When I was 17 years old, my friend David Porsi got hired to work at a tool retail shop called Hershey Tools, owned by a nice man named Julius Herschowsky, in Kerhonkson, NY. His hiring there meant that he was going to leave his gig as a dishwasher at the Rainbow Diner, at the top of Kerhonkson Hill on Route 209. It was owned by an elderly couple, Ramona and Henry Bendell and was open 24 hours a day. I rushed over the two mile trek on my bicycle to the diner and met with the Bendells, telling them that I was a friend of Dave’s and that I was interested in the dishwashing job that was open. They hired me on the spot and told me I could start the next morning.
The next day I showed up at 6 AM and was introduced to the night cook, an older woman named Sarah, with a headful of black hair and a disdain for young dishwashers. The first hour of every morning was going to be hell, as a tired Sarah would go on a daily rant about the idiots who came in during the night, mostly truckers. I just gathered trays full of dishes and washed them, in three sinks—one for washing, one for rinsing and one for disinfecting. The silverware was done differently. It was placed in a galvanized bucket full of a very strong bleach and water solution and shaken vigorously in a rotating motion for about 30 turns, then dumped and refilled with hot water and disinfectant. Another 30 rotations and the silverware was deemed clean and sent out for use again. I was skeptical that the process worked but save for a few stubborn bits of eggs on some fork tines, they looked good.
At 7 AM Sarah’s replacement came in. Anna Pagliaroni was her name and she was a large jolly woman with a large family and even larger bunch of stories to tell. I enjoyed her immensely and discovered that I knew a son of hers, Tim, from school. Occasionally I would stay longer than Anna’s shift and would have to work with , and for, a cook who I will call only Ron. Ron would come in for the late afternoon and evening shift and was often fairly in his cups. Several times customers got their orders cooked by a 17 year old dishwasher, but since no one complained, I guess I did alright. My cue to take over was usually when Ron was so drunk that he would drop hamburgers on the floor right before replacing them on the buns and serving them. There was also a weekend cook named Don, a rotund man who lived alone and who later was discovered to be a pedophile.
We had a couple of waitresses there who were memorable, Sherry , a lovely woman, was one, and there was also Darlene. Sherry’s husband had been killed in a tragic fire several years earlier at the Pine Grove Resort Dude Ranch when the staff quarters caught on fire, killing him and others, to the best of my recollection.
I recall a customer of special note as well. The brother of legendary local State Trooper Doug Dymond, Dennis Dymond was somewhat impaired in some way. This was understood by all and not a factor as he went about his business, which included coming in for coffee every morning at the same time. In fact , you could set your watch by “Diner Dennis” as he was affectionately known.
Dishwashing being an “off the books” type of job, Mrs. Bendell, when it was paytime, would call me over to a little closet just off the kitchen area. In there, with her back to the outside world, she would carefully count out my small stipend for each week’s clean dishes. It was almost comical in the amount of secrecy she did the payment under.
The job went along fine until one winter morning, on Easter Sunday, when a rather large snowfall hit the area. I had been told to expect a busier than normal Sunday and that I should be there by 4 AM. Not having a car, and no way to ride a bike that far in the snow. I had to wait til the roads were cleared. I arrived at about 8 AM to find Donnie Williams, a local kid, already hired in my place. No amount of pleading could convince the Bendells to hire me back, so I wrote it off as a lousy job I wouldn’t miss and moved on to my next adventure: a bellhop at the Granit Hotel.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Last Thoughts on Kerhonkson
As Kerhonkson slowly dies, it occurs to me that there are a couple of different courses of action that can be taken. One is to maintain the status quo. A friend of mine commented earlier that, in her opinion, and I agree with this, the blame falls mainly on the collective populace of the town. They might be making changes but at such a glacial pace that you can’t see it from outer space. I doubt adding a menu item at the Rainbow Diner counts for much….
The trouble is that, like in a bad marriage, people become accustomed to just getting through the day and that would appear to be the case here. A collective apathy, like much of what has stricken the country, is occurring on the local level, and unless someone makes the decision to step up and change things, they will remain the same.
And what is the current status of Kerhonkson? Of course, any comments about Kerhonkson must, by necessity, include Wawarsing, a section of Accord, Napanoch and Ellenville, since they are all at least part of the Town of Wawarsing, and ultimately anything administrative has to be approved by the Town Board in Ellenville, where the Town of Wawarsing government is housed. As I visited all four of those villages recently I was dismayed to see that the once busy former Jamesway, formerly Whites, formerly Grants, formerly Ames ( I think) Plaza looks like it is a radioactive “stay out zone” with what appears to be a flea market in its place. From a lifetime of experience I know that when a place reaches flea market status the body is almost cold…and they tend to look like flea markets, cheap, trashy garbage masquerading as merchandise once you can get the mildew smell out of it. It’s not funny, but the flea market/auction subculture is a strange cycle of buying and reselling that makes no sense but keeps a certain group of people busy. Years ago I worked for a couple of summers and winters with Vic Zolinksy at Trader Vic’s Napanoch Auction Barn. His faithful followers were buying the same items over and over, selling them to each other and then having Vic sell them again at the auction. A strange, probably unique American experience that would, if it wasn’t so pathetic, be funny.
So, I digress again. Kerhonkson is in the flea market stage. Same old crap every day, same unemployment, same ugly and abandoned buildings, same drug problems, same everything. Almost ready for a new bridge that connects…what?
Reader David Witkus had a great idea to turn what is left of Main Street into a type of culinary row, refurbishing or rebuilding the remaining buildings to house cooking schools for local teens. Free tuition as long as they promise or agree to operate restaurants on the street after they have graduated. Money certainly would be problematic (Where the HELL is all that tax money going????) but it’s possible that someone with the capital would be able to seize the moment and build something memorable. Heck, they could even name the thing after themselves: Schoonmaker Row, or Kortright Korner, or any number of well to do families who have a vested interest in keeping their hometown alive.
Another reader reminded me of the fact that there is another resort, Soyuzivka, on Foordmore Road. It caters to Ukrainians, but has been a thriving and good neighbor to the area. Maybe expanding the Ukrainian theme would help the town a bit--some shops and restaurants with a touch of Ukrainian heritage, perhaps? Down here in Georgia, there is a town called Helen, which has a Bavarian theme going on, amongst beautiful scenery, no more so than Kerhonkson, and the place does extremely well with tourists, especially during Oktoberfest time. The beer and bratwurst are great. Why not adopt something similar in Kerhonkson, playing up Minnewaska as aprt of the mountainous area.
Of course all of this is speculation. Previously I had floated the idea of a grand hotel being built on the mountaintop, but someone reminded me that a large section of the mountain was declared “forever wild” by the Town of Wawarsing. I don’t know if the area above Kerhonkson is part of that but I’m sure someone will tell me.
C’mon folks…let us put our heads together and figure out how to revive this lovely place before its too late.
The trouble is that, like in a bad marriage, people become accustomed to just getting through the day and that would appear to be the case here. A collective apathy, like much of what has stricken the country, is occurring on the local level, and unless someone makes the decision to step up and change things, they will remain the same.
And what is the current status of Kerhonkson? Of course, any comments about Kerhonkson must, by necessity, include Wawarsing, a section of Accord, Napanoch and Ellenville, since they are all at least part of the Town of Wawarsing, and ultimately anything administrative has to be approved by the Town Board in Ellenville, where the Town of Wawarsing government is housed. As I visited all four of those villages recently I was dismayed to see that the once busy former Jamesway, formerly Whites, formerly Grants, formerly Ames ( I think) Plaza looks like it is a radioactive “stay out zone” with what appears to be a flea market in its place. From a lifetime of experience I know that when a place reaches flea market status the body is almost cold…and they tend to look like flea markets, cheap, trashy garbage masquerading as merchandise once you can get the mildew smell out of it. It’s not funny, but the flea market/auction subculture is a strange cycle of buying and reselling that makes no sense but keeps a certain group of people busy. Years ago I worked for a couple of summers and winters with Vic Zolinksy at Trader Vic’s Napanoch Auction Barn. His faithful followers were buying the same items over and over, selling them to each other and then having Vic sell them again at the auction. A strange, probably unique American experience that would, if it wasn’t so pathetic, be funny.
So, I digress again. Kerhonkson is in the flea market stage. Same old crap every day, same unemployment, same ugly and abandoned buildings, same drug problems, same everything. Almost ready for a new bridge that connects…what?
Reader David Witkus had a great idea to turn what is left of Main Street into a type of culinary row, refurbishing or rebuilding the remaining buildings to house cooking schools for local teens. Free tuition as long as they promise or agree to operate restaurants on the street after they have graduated. Money certainly would be problematic (Where the HELL is all that tax money going????) but it’s possible that someone with the capital would be able to seize the moment and build something memorable. Heck, they could even name the thing after themselves: Schoonmaker Row, or Kortright Korner, or any number of well to do families who have a vested interest in keeping their hometown alive.
Another reader reminded me of the fact that there is another resort, Soyuzivka, on Foordmore Road. It caters to Ukrainians, but has been a thriving and good neighbor to the area. Maybe expanding the Ukrainian theme would help the town a bit--some shops and restaurants with a touch of Ukrainian heritage, perhaps? Down here in Georgia, there is a town called Helen, which has a Bavarian theme going on, amongst beautiful scenery, no more so than Kerhonkson, and the place does extremely well with tourists, especially during Oktoberfest time. The beer and bratwurst are great. Why not adopt something similar in Kerhonkson, playing up Minnewaska as aprt of the mountainous area.
Of course all of this is speculation. Previously I had floated the idea of a grand hotel being built on the mountaintop, but someone reminded me that a large section of the mountain was declared “forever wild” by the Town of Wawarsing. I don’t know if the area above Kerhonkson is part of that but I’m sure someone will tell me.
C’mon folks…let us put our heads together and figure out how to revive this lovely place before its too late.
Monday, October 4, 2010
The Kerhonkson Conumdrum: Death of a Village Pt 2
In my last piece I recounted coming home to Kerhonkson after a long absence and finding out that it looked like parts of a third world nation. A friend commented: I believe that the problem Kerhonkson has always had exists in its residents, collectively. If the majority were so inclined to productively change their community - it could be done. For a plethora of reasons it has not been done, and currently if anything is being done...it remains at a snail’s pace. Your blog on Kerhonkson was, unfortunately, correct to a very large degree.
Well, I’m sad that she agrees with me, since she has been there through it all. But since it seems to be the consensus that the place is close to dead, what can be done to resurrect it? Too many blogs and even traditional media use their space to list and lament problems in an area but never come up with solutions. Let’s dare to be different here.
It’s obvious that the area itself has many strengths—it offers beautiful scenery, is a very large village if you realize that Kerhonkson itself runs from roughly the Lake Minnewaska entrance on Rt 44-55 all the way to Palentown Poad and the former Peg Leg Bates Resort, now owned and operated by another group of people. That is a distance of 15 or 16 miles, plus it runs from Wawarsing to Accord, another 5 or so miles on Rt. 209. It’s a big area, and the mountains, especially the Shawangunk Mountain that Minnewaska is part of and the ridge along its top that runs to Ellenville, along which were the old shacks and huts that housed the denizens of the huckleberry industry of days of old, offer a great resource if rules and regulations can be moderated to accommodate some sort of industry or business up there. Years ago Marriott wanted to put a hotel at Lake Minnewaska. That idea was voted/shouted down. So why not move the site of a nice big hotel to the very top of the mountain, among the scrub pines and granite, keeping it as environmentally friendly as possible, accessible from Rock Haven Road near 44-55? The place could be called Mountain Top Hotel, and if landscaped properly and new, "green" methods of waste disposal were handled in an intelligent way, it could be a huge boon to the area, offering jobs and bringing sorely needed money into the local economy. And who knows what it might lead to?
Local farm stands are another example. The most beautiful and prosperous of these is definitely Saunderskill Farms in Accord, but others are doing well and there is room for more, especially in the Kerhonkson area. Burd Farms on 209 has a nice little stand but it could be bigger and offer more produce and baked goods. Other small, roadside shops and markets of specialty items like maple syrup, arts and crafts (local, not mass produced crap)and more. Look at Woodstock for an example, with a few constraints. Woodstock is Woodstock. Kerhonkson is Kerhonkson. There's a great creek that runs through town. Make use of it! Put a nice restaurant over looking the water somewhere. Clear the crappy looking old trees and woods and open it up. People will come, industry or no industry.
Another suggestion is to play up the fresh water that the area produces. I recently brought back a few bottles of out of the ground pure goodness from Upper Cherrytown Road. Someone shold bottle this stuff for the tourist trade. Doesn't have to be a huge production, but water that pure can get top dollar as a specialty item for tourists. Nice bottle, fancy label, sell it in town, and a lot of cash will flow like that water. People come to the Catskills for the scenery. Let's give them a show. (Of course we don’t tell the tourists exactly where the water comes from---can’t let that cat out of the bag, cuz it needs to be left alone for the locals who already drink it).
C’mon, people. A few of you read this blog, and more read my facebook page. Gimme more ideas so I can submit them to the proper authorities. There is no need for all of this to get bogged down in beaureaucratic red tape, as I’m sure it will, per the usual way of things getting not done in Kerhonkson, but for the town’s sake, let’s try.
Well, I’m sad that she agrees with me, since she has been there through it all. But since it seems to be the consensus that the place is close to dead, what can be done to resurrect it? Too many blogs and even traditional media use their space to list and lament problems in an area but never come up with solutions. Let’s dare to be different here.
It’s obvious that the area itself has many strengths—it offers beautiful scenery, is a very large village if you realize that Kerhonkson itself runs from roughly the Lake Minnewaska entrance on Rt 44-55 all the way to Palentown Poad and the former Peg Leg Bates Resort, now owned and operated by another group of people. That is a distance of 15 or 16 miles, plus it runs from Wawarsing to Accord, another 5 or so miles on Rt. 209. It’s a big area, and the mountains, especially the Shawangunk Mountain that Minnewaska is part of and the ridge along its top that runs to Ellenville, along which were the old shacks and huts that housed the denizens of the huckleberry industry of days of old, offer a great resource if rules and regulations can be moderated to accommodate some sort of industry or business up there. Years ago Marriott wanted to put a hotel at Lake Minnewaska. That idea was voted/shouted down. So why not move the site of a nice big hotel to the very top of the mountain, among the scrub pines and granite, keeping it as environmentally friendly as possible, accessible from Rock Haven Road near 44-55? The place could be called Mountain Top Hotel, and if landscaped properly and new, "green" methods of waste disposal were handled in an intelligent way, it could be a huge boon to the area, offering jobs and bringing sorely needed money into the local economy. And who knows what it might lead to?
Local farm stands are another example. The most beautiful and prosperous of these is definitely Saunderskill Farms in Accord, but others are doing well and there is room for more, especially in the Kerhonkson area. Burd Farms on 209 has a nice little stand but it could be bigger and offer more produce and baked goods. Other small, roadside shops and markets of specialty items like maple syrup, arts and crafts (local, not mass produced crap)and more. Look at Woodstock for an example, with a few constraints. Woodstock is Woodstock. Kerhonkson is Kerhonkson. There's a great creek that runs through town. Make use of it! Put a nice restaurant over looking the water somewhere. Clear the crappy looking old trees and woods and open it up. People will come, industry or no industry.
Another suggestion is to play up the fresh water that the area produces. I recently brought back a few bottles of out of the ground pure goodness from Upper Cherrytown Road. Someone shold bottle this stuff for the tourist trade. Doesn't have to be a huge production, but water that pure can get top dollar as a specialty item for tourists. Nice bottle, fancy label, sell it in town, and a lot of cash will flow like that water. People come to the Catskills for the scenery. Let's give them a show. (Of course we don’t tell the tourists exactly where the water comes from---can’t let that cat out of the bag, cuz it needs to be left alone for the locals who already drink it).
C’mon, people. A few of you read this blog, and more read my facebook page. Gimme more ideas so I can submit them to the proper authorities. There is no need for all of this to get bogged down in beaureaucratic red tape, as I’m sure it will, per the usual way of things getting not done in Kerhonkson, but for the town’s sake, let’s try.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Better to burn out than to fade away: Kerhonkson, New York is a dying place...
I went home this week. To Kerhonkson, New York, a small town in the Hudson Valley in the fringes of the Catskill Mountains. It is, sadly, a town that is as sick and dying as a town can be without being called a “ghost town” and that’s a shame.
I grew up there. When my family moved south in 1968 from Brainardsville, NY, an even smaller town on the northern edge of the Adirondack Mountains, we were excited. Kerhonkson was exciting. It was bigger, more lively, and had a cast of characters that would rival those anywhere. The Granit Hotel was a mile from my house and was one of the few of the Catskills hotels still thriving, and had a great set of tennis courts and stuff to do. Ten miles up Samsonville Road, Peg Leg Bates ran a country club that everyone was welcome to but that catered mostly to blacks. It was not unusual to see 30 to 40 chartered busloads of folks up from New York for a great weekend of good food and entertainment. Jobs were readily available in the hotels and in nearby Ellenville, where other hotels like the Nevele and the Fallsview stood. The famous Schrade Cutlery knife factory was running on Canal Street and Channel Master and VAW were right up the street. In Napanoch, a mile north of Ellenville, the Eastern New York Correctional Facility, formerly an institution for juveniles with behavioral problems, employed hundreds of corrections officers.
In Kerhonkson, there were many stores and shops to check out. There were Aversano’s, Lipton’s, and Lytwyn’s, (later Sirico’s) Markets for food shopping, Marty Shuster’s Pharmacy, and much more. The Cassino Restaurant was open and busy, as was the Rainbow Diner run by Henry and Ramona Bendell. Nick Previll’s Shell Station offered good service. Tom Gewant sold Fords at his dealership and the mechanics around town were all mostly reliable. It was a pretty typical small town in a nice section of the state of New York, and a good place to live.
Kerhonkson, if you’ve never been there, is located on Route 209 as it runs north and south from the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge on the Hudson River to parts south and ends (I think) in Pennsylvania. The Rainbow Diner, Aversano’s and other businesses were located on 209 and there is a street called Old Minnewaska Trail that runs perpendicular to 209 and off of which runs Main Street, just over a steel bridge that spans the Rondout Creek. Main Street housed the Fire House, the Post Office and several more shops and markets, as well as McGillicuddy’s Tavern and a bunch of apartment buildings. It wasn’t a wealthy town by any stretch of the imagination but it was a happy place to live and things were good.
There were many characters around town and the surrounding hills. Up on Shawangunk Drive, Fletcher, Earl and Nellie Mae VanWagener lived in a small house together—siblings, they were born in the house and would eventually die in the house. Nellie Mae would be the last to go, a tough mountain woman who chopped her own firewood, shingled her own roof and took no crap from anyone. In her bedroom closet she kept a rifle hidden in a cardboard tube. And she wasn’t afraid to shoot first and ask questions later. She had been a part of the once flourishing blueberry picking industry that existed on the mountain that stretched from Kerhonkson to Ellenville. She would eventually die alone in her small ramshackle house, with dozens of cats running rampant inside and out, stubborn to the end. A fall had broken her hip and because she had refused to wear a life alert button that friends had acquired for her, she was unable to call for help. She died a terrible death in the same house that she was born in. She was cremated by the county, having died intestate, and her ashes were spread around her beloved property by myself and a woman named Donna Spano, who had also looked in on Nellie once in a while, as I had, frequently having to take her shopping when her old car finally died and she couldn’t afford another one. At one point Nellie, who was on a limited income, complained that her light bill had approached six hundred dollars the previous month and she wasn’t able to pay it. She usually had a bill of around thirty five dollars, using very little electricity, but it had spiked for an unknown reason for a month and she was worried about how to pay for it. I called Central Hudson and when they looked back through her records noted to me that she had not missed a payment or been even late with one since 1948. And they couldn’t help her. I think eventually they relented whe nit was discovered that her freezer had gone wacky and was burning up the juice at a furious rate. Donna (or I) made arrangements for a used but good fridge/freezer combo to be delivered to her at no charge.
Jigs Crose was another character. I only met him once and have a vague memory of that encounter but he was famous around town for his ability (?) to chew and eat a shotglass with no obvious ill effects.
Another guy I recall from my childhood was a mentally challenged man named Art Decker, who dressed like a hillbilly and rode a very old bicycle around town all the time. He usually had drool on his mouth and didn’t smell too great, and little girls were warned to stay away from him. I write this cautiously, not wanting to libel the man, but it was a concern in our circle of families and friends,
Other people and events are recounted in a nice new book called Closed Until Further Notice , written by a local author and resident Art Stockin. More a memoir and recollection of a lot of the author’s acquaintances than a history of the village itself, it is nonetheless a very interesting look at the area and its people. Proceeds from it go to help rebuild the village.
Kerhonkson is a tough place to describe in a brief piece like this one, but if one word could do it, for me it would be “home.”
And when I recently visited Kerhonkson again this past week after a 4 year absence, I felt the pain from a double edged sword through my heart when I saw not only the decrepit state of my old house on Foordmore Road, but Kerhonkson itself. The bridge connecting Main Street to the rest of the town had been torn down and is finally in the last stages of being rebuilt. During its absence the fire department has had to take long detours just to get to short, as the crow flies, distances away. Main Street now consists of three buildings, the rest having been torn down. The Granit Hotel had been sold to a Korean concern and is now the Hudson Valley Resort and is facing serious financial problems, leaving it, along with the former Peg Leg Bates Resort and the Pine Grove Resort Ranch, a “dude ranch” for city folks who want to ride horses and get a little country in them, as the last functioning resorts in the area.
The job market in the area now consists mostly of corrections officers and yard sales. I know it’s an exaggeration but folks, there ain’t much there. Channel Master left town long ago. Schrade Cutlery, which employed hundreds, went out of business several years ago, as did VAW. The Nevele and Fallsview Hotels finally folded, the last of the famous Catskills Borscht Belt hotles to fall, although up in Sullivan County a few still hang on.
I guess as long as there are criminals the prisons will always need guards, but what does it mean when guarding bad guys is the cottage industry of a region? I used to think that we shouldn’t be spending money to build more prisons all the time but it also occurs to me that as a society we keep producing criminals so as a society it is our responsibility to keep them off the streets and focus on producing more good citizens. Better schools plus better parenting equals better people equals less need for prisons.
But I digress.
So my hometown is dying. It’s a sad but true commentary that nothing lasts forever but dammit, it’s a vital and lovely place and can’t be left to rot. Post 9/11 incursions of city folks changed the face of the area forever with their big city money. Houses that once were selling for $80,000 all of a sudden became half million dollar homes as asking prices, usually a place to start as you bargained it down, became starting points in bidding wars for the wealthy who wanted out of the city. The tax base shot up at record speed and only the wealthiest locals could keep up. Here’s an eye opener: A friend in Rosendale, NY, about 10 miles away, has a small house on .18 of an acre. She and her husband pay around 4200 bucks annually in taxes. That’s like adding 350 bucks a month extra to your rent or mortgage payment. Down here in Georgia another friend has a big house, on a lake with 8 acres, and pays about 1200 dollars a year in taxes. The job situation here in the south is pretty dire, but at least the taxes aren’t criminally high.
So I went home. I’m glad I did. And I’m sad that I did. I often harbor thoughts of moving back but to what? I guess time will tell.
I grew up there. When my family moved south in 1968 from Brainardsville, NY, an even smaller town on the northern edge of the Adirondack Mountains, we were excited. Kerhonkson was exciting. It was bigger, more lively, and had a cast of characters that would rival those anywhere. The Granit Hotel was a mile from my house and was one of the few of the Catskills hotels still thriving, and had a great set of tennis courts and stuff to do. Ten miles up Samsonville Road, Peg Leg Bates ran a country club that everyone was welcome to but that catered mostly to blacks. It was not unusual to see 30 to 40 chartered busloads of folks up from New York for a great weekend of good food and entertainment. Jobs were readily available in the hotels and in nearby Ellenville, where other hotels like the Nevele and the Fallsview stood. The famous Schrade Cutlery knife factory was running on Canal Street and Channel Master and VAW were right up the street. In Napanoch, a mile north of Ellenville, the Eastern New York Correctional Facility, formerly an institution for juveniles with behavioral problems, employed hundreds of corrections officers.
In Kerhonkson, there were many stores and shops to check out. There were Aversano’s, Lipton’s, and Lytwyn’s, (later Sirico’s) Markets for food shopping, Marty Shuster’s Pharmacy, and much more. The Cassino Restaurant was open and busy, as was the Rainbow Diner run by Henry and Ramona Bendell. Nick Previll’s Shell Station offered good service. Tom Gewant sold Fords at his dealership and the mechanics around town were all mostly reliable. It was a pretty typical small town in a nice section of the state of New York, and a good place to live.
Kerhonkson, if you’ve never been there, is located on Route 209 as it runs north and south from the Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge on the Hudson River to parts south and ends (I think) in Pennsylvania. The Rainbow Diner, Aversano’s and other businesses were located on 209 and there is a street called Old Minnewaska Trail that runs perpendicular to 209 and off of which runs Main Street, just over a steel bridge that spans the Rondout Creek. Main Street housed the Fire House, the Post Office and several more shops and markets, as well as McGillicuddy’s Tavern and a bunch of apartment buildings. It wasn’t a wealthy town by any stretch of the imagination but it was a happy place to live and things were good.
There were many characters around town and the surrounding hills. Up on Shawangunk Drive, Fletcher, Earl and Nellie Mae VanWagener lived in a small house together—siblings, they were born in the house and would eventually die in the house. Nellie Mae would be the last to go, a tough mountain woman who chopped her own firewood, shingled her own roof and took no crap from anyone. In her bedroom closet she kept a rifle hidden in a cardboard tube. And she wasn’t afraid to shoot first and ask questions later. She had been a part of the once flourishing blueberry picking industry that existed on the mountain that stretched from Kerhonkson to Ellenville. She would eventually die alone in her small ramshackle house, with dozens of cats running rampant inside and out, stubborn to the end. A fall had broken her hip and because she had refused to wear a life alert button that friends had acquired for her, she was unable to call for help. She died a terrible death in the same house that she was born in. She was cremated by the county, having died intestate, and her ashes were spread around her beloved property by myself and a woman named Donna Spano, who had also looked in on Nellie once in a while, as I had, frequently having to take her shopping when her old car finally died and she couldn’t afford another one. At one point Nellie, who was on a limited income, complained that her light bill had approached six hundred dollars the previous month and she wasn’t able to pay it. She usually had a bill of around thirty five dollars, using very little electricity, but it had spiked for an unknown reason for a month and she was worried about how to pay for it. I called Central Hudson and when they looked back through her records noted to me that she had not missed a payment or been even late with one since 1948. And they couldn’t help her. I think eventually they relented whe nit was discovered that her freezer had gone wacky and was burning up the juice at a furious rate. Donna (or I) made arrangements for a used but good fridge/freezer combo to be delivered to her at no charge.
Jigs Crose was another character. I only met him once and have a vague memory of that encounter but he was famous around town for his ability (?) to chew and eat a shotglass with no obvious ill effects.
Another guy I recall from my childhood was a mentally challenged man named Art Decker, who dressed like a hillbilly and rode a very old bicycle around town all the time. He usually had drool on his mouth and didn’t smell too great, and little girls were warned to stay away from him. I write this cautiously, not wanting to libel the man, but it was a concern in our circle of families and friends,
Other people and events are recounted in a nice new book called Closed Until Further Notice , written by a local author and resident Art Stockin. More a memoir and recollection of a lot of the author’s acquaintances than a history of the village itself, it is nonetheless a very interesting look at the area and its people. Proceeds from it go to help rebuild the village.
Kerhonkson is a tough place to describe in a brief piece like this one, but if one word could do it, for me it would be “home.”
And when I recently visited Kerhonkson again this past week after a 4 year absence, I felt the pain from a double edged sword through my heart when I saw not only the decrepit state of my old house on Foordmore Road, but Kerhonkson itself. The bridge connecting Main Street to the rest of the town had been torn down and is finally in the last stages of being rebuilt. During its absence the fire department has had to take long detours just to get to short, as the crow flies, distances away. Main Street now consists of three buildings, the rest having been torn down. The Granit Hotel had been sold to a Korean concern and is now the Hudson Valley Resort and is facing serious financial problems, leaving it, along with the former Peg Leg Bates Resort and the Pine Grove Resort Ranch, a “dude ranch” for city folks who want to ride horses and get a little country in them, as the last functioning resorts in the area.
The job market in the area now consists mostly of corrections officers and yard sales. I know it’s an exaggeration but folks, there ain’t much there. Channel Master left town long ago. Schrade Cutlery, which employed hundreds, went out of business several years ago, as did VAW. The Nevele and Fallsview Hotels finally folded, the last of the famous Catskills Borscht Belt hotles to fall, although up in Sullivan County a few still hang on.
I guess as long as there are criminals the prisons will always need guards, but what does it mean when guarding bad guys is the cottage industry of a region? I used to think that we shouldn’t be spending money to build more prisons all the time but it also occurs to me that as a society we keep producing criminals so as a society it is our responsibility to keep them off the streets and focus on producing more good citizens. Better schools plus better parenting equals better people equals less need for prisons.
But I digress.
So my hometown is dying. It’s a sad but true commentary that nothing lasts forever but dammit, it’s a vital and lovely place and can’t be left to rot. Post 9/11 incursions of city folks changed the face of the area forever with their big city money. Houses that once were selling for $80,000 all of a sudden became half million dollar homes as asking prices, usually a place to start as you bargained it down, became starting points in bidding wars for the wealthy who wanted out of the city. The tax base shot up at record speed and only the wealthiest locals could keep up. Here’s an eye opener: A friend in Rosendale, NY, about 10 miles away, has a small house on .18 of an acre. She and her husband pay around 4200 bucks annually in taxes. That’s like adding 350 bucks a month extra to your rent or mortgage payment. Down here in Georgia another friend has a big house, on a lake with 8 acres, and pays about 1200 dollars a year in taxes. The job situation here in the south is pretty dire, but at least the taxes aren’t criminally high.
So I went home. I’m glad I did. And I’m sad that I did. I often harbor thoughts of moving back but to what? I guess time will tell.
Friday, October 1, 2010
The Dumbing Down of America
George Carlin once did a bit about the corporate control of America and how those corporations own everything, including the schools. He concluded that the reason that education in this country is so inferior to other countries is because the powers that be don’t want a citizenry that can think for itself and make informed decisions about anything other than what to have for lunch on any given day. And he may be right.
As I walk around town, not just here in Georgia, but even back in my hometown of Kerhonkson, New York, (a small town the size of Jackson) where I just visited this week, I see signs, literally and figuratively, that are disturbing,. The very basics of our educational system are falling by the wayside and it’s something that needs to be corrected immediately. I’m talking about our rapidly failing ability to read and write properly. It’s everywhere.
A friend recently put an ad in her local paper in north Georgia. She was looking for a job, and phrased the ad that way. She also gave her qualifications and described her “skill set” and left her phone number in the ad. Calls started coming in….from people who did not read the ad properly and who were looking for a job, not offering one. It happens all the time.
Another friend recently took on the task of reading and rating entries in a youth writing challenge sponsored by Positive Impact Magazine. The contest is open to school children of all ages. To her dismay, she discovered that the best writing came from children in grades four through six, and that they wrote on a higher level than the average high school student. It’s just one person’s observation, but it is indicative of a greater problem that has helped drop this country’s status in the world rankings further and futher down the list. This country is getting dumber. Why is that?
I was a school teacher for six years. I taught all subjects, but the one I stressed and focused on most was reading. If you never learn another subject, you must learn to read. Reading, and writing, are the keys that open all doors. Don’t know how to make an apple pie? Read the recipe. Don’t know when the Civil War was? Get a book and READ.
And write. The simplest errors are often the ones that stand out the most. As a writer, when I see a sign that says, “Puppie’s for sale” or “free kitten’s,” I cringe. Folks, apostrophes are possessive, as, “The puppies are Larry’s. ” It’s a small error but just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the dumbing down of America. When the signs say, “Puppy’s for sale,” then I get even more worried.
In an era where everyone has a blog and technology and internet use has increased a million-fold, lazy habits become more and more commonplace. “Texting” has created a whole new language, adding to the mess. Audio books have reduced the number of actual books read, and the country as a whole seems to be dumbing down and getting lazier. In the meantime, our competition in the world market seem to be sharpening their collective axes and are just waiting for us to get to the point where they can chop our heads off and take over as the dominant world power, if they have not already.
It’s not a simple solution to regain our position as a world superpower overnight , but learning the basics all over again would be a good start. Readin’ and writin’ people! Do it!
As I walk around town, not just here in Georgia, but even back in my hometown of Kerhonkson, New York, (a small town the size of Jackson) where I just visited this week, I see signs, literally and figuratively, that are disturbing,. The very basics of our educational system are falling by the wayside and it’s something that needs to be corrected immediately. I’m talking about our rapidly failing ability to read and write properly. It’s everywhere.
A friend recently put an ad in her local paper in north Georgia. She was looking for a job, and phrased the ad that way. She also gave her qualifications and described her “skill set” and left her phone number in the ad. Calls started coming in….from people who did not read the ad properly and who were looking for a job, not offering one. It happens all the time.
Another friend recently took on the task of reading and rating entries in a youth writing challenge sponsored by Positive Impact Magazine. The contest is open to school children of all ages. To her dismay, she discovered that the best writing came from children in grades four through six, and that they wrote on a higher level than the average high school student. It’s just one person’s observation, but it is indicative of a greater problem that has helped drop this country’s status in the world rankings further and futher down the list. This country is getting dumber. Why is that?
I was a school teacher for six years. I taught all subjects, but the one I stressed and focused on most was reading. If you never learn another subject, you must learn to read. Reading, and writing, are the keys that open all doors. Don’t know how to make an apple pie? Read the recipe. Don’t know when the Civil War was? Get a book and READ.
And write. The simplest errors are often the ones that stand out the most. As a writer, when I see a sign that says, “Puppie’s for sale” or “free kitten’s,” I cringe. Folks, apostrophes are possessive, as, “The puppies are Larry’s. ” It’s a small error but just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the dumbing down of America. When the signs say, “Puppy’s for sale,” then I get even more worried.
In an era where everyone has a blog and technology and internet use has increased a million-fold, lazy habits become more and more commonplace. “Texting” has created a whole new language, adding to the mess. Audio books have reduced the number of actual books read, and the country as a whole seems to be dumbing down and getting lazier. In the meantime, our competition in the world market seem to be sharpening their collective axes and are just waiting for us to get to the point where they can chop our heads off and take over as the dominant world power, if they have not already.
It’s not a simple solution to regain our position as a world superpower overnight , but learning the basics all over again would be a good start. Readin’ and writin’ people! Do it!
Friday, September 17, 2010
A Man of Character, Who Knocked Me on my Ass
I stood in a boxing ring for the very first time. I was wearing a plastic mouthpiece, headgear that made me feel like a pilot in a jet plane and big, pillowy gloves, inside of which were a pair of shaking hands wrapped in gauze and tape. The guy on the other side of the ring, wearing no headgear but the same big sparring gloves, asked me if I was ready. I nodded my head and he said, in a much louder voice, “Time!” And we started our dance.
Although the next short bit of time seemed like an eternity, I’m pretty certain that only about 60 seconds elapsed. The man kept telling me to jab, jab, jab. I jab, jab, jabbed, connecting with his bobbing head a few times, eliciting a “nice shot” response once or twice. He jabbed back, connecting more frequently, eliciting only grunts from me, and a few wild jabs back in self-defense. When one of my wild jabs connected pretty good, he turned up the heat and in a few seconds a shot to my solar plexus had me on the canvas, sucking wind and wondering, humorously, if death was around the corner. Time!, the voice said again. A minute later, once I had regained my wind, a gloved hand reached down and helped me to my feet, where I was wobbly but no worse for the wear.
“Nice job, “ said Floyd Patterson, who only a year and a half earlier had retired from his own boxing career after losing for the second time to Muhammad Ali, and who had just knocked me down. “I laid it on you a little to see if you’d turn away but you hung in there. There’s hope…” he said, laughing a little.
And so my boxing career began, and I faithfully visited Floyd’s house and gym almost every day for about a year, until a cyst in my wrist became too large and painful, and I stopped.
Floyd Patterson was one of those rare human beings who dragged himself up from a bad childhood and made himself, through sheer willpower, into a two time heavyweight champion, although he was the size of a light heavyweight. After his retirement, he opened up his training center (a three story barn on his property in New Paltz, NY, 12 miles from my house) to local kids, where he let them come every weekday and train, work out and spar, often with him. The charge for all of this expertise and experience: 20 bucks a month to help heat the barn. Countless young people came through Floyd’s barn, and many of them went on to have respectable careers in the pugilistic world, while others continued their own paths. I can say that, good or bad, their experience at Floyd’s was only beneficial. Life is all about choices, and Floyd Patterson equipped many young people with the skills and character that they needed to be able to make good choices.
As brutal and as savage as the idea of beating people up is, there is a certain dignity, decorum and class to boxing that mixed martial arts will never have. Floyd Patterson personified all three of those qualities, and it was an honor to be knocked down and later trained by him. Many, many years later, I stopped by his house, after not having seen him in 20 plus years (and I didn’t delude myself that he even knew my name---just called me “kid” back then) to get an autograph for a friend. It was 11AM and Floyd answered the door himself. It had been rumored that he was slipping mentally, but he invited me in, asked me right away how my wrist was, and signed a photo for my friend, a standard boxing pose. When I thanked him, he said, “You want one too?” He rummaged through his briefcase, found a great shot of himself landing a flying hook on the great Ali back in 1975, and said, “This is my last one.” And signed it, without ever asking my name, “To Jim Abbott, from your friend, Floyd Patterson.”
Although the next short bit of time seemed like an eternity, I’m pretty certain that only about 60 seconds elapsed. The man kept telling me to jab, jab, jab. I jab, jab, jabbed, connecting with his bobbing head a few times, eliciting a “nice shot” response once or twice. He jabbed back, connecting more frequently, eliciting only grunts from me, and a few wild jabs back in self-defense. When one of my wild jabs connected pretty good, he turned up the heat and in a few seconds a shot to my solar plexus had me on the canvas, sucking wind and wondering, humorously, if death was around the corner. Time!, the voice said again. A minute later, once I had regained my wind, a gloved hand reached down and helped me to my feet, where I was wobbly but no worse for the wear.
“Nice job, “ said Floyd Patterson, who only a year and a half earlier had retired from his own boxing career after losing for the second time to Muhammad Ali, and who had just knocked me down. “I laid it on you a little to see if you’d turn away but you hung in there. There’s hope…” he said, laughing a little.
And so my boxing career began, and I faithfully visited Floyd’s house and gym almost every day for about a year, until a cyst in my wrist became too large and painful, and I stopped.
Floyd Patterson was one of those rare human beings who dragged himself up from a bad childhood and made himself, through sheer willpower, into a two time heavyweight champion, although he was the size of a light heavyweight. After his retirement, he opened up his training center (a three story barn on his property in New Paltz, NY, 12 miles from my house) to local kids, where he let them come every weekday and train, work out and spar, often with him. The charge for all of this expertise and experience: 20 bucks a month to help heat the barn. Countless young people came through Floyd’s barn, and many of them went on to have respectable careers in the pugilistic world, while others continued their own paths. I can say that, good or bad, their experience at Floyd’s was only beneficial. Life is all about choices, and Floyd Patterson equipped many young people with the skills and character that they needed to be able to make good choices.
As brutal and as savage as the idea of beating people up is, there is a certain dignity, decorum and class to boxing that mixed martial arts will never have. Floyd Patterson personified all three of those qualities, and it was an honor to be knocked down and later trained by him. Many, many years later, I stopped by his house, after not having seen him in 20 plus years (and I didn’t delude myself that he even knew my name---just called me “kid” back then) to get an autograph for a friend. It was 11AM and Floyd answered the door himself. It had been rumored that he was slipping mentally, but he invited me in, asked me right away how my wrist was, and signed a photo for my friend, a standard boxing pose. When I thanked him, he said, “You want one too?” He rummaged through his briefcase, found a great shot of himself landing a flying hook on the great Ali back in 1975, and said, “This is my last one.” And signed it, without ever asking my name, “To Jim Abbott, from your friend, Floyd Patterson.”
Friday, September 10, 2010
Lying For A living
The date was November, 2001. It was roughly two months after the attacks on the World Trade Center and I was going to do something I had never done before: I was going to audition for something. I was gonna try to get into a class on the art of acting.
The class was to be called “Lying For a Living” and was to be conducted in Los Angeles by the late and great Marlon Brando. The name of the class echoed what Brando had referred to his profession in an interview years earlier. Auditions for the classes, which were free, and which would feature guest instructors, big names from the film world, had been announced in a small item in the New York Daily News that same morning. They were being held at an off-off Broadway theater in lower Manhattan. I was visiting friends in Brooklyn, so it was only a 30 minute subway ride into the city.
It was a cold and wet day, the kind of cold and damp that penetrates to the bone. When I arrived the line went nearly around the block, with all sizes and shapes of future thespian hopefuls talking acting techniques and practicing soliloquies. It was interesting watching them all, since I had no experience at all in any kind of performance, except for a chorale gig as a small kid in school, where I soloed on “Edelweis” in front of a hall full of patient parents. As I stood quietly, I began to lose patience, and body heat. I Was not alone and after a while the recitations stopped and the slightly annoyed tones of voice began to get more annoyed. The doors were supposed to open at 11AM but it was nearing noon when the first applicants were allowed in. Once inside, we were obliged to fill out several pages of short autobiographical info, given a number and made to wait. As we were only allowed in three at a time, and were kept inside of a lobby, it was a mystery as to what was going on beyond the door that, one at a time, we were herded like lambs to an uncertain future.
I entered the door. Bright lights glared, and the unmistakable sounds of an audience were present through the lights and the nerves. I was also aware that a video camera was mounted on a tripod and pointed in my general direction, and that there was a man behind it. The more interesting man, though, was sitting in a cheap lawn chair, decked out with full beard and turban and looking for all the world like Osama Bin Laden, complete with a small American flag poking out of his turban. Two months post-9/11, I should have been offended but due to nerves was more confused than angry. I stared at him.
“What are you looking at?” he asked, in a British accent. I stammered some kind of dumb remark, which he ignored. He shook my hand, introduced himself to me as Tony Kaye, (director of the classic film American History X) and we were off. He asked me what special talents I possessed. I told him I played guitar, and within seconds a cheap Yamaha acoustic guitar was in my hands. Kaye told me that he wanted me to play a song. I thought, “This is gonna be easy,” since I am proficient on the guitar, until he said, and the lyrics to the song are, “Marlon Brando ate my car.” Those were the only words. My frozen hands weren’t as limber as they usually are but I began to fingerpick a folksy sounding pattern, and started singing the one line that he had provided me, changing the melody for each line, until he finally told me to stop. From the darkness there was a loud burst of applause from about 30 people who were sitting watching, unseen. Thirty seconds later I was out the door and back out on the street, shellshocked.
In the end, Brando didn’t use anyone from the auditions for his classes. He picked random passerby off the streets and that was that. Kaye’s video of the auditions and the classes is tied up in legal wrangling and might never see the light of day.
Weirdest day of my life, and one of the most fun.
The class was to be called “Lying For a Living” and was to be conducted in Los Angeles by the late and great Marlon Brando. The name of the class echoed what Brando had referred to his profession in an interview years earlier. Auditions for the classes, which were free, and which would feature guest instructors, big names from the film world, had been announced in a small item in the New York Daily News that same morning. They were being held at an off-off Broadway theater in lower Manhattan. I was visiting friends in Brooklyn, so it was only a 30 minute subway ride into the city.
It was a cold and wet day, the kind of cold and damp that penetrates to the bone. When I arrived the line went nearly around the block, with all sizes and shapes of future thespian hopefuls talking acting techniques and practicing soliloquies. It was interesting watching them all, since I had no experience at all in any kind of performance, except for a chorale gig as a small kid in school, where I soloed on “Edelweis” in front of a hall full of patient parents. As I stood quietly, I began to lose patience, and body heat. I Was not alone and after a while the recitations stopped and the slightly annoyed tones of voice began to get more annoyed. The doors were supposed to open at 11AM but it was nearing noon when the first applicants were allowed in. Once inside, we were obliged to fill out several pages of short autobiographical info, given a number and made to wait. As we were only allowed in three at a time, and were kept inside of a lobby, it was a mystery as to what was going on beyond the door that, one at a time, we were herded like lambs to an uncertain future.
I entered the door. Bright lights glared, and the unmistakable sounds of an audience were present through the lights and the nerves. I was also aware that a video camera was mounted on a tripod and pointed in my general direction, and that there was a man behind it. The more interesting man, though, was sitting in a cheap lawn chair, decked out with full beard and turban and looking for all the world like Osama Bin Laden, complete with a small American flag poking out of his turban. Two months post-9/11, I should have been offended but due to nerves was more confused than angry. I stared at him.
“What are you looking at?” he asked, in a British accent. I stammered some kind of dumb remark, which he ignored. He shook my hand, introduced himself to me as Tony Kaye, (director of the classic film American History X) and we were off. He asked me what special talents I possessed. I told him I played guitar, and within seconds a cheap Yamaha acoustic guitar was in my hands. Kaye told me that he wanted me to play a song. I thought, “This is gonna be easy,” since I am proficient on the guitar, until he said, and the lyrics to the song are, “Marlon Brando ate my car.” Those were the only words. My frozen hands weren’t as limber as they usually are but I began to fingerpick a folksy sounding pattern, and started singing the one line that he had provided me, changing the melody for each line, until he finally told me to stop. From the darkness there was a loud burst of applause from about 30 people who were sitting watching, unseen. Thirty seconds later I was out the door and back out on the street, shellshocked.
In the end, Brando didn’t use anyone from the auditions for his classes. He picked random passerby off the streets and that was that. Kaye’s video of the auditions and the classes is tied up in legal wrangling and might never see the light of day.
Weirdest day of my life, and one of the most fun.
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