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Tuesday, Aug. 16, the Old Men of the Mountain were sitting on the benches of the Country Café in Schoharie waiting for the proprietors to open the doors.

So often it is said, “You can take the boy out of the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the boy.”

Another take on the saying can be, “You can take the man out of the military, but you can’t take the military out of the man.”

Each of those scenarios require both the man and the boy to get up early. So there they are — OFs waiting for the restaurant to open.

One OF showed up with a box of new hats for the OMOTM, so you may see more of the gray and black hats with the “OMOTM” letters on them. When you see some OF with one of these hats on, be kind to him, because that person will fit the first two letters, Old and Man.

This gentleman may be wobbly on his feet (though not drunk) or he may walk into the wall and miss the door because he has only one eye that works most of the time, or he may know you and then again might not, or he may be wandering around the parking lot looking for his car, and then again he might be standing right beside it and not know it.

He may even be trying to get into your car thinking it is his and giving you an argument. If you happen to notice he has on one of the gray and black hats with the OMOTM label, take it easy on him; the OF is doing the best he can.

The hat advertises that the person under it has eyes that may be a little dimmer, the hearing may be fading a bit, the gait may be slower, but the heart beats with the same passion for living as it did 50 years ago.

One OF suggested that there should be a club in school that researches the elderly in the community and helps them out with routine chores. Another OF thought that there are such clubs, and maybe the OFs are too active for these clubs to notice.

However, it would be nice if a club researched and found older people still quite ambulatory but living alone and then these younger folks could go mow their lawns, help with cleaning their houses, and even perform some simple routine maintenance like changing light bulbs, give painting a touch here and there, and fix the broken hinge — things like that.

In cleaning the house, this club would really be a big help because there comes a time in the aging process where the older people may be able to get down but getting up is another matter. Scrubbing the tub and shower is one chore that requires the getting down and getting up.

The OFs say it is just a thought, and, like one OF mentioned, in many places this type of volunteering may be going on, but it gets no press.

Fond fair memories

It is fair time and the OFs discussed these country fairs, for example, what they are now and what they used to be. The OFs can’t relate to the fair as it is now and one OF assumed it’s because we are of another generation, to which this scribe suggested he try another word here because it is likely more than one generation. The OFs are so antiquated that generations is a more likely word.

The complexions of the communities have changed from agricultural to suburban.  Farms are few and far between, half the people attending the fair (the OFs think) only know a cow from picture books and probably think chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

To which one OF told the story of how his brother brought some friends of his from college home to their farm in Schoharie. They were from the city, and the OF said his brother had them convinced that this cow story was, in fact, the way it was.

This farm had a mixed herd, and some of these cows were Jerseys (one of the smallest breeds of dairy cattle and definitely brown in color). The OF had his father place some cocoa at the bottom of a bucket and then the OF’s brother hand-milked a Jersey and the milk turned, you guessed it, brown.

In the milkhouse, the OF’s brother had a strainer on a milk can with a taped-on sign noting, “This can for chocolate milk only.” The OF wonders if those two guys still think chocolate milk comes from brown cows.

The OFs remember showing animals and bringing produce to the fair. They remember their Future Farmers of America projects at the fair, having their crafts presented in the 4-H building, and their parents working together with other farmers on their Grange presentations. Spending the week at the fair, taking care of the livestock, was tons of fun.

The OFs hope the fairs keep on going so their grandkids can have the same experiences; most will. However, it is more likely some of these programs will be offered in different ways.

Things have changed a lot in the generations the OFs have trod this planet. At one point, the OFs who are Catholic discussed how they had to behave and how they had to dress at the parochial schools they attended as youngsters.

One OF said he doesn’t think that has changed much over the years. The OFs knew that they had to wear knickers, shirts, and ties — and boy! when a nun spoke, the OFs listened.

The OFs remembered practicing the Palmer method to learn cursive writing. One OF said he does not think that many kids today write in cursive.

Another OF said, watching the kids today, he thinks that over the years the pointer finger and the index finger will turn into thumbs. Another OF added he didn’t think so; the technology of today is moving so fast that the technology of tomorrow won’t require thumbs.

Some of the OFs said that is the way the fair will go; if it is to maintain itself, it has to cater to the younger generation. The OFs are now out of the loop even though they hope that in some places there will still be the old-fashioned country fair.

Casino debate

Along with a lot of people in the area, the OFs joined in the discussion on the casino that is being built in Schenectady. Some think it will work fine; others think it is going to bring problems.

Some OFs think it will hurt Saratoga, and also the Turning Stone casino. One OF said there is only a certain number of gamblers to go around. Another OF added he thinks there will be quite a marketing attack to entice younger people to take up the habit so they can introduce more people to gambling in order to have a larger gambling pool.

One OF said that he has heard that there are some that are going to run river cruises from the New York City to the casino. That, to some OFs, sounded like a neat idea and will probably work, although one OF said that will be more than a day trip to the casino.

A boat coming up the river from New York City and that area is not going to be like coming by train or bus.  A boat will take awhile and, unless that is one really fast boat, those people will have to stay over.

Wild weather

The OFs were discussing the recent weather disasters, and they really are disasters, bombarding the South with the rains coming from the Gulf, and the fires in the West that are burning up half the state of California.

The views they show on the news remind the OFs of Katrina, and our own Tropical Storm Irene. The water in Louisiana nobody can do anything about.  If it is going to rain, it is going to rain, but the fires in California appear to have been set.

The OFs are not too sure about that yet but the authorities allegedly have an arsonist in custody. If this is proven to be true, what damage this guy has done! One OF said they are going to need a small army to protect this character because there are thousands of people who will want to hang him from one of those burned-out trees.

One OF said he wouldn’t want to wade in the waters in Louisiana because he would be afraid of running into a snake or an alligator trying to get to the same high ground as he was.

“That is one thing we don’t have to worry about with floods in our neck of the woods,” an OF added.

“Where does all this water go down along the Gulf?” one OF asked. “That area is already at sea level. It can’t run off; it has to sink into the ground or evaporate. I will take a good old snowstorm on my mountain any day.”

The OFs sitting on the benches in front of the Country Café in Schoharie added a touch of yesteryear to the streets of Schoharie as they watched a man travel to each hanging plant that lined the streets, watering them. This would be reminiscent of early risers watching the old lamplighter putting out the lamps in the morning. The OFs that gathered there were: Miner Stevens, Bill Lichliter, George Washburn, Robie Osterman, Roger Chapman, John Rossmann, Dave Williams, Harold Guest, Bill Bartholomew, Marty Herzog, Chuck Aelesio, Richard Frank, Roger Shafer, Bob Benac, Art Frament, Roger Fairchild, Herb Sawotka, Jim Rissacher, Mace Porter, Lou Schenck, Jack Norray, Gerry Irwin, Wayne Gaul, Duncan Bellinger, Joe Bender, Rich Donnelly, Don Wood, Sonny Mercer, Bob Lassome, Duane Wagonbaugh, Ted Willsey, Bob Benninger, Bob Fink, Elwood Vanderbilt, Harold Grippen, and me.

Something I've been dreading for a long time finally happened: I'm now one of the legions of folks who need to wear eyeglasses at least some of the time. Welcome to middle age.

It started out with having more and more trouble reading the morning newspaper. I could still do it without eyeglasses, but it was getting difficult seeing the smaller print (like the clue in the Jumble puzzle picture).

This condition is called presbyopia. What happens is your lenses lose elasticity as you age, so you can't focus up close like you used to. When this happens, whether you like it or not, eyeglasses become a part of your life.

I know I shouldn't complain. I went over 56 years before having to deal with this hassle. I remember having a friend when I was a kid who had eyeglasses with lenses so thick they looked like the proverbial bottom of a coke bottle.

So I've been very fortunate all these years. Even now, when I renew my driver's license, I can pass the eye test with no problem. Still, I'm a voracious reader, so eyeglasses are now one more thing I have to deal with.

Getting eyeglasses is one thing. Getting the right eyeglasses is another thing entirely. I've actually had several pairs of eyeglasses over the years. I'm slightly near-sighted, so I'd use these when going to a movie, a football game, or any event where the action was far away. Not that I couldn't see without them; they just made everything a little bit sharper. They came in handy that way but I could easily do without them and often did.

So now, being that I need eyeglasses to read, why not try to get one pair to do everything? Even I know about bifocals, so that's what I had made.

The problem with them is now you have a compromise. They work OK for distance, as long as they don't slide down your nose too much. But for reading you have to look through the bottom part of the lens, which affects where you place your book, newspaper, or whatever.

Having to look down while keeping your head straight gets old fast. An even bigger problem is they were useless for using a computer — that middle distance was just blurry no matter what I did. So much for compromise.

I wound up having another pair made for reading and using a computer. If I combine this pair with my distance pair I'm pretty much covered (though having a magnifying glass available, especially when working on cars or whatever, still comes in handy quite often).

So now the problem becomes the one I've always had with eyeglasses: Where do you carry them? Where does a man find a spot on his person for two pair of eyeglasses that will be convenient anytime — in a suit at work or in a T-shirt and shorts on the weekend.

I haven't figured it out, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to start carrying a purse around. Sigh. It's always something.

I basically just leave the reading and computer glasses at work, and keep the distance glasses in whatever jacket pocket I'm wearing at the time. Then I have some older glasses for reading — the kind you can buy off the rack at the drugstore — strategically placed around the house.

So I hope with all that going on I can find a pair of eyeglasses when I need them. Not an ideal situation but I haven't yet figured out anything better.

I know a guy who keeps his eyeglasses on a cord that goes around his neck, so they are hanging on him at all times. Very convenient, but I just can't handle that "look," pardon the pun.

Believe me, I'm not a vain person — if you've seen my goofy ties and T-shirts you know I don't give a flip about dressing stylishly. But going to the hanging eyeglasses is just too close to having a cane or walker for me, so I'll pass on that for now at least.

Funny story when I tried to pick out a frame. I looked at the various display pictures at the vision center, and found one of a really handsome guy in a nice and relaxing summertime pose. It was a great picture. So I asked to try on those frames.

The people in the store basically laughed them off my face because the glasses looked so bad on me (they claimed). I have no sense of style to speak of, I know that, but if they looked so good on the guy in the picture, how could they possibly have looked all that bad on me? I can't figure it out.

Then again, my wife and daughter always point out that I often wear my jeans "crooked." I don't even know what this means, so I guess I should just let someone else pick out my frames.

I've heard it said that wearing eyeglasses makes one look more intelligent. Huh? To me someone wearing eyeglasses looks like someone that needs vision correction. How that look ever got matched up with intelligence is beyond me.

It's to the point that some folks actually get eyeglasses made with clear lenses just so they can have that so-called intelligent look. Man, I just don't get that at all. That is something I would never, ever do.   

Then there's the way eyeglasses seem to slowly creep down your nose; how they steam up when you drink coffee; how they force you to look in certain spots of the lens; how they distort if you look in the wrong spot; how they constantly need to be cleaned, no matter how careful you are with them; how you always have to watch out lest you drop, sit on, or lose them; how they leave red spots on the bridge of your nose when you wear them for a long time; and the worst part, that you have one or two more things to carry around and be responsible for.

I always thought getting older would be easier simply because you'd have less to do, but with health issues, the greater responsibilities, and the overall craziness of the world these days I can see why the liquor business is always so good.

When you see me, please tell me how nice my new eyeglasses look.

Perhaps I need to consult a theoretical physicist. I think what I see every week may be some sort of violation of the laws of nature.

To put it another way, how can a single cat weighing in at perhaps 16 or 17 pounds (yes, he is a big boy), create what appears to be double his weight in cat hair without ever looking any smaller, balder, or even a bit winded? And how can said cat hair exhibit properties that seem almost magical?

Yes, we do have four cats in our home these days. All four would be what one would consider examples of the domestic short-hair variety. So again, I ask, how can one in particular, Lemon, and to a lesser degree, Romeo, create so much hair? If I vacuum the house every three to four days, I pick up enough hair each and every time, to easily construct a new cat.

Do cats have some sort of hair factory as an unnamed internal organ? They just push out new hairs on a minute-by-minute basis and so, wherever they walk, lie, groom, eat, or pretty much exist, there’s hair there.

There’s hair on the carpet, the floor, the furniture, the clothes, the towels, the counters, the chairs, and pretty much any horizontal surface. And the question is how do they manage this feat? If humans grew hair at this pace, we’d all have 20-foot ponytails every three weeks and hair stylists would be the most highly paid professionals on the planet.

And how does the hair get into places that aren’t even visited by the cats? I can open a bag of pretzels from a cabinet that’s six feet off the floor and can’t be reached by the cats (of course I could be wrong and they’re using jet packs while I’m asleep). It’s a new bag and as soon as I reach in for a pretzel, I notice a cat hair on it. Is there are cloud of cat hair invisible to the naked eye that forms and deposits anytime a person does anything? Is it like a rainstorm of cat hair that lives in the homes of cat owners?

I jokingly suggested we have the cats shaved or spray them with Nair but I suspect it still wouldn’t work. I actually met (and petted) a hairless cat last year and perhaps that’s the answer. Of course they do look rather odd, and have skin issues (sun sensitivity among others) so, if I wanted to let the cat out to roam, I’d have to hit it with a good coat of spf 30 and then reapply every so often. Yeah, not so sure that’ll work out.

So, since I can successfully vacuum up a lot of the hair, should I then start vacuuming the cats themselves? I can just see this. I walk up to the cat in question, who is stretched out in a sunbeam, fire up the utterly silent vacuum and then proceed to suck away all the loose hair.

The vacuum fills up, smoke pours from it, and I wake up from the dream. I turn over groggily, realizing that there’s no such thing as a silent vacuum.

Besides, the cats, upon seeing the vacuum, usually jet of for parts unknown within three microseconds; rendering the act pretty much pointless. I know that two or three of the four will allow themselves to be brushed at times, but the brush clogs too fast and the resulting area gets so covered in hair, that you just have to vacuum anyway.

Those large tape rollers that you use to get stuff off your clothes just before you head off to work, or the wedding, or a job interview, are interesting. The ones we have work fine to a point.

You tear off the outer sheet and proceed to roll it over the surface. After three inches, it’s covered in cat hair. You peel off the layer, keep rolling, more hair, another layer and so on until you have a perfectly clean couch cushion, and you’re standing amidst a two-foot pile of cat-hair-covered tape.

Then Lemon comes over and lies down on the clean cushion. Oh, and once you gather all the cat-hair-covered tape and toss it in the trash, Sylvie wanders over, knocks the trash over, and proceeds to chew on the tape, as she has a thing for adhesive products. Really, I’m not making this up.

So what to do about the cat hair, that sheds, rains, appears, and seems to reproduce without a cat even being nearby? Well, we have two vacuums, lint rollers, cat brushes, and special brushes designed to remove cat hair from furniture and fabrics.

We could spend several hours a day combatting the cat hair until, for at most, 65 seconds, the house is utterly cat hair free. Or, we could just vacuum a couple times a week and call it even. That’s where I’m at for now.

But my hope is that by studying the weird behavior of cat hair and making some sort of incredible discovery that sets modern theoretical physics on its ear, I’ll win the Nobel. Then I can get enough cash to hire someone to vacuum for me. I can dream.

Editor’s note: Michael Seinberg says he would have gone further with this column, but he had to go vacuum the back of a green couch that now looks white.

Apropos! Great! A column concerning the first class to graduate from Albany Normal School in 1845 just emerged from old yellowed files in this historian's desk. How did I miss this one for so long?

The Normal School in Albany was a new school for students who wanted to become teachers.  A letter tells of  final examinations and the number of graduates granted a “sheepskin.” The writer’s name was Edward Chesebro of Guilderland.

Chesebro was to begin seven weeks of vacation and was also preparing for a "camp meeting at the old place" somewhere near Fullers-French's Hollow. That "place" was  an old farm and house out Western Turnpike  near where the Watervliet Reservoir is today.  The house still stands.

Whole families spent an entire week there, renting one of the shanties or a tent, cooking by campfire, and attending religious services held every afternoon and evening. It was a picnic, a holiday, and a pioneer's Chautauqua with a chance to meet old and new friends, wrote the late Guilderland historian Arthur Gregg.

But the primary purpose was by no means neglected — that of “quickening their religious experience and of bringing new converts into the fold.”  The camp meeting of ancient Methodism was the principal source of their ever-increasing membership.

Another exciting feature of the vacation was that, of all locations and resorts, Principal Page, head of the Normal School, forerunner of the University at Albany, had selected the Chesebro homestead on the Normanskill as a boarding place for his children and their nurse.

Chesebro’s letter                                         

On Guilderland, Aug. 28, 1845, Edward Chesbro wrote to his brother-in-law, John, who had married his sister.

John Dearest,

We received your last a few days ago and hasten to reply. Allen [another brother] wishes me to say to you that your agency in regard to your school matter meets his entire concurrence and what time they will want him so he may make his plans to suit circumstances. He will still be obliged to rely on you for the desired information.

Business is all topsy-turvy preparing for camp meeting which starts next meeting at the old place. Everybody is going to make his fortune this time by putting up shanties. They are now clearing the ground, putting up tents, fixing up watering place etc. etc.

The Normal School terminated day before yesterday by an examination that lasted four days, and I intend  for the ensuing seven weeks prior to the next term to remain at home. There were 34 graduates at the end of the term and if I had seen fit to leave the institution I too, even I as  ignorant as I am, could have bought off their "sheepskin,”  but I would not have it under existing circumstances.

The Executive Committee say they have been very lenient in granting certificates at this time, but in the future they will require higher standard of qualifications. So I am doomed to another half year at Normal School.

Accompanying this you will find a "District School Journal " containing the catalogue with the graduates marked.

You would probably like to hear when Pa and Ma and Uncle Robert and Aunt Cataline will be to see you but I can't at this time because of the camp meeting. After that also Mr. Page's children and nurse will be spending a week or more.

I congratulate you on your respite from "Candleism.”  Respects to Polly, Charles and the children. Does Angelina want any flower seeds saved? If so, What kind?

You would probably call it news to know that Mr. Powell was married a few days since to Widow Throop from Schoharie.  Her first name was Seiby. They have commenced to keep house in his new house which Henry Carhart and John Moak built for him this summer down on his place near Harry Mains.

Aunt Laviana Chapman wants me to send her "hopping" compliments to you all and her "hopping" love to little Susan.

Yours etc. etc.

Edward W.  Chesebro

“Candleism”  was the term for the transition from candles to oil.

Widow Throop  was the widow of Washington Throop of Schoharie who operated the Throop Drugstore there. That family operated the famous Throop Drugstore for 136 years. The drugstore was removed to the Albany Pharmacy College and reconstructed for future generations with fixtures, patent medicines, and drawers filled with materia medica of  more than 100 years ago.