Archive » January 2023 » Columns

This January so far has not kept the Old Men from their appointed round of restaurants. Tuesday, Jan. 17, the Old Men of the Mountain met at the Chuck Wagon Diner on Route 7 in Princetown. At this time of year and this time of day, the sun is coming up and the aroma of the diner is very nostalgic to the Old Men of the Mountain.

It is odd that a simple thing like shopping (with today’s prices, it is not as simple as it sounds) is downright scary, and scary is the word in this conversation. The OFs at one table discussed how they are a little nervous to shop at Crossgates Mall.

It is not that they do not use a store as a form of destination shopping. For instance, if one OF is shopping for electronics and thinks he will find it in Best Buy, the OF finds a spot in the parking lot by the store and will shop only at that store.

Another OF said it is good to shop even in one store with a friend and not to go alone. Another OF thinks the mall is for young people — it is not an OF mall.

One OF thought that, when anyone becomes 60 or 65 years old, they don’t make anything for people beyond that age, especially clothes. To purchase a clock radio, or just a radio, or TV, or even a coffee pot with just an on-and-off switch is almost impossible.

One OF mentioned that everything comes with a remote or with more buttons on it than in the space shuttle. Who cares if the coffee pot not only makes coffee but will make toast and pancakes, sprout legs with wheels, and bring the stuff right to you?

On the topic of shopping, the OFs remember what it was like 20 to 40 years ago to shop and where they went shopping. The OFs remember shopping Johnstown/Gloversville and all the items that were actually manufactured there.

One OF said they would go all the way there to shop for cars. The OF claimed they thought (and now the OF knows) they got better deals there, but it was a long way to go to have the car taken care of.

Another OF said they went there for quite a few years to do much of their Christmas shopping at the Johnstown knitting mills.

The leather and glove manufacturers like Grandeau leather made St. Thomas wallets, and other leather goods with the St. Thomas label. The company also made pocketbooks and leather items like that for other companies and put on those company labels.

At Christmas, the Grandeau leather factory outlet, which was right at the factory, had employees at their cellar door letting people in as people came out and the outlet was packed as was the glove place where shoppers were brought in by the bus load. All these places are gone now. 

Still in the shopping vein, the OFs discussed how many of the older shopping places are gone; small stores the OFs were familiar with where the OF knew the employees, and the employees knew the OFs — most of these are also gone. One OF said many little boutiques opened up and, in a few short years, these shops too were out of business.

It was more or less summed up by one OF who said that we are out-of-the-loop guys. The younger guys (we should include gals here, but to the OFs the term “guys” is all inclusive, so the distaff side shouldn’t feel left out) are used to the new ways and 50 years from now they will be wondering what happened to their way of shopping and why does everything have only an on-and-off switch.

 

Weather — or not

A usual topic of conversation — the weather — came up and how the OFs don’t remember a January like this in our area even if the month is only half over. Many of the OFs are beyond their skiing years and, as long as we get enough precipitation as rain, or a collection of small snowfalls that melt away in a day or two, the OFs are happy.

But as one OF put it: This is us. Look at the west coast, and the problems with the weather in the south and southwest: Boy, are they having problems! So far the Northeast has been lucky.

The so-far mild January brought up a discussion on how soon spring will be here. (Scribe’s note: Is this wishful thinking or not?) Spring training for baseball, and the Daytona 500, both coming in late February was mentioned.

There is still a lot of winter to go, and one OF at the table said we could pay for this in April or May. Yep.

Look for a cold spring and mud up to your crotch, the typical pessimist/optimist discussion, the kind only time will tell and one or the other will have the bragging rights of “I told you so.”

At our ages, nobody is going to remember the conversation anyway.

The Old Men of the Mountain who traveled to the Chuck Wagon Diner in Princetown just to enjoy the early morning ride and bask in another rare January day were: Paul Whitbeck, Elwood Vanderbilt, Bob Donnelly, Jeremiah Donnelly, Dave Hodgetts, Dan Peltier, Lou Schenck, Herb Bahrmann, John Bahrmann, John Dab, Rick LaGrange, Doug Marshall, Jake Lederman, John Muller, Ted Feurer, Miner Stevens, Wally Guest, Harold Guest, Roland Tozer, Jamey Darrah, Jake Herzog, Roger Shafer, Glenn Patterson, Mark Traver, Joe Rack, Rev. Jay Francis, Dick Dexter, George Washburn, Robie Osterman, Bill Lichliter, Paul Guiton, and me.

 

— Photo from the Guilderland Historical Society

The Fullers District 13 School continued in use until Guilderland School District centralized and Fullers students began attending Altamont Elementary School. In 1953, the district auctioned off the old building, receiving $1,200 from a buyer who converted the school into a residence. It still stands on the north side of Route 20.

Many years ago, I was put in touch with an Arizona man who had spent his boyhood years in Fullers. During many phone calls as Ed LeViness reminisced about his youth during those Depression times leading to the early World War II years, I jotted notes. With his permission, I wrote this story about his boyhood years in Fullers.

Fullers had once been a prosperous little 19th-Century farming community with its own post office, general store, and railroad depot located on the Western Turnpike where it was crossed at grade level by the West Shore Railroad (now CSX). By the 1930s, the businesses and depot had disappeared with the tracks now crossing overhead by trestle.

However, the people living there continued to feel a sense of community, chiefly because their small one-room District No. 13 Fullers School continued to give the area its identity.

Just as the Depression began in 1929, the LeViness family: Jack, Ruth, and their 4-year-old son, Edward, accompanied by Edward’s Chesbro grandparents, moved into a house (now taken down) on Route 20 in Fullers. Upstairs the discovery of phone books from several Midwestern cities led Jack LeViness to suspect the place might earlier have been a speakeasy.

With the house came 180 to 200 acres of pastures and hayfields and a barn. The family milked 20 dairy cows, grew silage corn, and cut acres of hay. Earl Gray, a Dunnsville man, would come around with his hay press, a device that used actual horse power to compress hay into bales.

There were several other active farms along Route 20 in that area, including the Van Patten farm just west of the railroad tracks (where 84 Lumber is today) with the barns across Route 20. The Coss farm, located at the corner of Fuller Station Road and Route 20, was also divided by Route 20. The Coss farmhouse was the old Fullers Tavern (also taken down now).

Milking cows by hand was still the rule in those days. The large 40-gallon metal cans containing milk were placed daily on a wooden platform at the edge of the road waiting to be collected by the milk truck that at the same time left off freshly washed cans from the day before.

Some of the more affluent farmers in Guilderland were using tractors, but many including the LeVinesses continued to rely on horses. Behind their house was a chicken coop with registered New Hampshire red hens producing high-quality eggs that were sold locally.

As Ed grew older, he was expected to do all sorts of chores, regularly milking cows and cleaning out the henhouse. His mother and grandmother canned large quantities of fruits and vegetables for the family.

Accumulating enough income to support a family was no easy matter during those Depression years. In addition to earnings from farming activities, Jack LeViness worked at General electric in Schenectady, but had had his hours cut back to two days a week.

Until he retired, Mr. Chesbro was a West Shore engineer. Ruth LeViness and her mother added to the family finances by hanging a sign out front of the house with the inviting name “Sunny Croft,” earning spare cash from tourists or boarders.

Owning a car was a necessity for any family residing in Fullers. An older model Durant that needed to be cranked to start was the car that brought the LeViness family to Fullers. Later, the family moved up to a Hudson Terraplane, produced between 1932 and 1938, “inexpensive, but powerful,” and by 1941 Jack LeViness was able to purchase a new Chevrolet two-door sedan.

About once every two weeks, the family drove to Altamont to shop at the A & P, and there were weekly trips over to Guilderland Center to worship at the Helderberg Reformed Church where Ed attended Sunday School.

Moderate traffic rolled over U.S. Route 20, the old turnpike having become a two-lane paved highway that was a main route west. A few farmers could still be seen out in horse-drawn wagons, giving Tommy Croote’s blacksmith shop on Fullers Station Road steady business.

Ed was just old enough to recall the old covered bridge at Frenchs Hollow being taken down in 1932 to be replaced by a new two-lane bridge. A weathered railroad-crossing sign remained along the road even though it had been a long time since anyone had to worry about tangling with a train on a grade level crossing in Fullers.

Passing motorists could stop for a dollar’s worth of gas at Oliver Cutler’s Socony gas station on the southeast corner of Fuller Station Road and Route 20. At the antiquated gas pumps, it was necessary to push a handle up and down for gas to fill a glass cylinder at the top, gravity allowing the gasoline to flow into a car’s gas tank.

Every now and then, men of the neighborhood gathered at the gas station for a friendly game of penny ante cards. Each player contributed a small amount of money for the pot and used matchsticks to keep track of the winner of each hand, allowing whoever ended up with the biggest pile of matchsticks to take home the pot.

 

Adventures

In addition to chores and school, Ed had fun and exciting adventures with several boys his own age. He remembered his bike carried him down Fullers Station Road and Frenchs Hollow Road to Cain’s farm where there was a field used by the kids to play baseball or to the Normanskill where there was a great spot just below the falls for a cooling swim.

Winter brought sleigh riding either on hilly Fullers Station Road or Frenchs Hollow Road leading down to the Normanskill. Most challenging was the steep hill on the north side of the Normanskill where French’s Hollow Road sharply curved just before going over the bridge.

One time, a family acquaintance took Ed up in an antique biplane with two open cockpits and double wings on a flight over the local area, beginning Ed’s lifelong love of flying.

As the boys got older, muskrat trapping helped to earn some much-needed cash. Ed found the best spot to catch muskrats was along the Normanskill near the footings of the railroad trestle.

By state law, trappers had to check traps daily, a serious responsibility for a boy, who then had to skin any muskrats he caught, preparing the pelts to be shipped to a fur wholesaler. Ed received a Remington .22 for his 11th birthday, a gift he prized all of his life.

Honing his marksmanship skills by taking out woodchucks on nearby farms, Ed found local farmers were delighted to be rid of the rodents whose deep holes created a serious menace in their fields.

Not all pleasures were found in the neighborhood. Radio provided all ages with information and entertainment from afar.

An Atwater Kent radio on legs sat in the LeViness living room where Ed sat listening to shows like “Tom Mix Ralston Straight Shooter,” “Fibber McGee and Molly,” and “One Man’s Family.”

About once a month, the LeViness family drove to Schenectady to see movies, usually at the State Theatre, but sometimes splurged on admission to the more expensive Proctor’s where the program not only included a movie, but also vaudeville or a big band. The movie of his childhood that made the biggest impression on Ed was “Gone With The Wind.”

 

School days

Windswept, open farm fields surrounded the Fullers one-room school on Route 20. In cold weather, a potbelly stove was fired up, first with kindling and, when that blazed up, coal was added. An active parent-teacher association was involved with the school whose members brought in hot soup at lunchtime during cold winter days.

Ed walked each day to school. A bright boy, he was placed in second grade almost immediately.

He had fond memories of Miss Isla Heath, the teacher who not only taught the basics to all eight grades, but enriched the children’s lives by taking them on nature walks, encouraging them to act in plays, and to be patriotic and kind.

Ed was once the recipient of a birthday-card shower from his fellow classmates on the occasion of his 10th birthday when he was housebound recuperating from injuries caused when he was hit by a car.

Miss Heath was expected to coolly handle crises as well. One winter’s day, the snow was good for packing. At recess, the kids were having a great time lobbing snowballs at each other over the schoolhouse roof.

Ed made the error of peeping around the corner of the school building only to see a frozen missile coming straight at him. Quickly pulling back, he hit his head on the building’s sharp corner, cracked open his scalp, and immediately began to bleed profusely.

Miss Heath performed emergency first aid, piled him into her Ford coupe, and then raced up Route 20 to deliver Ed to his mother. Eighty years later, Ed still had the scar!

The children looked forward to two holidays as welcome breaks in the routine. At Halloween, ducking for apples was the highlight because Miss Heath stuck a nickel inside of one apple. 

With one apple for each student floating in a water-filled wash basin, one by one, the students began to duck down to retrieve an apple, each child hoping they would go home with that precious nickel, which in the 1930s bought an awesome amount of candy.

At Christmas, there was always a decorated Christmas tree and students performing in a play put on for the whole community one evening just before the holiday. Mothers had made costumes and Miss Heath rigged up a stage curtain of sorts for the performance. Santa showed up and there were refreshments and a wonderful time was had by all.

Boys’ and girls’ 4-H clubs provided both practical and social activities for Fullers’ young folks. Ed’s parents were each leaders and even Miss Heath helped out with the girls’ group.

Both groups had hands-on projects and exhibited at the Altamont Fair each year. Building birdhouses was an example of one of the boys’ projects.

Meetings were at various members’ homes where refreshments were a treat often followed by recreational activities such as one winter’s night when the boys went coasting after their meeting.

Members learned social skills as well. After one meeting of parents and teachers at the school, 4-H members displayed their finished projects and then served refreshments to the adults who attended.

Often, activities were co-ed. Once there was a ski party followed by refreshments and every now and then a joint activity with another 4-H group such as the roller-skating party the Berne-Knox 4-H invited them to attend.

One year, Ed attended 4-H camp at Kinderhook Lake and attended Albany County 4-H Council meetings. Having been named to the 4-H honor roll, Ed was invited to dine at Albany’s Ten Eyck Hotel at a Kiwanis luncheon.

To earn an eighth-grade diploma, the New York State Education Department requirement was to pass seventh- and eighth-grade Regents exams in basic subjects. If all seventh-grade Regents were passed in seventh-grade, the student was allowed to move directly on to high school.

Ed was one of those pupils who qualified for high school without sitting through eighth grade, joining the other high school students from the Fullers, Parkers Corners, and Dunnsville Common School districts who attended Draper High School in Rotterdam.

The three local districts paid tuition to Draper and provided transportation by Bohl Bros. Bus Co. of Guilderland. Ed had no trouble making the transition from the one-room country school to Draper, graduating in the class of 1943.

 

War years

For high school students in the early 1940s, the future was ominous as the Second World War raged in both the Pacific and in Europe.

At graduation time, Ed, Raymond Bradt, and Vard Armstrong, two of his childhood friends from Fullers, traveled to downtown Albany to enlist in the Marines.

Because Ed had skipped elementary grades, he was only 16 and was told to return  when he was 17, have his father sign the permission papers for an early enlistment, and then come back down to the recruiting station, which he did.

His friends who were already 17 were able to enlist once their fathers had signed the papers. Ironically, it was Ed who was actually called first. He fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa with the 5th Marine Division.

All three returned home safely.

As Ed remembered, others of his generation who served from Fullers were Jacob Bradt and Robert Croote in the Navy; Emerson Van Patten in the Army Air Corps; and Anna Croote in the Women’s Army Corps, Margaret Culver in the Marines.

Morris Becker, who served in the Army, was wounded in Germany and Frank Pospicil, a Marine, was killed at Iwo Jima.

At Union Station, Ed’s parents waved goodbye to him as he boarded the train bound for Parris Island, his idyllic Fullers boyhood behind him forever.

****

Edward Arthur LeViness died on Dec. 7, 2017 at the age of 92. He returned home after World War II but then served again during the Korean War, and was honorably discharged in 1952 after which, according to his obituary, he quickly moved to Arizona where he worked as a cowboy, before attending the University of Arizona on the GI bill, earning a master’s degree in biology. Married with three daughters, he worked for three decades for the University of Arizona as a range and livestock specialist, helping cattle ranchers around the state.

 

The Your Way Café in Schoharie was the meeting place for the Old Men of the Mountain Tuesday, Jan. 10. For a while, this scribe has to write out 2023 until the habit of 2022 is gone. For this scribe, a lot has happened since 1933 and it seems like it was just yesterday.

In most of the restaurants the OMOTM visit hang cutesy signs, plaques, and notices on the walls or these objects sit on the counters and some tables. In the Your Way Café is one that the OMOTM notice and in its cuteness is a truism: “We Guarantee Fast Service … No matter how long it takes.”

This one is funny, yet has to be thought about.

 

Fowl is fair

Chickens, where would we be without chickens?

The OFs discussed the world of chickens because currently the price of eggs is so high due to the avian bird flu. This bird flu has happened before but the price of eggs at that time remained stable.

One OF said at that time chicken feed was reasonable. Now the OF said it is not only the bird flu but the cost of feed and transportation combined with this flu, and the chicken farmers are still losing money.

The whole world depends somewhat on chickens. Eggs are primarily for eating, baking, cooking, chemicals, medicines, and then the birds themselves for eating, and, as one OF said, “We even eat the guts, like chicken livers.”

How many chickens are there worldwide? That must be some number.

It was even brought up that chicken manure makes great fertilizer, although one OF said that it is necessary to be careful with its use or it will burn the plant.

Another OF said the use of chickens as pets is also growing. With good care, and no genetic issues, a hen can live 10 to 12 years, just a few years shorter than a healthy cat and on average about as long as a well-cared for goldfish.

However, some species of goldfish can live up to 30 years if they have the proper psychological care. (Don’t ask me about this; it was on Google). Maybe a chicken will live longer if the chicken sees a shrink on a regular basis. Oh well.

 

Flash in the pan

On occasion, the OMOTM talk about black powder and hunting. Tuesday morning, there was another discussion on black powder shooting and how, at times, when shooting black powder nasty things can happen.

Some of the OFs are (or have been) members of re-enactment groups or rod-and-gun clubs where they were able to shoot weapons that used black powder.

The OFs related some stupid maneuvers they did themselves or some of those they were shooting with did, and what the results were.

The term used for describing the sound of a firearm using black powder is “Ka-Boom” and that term comes from what a musket sounds like when it goes off.

The first sound is the ignition of the powder in the pan “Ka.” Then the ignition of the powder in the barrel makes a “boom” sound — hence “Ka-Boom,” still used today.

This is basically what the OFs talked about Tuesday morning: the “Ka” — and no “Boo.m. This can lead to some funny and not-so-humorous situations and the OFs’ reactions to the “Ka” and no “Boom.” This is also known as a “flash in the pan” and that term is also used today almost on a regular basis.

 

Blinding lights

Another topic brought up on Tuesday morning that is not only voiced by the OMOTM, but also by the younger members in the group, is the blinding of the white and blue lights on vehicles. They may help the driver but definitely in many cases are dangerous to oncoming traffic.

These lights are blinding. One OF said that, when meeting a car with this type of light as it comes over a hill, there are a few moments when the driver of the oncoming vehicles are completely blinded. This occurs on some turns, an OF added.

Then one of the younger OFs added that age has nothing to do with this situation; these moveable search lights also blind younger eyes. There are times when they seem to be OK but that is seldom.

One OF said that he even has problems with rooms that are lit by these white lights where everything is so bright he has to squint and in a short time he has a headache, which goes away quickly when he leaves the room.

Another OF wondered how this form of illumination was checked out before it was put into use. Were all aspects of what happens tested before being put on the shelves?

Then one OF piped up, “Don’t you know dollars talk? If there is a buck to be made to heck with what problems it causes down the line.” For one OF, this really seemed the case.

The OFs talked about rules by the feds and rules by the states especially when it came to driving. It is amazing that a license issued in New York is good in Florida, California, even in Mexico, or Canada and even in Europe, and vice versa.

If licenses can be handled like that, why not some other rules that vary state-to-state?

Those OFs who traveled to Schoharie and to the Your Way Café to enjoy their eggs, fried, pouched, scrambled, or in omelets, were: Bill Lichliter, George Washburn, Robie Osterman, Lou Schenck, Herb Bahrmann, Dick Dexter, Jack Norray, Roger Shafer, Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Jamey Darrah, Rick LaGrange, Joe Rack, Mark Traver, Glenn Patterson, Doug Marshall, Jake Herzog, Bob Donnelly, Dave Hodgetts, John Dab, Paul Guiton, and me.

Among the many 19th-Century graffiti on the walls of the Clarksville Cave is the elegantly-carved “D.C. Gould  August 12, 1864.”

Most New York State caves are closed to visitors from Oct. 1 to May 1. For information about Clarksville Cave and other area caves, visit www.northeatserncaveconservancy.org. I thank David Wallingford and his son Owen Tobias-Wallingford for their assistance in photographing the Clarksville Cave.
 

For generations, the Clarksville Cave system has drawn sport cavers and scientists alike.

Lying under a preserve owned and managed by the Northeastern Cave Conservancy, the cavern is half-an-hour drive from downtown Albany, just off Route 443. Histories of the village record visits to the cave in the mid-1800s, and graffiti from the Civil War Era and before are carved in sometimes elegant characters on its walls. (The precise moment at which graffiti go from being vandalism to history has never been determined, but carving on cave walls today is — to put it mildly — strongly discouraged!) 

There are forms of vandalism other than carving, of course — spray-painting and littering of the passages with trash are sadly not unknown; some forms such as muddying formations by climbing on them may be unintentional but are no less damaging.

Regrettably, most of the Clarksville Cave’s delicate formations such as stalagmites, “soda-straw” stalactites, and the translucent “draperies” were broken off long ago, though in hard-to-reach areas of the cave some flowstone deposits and the unusual natural dams called “rimstone pools” have managed to escape vandalism.

In years’ past, visitors were invited to scratch their names into the walls; two of the most prominent were left by one “D.C. Gould” whose name was carved in neat letters on Aug. 12, 1864, and one “E. Brinley” whose name was incised in 1839 on a wall above a pool.

Yet, in spite of visits by untold thousands of people over the decades, the Clarksville Cave and its preserve remain iconic examples of geologic processes, and specifically of cave geology — known as speleology.  Teachers of Earth science and geology in both secondary schools and colleges have used it as a resource for many years and, in the summertime, camps and environmental groups from all over the Northeast run field trips to the cave.

The preserve covers some 19.4 wooded acres, and within the forest are trails that lead not only to the cave’s multiple entrances but past classic examples of karst geology features: exposures of the bedrock called the Onondaga Limestone in which the cave has formed; mossy sinkholes and vertical shafts; and long solutionally-widened fractures in the bedrock called grikes.

In very wet weather, one of the cave entrances becomes an artesian spring and hourly thousands of gallons of turbulent water under pressure bubble upward against gravity and flow into the nearby Onesquethaw Creek.

The Onondaga limestone formed in a warm, shallow sea during what geologists call the Devonian Period, some 400 million years ago, when the landmass that would become North America lay much farther south than it is today and the Equator ran through the section that would become New York State. 

It is a very clean limestone — almost pure calcium carbonate — with little or no clay or sand within it.  This indicates that there were no high mountains near where it was forming that would have shed sediments into the water. It is densely packed with fossils such as crinoids (sea lilies), trilobites, clam-like brachiopods, and several species of coral.

The corals in particular are indicative of an environment of clear, relatively shallow, water. In some sections, the limestone is studded with nodules and shelves of the silicate rock called chert — or flint — which has precipitated there through processes still not completely understood.

The ages of caves are often difficult to determine. Except for lava caves such as those in Hawaii that form in real time as lava flows cool, the age of a cave has nothing to do with the age of the bedrock from which it has formed.

But one of the obvious features of the Clarksville Cave system is that it contains enormous deposits of rounded pebbles and cobbles in a clay matrix: remnants of debris left when glaciers retreated at the end of the last ice age some 12,000 years ago and their meltwaters roared through the cave carrying massive quantities of sediments.

These deposits can be found in even the loftiest parts of the cave. They indicate that the cave passages were there before deglaciation and for a time were choked with tightly-packed sediment; subsequently post-glacial streams found routes into the cave through the limestone bedrock layers that border Stovepipe Road west of the hamlet and elsewhere and began to flush out the sediments.

However, clues to a cave’s age are the features known as speleothems: stalactites, stalagmites, and flowstone that form from mineral-saturated water seeping into the cave. The old rule-of-thumb that every cubic inch of such features requires 100 years to grow has been shown to vary tremendously from one cave to another, but a massive flowstone feature such as that in the accompanying photo (Figure 3) undoubtedly required tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years to form.

To put it simply — Clarksville Cave is old!

It has formed along a tectonic fault that shows itself in many places in the cave passages and at the surface where scratches called slickensides and folds in the bedrock appear.  One particularly prominent display is in the bed of the Onesquethaw Creek just a few yards east of the stone bridge on Plank Road. 

Within the cave, the ceilings of many passages show a slight tilt from west to east as a result of the fault movement. This tilt has allowed great quantities of mineral-saturated water to enter the cave over millennia, with the result that masses of flowstone accumulated on the western sides of the cave passages — much of it now damaged — and in some places the waters have acted as a natural cement, turning large piles of glacial debris into the sedimentary rock called conglomerate.

The cave was frequently visited in the 1800s — at least for a time its owner offered guided tours by lantern light and the cave was written up in Harper’s Weekly.

Until the early 1960s, the system was regarded as two separate caves, with one entrance in the village close to Route 443 called “Gregory’s Cave” after its then-owner. It consists of a series of lofty chambers connected by a wide tunnel carrying a meandering stream and terminating after around 450 feet in a pool rising nearly to the ceiling — a feature which cave explorers call a “sump.”

A longer section entered through a sinkhole in the woods bordering the hamlet trends north and was known as “Ward’s Cave.” Around 1,200 feet long, this section resembles a subway tunnel through which flows the upper stretch of the same gurgling stream, rising in a deep artesian pool near the north end, known rather grandly as The Lake.

But for years after the 1948 publication of “Underground Empire” by Clay Perry, which dealt with the caves of New York State, explorers were intrigued by Perry’s statement that the two caves were connected by what he described as a half-mile long tunnel lined with calcite crystals.

Then, during the summer of 1962, an extended drought hit New York State and the water level in the sump in the Gregory section dropped almost three feet. Following the cave explorer’s directive — “Follow the water!” — within a couple of days of each other, one group of explorers from Albany and another from the Boston area waded through the sump and found that the cave continued in the direction of the Ward section.

To this day, no one is certain which group was first; cavers are notoriously — some would say obsessively — reluctant to give details about their discoveries. But within weeks the word was out that a major breakthrough had been made in Clarksville and that the two caves were now connected.

To everyone’s amazement, in lamplight the then-pristine formations in the connection section did indeed sparkle in the form of calcite crystals that seemed to cover every surface. This discovery obviously raised the intriguing possibility that some intrepid explorers in the distant past had also made the connection yet somehow left no trace of their passage.

Alas, most of the crystalline surfaces are today obscured under a coating of mud left by the boots and clothing of more recent visitors.

Yet even so, the connection is not without its wonders: mysterious side passages that sometimes loop back upon themselves; the artificial-looking rimstone pools; bedrock twisted and distorted under pressure of the fault movements; great slabs of rock coated with slickensides; a high, funereal chamber where lengthy roots from trees in the forest above hang like black veils in the gloom; a 40-foot wide waterfall whose currents of crystal-clear water send echoes throughout this section of the cave, sounding eerily like energetic conversation; and on almost every exposed surface the marvelous, mysterious Devonian fossils.

One can easily understand why the Clarksville Cave is considered a veritable textbook of geologic phenomena.

Today, being under the protection of the Northeastern Cave Conservancy and its appointed cave managers and lying so close to so many colleges and primary and secondary schools, the Clarksville Cave will continue to attract sport cavers, adventurers, and students for generations to come.

And, while walking or crawling through its inky-black recesses, one can only wonder what secrets the cave yet holds in the unknown passages from which its waters come, and the mysterious conduits into which they flow.

This Tuesday, Jan. 3, was our first gathering of the New Year, 2023, and it was at Mrs. K’s Restaurant in Middleburgh. Many of the Old Men of the Mountain hope ’23 is better than 22. ’So it is with much sincerity that the OMOTM wish one and all a Happy New Year.
One OF ended 2022 nicely with a trip to an Xcaret hotel in Mexico and returned to the OMOTM raving about his experiences there. Apparently these hotels are not for old folks according to this OF — Hmm.

This OF spoke of how some of the hotels in the complex are open; no walls or windows in the lobby and the animals of the jungle are invited to come in — just like the homo sapiens are invited; however, the animals use the facilities for free.

The OF related a story: Once, while they were eating, a monkey came up to the table; they gave it an apple, which the monkey ate right there with them. The monkey quickly left and ran into the jungle but came back shortly with a baby monkey, which was smaller than a squirrel, then proceeded to show it off to the people at the table.

The OF also reported that it got quite cold for the locals because the cold snap from Canada reached all the way to where they were staying. There was no way to shut the cold out because the place had no walls or windows, and they never expected anything like this. The OF said, thank goodness the cold weather didn’t last long.

This OF was traveling before all the problems people were having with the airlines cancellations and delays. However, they did have a problem with an airplane and sat on the plane for a while and then were told to return to the terminal for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Of course, this turned into hours, and finally the passengers were told they could not fix the airplane and they would have to bring in another, which they did and eventually they were on their way.

 

Ham drawing

The OMOTM had a drawing for a turkey at Christmastime supplied by Frank Dees. Frank was gracious enough to supply a spiral-cut ham for another drawing.

The ham was won by Herb Bahrmann and we hope it serves him well for the next couple of weeks. We believe there will be ham for dinner, ham sandwiches, pea soup, and ham salad.

This drawing was after the holiday because all the pandemic problems — i.e., colds, flu, COVID, etc. — seemed to catch up with many people sooner or later so changes of all kinds of plans were made, including for the OMOTM.

 

Morris Minors

Life is full of coincidences; in some cases, the chance of a coincidence happening is a daily occurrence. Such was the case on Tuesday morning.

Like always, the subject of cars, trucks, or some sort of equipment comes up with the OMOTM. On Tuesday, it was cars where the tale of a Morris Minor fit right in.

Shortly after the discussion, the OF who was part of it left his seat and, upon returning, he heard from the OMOTM sitting next to him that his first car was a Morris Minor. Not many even know what a Morris Minor is; now two people sitting next to each other chat about having their first car being a Morris Minor.

Both of these OGs said they would like to have that vehicle back; it was one of the best cars they ever owned, and the OGs were talking back to the late fifties and sixties. The Morris Minor was made in England and sold as a British economy family car.

These Morris Minors are still about; they have not changed and they look the same as they did then. The little boxy cars are still seen on British TV shows, like “Doc Martin” and “As Time Goes By” and also on the current show, M’idsummer’s Murders.” (What a gruesome name for a TV show.)

The cars maybe in other shows the OMOTM don’t catch. The Morris can be seen parked alongside a curb and sometimes even spotted on the move in some of these British shows.

 

Poor people

A few of the OFs discussed the increase in their Social Security and those who worked for the state of New York also received a notice that their retirement was going down. Say what!

The OFs said no way can you get ahead in this state. The increase in Social Security didn’t even keep the OFs level with inflation. Our illustrious leaders in Albany had the nerve to grant themselves a huge pay increase, and how did they manage it?

One OF said, “They took it from us to pay themselves.” We will leave it there.

The OFs wonder how poor people can afford to have any pets. It is a two-edged sword. Vets’ bills are getting to be so high that only rich people can keep a pet. This is sad.

One OF commented that it is not only pets but the cost of a lot of things that keep the poor people down with no way to climb out. We OFs are not talking about those who are working the system but down-and-out poor people. We will leave that one there too.

Those Old Men of the Mountain who piled into Mrs. K’s Restaurant after not leaving their Morris Minors at curbside were: Joe Rack, George Washburn, Robie Osterman, Paul Nelson, Russ Pokorny, Roger Shafer, Ken Parks, Bill Lichliter, Doug Marshall, Wally Guest, Harold Guest, Warren Willsey, Frank Dees, Marty Herzog, Jim Rissacher, Gerry Chartier, Henry Whipple, Elwood Vanderbilt, Dave Hodgetts, Bob Donnelly, Allan DeFazio, John Dab, Paul Guiton, Lou Scheck, Dick Dexter, Herb Bahrmann, Jack Norray, James Darrah, Ed Goff, Frank Weber, and me.

Another Old Men of the Mountain breakfast and again, the scribe was unable to attend. The first problem involved a painful shoulder, but a shot took care of this pain almost immediately. The second non-attended breakfast involved a bout with COVID (again).

The first time with the disease left this scribe battling blood clots on the lungs. Still trying to get rid of these clots and along comes another stretch with this disease.

This scribe is currently typing this while just finishing the 10-day quarantine and, except for feeling weak, feels pretty good, although tires easily. This scribe is fully boosted, and wears a mask almost religiously. Hmmm! Can one be almost religious?

The Old Men of the Mountain meet whether this OF is there or not; this time it was at the Middleburgh Diner in Middleburgh, on Tuesday, Dec. 27, and thank goodness there are OFs who take attendance and supply a few notes.

This lets this scribe compose some sort of report on the OMOTM by using this information and a few selected old notes not used in other columns. This information and the names help keep bill collectors and truant officers away from the OFs at the current breakfast.

At the ages of most of the OMOTM, the blending of the years seems to just melt from one to the other with not much fanfare. The OFs are not much on resolutions; to the OFs, resolutions don’t seem to mean much and most gave up on them years ago. Never kept any anyway.

One OF mentioned that, to keep a resolution, if that is what you want to call it, takes more than one person; it takes at least two, maybe more, to keep the resolvee on the resolve. This makes sense.

One OF said, “When it comes time, years don’t seem to mean much; 2019 is no different than 2022. Even the news is the same, only the names are different.”

Another OF commented that one thing that does change is it gets easier to count friends and relatives because the number is lower. This OF was echoed by another OG who uttered, when it comes to gathering, it used to be weddings and births, now it is hospitals and funerals. What a cheery group that breakfast was.

 

What matters in life?

The OMOTM quite often speak about family and how important that is.

Some OFs say their family is spread all over the country, and a couple said their families are not only spread over this country but the world. Japan and Germany were mentioned as they used to draw people in the military and in some cases still do; now though it is jobs.

As the OFs age, to have family close by helps. None of the OFs want to go to the “home.” This is where family really helps.

One OF said the old saw about treating your kids right in the beginning is a good idea because they are the ones who are going to select the home they are going to pack the OF off too.

Another OF mentioned how they took care of their elderly parents, and now they are the elderly parents, and still have maintained the lifestyle that they are yet to be a burden to the kids.

Still another OF said his kids were such a PIA that he couldn’t wait to be a burden to them.

This little old-fashioned and long-held statement about kids being a pain this scribe thinks is just talk — the OFs should think about what kind of PIA they were to their parents.

One OF said that the big old farmhouses were meant for multiple families, and the old folks, including in many cases aunts and uncles, all lived and died in the same place and many were buried in family plots right there on the farm.

An OF took his crooked finger and waved it in the air and said we all strive to get old. The OF said we are preached to, to not smoke, and eat well, get plenty of exercise, and don’t drink all that stuff so we can live longer.

Well, I am here to tell you getting old ain’t fun. For what? So you can live in pain, can’t dress yourself; heck, if I knew then what I know now, the motto would be, “Hey, live life to the fullest, be happy, die young, and skip all this old-age crap.” (There ya go!)

 

Blizzard

The storm that hammered Buffalo was really bad; however, the OF mentioned our own blizzard on the Hill that hit us in the fifties. Just like the Buffalo storm, it was very local. You could drive a few miles and there was nothing.

“There was a big difference in this one,” an OF said. “Our storm affected few people but Buffalo is the state’s second largest city. That is a lot of people impacted by this weather.”

It seems no matter where the OFs run to, sooner or later a natural disaster of some sort is going to catch up with the OF.

The OFs made some comments on life as it is as they trotted to the Middleburgh Diner in Middleburgh, and the members of this happy group were: Miner Stevens, Jake Herzog, Roger Shafer, Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Jack Norray, Lou Schenck, Herb Bahrmann, Paul Nelson, Roland Tozer, Warren Willsey, Russ Pokorny, but not me.

The Enterprise — Jesse Sommer

Redburn Principal Jeffrey Buell receives the deed to the old Central Warehouse from County Executive Dan McCoy. In the background are Assemblymembers Patricia Fahy and John McDonald, as well as Deputy County Executive Dan Lynch.

On the sixth of January, 2022, a correlated pair of articles appeared in Albany County’s leading periodicals.

In this newspaper, my annual shriek for the Central Warehouse’s demolition lambasted both the building’s then-owner and the local political establishment for their inaction. The Times Union, meanwhile, published a report on the death of Richard Garrity, one of the Central Warehouse’s many erstwhile owners.

This concurrent reporting accentuated what several successive generations of Albanites long ago accepted as twin inalienable truths: that the Central Warehouse is an unconquerable eyesore, and that it will outlast us all.

Yet there persist visionaries who rage against this sorry state of affairs from opposite sides of the same ideological camp. On the one side are those who dream of a rooftop bar atop a rehabilitated Central Warehouse o’er which the sun rises each morning to cast its fiery glow upon a downtown in the throes of renaissance.

On the other are those who dream of a rooftop bar atop some other building constructed in the cratered footprint of a demolished Central Warehouse, the rehabilitation of which would constitute an unconscionable taxpayer boondoggle were it even remotely feasible, which it isn’t.

As a proponent of that pessimistic latter perspective, I felt compelled to get my message out. Thus I’d included in last year’s column an antagonistic broadside calculated to bait upstate New York’s fastest-growing web media company into giving me access to its expansive audience.

Proving once more that The Media loves discussing nothing more than itself, three weeks later I was summoned to appear on Two Buttons Deep’s “Behind the Buttons” podcast to defend myself against the online retaliation I’d invited.

Ever the survivor renowned for my “strategic cowardice,” I immediately disavowed all prior criticism and passionately tongue-kissed the ring while nonetheless advancing my cause. Listeners later called my appearance “a cringeworthy display of opportunistic weakness”; I called it “Tuesday.”

Yet in the days that followed, I received dozens of gushing emails/texts/DMs thanking me for so rationally advocating the Eyesore’s demolition. My message had been sent; it was now upon Destiny to receive it.

But I wasn’t the only savvy partisan postured to manipulate the media that month. I’ll get to Jeffrey Buell in a second.
 

For posterity

Though out of fashion in contemporary journalism, taking a yearlong beat to opine on a topic allows for a more deliberative evaluation of trends. And in contemplating the jagged thorn that’s been side-stabbing Albany for generations, the “long view” is more instructive than the hysterical amnesia wrought by social media’s turbocharged 60/24/7 clickbait battlefield.

So with an eye towards the historical record, here’s an accounting of the last twelve months:

In early March, notorious Eyesore owner Evan Blum — illiterate to the writing on the wall — sought a judicial order to vacate a Feb. 15 foreclosure judgment against him. The action languished in state court for months.

Then, in April, Mr. Blum turned to the federal courts, filing for bankruptcy for the second time in a year to demand that he be allowed to sell the property — the one on which he paid zero taxes after purchasing it for a single dollar — at auction for a minimum of $500,000. The presiding judge dismissed the motion that same day.

In response — and forgetting that Mr. Blum moonlights as a neurotic terminator zombie immune to both compromise and exhaustion — the Times Union triumphantly announced that the Central Warehouse owner’s bankruptcy bid had ended. This prompted Mr. Blum to whisper “hold my beer” while repurposing his state court motion from March to initiate an identical federal lawsuit seeking $1.5 million in damages for Albany County’s alleged “failure to follow the proper steps” in seizing the Central Warehouse via tax foreclosure.

And so it was that on my 40th birthday — with the judicial system thoroughly tied in knots by the money Mr. Blum wasn’t using to pay his overdue school and property taxes — I decided to take matters into my own hands.

Turning to a more ancient arbiter of justice, to wit, God, I made a single birthday wish: that the Central Warehouse immediately implode. And in what initially seemed proof that the Almighty works faster than municipal government, just one day later, on July 28, 2022, a vertical portion of the Eyesore’s façade crumbled onto the railroad tracks.

I later learned this had less to do with prayer than with physics. Because the day prior — on my birthday — the city of Albany had received a structural engineering report warning that the Central Warehouse was in danger of imminent collapse. And though inexplicably caught off guard by the exact scenario of which I’d previously warned, Albany mobilized with a seriousness of purpose heretofore maddeningly absent.

Mayor Kathy Sheehan declared a 30-day state of emergency, County Executive Daniel McCoy ratcheted up the smack-talk with which he’d been lashing Mr. Blum for the better part of six months, and Albany Building Commissioner Rick LaJoy toiled through the weekend alongside work crews to stabilize the Eyesore’s rotting exterior.

Within four days, Amtrak had restored commuter rail service and the public servants who’d rallied in response to this latest of the Eyesore’s potentially lethal hazards were rightfully commended for their diligence.

But because I’m dispositionally prone to drown in the glass half full, I’m obliged to note that our municipal officials were reacting to a predictably avoidable threat. Indeed, this wasn’t even the first time that the Central Warehouse’s state of decay had compelled suspension of Amtrak rail service.

To adapt an old adage: Some leaders make the trains run on time; others arrange for buses when the trains can’t run at all.

Neither politician nor pundit could reasonably claim excuse for their surprise. But that didn’t stop Chris Churchill — the Times Union columnist who on at least three prior occasions has proposed “fixing” the Central Warehouse by painting murals on the very walls which now splattered across the tracks — from seizing the conch shell.

“[The] Central Warehouse is everyone’s problem now,” he declared, as though it hadn’t been everyone’s problem throughout the half-century that it economically condemned an entire urban quadrant while intermittently catching on fire.

And that was just the title. Within the column itself, Mr. Churchill — who’s practically turned unsourced reporting into an art form — derisively claimed that razing the building would cost more than $20 million. Whether this unsubstantiated figure was parroted or concocted, the investigative reporting Mr. Churchill didn’t do now confirms that there exists no agency-led assessment of competing demolition bids, no formal evaluation of environmental mitigation metrics, and no documented examination of deconstruction-and-removal feasibility.

Yes, there are lots of enablers whose gut-reflexive contrarianism has had a pernicious impact on the inertia surrounding this building. But Mr. Churchill is in a league of his own. The man is silent about the impact on Amtrak routing when Assemblymember Patricia Fahy trots out yet another call to dismantle Interstate 787, but when confronted with a four-day demonstration that there exists a successfully workable contingency with which to ameliorate the suspension of rail service, he declares that demolition “isn’t a realistic option.” Unlike wall murals.

Penetrating the cacophonous din of elected leaders spouting from both sides of their mouths should be easy for sophisticated columnists like Mr. Churchill. Yet he’s never once noted that the very same officials who refuse to even consider leveling the Eyesore because “its debris would overwhelm the capacity of area landfills” also just allocated $5 million to study the demolition of I-787, as if the rubble from that fancy could just be left curbside on trash day.

Whatever. For all but a single upstart/upstate web media company to clearly see, the fiasco of July 28 was the willful fault of one man:  Evan Blum, the tax-dodging charlatan hellbent on holding Albany’s skyline hostage.

In the crisis’s immediate aftermath, the city gave Mr. Blum ten days to implement all due repairs and then stuck him with a $225,000 bill. He busted that deadline (along with a half-dozen others) and added the invoice to the cancerous mass of unpaid debt he’s been flagrantly expanding since 2017. As of press time, Mr. Blum hasn’t paid a dime. His litigation continues, as does local media’s curious tendency to keep publishing the bullying emails sent by his attorney.

This historical accounting doesn’t intend solely to consolidate castigation of Mr. Blum. No, my principal objective is to remind municipal officials that the charming, visionary developer they’d once held in such high esteem (and to whom they gave inordinate tax advantages) ultimately betrayed them, weaponizing the judicial system in a costly multiyear campaign of obfuscation and delay.

You’d thus think that city, county, and state officials would require the next smooth-talker with big ideas about the Central Warehouse to agree to certain express conditions before receiving title thereto, like waiving procedural rights to contest foreclosure, agreeing to an automatic reversion of the deed if deadlines are missed, and reinstatement of forgiven back-taxes if deliverables go undelivered.

But that didn’t happen. Bear with me; I’m getting to Jeffrey Buell.  
 

Two Buttons Loose

In the midst of Mr. Blum’s self-immolating temper-tantrum, Two Buttons Deep (2BD) again inserted itself into the fray. Following an intrepid live-recorded Aug. 12 phone call with Mr. Blum, 2BD’s Jack Carpenter issued an out-of-the-blue demand to know what Mr. Blum intended to do with the building.

It was a jaw-dropping display of tabloid fortitude; Mr. Carpenter’s uncharacteristically aggressive tone was more than justified by a shameless Mr. Blum who displayed no compunction about making deranged excuses for his inaction. “I wanted to go into the building so I could start doing repairs,” Mr. Blum claimed, speciously, “but the city won’t let me in. If I [walk in] they’ll arrest me  ... that’s what they told me.”

Yeah OK, Evan. Roger that.

Mr. Carpenter’s call was rabidly entertaining, and he was clearly having fun. (“I’ll make you a deal:  I’ll pay you $2, you’ll double your investment, and I’ll take the building over.”) Then, flexing his innate business savvy, he extended Mr. Blum a chance to tell his side of the story — deftly slipping in a shoutout to one of 2BD’s commercial sponsors in so doing.

Lo and behold, on Aug. 26, 2022, having scored his exclusive interview on location in New York City, Mr. Carpenter again warranted instant praise for deploying the only journalism yet to determine how Mr. Blum’s last name is actually pronounced (rhymes with “slum” as in “slumlord”).

But the rest of the interview crumbled into a misguided approach to journalistic objectivity. Mr. Carpenter accepted without challenge Mr. Blum’s self-anointed victimhood, he credited Mr. Blum’s publicly verifiable misrepresentations, and then he went to great pains to show even-handed empathy towards a “misunderstood guy” ostensibly down-on-his-luck. 

“I want my audience to decide how they feel about the issue,” he said in behind-the-scenes comments before telling his audience how to feel about the issue.

More egregious was the propaganda 2BD released just days later in its “Behind the Buttons” treatment of the excursion. Now joined by his venture partner, Taylor Rao, the 2BD team went full Soviet.

“I’m sorry [the Central Warehouse] is not good to look at…. The entire issue citywide is a little bit blown out of proportion,” said the *checks notes* resident of Saratoga Springs.  “People care, seemingly, more about what the outside of it is than what the inside is, because they just don’t want to look at it on the highway.”

“This building isn’t hurting anybody,” Ms. Rao continued, either unaware of or unconcerned by the mortal peril to firefighters that the Eyesore has repeatedly posed in the past. Her comments were flippantly oblivious to the recent raft of Eyesore-inspired statewide legislation proposed “to better combat the property neglect and abandonment that inhibits healthy development and which costs taxpayers millions of dollars every year in lost property taxes and remediation expenses.”

In fact, the building is hurting anybody, which was something for which Mr. Carpenter allowed in a rare burst of self-awareness: “I have no problem with the building, except when it interrupts interstate commerce with Amtrak.”

“Yeah but that was a week ago,” Ms. Rao retorted, as if the interruption of a major arterial rail line were an irritant as forgettable as a Kanye tweet, as if the quarter-million-tax dollars that this ticking time bomb required to finance emergency repairs were just a rounding error in a 2BD merchandising report.

The podcast was reckless; 2BD had handed to Mr. Blum a megaphone through which he could softly articulate his persecution while fluttering his eyelids and wondering why the critics had been silent until now.

And this is why reading is important, folks, because the press record shows that people had been clamoring for the building’s restoration or demolition — for decades — roasting the many former owners whose neglect had blighted the area. That was why municipal officials had been so eager to offload the Eyesore to Mr. Blum when he rolled into town promising progress.

“Is Mr. Blum a freaking Jedi?” I wondered as the podcast approached its denouement. How could one man so deleteriously impact Albany’s skyline from a plush Manhattan residence while making a couple upstate influencers feel so sorry for him?

While the 2BD team could be forgiven for being seduced by the same congenial charm with which Evan Blum had manipulated the city of Albany, their commitment to propaganda was impossible to excuse. By the end of the podcast, the hosts were literally depicting Mr. Blum as the perfect suitor for their mothers. No, like, literally.

I’m not trying to invite the ire of the regionally powerful Buttonista army; trust — I have a monthly budget dedicated to 2BD merch. But it’s precisely because “Jack and Taylor” are so likable that their stamp of approval is so dangerous.

Their interview with Mr. Blum was their “Jimmy Fallon tousles Donald Trump’s hair moment,” humanizing a man who continues to commit measurable harm to New York’s capital city and its financial ecosystem.

Jimmy Fallon came to regret his moment, but 2BD never atoned for its own sins, despite the fact that just three weeks after the gang’s self-congratulatory exclusive, Mr. Blum blew his legally-obligatory deadline to make repairs to the derelict building. His justification?  “I didn’t see the point,” he said.

Oh, well, in that case.

The essential fallacy of the “fairness doctrine” — and the reason it was wisely abolished — is that while there may be two sides to a story, there’s one side to a building about to collapse on commuter rail. When does an advertiser-driven entertainment platform inherit the solemn mantle of journalistic integrity? It’s hard to say exactly, but it’s a Rubicon that 2BD crossed long ago.

This increasingly influential operation — run by a humble team of Millennials genuinely oblivious to their emerging power — has become a central part of the Central Warehouse.

If you’re not tracking 2BD, then you’re unaware of this company’s capacity to define Millennial and Gen Z perceptions within the Capital District. You’re missing out on entertaining, compelling, irreverent, authentic, and estimable original content. And you’re overlooking the extent to which 2BD directly, tangibly, and unaccountably influences local development.

And that, at long last, brings me to Jeffrey Buell.
 

Saved by the Buell

At a press event on Dec. 22, 2022, Jeffrey Buell — the most conspicuous principal of Redburn Development Partners — became the Eyesore’s latest hot-potato recipient of the Central Warehouse deed. A late October court ruling had cleared the way for the forcible transfer of property, and Mr. Buell was again poised to steal the limelight after trampling all over my call for demolition eleven months earlier.

He had meticulously laid the groundwork for this moment more than a year and a half prior, having assembled an impressive brain trust to submit a bid to develop the Eyesore in partnership with Columbia Development Companies. Though openly acknowledging that he wasn’t sure how the Central Warehouse would be salvaged, he’d remained committed to his cause throughout Mr. Blum’s yearlong litigation circus.

By all accounts, this charismatic 42-year-old is a wonderfully selfless man with a proven track record of bringing dreams to life and a beard sculpted to perfection in a secret government lab somewhere. No wonder local media tripped over itself to fawn over Mr. Buell’s swashbuckling bravado.

But almost immediately there were troubling indicia of déjà vu, the first instance of which was the tax holiday. Albany County wiped out $549,708 in back taxes in consideration for a single payment of $50,000, which, to be sure, was a better deal than the $1 giveaway Mr. Blum enjoyed in 2017, except that the “plans” Mr. Buell’s consortium articulated were just as riveting in their vagueness and disregard of basic accounting.

On Valentine’s Day, the Albany Business Review reported that Mr. Buell’s estimated cost of renovation had been revised upward from the initially-bid $68 million to $100 million — an increase of more than 47 percent. From where would that $100 million materialize? From “everybody and their brother who might have money to help us out,” Mr. Buell said.

If I’d known my own bid would be taken seriously despite misstating the projected cost by a third and documenting no discernible source of financing, I would’ve tossed a set of blueprints into the ring.

I wasn’t the only one to recognize the implication of Mr. Buell’s astronomical cost estimate. In a letter to the Times Union, Albany County resident William Cooney put a finer point on what CW Skyway — the subsidiary consortium owned by Redburn and Columbia — meant when it said the project “would rely heavily on public support.”

“[Y]ou and I will have to pay for this concrete cubical whimsey in this desolate location abutting Interstate 787,” Cooney complained. “The Albany County Legislature needs to let its voters know the cost of development or demolition of the Central Warehouse and let them vote their preference,” Cooney later wrote in this paper, echoing public comments he’d made at the March 14 meeting of the Albany County Legislature whereat legislators resoundingly ignored his sentiments.

Interestingly, Mr. Cooney’s underlying presumption that the $100 million restoration was defensible in the first place actually begged the question. Because a comprehensive and mathematically responsible report published last February by both the Albany Parking Authority and Capital District Transit Authority established a baseline as to what downtown money could do.

At a projected cost of $81 million, the report laid out a path to demolishing Albany’s perennially disintegrating bus station and replacing it with a seven story “transit center” megaplex complete with a parking garage amenable to nearly 900 vehicles.

So even granting Mr. Churchill his $20 million demolition price tag, Redburn and Columbia could raze the Eyesore and still have $80 million left over to construct a major hub of public transportation.

And if that doesn’t cock an eyebrow, consider Mr. Buell’s concession that it would be “some time” before the public would notice any improvements to the Central Warehouse. “Probably the first $20 million, you won’t even see,” he said.

A state grant of $9.75 million for the resurrection of the Eyesore was the impetus for the Dec. 22 news conference, which I attended for want of friends and a life. I was triggered from the jump.

“We’ve always known this building would require public dollars to bring it back into use,” Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan stated in opening remarks. “And that’s why we need to have an open mind. Let’s not take any idea off the table.”

That is Olympic-level obliviousness, friends. Because the idea of demolition has never even made it onto the table, which was a point I drove home by raising my hand to inquire of Mr. Buell what, as an alternative, the cost of demolition could be. He answered honestly: “I don’t know.”

All of Mr. Buell’s answers were refreshingly frank. Maybe too frank. For example, without batting an eye, he conceded that the cost of renovating the building would exceed the dollar value of the resultant outcome.

Then, after cavalierly acknowledging that the $9.75 million grant would be just enough to let him “figure out what to do with the building,” he invited the public to submit ideas as to what could be done with the very structure he’d had an extra year to plan out and finance.

Pro tip: A project assessed to be underwater before ground is even broken should not inspire confidence. It should, however, inspire tough questions. Especially when even the Times Union is noting the Groundhog Day parallels.

That paper might’ve misspelled “Punxsutawney” in its March 2022 editorial about the Eyesore, but at least it got the gist right this past August in summarizing the perpetual musical chairs: “A new owner takes over only to run into trouble. A bank takes control, sells it for a dollar. A new owner, new promises, new dreams, only to be sold again.”

Even the Times Union editor got in on the action, satirically channeling the Central Warehouse in a first-person commentary that went entirely unheeded by the dignitaries at that Dec. 22 presser: “For decades, I’ve been handed off from one developer to another, each promising what quickly proves to be an even less viable scheme to spiff me up. And every time, local elected officials act like it’s the dawn of a new day.”

Yup. And so it was that I found myself up close and personally watching once again as Albany — county and city — stumbled headfirst into well-intentioned ambitions without a single iota of requisite due diligence. There was no indication that any of the state money — which has yet to be allocated towards specific uses — would be apportioned towards a formal and good faith “demolition feasibility study” the results of which could be published and scrutinized.

And by refusing to commission a competitively-bid demolition assessment with a portion of that “free” state grant, the officials in attendance were denying both reality and the will of their constituents.

Instead of devising a fail-safe kill-switch off-ramp, city and county officials evidently decided to accept as a matter of faith that this newest developer’s plans will work — no need for contingencies — and that Mr. Buell is somehow different than the dozen-plus contenders before him, all of whom are on public record screaming “Bingo!” with the same garbage heap of buzzwords: affordable mixed-use residential-commercial green space.

When it was her turn at the mic, Assemblymember Fahy turned to Buell with a plea: “Tell me this isn’t throwing good money after bad!” But I have it on good authority that she meant to ask the following:

“What is the total public financing you’re seeking, from what specific sources, and how will the project be impacted if you’re unable to secure that entire sum given emerging recessionary pressures? What is your timeline for assembling private financing, how much money are your investors intending to recoup and in what period, and what are the loan terms dictating your monetization of the property?”

Relatedly: “Given the regionally-unparalleled cost to rehabilitate this building, what are the projected lease and sale prices for the planned residential and commercial units? What socioeconomic demographic are you targeting for residential tenancy? What data indicates that this demo will be eager for high-end housing directly adjacent to both an interstate highway and active railroad tracks?”

Twenty years ago, my friend Lukas Snelling coined a maxim by which I’ve come to live: “If you say it can’t be done, you’re the problem.” Well, Luke, I’m not saying it can’t be done; I’m saying it won’t be done. And that’s because in the twenty years since you uttered those immortal words, I’ve cyclically borne witness to developers who overpromise just enough to keep baseless hopes alive.

Years after Mr. Blum purchased the Eyesore, this newspaper published the results of cursory Google searches which first brought to light Mr. Blum’s troubled past. So has Albany learned the right lesson when it comes to vetting?

A felony “bid-rigging” charge against the head of Columbia Development was dismissed pursuant to a prosecutorial cooperation agreement in 2018. And barely six weeks ago, a subsidiary of Redburn Development made headlines for allegations of racism and a toxic workplace culture. Even taking as false all of these past allegations, there remain legitimate questions — and if the honor system worked, we wouldn’t need the very public officials who should be asking them.

What happens if funding sources dry up, or a catastrophic structural defect is discovered, or retail lessees don’t materialize? How will Albany ensure that its tens of millions of dollars in public resourcing won’t amount to yet another giveaway if the developer walks?

Time and again have we foolishly taken at face value the representations of the Eyesore’s owners. Instead of praise and accolades, Mr. Buell needs timetables, oversight, and a wary demand that he prove himself every step of the way. As Albany once again kicks the can down the road — this time with $10 million stuffed in it — Albanites deserve assurances of accountability.

And, they deserve a local media apparatus that does its job.

When WAMC reports that Mr. Buell “sets an aggressive timeline for completing the project” and then quotes him saying “it would be really lovely to have everyone on the roof on New Year’s Eve ’24,” it’s seducing a city back to sleep with wildly unrealistic implications. That’s eleven months away. And who’s “everyone”?

When Mr. Churchill rightfully notes that “the context around the old cold-storage warehouse has changed, increasing the building’s value and making its redevelopment much more viable,” he should also emphasize that more modest development — composed of modern accouterments and requiring no reengineering — situated atop the former site of a demolished Central Warehouse is at least a plausible alternative.

When the Times Union editorial board spurs the public to “keep the pressure on, keep things moving forward,” it needs to take a hard look in the mirror and at its own Eyesore coverage over the last 15 years.  Whereas William Randolph Hearst once used his Morning Journal daily newspaper to foment the Spanish-American War, the daily rag his great-grandson inherited is more interested in uncritically publishing cool graffiti photos than in independently verifying any of the stated cost estimates.

And when 2BD turns toward the Central Warehouse the lens of a money-printing enterprise it’s built out of a genuine love for the Capital Region, it needs to remember that there’s still an imperative in advertiser-driven business models to be a dispassionate champion for truth.

Mr. Buell credited 2BD for inspiring the redevelopment of the Huck Finn’s Warehouse complex. He’s been a fixture in 2BD programming for years, and for good reason: He’s passionate about improving his communities, and he wields a résumé filled with accomplishment.

His inspirational exploits — such as buying a drink for every frazzled passenger on a chronically delayed flight home — give even Santa Claus a run for his money, and make for the exact type of content that 2BD has fashioned into a juggernaut entertainment platform.

But it’s our job as Albany residents, journalists, pundits, personalities, and politicians to make Jeff Buell be the hero we seek — not by following him blindly, but by testing his sense of direction.

Because exactly one year to the day before that correlated pair of articles appeared in Albany County’s leading periodicals, the horrific consequence of false narratives, delusion, and a skepticism unvoiced was on full display in our nation’s capital.

The sixth of January is a stark reminder that when superstition is allowed to occupy the space abandoned by rational inquiry, buildings crumble.

This will be my last column about the Eyesore until its centenary in 2027; a half-decade breath will allow for more measured conclusions. But if the Central Warehouse is to outlast us all, I hope it’s because Jeff Buell had the courage to manifest his vision, and that his far-off obituary commends him for the optimism that I lost the strength to muster.

Editor’s note: Jesse Sommer is a lifelong resident of Albany County. 
He welcomes your thoughts at jesse@altamontenterprise.com.