Archive » January 2016 » Columns

It is already Jan. 19, and a Tuesday when the Old Men of the Mountain braved the wind and single-digit temperatures to meet at the Hilltown Café in Rensselaerville.

Wouldn’t you know it — Murphy’s Law applied. As good as the Hilltown Café is, it is the restaurant with the highest elevation the OFs have on their list, and Tuesday was the worst day of the year so far.

Two hands on the wheel or the vehicle could be blown into the ditch, and there the OFs would be stuck, with a temperature, figuring in wind chill, of 20-degrees below zero, in the middle of nowhere hoping another carload of OFs would come by and pick them up.

It’s wrong to be always right

The OFs found that it was time to pick on those who think that they are always right.  An argument between two people who think they know it all and who are always right the OFs consider a waste of time. Generally neither one is right.

The term “my way or the highway” is one phrase the OFs say fits right in this discussion. The OFs said we all know people like this.

One OF said, “Yeah, we have a room full of them right now.” This OF continued, “I know I am right on this. Which one of you guys is going to admit they are not right? Starting a sentence with, ‘I may be wrong, but “xyz”’ doesn’t count because it really means the OF thinks he is right.”

In most cases, there is more than one way to get a job done. As long as the job is done and it works, there is no right way; any way was the right way, the job is done, so what, who cares how it was done.

Travel with cash

One OF mentioned that, when traveling now, it is a good idea to bring some cash. Some banks and credit card companies will prevent you from using your card if the place where it is being used is an unusual situation for you.

One OF reported that his identity was stolen and the credit card was being used to buy lumber in California.  The credit-card company stopped payment right away, and would not honor it. The company contacted the OF to see if he was there and, of course, he was not there, he was still here in New York. The OF then obtained a new credit card, making the original one useless.

But the OF said, “Suppose you were in California and really needed to use the credit card and the bank put a stop on it and you had no cash?” Whoops — now what kind of hoops would you have to go through?

The OFs said that it is a good idea to notify your bank if you are going to travel and inform them of where you are going ahead of time. That sounded like a good idea to the OFs.

Diet advice

Another topic the OFs touched on Tuesday morning was diets. As long as the OFs have been around, diets (going on and off diets) have been a national source for conversations, articles, and cookbooks.

How many ways can you fry a potato? The OFs have found a diet that seems to work and was prescribed by a physician — just a regular M.D. trying to help someone lose weight. The OF relating the advice the doctor offered said that, on a plate of meat, potatoes, and veggies, start with the protein first, and then chew, chew, chew.

Many of the OFs have their breakfast gone in a manner of minutes. The reasoning is they like to eat their food while it is still warm. To these OFs, if you spend all your time chewing, it takes too long and the food cools off.

That may be part of the secret of this diet plan; if the food is cold the eater will eat less — hmmmm. Some OFs do chew their food but shape-wise, the mix of OFs who chew, or gulp proves nothing.

The other part of this diet is to drink water. Sounds simple enough to this scribe who might take heed; apparently, it is not what you eat but how you eat. Hey, it is worth a shot.

The last piece of advice was not about dieting but should be added to the regimen and that is: Get some exercise. How much and exactly what type of exercise was not mentioned.

This scribe thinks good long walks should be sufficient. Although, at the ages of some of the OFs, the arthritis, along with other aches and implants, prevent the OFs from these long walks.  Some sort of exercise for these OFs should be doctor recommended.

This brought up the notice of how many of the OFs use their elbows or hands to push on tables to get up. Some of the OFs prefer to sit in chairs with arms so they can use the elbows, and some even sit with their elbows and shoulders under pressure on the arms of chairs because they are unknowingly supporting their backs even while sitting down.

Tips on tipping

The OFs brought up the adding of 18 percent to the bill for a tip. The OFs say they don’t trust a lot of the managers of these restaurants to pass that money along.

The OFs would rather leave it or hand it to the server than have it automatically collected. A few of the OFs have been so disgusted in a restaurant (these OFs had to admit it was just a few times) that they left the traditional penny to indicate their displeasure.

Now, an OF said, the waiter or waitress can just sling the plate at you, and forget to even ask if everything is OK, or if you need anything else and they still get a tip. This is wrong, according to the OFs.

Most of the OFs leave a pretty good tip when they are happy and now they won’t even get that chance.

The OFs wonder what planet these politicians live on. Social Security saw no increases this year because the cost of living has not risen — say what?  Have the people who run that governmental department been in a grocery store lately?  The OFs doubt it. How this got into talking about tips, this scribe does not know.

The OMOTM that were at the Hilltown Café in Rensselaerville and being served by a waitress with a ready smile and laugh along with proficiency that earned her money and tips were: Roger Chapman, Bill Lichliter, George Washburn, John Rossmann, Robie Osterman, Harold Guest, Chuck Aelesio, Glenn Patterson, Mark Traver, Lou Schenck, Gerry Irwin, Mace Porter, Jack Norray, Bill Herzog, Jim Rissacher, Bill Rice, Henry Whipple, Mike Willsey, Ted Willsey, Elwood Vanderbilt, Harold Grippen, Wayne Gaul, and me.

Here's how it starts: You finish a 5K run and they hand you a commemorative event T-shirt. Then you go to the motorcycle store and see a great new T-shirt design that you just have to have.

Soon after, there's an open house at the local hardware store where you get yet another T-shirt. Of course a popular reward for volunteering for anything is a T-shirt. The next thing you know, your drawers and cabinets are so full the back or bottom is ready to burst. T-shirt overload has set in.

This happened to me recently, and it was so bad I had to finally take action to cull the herd. My lovely wife let me know of a family in need due to a devastating fire.

So I sorted out all my tees and selected 50 I no longer wanted. These would go to some folks who could really use them, so that was good. Even with this many removed, I still have all my drawers, cabinets, and closet shelves full, believe it or not.

Yes, I really did have a lot of T-shirts. They seem to be attracted to me just like mosquitoes.

The funny thing is, even though I'm very selective about bringing a new tee home — I have to really like the design or organization behind it — I'm the exact opposite when deciding which ones to wear at any given time. Most often, I just reach into the drawer and grab the first one I get my hands on.

This of course leads to some awkward situations — like wearing the BMW shirt to the Harley Davidson dealer and vice-versa. But it is what it is. Heck, it's only a T-shirt.

Sometimes the sheer happenstance in my T-shirt wearing selection process is a good thing. One time I had one of my many Norton (a long-gone but sorely missed British motorcycle marque) tees on in a museum, and a guy stopped me. We had a very long and enjoyable conversation that happened only because I was wearing that shirt. So that was good.

But, after wearing my bright red “I don't need Viagra, I'm Italian” T-shirt to my kid's school open house one time, I now at least try to make sure I'm not wearing anything odd or embarrassing to certain events. I must be getting older.

T-shirts are like bumper stickers for people. For every wild and outrageous bumper sticker, there is a T-shirt to match. I like funny ones for sure, but I have no desire to say anything political or controversial on my T-shirt.

Having said that, if they can sell you a T-shirt, then they should let you wear it, not turn around and have your arrested like what happened at Crossgates Mall a few years ago. That's just ridiculous.  

My two favorite T-shirts were purchased in Manhattan many, many years ago. The first one was short-sleeved and blue, with the saying, “Frankly Scallop, I don't give a Clam” on the front. At the time, I just found that so funny and clever, I had to have it. I wore that thing for a long time but I don't know whatever happened to it.

The other one was a long-sleeved ZZ Top concert tee that I bought on the street outside of Madison Square Garden after one of ZZ Top’s concerts. I wore that thing until it was literally a rag, and I still use parts of it to polish my bikes and cars. I really loved that one.

I've gone to a lot of quilt shops with my wife. She does some quilting when she has time, and it's fun to look at the often exquisite designs skilled quilters can produce. We've been in stores and shops where you have to put on white gloves before they'll even let you look at them.

What I'd like to do is have my wife take some of my favorite old T-shirts and make some really nice quilts out of them. She could do one on motorcycles, one on music, etc. I doubt she'll have time any time soon to even start one but it's nice to dream about.

As I get older, I don't wear T-shirts as much as I used to (which was all the time). These days, I prefer flannel shirts with pockets in the front. Those pockets are so handy for eyeglasses, Lotto tickets, etc., and I like having sleeves much of the time as well.

Still, if I go to an event or shop and see a new T-shirt I like I'll often buy it out of force of habit. Some of them are really nice, like ones with exploded views of engines and things like that. I can't resist those.

I've seen places on the Internet where you can get T-shirts made up in bulk for as little as $2 to $3 per shirt. That is so cheap that, if I were a small-business owner, I'd get a ton of them made up and just give them away. What better way to spend your advertising dollars?

People love anything free and that T-shirt you just gave away can give you free advertising all over the country and even the world. I know for a fact I've learned about new shops, products, and places to go from reading other peoples T-shirts. What a great way to advertise.

The only thing I don't love about T-shirts is how fast they tend to accumulate. Maybe I should practice my woodworking skills and build another cabinet or put up more shelves to hold the new ones. That's always fun, and I can even wear a T-shirt while doing the building. Of course, I could just stop buying T-shirts, entering races, and volunteering, but what fun would that be?

My first experience with Acadia National Park on Mount Desert Island in Maine was in the summer of 1987 when I went as a graduate student to the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor for a course in the island’s geologic foundations.  I was assigned a dorm room in a refitted mansion from Bar Harbor’s Victorian heydays, one of several on the college’s campus.

With the enigmatic name of “Seafox,” the building sat on a low cliff right above Frenchman Bay and had a view out over the cluster of fir-tree crowned, rocky islands known as the Porcupines to the far shore of the Schoodic Peninsula and the Gulf of Maine beyond it.

It is a stunning view, and it evoked in me a line from John Denver’s ballad “Rocky Mountain High”:  “…Comin’ home to a place he’d never been before.”

Mount Desert Island — the locals insist on pronouncing the middle word “dessert,” as in baked Alaska — is roughly 12 by 17 miles and shaped like a huge lobster claw.  Its interior is rugged:  30 or so named peaks with steep slopes and barren, wind-blasted summits that belie their fairly low elevations, making them seem far higher than they really are and posing a challenge to even experienced climbers.

The glacially-sculpted valleys between them are thick with deciduous trees — oaks, maples, and birches — as well as balsams, spruces, and other conifers.  One mountain-bordered valley called Somes Sound is a deep, briny body of water with an uncanny resemblance to Lake George; it is Maine’s only fiord, a U-shaped glacially-cut valley filled with sea water.

The ocean water surrounding Mount Desert Island — MDI for short — is achingly cold, and even at the climax of a hot summer it is unusual for it to get above 55 degrees; tourists visiting an MDI beach for anything more than a very brief, bracingly cold dip are usually well-advised to head inland to one of the island’s numerous ponds and lakes which commonly reach 70 degrees by August.

Waves meet bedrock

But most visitors to the island’s ocean beaches are not there for swimming: They are there to take in the stunning scenery that results when the powerful waves come in off the Gulf of Maine and crash into the hard bedrock of the island.  It is mostly granite, but in a few places it is made up of hard sedimentary rock and a metamorphic rock called schist.

All of these rock types are very ancient, the youngest being from the Devonian period — roughly 400 million years old, while the oldest — the schist — dates from the Cambrian and Ordovician times, roughly 550 million years in age.  When the powerful Atlantic waves meet the bedrock of Mount Desert Island, the results are what the tourist brochures call “eye-popping.”

And fortunately, some of the most spectacular are easily viewed from Acadia’s Park Loop Road, which skirts a long section of the coast before heading into the fragrant forest of interior Mount Desert Island.

Every high school student is familiar with the diagram in the Earth Science Reference Tables showing the relationship between the velocity of water and its consequent ability to move rock particles.  To describe it simply, the higher the yearly average velocity of a stream or a wave, the larger the particles it can move.

Very slow-moving water — a meter (roughly one yard) per second or less — can transport tiny particles such as silt, clay, and sand, and some diminutive pebbles; but as the water’s average velocity increases to 4 or 5 meters per second or higher, it develops the ability to transport increasingly huge boulders, and sometimes to hammer away at bedrock, leaving nothing but sheer cliffs rising from the sea.

“Sand Beach”

Given the island’s location off the coast of Maine, exposing much of it to the full power of the ocean, it is not surprising that sandy beaches are uncommon on MDI.  In fact, there are just two, and one is artificial, with truckloads of sand required every few years to keep up with the ocean’s erosive power to take it away.  But the other is natural, and it affords one of the most breathtaking views on the island.

Named perhaps a bit too literally “Sand Beach,” it sits on the side of the island that faces directly east making it a tempting target for the huge waves that roll in off the Atlantic all the year around.  But Sand Beach is what geographers call a “pocket beach.”

It sits tucked back into a broad, shallow valley, protected partially on its east side by the craggy peninsula called “Great Head” and to its south by a large rocky shoal known as “Old Soaker.” Against both of these features, powerful waves break and lose much of their power.

Thus they are unable to blast away completely the sand that ends up on the beach, either washed down from higher areas on the island or transported along the coast by off-shore currents.  Probably the singular most popular visitor draw on the island, it offers in summer a gorgeous place to sunbathe, picnic, and perhaps to test one’s ability to withstand the numbing but bracing waters without fear of the ocean’s ability to create crushing waves and rip currents.

Safe haven

The picturesque village of Bar Harbor is located on the edge of Frenchman’s Bay, named for the explorer Samuel De Champlain.  The bay has been known since the days of sailing ships as a safe haven from the wild Atlantic waves.

Still, not far off the coast the surrounding waters are very deep, and in spite of the existence of a scattering of islands and an artificial breakwater, relatively strong waves frequently break against Bar Harbor’s shores, washing away small sediments such as silt and sand but leaving larger ones such as pebbles in place.

The village sits on the sedimentary sandstone and siltstone bedrock known as the “Bar Harbor formation.”  When the rock is eroded by waves, it tends to break down in layers, which in turn weather into small, flat fragments, resulting in what is known as a “shingle beach.”

During times of accelerated wave velocity, such as in a storm, the fragments clatter against each other, becoming smooth from the grinding and producing a haunting sound.  Those who remember Matthew Arnold’s beautiful poem “Dover Beach” from their school days may recall that it was just such sounds on an English beach that inspired his philosophical musings.

Given the fact that vast stretches of Mount Desert Island have harder bedrock than underlies Bar Harbor and are exposed to waves more powerful than those at the village, it follows that many of the island’s beaches are scenically rugged, especially along the east coast of MDI, both north and south of Sand Beach.   In these locations, waves are on average powerful enough the year around to wash away all but the largest sediments.

Little Hunter’s Beach

A number of cobble beaches have formed, with some of the sediments produced directly from their underlying bedrock, and vast quantities were transported there by the great glaciers that covered the island 20,000 years ago.  A particularly photogenic example is Little Hunter’s Beach, named for a stream that spills down and into the ocean from the high forest looming above the beach.

The rounded cobbles that bury the bedrock several meters deep here come from numerous  points to the beach’s north, many from inland Maine.  They are of many kinds and brilliant colors:  granite, basalt, schist, and other rock types, rounded and polished by centuries of wave erosion.

There is a direct relationship between the force of the waves and the steepness of a beach surface, so traversing Little Hunter’s is a challenge, akin to walking on an enormous, slanted pile of billiard balls. Like Sand Beach, Little’s Hunter’s is also a pocket beach, tucked back a couple of hundred feet into the landscape — but Little Hunter’s faces open ocean, and only the distant Cranberry Islands somewhat lessen the waves’ power to remove sediments.

Hence the beach is made largely of cobbles, with smaller pebbles visible only at the waterline at low tide, when wave energy is often much lower. The beach is bordered by woods filled with balsam firs, spruces, and bayberry, and the cold breeze that blows over it carries their fragrance for great distances.

Powerful waves

A few miles north of Little Hunter’s is a section of coast open to the full fury of the Atlantic and here are found what geologists call “high energy” beaches. In these areas, the waves have sufficient energy to leave behind nothing but boulders or have blasted away all sediments and left massive cliffs rising starkly from the raging ocean waters.

A boulder-strewn beach that is easily visible from the Park Loop Road is called “Monument Cove,” a recess cut back a couple of hundred feet into the bedrock, which consists of the beautiful deep-pink Cadillac Mountain Granite, forming 60-foot cliffs that tower above a jumble of boulders, some a meter or more in diameter.

It can take waves moving 1,000 centimeters per second — over 30 feet — to move rocks of that size; but the rounded and smoothed appearance of the rocks testifies to waterflow of that power, providing a spectacle of furious waves and foam and the roar of the sea during the occasional off-shore hurricane or one of the many winter storms that pound the Maine coast.

And yet — areas of Maine’s coast can be subjected to even greater wave velocities, and the stretch near Anemone Sea Cave is a sobering example. Anemone Cave harbors a population of sea anemones, in addition to sea stars, sponges, and other delicate life, and to protect it the National Park Service has long stopped publicizing its location.

However, that location makes it hazardous to humans as well.  The water immediately off the shore here plunges to great depths, permitting enormous waves to blast away at the coast with very little frictional drag from the bottom.  The result is that, in this stretch of Mount Desert Island, there is no beach in the conventionally understood sense of the word at all.

Instead, there are high cliffs rising directly out of the sea, featuring precipitous drops, and a combination of the relentless forces of frost action in winter and the rhythmic, endless surges of giant waves have blasted out a sea cave.  Such caves are relatively rare on the east coast of the United States, but common farther north and on the west coasts of both the United States and Canada where waters tend to be deeper and waves more powerful the year around.

Great diversity

Mount Desert Island has long been known to naturalists and oceanographers as a tremendous outdoor laboratory where creatures ranging in size from tiny ones such as plankton to far larger ones such as whales and a spectacular variety of plants may be studied; to geologists, it offers beautiful examples of all of the major rock types and the forces that from ancient times have created and weathered and eroded them.

But the island has also for many centuries drawn a great diversity of visitors as well:  Native American Indians fishing the rich waters, sailing ships seeking a safe harbor during storms, and city-dwellers looking to escape summer heat. But it has also drawn lovers of the island’s natural beauty and artists seeking to capture the astounding landscapes created when the angry ocean meets rock.

On the last Tuesday of year 2015, Dec. 29, the Old Men of the Mountain met at the Duanesburg Diner in Duanesburg. This was the first day that the OFs have even had a hint of winter driving.

Early in the morning, the roads to the Duanesburg Diner had some snow, and it was sleeting by the time the OFs who made it to Duanesburg and were fed. When the time came for the OFs to head home, it was not bad at all.

This scribe discussed the column with a published writer who reads the column but lives waaaay out of the area; he said he understands the problem of writing the column with a semblance of freshness because of the redundancy of conversations the OFs must have. Which, to the OFs, are not redundant, but variations of topics that have been covered many times before.

This makes reporting the fodder fed to the scribe by the OFs difficult. However, it is not unique to the scribe because he, too, is an OF and it all seems relevant and new to him.

One point the scribe failed to bring up in the conversation with the author, is that much of the chatter of the OMOTM is on aging and the problems that tag along with getting older and how the OFs cope. The scribe was taught many years ago the best way to learn anything and retain it was through repetition.

In that regard (and the scribe cites this as an example) the discussion of ticks in different ways, and repetitively, should help those who read the column (and the OFs themselves) to know what to do, how to realize they have been bitten, and how to avoid and understand the world of ticks.

Beaver pelts worthless

Now to the conversations of Tuesday morning.

One OF reported that he was called to remove some beavers from a pond where the beavers were causing a lot of trouble, and property damage. After obtaining the proper permits, the OF harvested five beavers from the pond.

The OF said the beavers were very large and he was glad he had help in getting them out. This OF told the other OFs that, now that Russia is mad at us and not buying the beaver pelts, the bottom has fallen out of the beaver pelt business.

The Chinese demand has not picked up the slack so it is hardly worth the gas money to mess with these animals. That may be way they are proliferating to the point where they really are becoming a nuisance.

Bourbon honey?

Our resident beekeeper reported that one of the honey people he knows is buying used bourbon kegs and filling them with honey.  This fellow is going to leave the honey in the kegs for a yet-to-be-determined amount of time.

The prototype apparently showed that the honey will absorb some of the bourbon flavor from the kegs. The alcohol will be long gone so only the flavor will be left and the theory is he will have bourbon-flavored honey.

He hopes this will catch on. It might with the “I’m going to hire a wino to decorate our home” crowd.

Water scarcity

The OFs discussed the reality that more homes being built in some areas of the Hilltowns are affecting the water tables. Residents of some homes (as other houses are being constructed around them) have noticed their well levels have gone down to the point where some have run out of water, or their wells have taken a longer time to recover.

These OFs report that wells that previously delivered 10- to 12-gallons-a-minute water flow are now in jeopardy.

Fish tales

The OFs progressed from this type of water to local streams, and lakes, specifically Warner Lake, and Thompson’s Lake and the stocking of fish. Some of the OFs were pretty sure the process of restocking is still going on, while a few others were not so sure.

An OF mentioned some state hatcheries have been closed and the only reason they could think of was state budget restraints.

The OFs started their fish tales on the size of some of the fish they have in their ponds, or ponds they know of, especially the size of some of the carp and catfish. These two aquatic scavengers do keep the OFs’ ponds clean. One OF mentioned that he has grass-eating catfish in his pond and they are pretty good sized and do gobble up some of the algae.

Name changes

The OFs talked about name changes and some of the OFs’ names are not their real names. The OFs told stories that, when their parents emigrated, quite often their names would be changed at Ellis Island to a more common name so they would be able to find work more easily.

One OF mentioned his father’s name was changed from what it was to a more “Americanized” name so he could do just that — take employment. This OF said that one of his father’s brothers also changed his name and it was different than the one his father took, again for the same reason. His other uncles did not have to change their names because they stayed on the farm.

Social Security and birth records must have a grand time with all this. Anyway, “Hey, you” works for anyone and is gender neutral.

Those braving the weather and making it to the Duanesburg Diner in Duanesburg and sitting in the warmth of the diner with hot cups of coffee were: Robie Osterman, George Washburn, Roger Chapman, Gerry Irwin, Lou Schenck, Mace Porter, Jack Norray, and me, and that’s it.