OFs advise that year-old spuds make the best salads

Guess what! The Old Men of the Mountain managed to gather again on Tuesday, April 25, at a new/old place with a new name. The place is Hillbelly’s in Westerlo.

One of the Old Men of the Mountain worked here many years ago when he was 15 years old and his grandfather owned the place. The OG is now 72 and eating in the same spot on this planet that he did when his mom probably fixed his lunch for him.

Now he has to buy his own lunch while someone in the kitchen puts it together and a cute little waitress brings it out. My goodness, some of the OFs don’t wander too far away from home.

Just like a bunch of old hens, the OFs talk about cooking more than one would think. One time it was how to build a sandwich; this time it was how to make potato salad.

For some reason this was a carry-over from the OF who said he planted 150 pounds of potatoes already. These OFs claim that, for one to make good potato salad, it is necessary to start with old potatoes — maybe a year old.

To some of the OFs, this takes considerable planning to store away this year’s potatoes for next year’s potato salad. The OFs said the spuds do have a bunch of eyes that have to be cut out before being cleaned and cut up but they do make great potato salad.

One OF said his father never really planted their potatoes but they always had quite a crop. This OF said, after cutting up the seed potatoes, his father just threw them on prepared ground in something that looked like rows (the OF said his father wasn’t too fussy) and then covered them up with straw.

When it was harvest time, they would just pull up the plant, and take off the potatoes, and they were just about all the same size by the straw covering and not dirt, the potatoes were then put in sacks, and hauled off to the root cellar.

Reunions

Now we go on to the next topic. Not many family reunions happen with the OFs but some do travel hither and yon to attend these rare family events.

In this conversation, a few of the OFs talked about meeting with the people they graduated with. Strange that the only ones who talk about this are meeting with their high school class, not college; this may be because we all are required to go to school up until the 12th grade; college is an elective.

There are, in the military, certain reunions but again most of the time the military was elective except when the draft was in force and that friendly greeting came from the government. The ones who received the greeting were advised to serve — election had nothing to do with it.

In this discussion, the OFs noted how many of their classmates have passed on, which makes their reunion gatherings smaller and smaller. The group called the Old Men of the Mountain is open-ended; it has no age limit at either end, the rule is just show up, but these high school reunions are the other way and that is what the OFs talked about — how few are left in some of them, and the shape some of the remaining members are in.

One OF put it this way: At some point, there will be one chair not turned over, or it may work out that the waiter has to turn all the chairs over. Some of the Old Men of the Mountain hope with this group it never gets to that point.

Cognoscente 

The gathering this Tuesday morning had one OF present an offering from one of his friends who is doing a survey for some hospital on “cognizant.” (A brief check in Google says this means “knowledge of something, especially through personal experience.”)

This OF said his friend thought the OMOTM would be a great group to be part of that study. This OF gave a brief dissertation on what would be involved.

The doctor would either come to the OF’s home or the OF could go to the doctor’s home. The OF said the question-and-answer period would be about three hours long. The OFs muttered this is no rinky-dink item.

“Three hours, I can’t stay awake that long,” one OF uttered quietly.

The information offered by the OF doing the presentation was pretty sketchy for now. The OFs thought for a study like this, this group is pretty “hip” because more often than not at each breakfast the OFs time jump from the 1930s to 2023 in a couple of sentences.

So far within the group, memory does not seem to be a problem. One OF suggested that might be just what they are looking for.

“I don’t know,” was a reply. “I can tell you what my wife was wearing when we first met, but I can’t tell you what she has on today.”

“Me too,” an OF replied. “I can tell what my mother used to make for us as kids for breakfast when we came in from doing chores in the barn, but come 4 o’clock this afternoon and I won’t be able to tell you what I am having right now for breakfast.”

It will be interesting to see how many takers we have on this. For now though the Old Men of the Mountain were enjoying their breakfast at the Hillbelly’s Restaurant in Westerlo, New York. 

The Old Men of the Mountain who made it to the new/old restaurant were: Ed Goff, Rick LaGrange, Miner Stevens, Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Bill Lichliter, Robie Osterman, George Washburn, Doug Marshall, Frank Fuss, Roland Tozer, Frank Dees, Russ Pokorny, Rev. Jay Francis, Herb Bahrmann, John Dab, Bob Donnelly, Dave Hodgetts, Elwood Vanderbilt, Allen Defazzo, Gerry Chartier and guest Winnie Chartier, Dick Dexter, Jack Norray, Lou Schenck, and me.