Complaints abound: Cold weather, pot-holed roads, and no Knox post office

Darn, darn, and darn again — it is still cold. At least the cold was still around on Tuesday, March 25, when the Old Men of the Mountain met at the Hilltown Café in Rensselaerville. The OFs think the town of Rensselaerville should petition the state to repair the roads into Rensselaerville (especially Route 85) and through the village to the bridge headed up the hill towards the Hilltown Café.

That stretch of highway is so full of holes that it is necessary to change lanes to miss them, and, if a car is coming, the common-sense thing to do is to stop so your vehicle isn’t in a pothole so deep it will have to be extricated by a crane. When you’re finally out of the hole, the highway guys will have to deal with four to seven really ticked off OFs.

One OF suggested that this may all be deliberate to control speed — like nature-made speed bumps.

“Well,” one OF said, “I would hate to be in an ambulance with a punctured lung and have them go over that stretch of road at any speed faster than 25 miles per hour. Faster than that would bounce me off the gurney even if I were strapped down.” 

The OFs coming from Schoharie County do not have to deal with that; they have nice roads right up to the Hilltown Café.

The OFs have mentioned before (in this little weekly report) that the Hilltown Café and the Rensselaerville Post Office are in the same small building just outside the village, off the road heading up the hill. The OFs who live in the town of Knox take advantage of this to purchase stamps, and take care of other post-office business because the post office in the town of Knox is no longer available.

The OFs complain about this all the time.

The OFs in Knox have to trot either to East Berne or Altamont to transact any routine post-office business they may have. For some OFs, this is a 20-mile round trip. ’Tain’t fun, Magee, when the alimony is due and there is a blinding snowstorm.

The town of Berne is about 60 square miles, and the town of Knox is about 42 square miles and the population in each town is about the same — 2,700 souls, and the town of Berne has two post offices. The town of Rensselaerville is about 60 square miles with 1,800-plus bodies running around, and it has a post office. Something doesn’t add up here, so the OFs still complain and are wondering whom we have offended.

Slow boat

One OF just returned from a cruise in the Caribbean and the OF reported he had a good time.

This OF said the boat was loaded with older OFs, most older than he. This OF said he thinks that, outside of the crew, he was about the youngest passenger on board.

He reported that there were so many on oxygen and in wheelchairs that it took forever to disembark at ports of call, sometimes over two hours just to get off the boat.

Rock solid

The OFs talked about the mudslide in the state of Washington, and one OF mentioned that, in our area, we complain about the rock but, when things like this happen, the OFs are glad it is rock and not mud.

One OF said he doesn’t think the rock is going anywhere. Another OF said the rock doesn’t move even when we want it to.

The OFs felt so bad for those caught in the mudslide.

An OF said, from what he read, the Army Corps of Engineers reported quite awhile ago that the area was no place to build because the land was unstable. Forewarned should be forearmed, and the OFs guessed in this case no attention was paid to the warning.

Suspicions confirmed

In the category of suspicions confirmed, many of the OFs have said all along that the missing Malaysian plane is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. The theory of some of the OFs seems to be playing out.

These OFs surmised that something catastrophic occurred on that plane and the pilot attempted to turn around and return to the airport but it was too late and all perished at the same time. The autopilot took over and the plane flew straight over the Indian Ocean until it ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea.

The one open end to this train of thought the OFs have is the loss of communications from anyone on board, or the plane itself. To which one OF theorized it could be a new technological problem that may occur when electronic equipment is confronted with serious and rapid decompression.

Some of the components in these devices could also decompress enough so they fail. Could be.

One OF still says this plane is inside a UFO headed to another universe in the cosmos.

Budget whiners

The OFs also discussed single-interest budget whiners, for example, schools wanting more money, and how we pay the most for education than any state, yet the kids are still falling behind, and it is not, emphasize not, the fault of the teachers.

The teachers quite often make diamonds out of clay with the students they have.

The OFs also talked about jobs and working (two different things), maple syrup, Easter, wood, deer, black flies, and others topics of specific interest.  

We OFs do chatter on and those OFs who made it to the Hilltown Café in Rensselaerville regardless of all the potholes were: Roger Chapman, Robie Osterman, George Washburn, Harold Guest, Frank Pauli, John Rossmann, Otis Lawyer, Jim Heiser, Chuck Aleseio, Glenn Patterson, Miner Stevens, Mark Traver, Andy Tinning, Lou Schenck, Gary Porter, Mace Porter, Jack Norray, Bill Krause, Henry Whipple, Bill Rice, Elwood Vanderbilt, Harold Grippen, Ted Willsey, Mike Willsey, Jim Rissacher, Gerry Chartier, and me.