ALTAMONT — Memories of Altamont Christmases well over a half-century ago are crystal clear for  John Meineker, each as distinct as an individual snowflake.

“Every year in the park, Santa Claus would come on a horse-drawn sleigh,” Meineker said by phone from his Florida home. Then he added with a chuckle, “Sometimes the sleigh would be on wheels” — a consequence of not enough snow.

“You’d sit in his lap in the old gazebo and tell Santa what you wanted for Christmas,” he recalled. He also recalled the hard candy, and the tree that was lit in the park.

“Carollers would go around the village and sing,” said Meineker. His family would leave on the porch light at their Lark Street home as a sign of welcome. “We would open the door and listen,” he said.

His family didn’t join in the singing — “We don’t have good voices,” he said — but they enjoyed the carols.

Meineker, who will turn 75 in February, has pressed many of his childhood memories into the pages of an 80-page book. One of those chapters — a Christmas story — is printed here in excerpted form. After his cousin Jim read the story, Jim recalled what a stir the incident had created in the extended family at the time. “I even remember getting a lecture on BB-gun safety and not ‘being reckless like Johnny Meineker,’” the cousin recalled.

Meineker put together the book — writing on weekends as he listened to football games — at the request of his daughter, Kelly, so that her children could better know their grandfather.

“My daughter had asked me to put down stories about growing up,” he said. “We only see them three or four times a year.”

Meineker presented the self-published book to his oldest grandson at his high school graduation this spring, and then distributed the books to his other grandchildren as well.

“They loved it; they were shocked,” he said.

Two of the chapters — one about Tories hiding in the Helderbergs, and the other about keeping watch for air raids during World War II — have appeared in print on the Enterprise opinion pages.

The book includes some photographs from Meineker’s Altamont boyhood — a typical shot of the village’s baseball team, for instance — as well as some remarkable pictures taken by his uncle, Edwin Stein, “an official photographer for New York State,” Meineker said.

Stein documented scenes in each of the rural Helderberg Hilltowns, Meinker said. “I have the originals in albums my Aunt Mary gave me,” he said.

The book’s cast of characters are primarily Meineker’s family members: his father, who managed a lumberyard at the Port of Albany; his mother, a nurse at Altamont Elementary School and at St. Peter’s Hospital; and his younger brother.

Meineker’s grandfather owned Altamont Plumbing Supply on Maple Avenue, which sold televisions and refrigerators as well. “He was the oldest person in Altamont,” said Meineker. He died at 97.

Meineker’s Aunt Pearl Kelley, his father’s sister, was a teacher at the little red schoolhouse on the Bozenkill. That one-room schoolhouse has since been moved to the Altamont fairgrounds.

The book’s central character, though, is the village of Altamont itself. “It was the perfect place to grow up,” said Meineker. “It had a train that ran twice a day; it had a post office and three markets; it had two bowling alleys until one of them burned; it had a shoe-repair shop, a paint and wallpaper store; it had two barbershops, and a newspaper,” he said. “It had everything you wanted. You didn’t have to leave. And it had the mountains behind you to explore and learn from.”

He also said, “Everybody knew everybody. If I threw a ball and it went through a window, every mother in the village knew about it. You couldn’t get away with anything.”

Meineker’s family went to St. Lucy’s Roman Catholic Church, one of three churches in the village. He was well acquainted with the other two churches because he attended school there. He went to kindergarten and first grade at the Reformed Church and to second grade at the Lutheran Church.

He finished out his primary grades at the Kent House on Euclid Avenue, in the basement classroom. “They didn’t have enough room at Altamont High School for the elementary grades,” Meineker explained.

He said of moving about to different classrooms, “I thought it was great. It made the teachers have to think about what to do. You did a lot of activities outside the classroom.”

He remembers his sixth-grade teacher, Betty Spadaro, with particular fondness. “If a couple of the boys were fighting,” he said, she wouldn’t attempt to break it up. Rather, she kept big boxing gloves on hand and she’d have the boys put them on and then she’d act as their referee.

A young entrepreneur, Meineker was a paperboy with a route on Maple and Western avenues — a route he passed on to his younger brother. He had a side business too, emptying people’s coal ashes for them.

Meineker’s stories

His Altamont stories embrace childhood — like the hijynx described in his Christmas story — through the teenage years and on to early manhood.

“Perched on a Pole” describes a “serious crush” Meineker had on an Altamont girl when he was 15. He wanted to call her for a date but she said she had no phone.

“My heart was pounding, and I felt like Don Quixote ready to do the impossible quest,” he wrote. “I told her I would get her a phone and install it myself.”

Using intel he picked up from a trip his Boy Scout Troop, 51, made to the Altamont branch central office of the New York Telephone Company, near his home, and information from a friendly telephone installer, Meineker was able to patch in a line for his girlfriend. The phone didn’t ring and he didn’t know its number, but she could call him.

“For about a week or maybe two, she would call me and we would talk and arrange to meet for a soda,” he wrote. “After two weeks, she learned that she could dial anyone’s telephone number and soon after she was no longer calling me but everyone else.”

As a newly married young man — he wed in 1962 — Meineker and his wife rented an apartment in Guilderland Center. When a fire broke out across the street and volunteers rushed to the rescue, Meineker decided he should join the department so he could help his neighbors.

He describes with humor his initiation to the band of brothers as well as the horror of being in the midst of a burning barn. “I heard a loud explosion and could feel the heat of a fire ball following me, now running for my life to the front of the barn,” he wrote.

The Helderberg wilderness near the village enters into Meineker’s stories, too. Some chapters detail the history of caves in Thacher Park that Meineker and his boyhood friends liked to explore. A chapter titled  “Climbing Indian Ladder” is illustrated with photographs taken by Edwin Stein of Helderberg hikers in the early 1900s.

“Sitting at home with an electronic device or video game can’t compare to the thrill and excitement a teenage boy can experience from the challenges and wonderment of exploring these natural wonders,” writes Meineker.

One story details a February 1953 hiker to High Point, now part of Thacher Park in the Helderbergs, just above the village of Altamont. Meineker and his friend were not fazed by places with hip-deep snow in the pine woods. They continued their quest despite wind and swirling snow, falling with large flakes.

“The upper wind speed was much more noticeable as tree limbs swayed back and forth, creating an eerie, uncomfortable feeling,” Meineker wrote. “Having come this far, we had no intention of turning pack.”

Meanwhile their worried parents formed a search party but their car got mired in a ditch. The intrepid hikers returned to their homes in the dark with nine or 10 inches of snow on the ground.

“When my mom and dad finally walked through the door, they found me sitting in front of the TV not knowing where everybody had gone, waiting for someone to make dinner before heading out to my 7:30 p.m. Boy Scout meeting,” he wrote. “My mom and dad were visibly exhausted from the ordeal, while I thought it was just another fun-filled vacation day.”

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John Meineker’s 80-page paperback, “As I Recall: A Collection of True Stories,”  sells for $9.95. Signed copies of the book are available at The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Guilderland or through emailing him at [email protected].

Books are also available through the printer, at thebookpatch.com, and through Amazon Kindle.

Meineker says he is more interested in sharing his stories and pieces of local history than he is in making money from his book.