How a stray golf ball solved a family mystery

MIDDLEBURGH — Temperature was climbing, humidity/dew point was climbing as the OMOTM descended on Mrs. K’s Kitchen in Middleburgh on Tuesday morning, July 30. We even had a potential new old guy join us for breakfast.

How does that happen? The “new old guys,” I mean. Well, it is a little like “I know a guy who knows a guy” type of thing.

We all know people or places, who to ask for anything about anything or anyone. There are three of these places people can pick from, and they are all extremely knowledgeable in their respective areas of expertise.

For instance, if you are looking for info on which kind of drill bit you should use and how to use it for a particular job, you would head to your local hardware store. Those guys know everything about every tool or widget ever made!

Then there are the bartenders; they know about people and places and politics and who is who. And most of all, they remember you and what you drink. The two most important things about them: They listen and keep their mouths shut.

Barber shops for men, and hair salons for women rival each other for people information and form the third leg of my information-gathering system. So, with all that in mind, I was getting my hair cut (what I have left) the other day and got to talking about the OMOTM when my barber all at once said she wanted to give me a name of a customer of hers who has been reading about the OMOTM for years and years.

He knew all about our Scribe, John Williams, having read his column for all of those years. My barber, MegN’s in Slingerlands, checked with her customer to get his permission to give me his name and number. I called him and we met this morning and had breakfast.

I don't know how it happens, but motorcycle guys can just sense when there is another biker in the room. In no time at all, my new barber-shop OF was talking motorcycle stuff with other OFs and I have no idea what was said.

Those guys talk a different language altogether. Sort of like me trying to understand First Cut and Second Cut in the hayfield.

Ancestral roots

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was talking a little about the ancestral  roots of so many of the OMOTM and suggested that many of them would have no trouble tracing their family lineage back to the Revolutionary War and before, right here in the Hilltowns?

Well, the general topic of genealogy came up at one of the tables and sure enough, one OF said he could take us back to the early 1700s with his family tree.

Another OF told the story of searching for a particular relative’s headstone with no success. It had to be around here in the Hilltown area someplace.

Time passes and things change. Some farms change hands or just get sold for whatever reason, and other uses for the land take their turn. In this case, a small golf course was made on some land. I didn’t catch the name or the exact place, but that is not important to this story.

One day a duffer like me hit a ball into the woods and believe it or not, he found his golf ball right next to a gravestone marker that had fallen over. That marker held the name of the relative the OF had been searching for for a very long time!

It was not the relative himself who couldn’t hit the golf ball straight, who found the gravestone, but a friend who knew our OF and his family and told him of his discovery. This was out in the woods. Not a church cemetery; there were no old farm houses close by.

There has to be a fascinating story connected as to how this came to be. So many questions. So few answers. A lot can happen in 250 years. Nature has a way of taking back her land when we are done with it.

Time warp

With that thought in mind, one OF told the story of climbing Mt. Grippy in East Berne as a young teenager and when he and his friends reached the top they found an open field where they could look down on Warners Lake and see the boats going around.

The bigger kids got some rocks and an old tree and made a flag pole and raised it up. Someone must have tied a towel or something to the top and that served as a flag.

Again, the years go by and the OF took his grandsons and drove around back of Grippy and with permission, walked out to the field to show his grandsons the view of the lake he had a long time ago and where the flag pole used to be.

Mother Nature had reclaimed the field with a forest of big trees over the period of some 50 years. There was no view, no pile of rocks. In his mind, it was yesterday; in real time, it was two generations.

Those joining our prospective new OF were: Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Ed Goff, Wm. Lichliter, Pete Whitbeck, George Washburn, Kevin McDonald, Gary Schultz, Roland Tozer, Jim Austin, Frank A. Fuss, Glenn Patterson, Joe Rack, Mark Traver, Ken Parkes, Paul Whitbeck, Gerry Chartier, Jake Herzog, Russ Pokorny, Frank Dees, Warren Willsey, Bob Donnelly, Dave Hodgetts, Jack Norray, Gary Cross, Herb Bahrmann, Lou Schenck, John Williams, Henry Whipple, and me.