Archive » July 2015 » Columns

by John R. Williams

A few days of summer so far, and on Tuesday, July 21, the Old Men of the Mountain met at the Home Front Café in Altamont.

Tuesday morning, the OFs had the honor to break in a new waitress (new at least to the OMOTM) under fire. When the early birds arrived, the waitress was pretty as a picture; however, midway through taking care of all these OFs, her hair was soon disheveled and the poor girl looked harried.

She probably was thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?” Though harried, she kept her composure throughout. Good job. After the OFs clear out, it is time for the mirror and a re-do.

The OMOTM are not hicks

The Helderberg Hilltowns are not the biggest towns in the world but that does not mean the city people can come up and stomp all over us, and it is not all city people, but enough to generate a stereotype.

Conversely, there are enough of the people from the hills that don’t understand the rules of the cities and earn the stereotype of “hicks from the hills.” The city folk are stereotyped as the “bullies and know-it-alls from the city.”

When, in fact, neither stereotype is true. We are defending the OMOTM from falling into the stereotypical category of being from the hills. Many OFs are from the hills, but the OFs are definitely not hicks.

Constant care required

An OF inquired of the OFs from the Berne area about the bridge repair in that village. They all agreed it was necessary and has to be done, along with repairing the road through the village.

The OFs were of the opinion that the bridge should be done by late August, and the road is to be repaired to the county line. The OFs who are familiar with construction said, while under construction, there are inconveniences, but people have to work around this while the construction is going on.

If there weren’t any maintenance on our highways and byways, they would become so dangerous that no one would use that particular stretch of road that is falling apart, and, if they did, they would be taking their life in their own hands. The same thing holds true with buildings as small as a tent and up to the size of the largest skyscraper — all of them require constant care.

The OFs from the Berne area said that the state has gone one step beyond because on the signs stating that the bridge is out and detours are in place, there is a notice that the “Berne Store Is Open.”  It is rare for the state to do something like this to facilitate one business.

The Berne OFs said the state sends travelers on basically state roads so their directions are sometimes quite convoluted.  Case in point is heading east on Route 443. The state, the OFs think, is required to use state highways.

In this case the state takes the traveler on Route 1 (Switzkill Road) to Cole Hill Road and back down to Route 443. This is a hike. The “locals” find Irish Hill to Cole Hill, to Route 443 much shorter.

Getting to events going on in Berne is not that much of a hassle using the local connections. If coming into town, particularly east on Route 443, just keep going until you get to where the event is; for instance, if it is at the school or even a garage sale.

Coming from the  west on Route 443, it is necessary to head north on Route 156 at the bridge to Rock Road and loop around to Route 443 and go east back into town.  This is about a four-mile trip from the bridge, and a three-mile trip cutting over Rock Road if approaching Berne going south on Route 156 from Knox.

There!  The OFs hope this helps.

Inventions to come

The OFs were wishing someone would develop a grass for lawns that grows to the height of about 3 inches and no taller. It also would have to be inexpensive, impervious to weeds, and survive during hot, dry spells.

Those who think everything that can be invented has been invented are off the mark. The OFs believe that the kids today have a whole field of inventions to come up with that the OFs haven’t even thought about, and the grass is one of them, only the OFs have thought of that one. 

The OFs included in this part of the conversation the trip to Pluto, and what other plans are in the works. One OF mentioned that the trip to Pluto was done with technology that is nine years old.

Look how far we have come in those nine years. What a time to be six years old — space travel is within their grasp. Beam me up, Scotty!

Those OFs who made it to the breakfast at the Home Front and some brought their space suits, were: Roger Chapman, Robie Osterman, George Washburn, Miner Stevens, Bill Lichlater, Dave Williams, Bill Bartholomew, John Rossmann, Frank Pauli, Harold Grippen, Glenn Patterson, Mark Traver, Jim Heiser, Chuck Aleseio, Otis Lawyer, Jay Taylor, Roger Fairchild, Bob Benac (with his brother, Joe Ketzeko), Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, Roger Shafer (with his son Michael, and grandkids),  Gerry Irwin, Mace Porter, Bob Lassome, Ted Willsey, Henry Whipple, Bill Rice, Elwood Vanderbilt, Harold Grippen, Joe Loubier, and me.

Location:

Post date: 
July 31, 2015

Tags:

Print this page

— Photo by Elinor Wiltshire

The Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh in 1963 visiting the stony grey soil of the family farm in Inniskeen, County Monaghan. He died four years later at 63. His often-quoted poem “Stony Grey Soil” has been read for many decades by every child attending elementary schools in Ireland.

Anyone who’s Irish or Irish-American or has an interest in the Irish soul, and even those who don a T-shirt on St. Paddy’s Day beaming “Kiss me, I’m Irish” while chanting, “The Wild Colonial Boy” over endless jars of porter, will want to include on this summer’s reading list Anthony Cronin’s nonfiction “Dead as Doornails” published by Dublin’s Dolmen Press in 1976. 

In “Dead as Doornails,” the Irish poet, biographer, novelist Cronin has produced a literary page-turner that reads like a murder mystery. The mystery is the reader wonders how long the cream of Dublin’s literary crop — who hung out at McDaid’s, that famous public house at 3 Harry Street, for purposes of stout, whiskey, and conversation — can keep a step ahead of the Grim Reaper of drink.

Cronin chronicles seven writers and painters whom he knew and “hung with,” even living with some, and who were an integral part of the social and literary fabric of Dublin during the decades following World War II.

He shows the greatest affinity for the great Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh; the great Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright, Brendan Behan; and the great Irish post-modern (a forerunner) novelist, Brian O’Nolan (aka Flann O’Brien, aka Myles na gGopaleen, when he wrote his column “Cruiskeen Lawn” for the Irish Times from 1940 until his death in ’66).

In the claustrophobic literary culture of Dublin, shaped by a scarcity of accolades and the ha’pennies needed to pay the rent, Kavanagh, Behan, and O’Brien went at each other with bladed tongues.

They acknowledged each other’s genius but rarely to each other’s face; their idiosyncratic suffering did not allow for convivial graciousness. Kavanagh, worst of all, could not stand a competitor of any ilk.

He eventually sold his friendship with an admiring and unconditionally supportive Cronin, for 30 pieces of ego. It’s painful to hear Cronin rue the loss of what could have been but there was a part of Kavanagh filled with bilious envy.

That the three refused to let each other up for air is evident in Myles’s column on Kavanagh’s “Spraying the Potatoes,” a poem published a short time before in the Times. Myles says, “I am no judge of poetry — the only poem I ever wrote was produced when I was body and soul in the gilded harness of Dame Laudanum — but I think Mr Kavanaugh [sic] is on the right track here. Perhaps the Irish Times, timeless champion of our peasantry, will oblige us with a series in this strain covering such rural complexities as inflamed goat-udders, warble-pocked shorthorn, contagious abortion, non-ovoid oviducts and nervous disorders among the gentlemen who pay the rent.”

Kavanagh, who came to the city from the family farm in Monaghan where he started writing rustic poems as a young man, knew that, when Dublin’s literary elite saw these words, many of whom graduated from Trinity or University College Dublin and considered themselves sophisticates, would relish Myles’s keeping a bumpkin in his place. The city smart-aleck Behan called Kavanagh a “culchie.”

But Kavanagh was able to escape the tag through a whole new order of poems that appeared in the mid-’50s typified by “Canal Bank Walk.” And his earlier rustic takes, such as “Stony Grey Soil,” “Shankoduff,” and “A Christmas Childhood,” have been part of every Irish child’s formation for decades. Every student from Dublin to Bantry has read his work and, should you meet one such in a pub some night, he will stand and recite with pride the full “Stony Grey Soil.”  

Brendan Behan, openly gay and not bashful to talk about his exploits, came upon sudden fame when his play “Quare Fellow” was produced in Dublin’s Pike Theatre in 1954 though “quare” then did not have the pith it has today.

Originally called “The Twisting of Another Rope,” the drama chronicles the ignominies of prison life culminating in the execution of “the quare fellow,” a character never seen on stage. With respect to the demeaning insult of prison, Behan was writing from experience (see infra).     

Born into a staunch republican family — his uncle was Peadar Kearney who wrote the “Irish National Anthem” — Behan left school at 13 to work in the family house-painting business.

At 16, he joined the Irish Republican Army and on a whacked-out whim conducted an unauthorized mission to blow up the Liverpool docks but the plot was thwarted. When the police found him heeled with explosives, he was sentenced to a borstal in the UK for three years. He wrote about his bid in “Borstal Boy,” which, when it appeared in 1958, became a sensation.

But, long before the book, a year after he got out of the borstal, in 1942, he was sentenced to 14 years for being involved in the killing of two detectives of the Garda Síochána. He was released after three years through a general amnesty that had been declared.

At McDaid’s and elsewhere Behan was always on, performing extended parlor pieces for the gathered crowd and even an audience of one when there was only one to be had, so great was his undiminished thirst for admiration.

He was so vicious in his sallies against Kavanagh that, when the Monahan poet alone in McDaid’s or elsewhere saw him coming, he hid or left the premises altogether. Cronin witnessed these encounters, which he treats with alternating doses of mirth and sadness.

Brian O’Nolan, who had his own covey of friends in McDaid’s and nearby pieds-à-terre, was no less a part of the goings-on. For years, he paid the rent working as a civil servant while writing for the Times. When he was “forced” to retire and a scant government pension did not allow ends to meet — the daily slog of drink a major drain — he sought a job as a clerical worker at Trinity but was denied.

Fate is crueler than anyone knows because decades later O’Nolan’s works were taught at the university, principally “At-Swin-Two-Birds,” published in 1939, the novel some say was the first postmodern piece written and a classic still. The Guardian ranks it 64 of the 100 best of all time.

O’Nolan was not around to see the kudos. Drink took him at 54; Behan it got at 41; and Kavanagh, the ancient of them, at 63, his belching stomach rarely tamed by the box of bicarb he carried on his person.

Cronin’s high-Irish Ciceronian sentences in “Dead as Doornails” are a delight to engage at every subordinate clause. He tells a riveting story.

There’s time to get a copy and sit beneath an umbrella on the beach refusing to talk to anyone until you’ve seen how the flames of these bright lights of Ireland’s soul flicker and expire.

Post date: 
July 17, 2015

Print this page

I am not a coffee drinker. Never have been. I like the smell of freshly ground coffee and fresh coffee beans but that’s about it.
My wife, on the other hand, is a devoted coffee drinker. She knows what she likes, brews her own using old technology (no Keurigs here, folks), and needs it each day to get her day started right, and I respect that.

But there is a problem here in paradise and that is the subtle, but always lurking destructive power of coffee. I mean this stuff doesn’t need to be weaponized; it already is.

Take coffee’s destructive staining power. A few drops on lighter colored material can destroy it for all time. White blouse? Wrecked. Beige pants or skirt? Destroyed. And light colored auto upholstery? Time for a new car.

And if you really want to do damage, drop a really hot cup of coffee on someone wearing white pants. They’ll be incapacitated by third-degree crotch burns and their pants will be destroyed for all time. If we could come up with smart coffee bombs, wars would be over in minutes.

And why does spilled coffee leave brown marks everywhere for a five-block radius? It’s worse than changing the toner on a copier while wearing a white tuxedo.

Coffee is also hell on electronics. How many laptops, tablets, keyboards, cell phones and other electronic devices have been rendered dead by the judicious application of spilled coffee? It brings a new dimension to cyber warfare.

If we could replace all the coffee cups in secret computer installations with ones that spill or explode when sent a remote signal, we could knock out the entire technical infrastructure of a country, army, or company in one, fell swoop. And we’d also wreck all those clothes too!

What about the human dimension? Imagine, if you will, what would happen to Seattle, LA, or NYC if all the coffee there were suddenly secretly replaced by decaf. You’re talking lethargy on an epic scale. Whole cities brought to their knees by a lack of chemical stimulation.

Traffic in LA would grind to a halt due to thousands of commuters asleep at the wheel. Seattle traffic (as bad as LA these days) would also grind to a halt (The Space Needle elevator would never rise again).

Companies would have to close due to no conscious employees. Government offices would be paralyzed, schools would shut down (no teacher can function in a class of 28 without that java jolt) and Starbucks, well, there’d be riots of zombie-like patrons who would pile up like snoring cordwood, blocking the doors. Mass hysteria!

But there would be some bright spots. Tea drinkers, like myself, would suddenly be operating in a quiet, calm world. We’d get a lot more done, as our phones would be silent and our e-mail boxes empty.

Social media, long driven by over-caffeinated thumbs would be a ghost town of cute kitties and no tweets. Countries like England would suddenly rise to world dominance, as they’d be the only places with functional populations.

People worry about legalizing pot and yet they daily consume brown liquid dynamite. It makes you wonder what the real story is.

Was coffee put here by aliens who like watching our planet size anthill writhe in a constant state of mass hyperactivity? Was it created by world leaders looking for a way to unnaturally motivate otherwise calm, relaxed populations in order to extract more productivity? Or was it Juan Valdez and his famous donkey from the old coffee commercials in the ’70s who were just trying to get revenge on the greedy gringos?

If you look at places on Earth where coffee isn’t widely used, you generally see calmer, saner and more well adjusted populations. The Amazonian pygmies seem like a mellow bunch as do the aboriginal peoples in Australia. You definitely don’t see too many Buddhist monks lining up for a double-shot espresso every day before morning meditation.

I understand the need many people have for a morning boost each day. Many western nations have done studies that show their people don’t get enough sleep on a regular basis. Thus, the need for coffee.

But, what if people suddenly figured out that getting enough sleep and working fewer hours was the answer? Then they’d start taking more time for relaxation and exercise. This could all move them into a mental and physical space that doesn’t require artificial stimulation. Oh dear, what am I saying?

Starbucks and Dunkin’ would fail, leaving thousands of empty, ugly buildings dotting the landscape from LA to Boston. There would be fewer empty cups at the sides of the road; clothes would be less stained; thumbs, less jittery; and people calmer. In other words, the end of western civilization as we know it.

Where do I sign up?

Editor’s note: Michael Seinberg says he has probably tried coffee twice in his life and, thanks to years of therapy and medication, he’s mostly over the experience.

Post date: 
July 17, 2015

Print this page

by John R. Williams

Tuesday, July 7, was almost a summer morning when the Old Men of the Mountain met at the Duanesburg Diner in Duanesburg. It is fun to watch the OFs pile into the restaurant of the week.

For once, this scribe was early enough to see most of the OFs arrive; when the OFs entered the diner, they were greeted by name with the typical, rhetorical comments along with the, “Good Mornings,” and the “Heys.” Faces light up with the well wishes of the morning.

The OFs who garden were in full bloom Tuesday morning — the basic conversation was on how well their gardens are doing. One topic, though, was a little different and that was how the gardeners are now keeping the deer from using their gardens as smorgasbords.

The new way (and the gardeners claim this works) is special lights. One gardener mentioned that his lights are continually changing colors, and another gardener said his lights were flashing lights set at the height that the average deer’s eyes would be.

This noiseless and no-chemical new gardening gizmo sounds like an effective and harmless way to control the problem. Now all the OF gardeners have to do is discourage the rabbits, mice, voles, and moles.

Beef beefs

The OFs segued from gardens and pesticides to organically grown products, especially beef. The OFs said this (organic beef) is very hard to do unless whoever is growing the beef makes their own grain from their own corn, wheat, and other grains that are also organically grown.

One OF said, “Go ahead and eat the chemicals.  How else are we going to supply food for the world without bumper crops? Eating the chemicals will develop a strain of people resistant to the chemical and become stronger because of it. We can’t be afraid of progress.”

“The people of the world are growing exponentially,” another OF said, “And therefore food has to keep pace. More people, less land, means the world is going to have to go up, not spread out. Organic is not going to cut it. Right now, organic is only for the higher income people because it does cost more.”

Boy, there are arguments on both sides!   

Hot potato

The OFs discussed (and to some it is their home away from home) the new location of the Schoharie County jail. All the OFs can agree with the locals that the location currently under discussion gives no consideration to those who will live in the proximity of the jail, and, as one OF said, it is not just a few, but this particular location will affect many homes and people.

There is much vacant land in Schoharie that is out of the floodplain, and there is no rule that says the jail has to be in town or anywhere near it, just someplace in the county. This is a political hot potato according to the OFs, and that potato just came out of the oven.

One OF ventured money and politics will win out over common sense and the will of the people — it always does.

Stable staffers

The OFs noticed that, at most of the restaurants the OFs visit, the staff remains the same year after year. Either the owners are good to work for, or the pay is good. A few of the restaurants do seem to have a rapid turnover, so the OFs think there is a hitch in the git-along at the establishments with the quick turnovers.

The OFs who made it to the Duanesburg Diner in Duanesburg and ate their sausage, bacon, home fries, and eggs with no concern about being organic, were: Roger Chapman, Miner Stevens, Robie Osterman, Dave Williams, Bill Bartholomew, Chuck Aelesio, Mark Traver, Glenn Patterson, John Rossmann, Harold Guest, Lou Schenck, Mace Porter, Gerry Irwin, Jack Norray, Joe Loubier, Bob Lassome, Ted Willsey, Bob Benninger, Bob Fink, Art Frament, Bob Benac, Joe Ketzeo, Roger Fairchild, Herb Sawotka, Duncan Bellinger, Elwood Vanderbilt, Gil Zabel, Harold Grippen, Mike Willsey, Gerry Chartier, and me.

BIG CROWD ON JUNE 30

On Tuesday, June 30, the Old Men of the Mountain met at the “Your Way Café” in Schoharie with 42 OFs at the breakfast.  It was one of the largest groups of OFs to date.                          

When at church or at a meeting at the Lodge, or Legion, the chatter of friends greeting each other as they gather for the meeting is what it is like at the breakfast. There is one exception, though; no one has to shut up because church is going to start, or the meeting is going to get underway.

The OFs can chatter about this or that until each group decides they have had enough, their bellies are full, and it is time for them to go. There are a few OFs who hang around until it is time for lunch. No one is hollered at, chastised, or criticized; they all have had their say, and everybody is caught up, and they are ready for the day.

Now take 42 OFs chattering away with many of then requiring hearing aids but not wearing them, and it becomes a lot of fun with a lot of laughs because many think they hear what is going on but only get half of it and then they pretend they got it all.

No pity party

Anyone who wants to become encouraged about their physical condition or the problems they are having health-wise should come and watch the OFs enter the restaurants and then try and listen in on their conversation.

Yeah, many are with canes and have their problems, but the OMOTM are not a group of pity partiers. One OF came in chipper and ready to talk and, when entering the restaurant, just mentioned, “Oh, I had a heart attack last week, and was in the hospital, for something else and didn’t even notice that I had one.”

The OFs have many credos — one of which is: If you are lame but can move, get up and get out.

Like on June 30, the OFs talked about the two fellows who escaped from the prison in Dannemora. The OFs are glad that both were not shot.

With at least one able to talk, there will be many holes filled in about how they made their escape and who helped and who didn’t. One OF mentioned that, with this type of information, the book and the movie will be much better.

Another OF said, if the movie is made with a high quality director and actors, he would go to see it, especially if it is shot on location like the movie “Iron Weed.” Many of the OFs have been in that part of the North Country and in the small towns up where it is really upstate.

The OFs were hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, climbing the peaks, bac packing, and especially canoeing the lakes and streams. These are big draws to the North Country. One OF mentioned there are some great places to eat in that part of the state also — nothing fancy, just real food, OMOTM food.

When junk becomes collectible

The OFs who go to flea markets often go not for the fleas but to see how much the junk, i.e., collectibles, they have in their barns is now worth. Some of the OFs go to auctions and antique stores for the same reason.

Much of what the OFs purchased to use years ago is now in antique shops. From lamps, to dishes, to picks and shovels, just about any toy and appliance they bought and kept 60 to 65 years ago is showing up in these places.

One OF said he has seen some of the stuff he has in his shed that he bought for one or two bucks is now worth one- or two-hundred bucks if in good shape.

We have mentioned before that, what some consider junk, someone else may consider collectibles. More than one OF comes home with more items from going to the transfer station (i.e. dump) than what he took from home.

One OF came home with a lawn mower that a guy was throwing away and this OF happened to be there and he asked the owner what was the matter with the mower, since it looked brand new.

The owner said, “Nothing is wrong but it mows too high and won’t go any lower.”

The OF looked at it and saw that the mower deck was as high up as it would go. The OF put it on the trailer and brought it home from the “transfer station” along with some other items he picked up there.  He adjusted the mower down, pulled the rope and away it went.

Hmmmm. What you can find at the dump — er –—transfer station, is all a matter of timing.        

Those OFs who attended the breakfast at the Your Way Café in Schoharie and are each thankful that the wife has not put him in an antique store with a for-sale sign on his forehead, were: Miner Stevens, Roger Chapman, Robie Osterman, George Washburn, Bill Bartholomew, David Williams, Glenn Patterson, Chuck Aelesio, Otis Lawyer, Mark Traver, John Rossmann, Harold Guest, Karl Remmers, Dick Ogsbury, Bob Snyder, Alvin Latham, Jim Heiser, Roger Shafer, Duncan Bellinger, Steve Kelly, Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, Mace Porter, Art Frament, Bob Benac, Herb Sawotka,  Joe Ketzko, Gerry Chartier, Don Wood, Warren Willsey, Mike Willsey, Bob Benninger, Bob Fink, Henry Whipple, Ted Willsey, Bob Lassome, Bill Krause, Gerry Irwin, Elwood Vanderbilt, Gil Zabel, Harold Grippen, and me.

Post date: 
July 17, 2015

Print this page

by Judy Rothstein

How do you motivate people? What is it that causes a person to take action, to take that first step? Specifically, in the case of volunteering for Community Caregivers, what will cause you to pick up the phone and call us?

I asked Mary Morrison, Caregivers’ transportation coordinator, to give me the names of eight to 10  women and men of  various ages  who have volunteered for CC. What motivated them might motivate you.

These are the questions I asked:

— 1. Age;

— 2. Date you started volunteering;

— 3.What services did you provide;

— 4. What was the impetus for you to call CC to look into volunteering; and

— 5. What would you say to someone who has expressed interest in CC to take the first step?

If the volunteer’s name is included, they have given permission. This is the first of a series to hear what some of our volunteers said.

When Judy Lenihan of Delmar was getting ready to retire, she “…was exploring a lot of options in planning retirement — docent at the Albany Institute of History and Art, ushering at one of our local theaters and I had been researching senior services in Bethlehem.”

One other activity, pre-retirement, occurred. She went to a job fair to see, as Judy put it, “what was available part time.”

At the job fair, Judy met Caregivers’ executive director at the time who explained, “Since our society is so mobile today, many families don’t have relatives to count on when they need help, and that is where CC can help.”

At this time, although she was still working, Judy learned about an opening for a transportation coordinator that allowed her to make calls evenings and weekend. (This job no longer exists for volunteers.)

 “It was a good fit for a while,” she said. After retirement, though, Judy wanted to do transportation for clients because it suited her “desire for flexibility.”

During this time period, I had met Judy and asked her to join the Volunteer Support Committee. Judy says that she has encouraged two of her friends to volunteer. She says, “Your personal invitation to join the VSC is what encouraged me to join the committee.”

What would Judy say to someone who has expressed interest in volunteering but hasn’t done anything yet?

“You can volunteer — as often as you want; there’s a no-guilt policy; rides for clients are important (not just seniors); there is joy in knowing that you are really helping clients access what they need due to a variety of circumstances; I enjoy meeting different, interesting people.”

Lastly, Judy says she’d ask a person who was contemplating volunteering what his or her biggest concern was. What is holding them back?

After a few years, Judy started in 2006, she became a client and received transportation services to chemo appointments. She said, “I would want to share what that meant to me.”

Take the step. Call 456-2898 to find out the date for the next orientation and what all the opportunities are.

Location:

Post date: 
July 16, 2015

Tags:

Print this page

by John R. Williams

On Tuesday, June 23, the Old Men of the Mountain met at the Country Café in Schoharie. The days are now getting shorter and many of the OFs have not really cleaned up from last winter, and supposedly summer is just getting is getting started.

The OFs think it is a lot more fun knowing each day is a day the sun is around a little longer than thinking each day the sun hides a little earlier.

Some of the OFs say it is because we are in the Northeast and right now we are the cool spot in the United States. A few OFs who have friends and relatives around the country are getting reports that it is hot: Florida, 103 degrees; Arizona, 110 degrees.

They can have it, a couple of OFs said, I will take my few days of 20 below, and the occasional blizzard rather than all that heat. So much for the weekly weather discussion.

The OFs gather around the table each Tuesday; on occasion the topic is food. Why not?

Tuesday morning, it was on veal and how some people enjoy that meat, while others consider the source of that meat and don’t understand how it is possible to eat meat of a calf. German Wiener Schnitzel is from the same meat, a calf.

Some thought that just knowing what it was those OFs are eating almost makes other OFs consider becoming a vegetarian. None went as far as a vegan.

Even those who thought eating veal was disgusting still enjoy a nice juicy steak. Then one OF brought up what is the big deal; in some countries, they eat cats and dogs.

Driving in the dark

The OFs brought up what they did when they were “teenagers” again. (This topic that its head out of the din on numerous occasions and it is these discussions that make most of the OFs wonder why they are still here.) This time, the tales were how the OFs drove on moonlit nights with their lights out.

The OFs like to couple no-headlight trips with how fast they could go in the dark and not hit anything. To the recollection of this scribe and the OFs, none of the OFs did hit anything.

The favorite places for these runs was the flats between Middleburgh and Schoharie; the other was the flats between Central Bridge and Sloansville. Just farm boys out having a little fun.

Farm boys of the 1940s and ’50s had lots of practice doing this on the farm, and it started at a real early age, like 10 or 11 years old, bringing in the last load of hay with an old Fordson tractor and that machine did not have lights. The YFs were only doing the same thing they did quite often just by working the farm only a little faster and, instead of the field road, the highway.

Actually, tractors had electric headlights before cars, and the tractors had radios before cars, too.

What if the power goes out?

The OFs regularly bring up the question: What will happen if there is a major power interruption and the power is off for many days? Those in the country could manage but what about all the people in the large cities?

The OFs say many city folks don’t know how to change a light bulb, and have no idea where water comes from; some think it miraculously flows from the tap. The question would be, if there were some kind of holocaust and this was not going to be just a short-time event, what do these people do?

Food, sanitation, water, medical services, transportation, the OFs wonder if there is any type of survival plan in effect to handle the situation if it ever came about. Like the OFs say: Just wondering.

Bumpkins rule

Even though, in the country, the OFs don’t make a ton of money, and quite often the work is hard and the people in the cities with their noses in the air have a tendency to look down on those who live above Route 84 as country bumpkins, the OFs say they don’t mind.

The OFs would rather be country bumpkins, than city slickers. As one OF said: It is the city slickers who want to take our guns away, and make all the rules that shut the farmers down.

One OF suggested that they are going the wrong way with guns. He thinks it should be a law everyone has to carry a gun, and it does not have to be concealed.

That way, if a robber or mugger tries anything, he should know the victim can shoot back.  Another OF said, if they are able to eliminate all guns, and even the police could not carry a weapon, the wackos would still find a way to commit mayhem.

Many people do not realize how easy it is to make a gun and a projectile, or Molotov cocktails, or pipe bombs. A complete wacko could charge into a public place with a machete.

How are you going to stop the attacker if no one has a weapon of some sort? The world has gone crazy, one OF said, and the wackos are winning. 

Those OFs who attended the breakfast at the Country Café in Schoharie and were eating regular food, like eggs and bacon, or pancakes, or French toast, and letting the strange stuff remain in the country of origin, were: Miner Stevens, Dave Williams, George Washburn, Bill Bartholomew, Chuck Aelesio, Glenn Patterson, Harold Guest, Roger Chapman, Robie Osterman, Mark Traver, Otis Lawyer, Frank Pauli, Jim Heiser, Steve Kelly, Roger Shafer, Ken Parks, Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, Mace Porter, Gerry Irwin, Bob Fink, Bob Benninger, Herb Sawobota, Bob Benac, Art Frament, Bob Lassome, Ted Willsey, Duncan Bellinger, Mike Willsey (who turned 89 on June 24, making him the oldest OF at the breakfast), Gerry Chartier, Harold Grippen, Elwood Vanderbilt, and me.      

Location:

Post date: 
July 6, 2015

Tags:

Print this page