Summer in rear view, naked cave stroll within purview
MIDDLEBURGH — It’s after Labor Day, and the early morning temperature is in the 50s, the lake water is much warmer than the air, fog lays in the valleys, some leaves are falling. School buses are rolling in large numbers, and what’s that in our rear-view mirror?
Summer.
I’ve been warning you for the past two weeks that this was coming; now we will just wait for a frost and then we can settle in for what we hope will be a nice long Indian Summer. With any luck, it will be a month or more before that first frost happens.
The average first frost is Oct. 3 — I looked it up. I am sure that we have some more 80-degree days left to enjoy. I looked that up too; the last 80-degree day is a month later, on Nov 2.
Enough of the weather. The OMOTM gathered this fine crisp morning, Sept. 3, at Mrs. K’s Kitchen in Middleburgh.
Soon our ranks will thin out a little as a few of the OFs depart for warmer parts of the country. But not yet.
One of life’s puzzles is the huge number of birthdays in the month of September. One such birthday, a very special one, takes place this week; it is number 90 for Jack Norray! Congratulations to Jack — Happy Birthday!
Muscle car
One of our OFs showed up on Tuesday in his 1958 Pontiac Catalina, which was parked directly across the street so we all could see it. Remember a couple weeks ago when I wrote about some of the OFs talking about how the cars of today all sort of looked the same?
Well, just about every one of us knew that this car was a late ’50s Pontiac, and most of those knew it was a Catalina somewhere close to a ’58.
It had chrome, it had two colors, and it was a picture-perfect muscle car. We all knew that from across the street! I hope the OF brings it next week, ’cause I’ll take the time to check it out.
If all the OFs who have classic cars, and motorcycles, all brought them to the same breakfast, from the Model T to the muscle cars, it would be quite a sight.
Nude vicissitude
Last week, an OF brought an article he noticed in the Times Union newspaper to this scribe’s attention. Last week, the scribe didn’t have room in his column to give it the proper attention it deserves.
But this is a new week and this is time sensitive, so time is of the essence and the scribe had to figure out how to properly write about this rather sad subject concerning the demise of a six-year tradition at the popular tourist attraction, Howe Caverns, while not offending some readers of The Altamont Enterprise.
The scribe is not at all worried about offending the OFs because, as we all know, they are unoffendable (that’s one of the rules to become an OMOTM; I believe it is # 7.) We get mad, we get upset, we get angry, but it is nearly impossible to offend us.
In any event, here goes. The lead headlines went like this, “Naked in a Cave to Bare All One Last Time” and “Howe Caverns to strip event out of its annual lineup.”
(Newspaper people just cannot resist writing headlines like that! But not The Altamont Enterprise! They would never fall for such an easy play on words. Absolutely not! They would never use the word strip. They would use words like “discontinue” or “cancel.”)
The article goes on to say it is a self-guided tour in which attendees stroll au naturel through the cavern — and that this all started on July 14, 2018, on National Nude Day. Who knew?
I’ll tell you who knew: Each year about 250 to 300 people stroll along for about 1.25 miles in 50- to 55-degree temperatures; that’s who knew.
Precautions are in place to ensure privacy. First, and foremost, the cave offers an extra layer of privacy because all this takes place 156 feet underground in the cave. You gotta have a ticket; there are no other people wandering around except maybe a stray bat.
A keyboardist will play music, and hot chocolate and cookies are provided halfway through the stroll and a towel (I hope it is hot!) is provided to sit on if you take the boat ride.
I don’t know about anybody else, and I love hot chocolate and cookies, but 50 to 55 degrees gets pretty cold for this OF in a very short amount of time! A lot less time than it takes for a 1.25 mile stroll au naturel.
It would take at least one-and-a half days for this OF to stroll that far! I’m a slow stroller, and the colder I get, the slower I stroll. Anyway, this is it. It’s all over after Sept. 28. A sad day for those of us who enjoy a good cup of hot chocolate and cookies.
Those of us making plans for the 28th while enjoying breakfast at Mrs. K’s included, Harold Guest, Wally Guest, Ed Goff, Wm Lichliter, Pete Whitbeck, George Washburn, Kevin McDonald, Gary Schultz, Jim Austin, Mark Traver, Glenn Patterson, Joe Rack, Ken Parks, Jake Herzog, Roland Tozer, Gerry Chartier, Marty Herzog, Frank Dees, Ted Feurer, Wayne Gaul, Jake Lederman, Russ Pokorny, Warren Willsey, Alan Defazio, Lou Schenck, Herb Bahrmann, Gerry Cross, Jack Norray, Dick Dexter, John Dab, Paul Guiton, Bob Donnelly, Elwood Vanderbilt, Dave Hodgetts, Dave Wood, and me.