Hill people like their water — sulfur is better than chlorine

On Jan. 10, the Old Men of the Mountain met at the Chuck Wagon Diner in Princetown, and this scribe does not have a clue as to what went on because this scribe was not there.

This will give the scribe a chance to expand on or use some of the notes from previous breakfast conversations. Some of what the OFs talk about is a very short, and generally quick, banter back and forth that may only be one or two sentences long and then a nippy retort.

Many of these are not newsworthy or fit for a paper but are very commonplace — locker-room talk of the senior-citizen type.

Last week, one of the topics not covered in the Enterprise report was water. On the Hill, many, if not most, of the wells have sulfur water. This is great stuff.

There are many kinds of water softeners that take care of the sulfur in the home if owner does not want it. Many on the Hill prefer it and, when going off the Hill and drinking the water in Delmar, or Guilderland or any community that has a water plant, the Hill people can smell the chlorine almost immediately.

Some of the OFs say it is almost like drinking Clorox. Some of the OFs who have softeners have a bypass line that goes to a faucet on the sink that takes the untreated water directly to that faucet. This water they use for drinking and cooking.

Some direct the sulfur water directly to a holding jug and let the water aerate. That is good water and spoils the OFs (and most people who drink it) from drinking other water. Thi is one of the many advantages of living on the Hill, but not all the wells are sulfur.  Some wells tap into a good stream of water before it travels through the limestone and that, too, is great water.

OFs ate health food down on the farm

The OFs, say they are OFs because well, duh, they are old and most of the OFs became old by eating the right stuff and the OFs did this naturally. The OFs keep getting reports on how people should be eating and, as the OFs look at these suggestions, many say: What is this stuff? The OFs say that they did not eat the good stuff all the time but, when they got off track, it was only occasionally.

When many of the OFs were growing up, their meals came from items grown in the garden, and butchered on the farm. One OF said, you can’t get any fresher than that, and it was chemical-free: Eggs, meat, and potatoes with veggies and fruit, although some OFs said their fruit came in the form of pies and jams.

A couple of the OFs said their fruit came in the form of wine. Home canning, and curing your own meat, was a food process more than one OF mentioned. “We used plain stuff like salt, or stuff you could pronounce,” said one.

Another OF said his family was poor, to which another OF quickly added, “We were all poor.” Anyway, this particular OF said he didn’t start to eat well until he went into the service.  

“We still eat the same way,” an OF said, “only we get it from the store, and we consume all the chemicals they use and don’t see any difference.”

However, another spoke up and said, “Most of us had a good start before the agriculturists started using all these growth hormones.”

Food and drink is essential

But is it interesting?

Looks like this scribe did not consider eating and drinking interesting because, for any of us to be here, we have to eat and drink. To this, this scribe says, it must be more interesting than he thinks because of all the cooking shows on TV and all the cookbooks in the bookstores.

The question becomes, as one OF put it, “Suppose we ate like they tell us to eat now. Would we be older OFs, and function better at 90 or 100, than we are now at 80 and 90?”

“Only time will tell,” another OF thought. “But who wants to be on this planet that long?”

This is the same OF who wanted to get off this planet awhile back.

Those OFs who made it to the Chuck Wagon Diner in Princetown and are still adding weight to this sphere were: Wayne Gaul, Ted Feurer, Gerry Irwin, Herb Bahrmann, Jack Norray, Mace Porter, Richard Frank, Chuck Aelesio, Bill Lichliter, George Washburn, Robie Osterman, Pastor Jay Francis, Roger Shafer, John Rossmann, Harold Guest, Warren Willsey, Mike Willsey, Ted Willsey, Glenn Patterson, Mark Traver, Otis Lawyer, Bob Fink, Bob Benninger, Jim Rissacher, Marty Herzog, Elwood Vanderbilt, Harold Grippen, and not me.