Ghost Towns

Communities seem to have lives, just like the people who make them.  Some towns seem to rise up out of nowhere, flourish with a vibrancy and life that is both robust and exuberant, and then just as fast as they came into being they disappear.  The west is filled with these “ghost towns” that grew up from some industry, like mining, and when the industry died out so did the towns.

In reading the posts about Hyde Park I am struck by the similarities of the western mining towns to my hometown.  At its height it was filled with the rich and famous, growing from its farming roots, it became a summer playground for rich, then an international political center as the home, and summer residence, of the President. 

It saw Kings and Queens come for visits.  It had its own train stop on the tracks along the Hudson.  It was inevitable that would end at some point.  The President died, and his wife Eleanor retired to her cottage at Val-Kill, but because of her fame and influence, the town continued to thrive.

In the 1950s through probably 1990 the life of the town ebbed and flowed as farms flourished, and the county’s number one business, International Business Machines, grew to employ thousands of people in the towns surrounding its headquarters, plants, and research centers scattered around Dutchess and the adjacent counties.  The service industries like restaurants, drug stores, supermarkets, gas stations, and retail stores all flourished.  In the 1960s, the city center in Poughkeepsie was alive with shoppers going to the department stores and retail shops that made up the main street.

In the latter half of 60’s and early 70’s, we saw the advent of the shopping centers and malls, with most of that going to the lands south of Poughkeepsie, for that was where the big employer was located, and it made financial sense to be convenient to your customers.  It was then that Hyde Park seemed to begin its transition to the bedroom community it is today.  A place where people come to sleep, but work is somewhere else, perhaps somewhere far away like the New York City.

In the 90’s IBM began its fall from greatness.  Its failure to understand the radical shift in office automation, the changing landscape of computing, and the enormous management bureaucracy it had built, doomed its ability to respond quickly to the exploding advancement of circuit technology as foretold by Gordon Moore, and they gave way to the more agile companies of what is now known as Silicon Valley.

I left the town in the early 70s to join the Air Force.  So I wonder, what will change the Hyde Park of today to bring back the town it once was or is its continued decline to a shadow of glories past inevitable?

Trails in the Sky

It was a summer’s day, warm and just a bit muggy.  We were playing in the fields behind the house in the Holt Development of Hyde Park.  I don’t recall exactly what we were playing, but Cowboys and Indians is a safe bet.  Of course in today’s world if we were playing Cowboys and Indians half of us would have to be dressed in Langoti.  But I digress.

Anyway, we were running, shooting our cap guns, hiding, running and shooting all over the place.  I don’t think anyone was actually killed, and I don’t even think the neighbors, if they were aware of this massive on-going conflict, actually called the police to come arrest us for unnecessary gunplay and violence.  We just continued to wage war on each other, changing sides and fortunes as the need arose.

But it was during one of these epic battles that I happened to look to the sky and see an Air Force transport pass overhead.  Soon another flew by, and then a third.  I stopped, in awe of the aircraft, and the trails they were laying out behind them. Today, I know they were C-123 Providers, and they were probably spraying pesticide for mosquitos.  It was probably not the best of places to be, but fortunately I don’t think I have come through that encounter any the worse for the experience, just the opposite.

That was my awakening to a world that would someday become my home.  To look down on the land from the flight deck of a cargo aircraft and see it pass as we flew low over the ground to bring relief supplies to those in need, or to infiltrate behind the enemy lines to drop off Special Forces, or just fly to practice flying.  We had an expression in those halcyon days of my early career.  “If God had wanted man to fly he would have been born with green baggy skin” like the flight suits we wore.

It is now almost sixty years since I looked up.  A lifetime has come and gone, and I will be forever grateful to those airmen who laid out the trails for me to follow.  They helped shape a world where time and space shrank, where frontiers reached the heavens, and technology took man to the moon.

I can only hope that in some small way I marked a trail for others.

Memories of Moosehead Lake.

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Although it was August it was a damp, chilly day as we set off for Maine.  I can close my eyes and place myself in the back seat of the station wagon driven by Wayne’s father.  We had a canoe on the roof and we were setting off on a 10-day trip to Maine.  To be honest I am not sure how this trip came to be.  I was a friend with this family from church and I worked with Mr. W at W.T. Grant in Poughkeepsie.

They were a wonderful family, and it seemed to me the model for what a family should be.  They had a nice home in Staatsburg, raised Siberian Huskies, and seemed never to argue.  Almost the polar opposite of what I experienced at home.

We drove through the night and arrived in Greenville, at the South end of Moosehead Lake early in the morning.  We stopped at an outfitter and rented a second canoe, and loaded our supplies aboard the two craft.  As we held the boats at the landing while the car was parked and pushed off around 8 am.  We paddled steadily for what seemed like four hours, finally pulling up to a small island to have lunch.

I was in awe of the beauty of the lake, and vastness and the wonderful privacy of the islands we passed.  We saw Loons, Geese and Ducks of all kinds.  The sun was warm, the air cool and fresh, and the activity steady for a couple of hours at a stretch.  After lunch we headed off to the next island and then the next.  Coming up on about 6 pm we pulled into a quiet little state park site on one of the islands, and made camp.

As we gathered sticks for the fire, and set up our tents a loon called in the distance.  It was hard to concentrate on the tasks at hand with so much beauty around, the setting sun lit the lake with gem-like sparkles, and fish would leap from the pristine water after the gnats that had swarmed a few minutes earlier.  It was the end of a perfect day.

The next day was much the same, as was the next.  Finally we came to the final island in your northern paddle.  We camped there for two days, and for the first time I saw a Bald Eagle, in flight and free.  It swooped down snatching a fish from the lake and headed to its aerie, or nest.  The spot the family had chosen was secluded and serene. We swam, fished, and explored, and then the weather began to turn.

The trip home, back to Greenville, was a challenge as storms rolled through the next couple of days.  The mornings would be rainy, with thunderstorms in the afternoon.  When the thunderstorms hit we would find the nearest island and seek shelter until it passed.  One of the nights was especially memorable as we made camp in a driving rain with gusty winds.  We secured the boats, but during the night something woke us and Mr. W got to the boats just in time to see one break free of its mooring.  This was a fortunate thing, for it would have been a very bad ending to a wonderful trip.   

Now, as a father with a lifetime of experience behind me I realize I never worried at all during the trip.  I had placed my faith in Mr. and Mrs. W and knew all would be well.  It is a very different experience when others place their faith in you. 

The next day was our last on the lake; it remained overcast, misty, and wet.  Much as it had been when we set out from New York.  We arrived back in Greenville, secured our cargo, loaded the boat on the car, and turned in the boat we had rented.  Before we headed back to our homes we took an excursion to the coast for an evening and a lobster dinner.  It was my first experience with lobster, and I’ve got to say there is nothing better when you are sitting on a New England shore, watching the sunset.

The Green, Green Hills of Home

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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.

The Hyde Park of My Youth

Life seemed simple then, the only world I knew.  The Holt development was a community of cookie-cutter homes for the post-war boom. Behind the Rainbow Room Tavern, off Route 9G, it was nestled into the small valley, with wonderful elevation changes you will never find in developments today.

We would push our bikes to the top of the Madison Avenue hill and ride like the wind down to the bottom. One summer we played cowboys dismounting our bikes like we saw the Pony Express riders do in the Saturday movies at the Roosevelt Theater.  That experience was good for at least two of the scars I carry to this day, but boy was it fun.

We had forts, hiding places, and wonderful journeys of exploration in the woods and farms that surrounded the development.  Having a Daisy BB gun and vast open fields makes a boy a great hunter of small things.  In these days where guns, gun safety, and gun ownership is condemned I can't imagine how children will grow to understand the role they do play and appreciate their value and their risk.

Winters brought snow, and the hill behind my house was perfect for sledding. Real sledding, not some wimpy saucer, but a sled with runners that could scream across the packed snow, or if you were really lucky the ice-crusted snow from a heavy fall, and a light rain that then froze on top. A sled you could steer - kind of, to avoid the big tree coming right at you. I guess I am one of the lucky ones, all my fingers still attached and no apparent damage to my frontal lobes.

I started school at Ralph R. Smith elementary but was exiled to Violet Avenue for second and third grades.  Having served my time I was repatriated back for fourth through sixth.  I still remember kickball with Mr. Johnson.

We moved to Brower Blvd. while I was attending Haviland Junior High. There is an interesting dynamic in moving from a neighborhood to a single street.  If I wanted to ride my bike it was through the cemetery, until I found the paths that took me to the town center.  Our bus stop was the entrance of the Union Cemetery, and we had to cross 9G to get to it.  Somehow I don't think that would be acceptable in today's risk adverse world. 

We were the first class to attend the new Roosevelt High for all four years.  There were three or four teachers who helped me survive. I was not a motivated student, but Mr. Sanford and Mrs. U apparently saw something worth helping.  Mr. S was the crew coach, and after I outgrew the coxswain position he allowed me to be the manager.  To this day, the times on the river linger in a warm place in my heart.  Mrs. U opened my mind to the arts by inviting me into the first Humanities class at the school.  What a fabulous year that was.  Study Architecture, and then go to see the great examples, I.M. Pei or Frank Lloyd Wright stand out, dramatically different in style, but both with great vision.  Music -- attend a symphony, art, see the Museum of Modern Art.   Ballet, Opera, Drama, Painting, she truly opened my eyes to the world.

Mr. King, was a wood shop teacher, my Drivers Ed teacher, and a World War I flying ace.  I had always been enthralled by aircraft and his quiet demeanor hid the fact he had a Sopwith Pup parked in the garage and would fight it out with the Black Knight on weekends in the skies over Rhinebeck.  He encouraged the dream for me, a dream that ultimately led to my commissioning in the Air Force.  The drafting teacher, whose name escapes me, also was a pilot, with a little homebuilt of French design.  I think it was the Cricket, but I am a little fuzzy on that detail.   

Well, that's about the sum of it.