in the tales of Washington Irving still lived
on. Every time a thunderclap rolled
across the river I could almost hear the old Dutch kegelers up in the hills
playing 9-pin and drinking, along with good ol’ Rip Van Winkle. With the dusk came the fireflies and an hour
of chasing them with our jars. I don’t
recall air conditioning, except in the theaters, and some of the evenings would
be pretty hot in the house, but listening to WABC nothing that was so terrible
I couldn’t fall asleep.
Of course back then games were more challenging. The invention and sale of Lawn Darts, as well
as a number of other potentially fatal recreational challenges made life
interesting. I guess when you have an
adult population whose lives were shaped by a World War; the risks of a one or
two-pond metal spike falling from the sky didn’t seem that significant. There were other, less fatal, great
inventions designed to keep up with a society that had increasing leisure time
available. We had hula-hoops® and the Frisbee®
to help keep us moving. In the summer we
always seemed to be moving.
Of course, at least once each summer we would make the
pilgrimage across the river, through Kingston, onto the Thruway up to Catskill,
and then west to see the Catskill Game Farm.
For us this was a summer must-do.
When I had children of my own, even though we lived in California,
Florida or Virginia, if we came home in the summer the Game Farm remained a
stopping point. I can still picture my
petite Mother getting mobbed by the young sheep, goats or deer, looking for the
bottle she had in her hand. I understand
that park is closed now… too bad.
As the season drew down and we reached Labor Day I remember
the Dutchess County Fair as the biggest deal in town. I don’t think anyone
would want to miss the fair. It was a
week of true Americana. If you parked in
the Fairground lots to the south you were admitted almost immediately into the
livestock area where we saw bulls and cows, sheep and rams, goats, pigs, chickens,
and all sorts of domesticated animals.
On the warm days you always knew where that part of the fair was.
I think we must have spent half our time walking through the
exhibit areas where we saw mops that rung themselves out, stuff you put on your
glasses so they would never fog up, things for slicing and dicing, and perhaps
even towels that folded themselves. There were ointments and salves to cure
everything from dandruff to the mange, and oh was there cookware… tons and tons
of pots, pans, bowls, and brushes. I
guess it was the Walmart of the day.
The midway was fun, and I think back then they even had a
tent with fan-dancers. I only speculate
about that, because I certainly wasn’t old enough to gain admission. I did get to go through the brand new “total
electric” home put up by Mid-Hudson Electric.
Pretty cool stuff…Who would imagine a toothbrush that you had to turn
on, or an oven that would clean itself, or a machine to wash the dishes for
you?
Of course one of the main draws for me was the Joey Chitwood
Thrill Drivers who put on quite the show… all the way around the track on two
wheels, cars weaving together at sixty miles an hour …amazing! The slide for life through a burning wall,
how did he do that?
I don’t remember much about leaving the fair and driving
home because I was usually in a cotton candy induced coma.
The end of the fair also marked the beginning of
school. The chance to reconnect with
those you’ve not seen all summer and to see what the natural biology of a
summer’s worth of aging had done.
The fall brought the last of the seasons and marked the transition
from green in the trees and fields to the bright colors of the elms, ash,
maples and hickory trees in their festive fall plumage. Every once in a while you would be blessed
with a few days of “Indian Summer” where it seemed even nature was unwilling to
let go of the good times.
One year, while in High School the organization I belonged
to spent three or four weekends traipsing around the Catskills in Ulster
County, looking for old aircraft wreckage so we could mark them with a big red
X so if another plane crashed these old wrecks would not be mistaken for the
new one. What a wonderful way to spend a
weekend… with friends climbing up and down the ancient mountains.
The later it got in the fall, the more the walks in the
woods took on a new feeling and the ground began to crunch under your feet as
the morning frost would extend ever further into the day, until eventually it
was not a frost, but a freeze -- and we returned once again to winter.
