Transportation

How We got around in the good old days? Good question, glad you asked.
     As I have said in other posts, that you may or may not have read, we didn't have a car when I was young. Well We did, but We didn't. The earliest Car I remember being in was a 1950's black station wagon my Aunt Emilie owned. She would occasionally come by to take my mother shopping. I guess it was around 1962-63, maybe. The Car was huge, at least to a kid my age. I could stand up on the floor in front of the back seat near my mom. Yes that was before the seat belt law. We had em then, but they were things that no one used and everyone wondered why they were ever put in a car. Aunt Emilie's car didn't have them.
      I remember my first trip to Nyack was on a bus. We were going to Woolworth's on Main Street. I guess I was five or six. To Me, a kid that walked the empty streets of West Nyack, Nyack was the city with it's hustle and bustle and it's traffic. Teri, my wife who grew up in Nyack laughs at me every time she can when I say that.  Nyack was a whole different world. We took the Red and Tan Line buses, now taken over by a bigger company from a forgotten corner. The Bus would pick us up at the corner of Old Route 59 and Klein Avenue, I think. We would take a ride into a different world. The Bus would turn onto Western Hwy. go under Route 59, then swing on to the road in a right hand loop. At that time Route 59 was still a small town road. It was two lanes each direction divided by a grass median and at certain section of the road there were crossovers. So if you were going east on 59 and wanted to turn around you would take a crossover between the west and east bound lanes.
     In Nyack, building were on both sides of the road going two and sometimes three stories high. In West Nyack, it was just houses and fields. Just before getting off the Bus at the corner of Broadway and Main Street, on the right side was the Federal Government's answer to urban decay, it was called Urban renewal. The Federal Government would tear down old buildings thinking they were long past their usefulness. What lay on the lot between South Franklin Ave and the next street going east was a rubble strewn lot. Later buildings would go up, but they lacked the charm of what Nyack had been.

The Pick up was something like this, just blue

      My Dad also, around that time had a blue Ford pick up truck. A single seat job not really good for a growing family. The only memory of being in the pick up was during the summer when we went over to Conger's lake off of Route 9W, somewhere over near where the lake gets close to the road to go fishing. In 2018 the Fire Department is across the street. There is a Restaurant and a garage or two on the property now. I don't know what it was then, but it was open and a dock pushed out into the lake. We went out on the dock to fish. My Dad, Karl and I. I remember having a bag of chips with me and sitting on the dock, but I don't remember a pole. My Dad went to talk to the owner of the property or talk to a friend or something. I just remember being on the end of the dock and my bag of chips falling into the water. I reach down to get them out of the water and suddenly I'm in the water too. I'm kicking my feet, struggling, panicking and suddenly I felt like I'm flying. My Dad has me and everything is OK. Well, according to everyone who remembers the incident everything was not OK with me, I wanted my chips and they were still in the water. Karl remembers the incident too he says I am remembering the wrong lake. Swarthout Lake is on Route 9W and Congers' Lake is on Route 303. Karl remembers we were there just a short while and didn't get to fish before I fell in and that Daddy was mad. If He appeared mad, I'd like to think he was just scared. He wraps me in a blanket and carries me to the truck.
I stand next to my Dad on the seat of the Pick up as we drive home and then he carries me inside to the kitchen. I don't know what is real and what is a fabrication in that story, but it's what I remember.
    After, my Dad gets rid of his pickup truck, he proceeds to bring home a series of cars all great deals and all standard shift cars my Mom can't drive. She never learns to drive a standard. I have one memory of her driving the pick up from our house to the farm in Nanuet. She would get to the corner of  Old Route 59, just off what is now called Route 304 and pulls the truck off to the side of the road tired of grinding the gears and frustrated trying to shift. We would walk the final quarter mile to the Farm. In the early sixties the trip there was on an empty road and it was not dangerous. Wally would drive us home. When it happened, it didn't seem strange and I don't remember being concerned how my mother was grinding the gears.
     During this time My Mom would cart the three or four of us around to different places by bus mostly. I remember one time taking a taxi home from Grants in Nanuet and my mom having to go inside the house to get some money for the ride while we waited in the Taxi like hostages.
     As the Sixties grew later, I guess it was 1967 or so, my Mom buys my brother Karl a go cart. I think it was blue. Something that was once such a huge part of my life has faded into such obscurity. Our backyard, during that time was transformed into a figure eight race track for go carts, or maybe it was just an oval.. The Track would go around the big Maple near the house, head along the driveway, go down an incline and turn back heading over near the sand pile and the old swing set. I think neighbors bought their go karts over, I'm not sure. I do remember driving it and driving it often.
    My cousins Billy and Kenny got a go cart and put a motorcycle engine on it.They would have to start it using an electric motor and a fan belt. When it got going it was loud and smoky. It would only occasionally be seen. I don't know how or why it ended.
       One Day Karl took the lawn mower, put it on the lowest setting and cut a grass, soon to be dirt oval track in the backfield. Karl and his friends, all two to four years older than me began racing mini bikes or motorcycles around the back field, it's a little hazy. Brian Cockcroft,Tommy Martin and a few other would race on the dirt track.
       I do remember Karl getting a motorcycle and him giving me a ride on it in the backfield (the yard outside the back fence where we would play baseball and football using Uncle Ken's redwood pool as a backstop and where the swamp was. I was scared of the motorcycle, but not wanting to be a chicken when my brother offered to take me for a ride, I held onto him as he starts the bike and begins to gain speed. Heading into the first turn around Uncle Ken's redwood pool into the mud of the first turn we wipe out. Picking myself up, dusting myself off I get the courage to tell him I've had enough. Motorcycles became an older kids enjoyment.
     Go Karts morphed into motorcycles for my brother as the other kids in the neighborhood went to minibikes. Minibikes, if you don't know were small motorcycles for kids. They would gather together after school and go down to the mountain where the Palisades Center is now located and ride around there. The only problem with that was they had to ride their minibikes on the roads and sidewalks to get there, People would begin to complain and the Police would get involved and eventually everyone grew up and that too disappeared.
      Karl was the first one into cars and I sort of followed. I never had the money to buy motorcycles and cars. My Brother had a job, so he did.
    My brother Karl once bought a 1968 dark blue fastback Mustang. It didn't work and sat on the northside next to our house for a while. One day out of the blue Karl says to me, "When I get it fixed I'm going to let you drive it." I was sixteen, it was 1974. So the first thing I did the next day was to invite my friend Mike to sit in it and show it off to him. I'm sitting behind the wheel, he's in the passenger seat. It's a great car. My Mom leans out the back door and tells me to get out of my brother's car. The magic of the moment begins to fade. It continues to fade more as time goes by and the car continues to sit. It fades to black a few weeks or is it months later when the car is sold and towed out of the yard. Oh those teenage dreams.
     The first time I was allowed to drive a car I was maybe twelve? My Dad and I are in the driveway on the south side of the house, I'm behind the wheel for some reason and the car needs to be moved. It's 1970-2 and we own a Ford town and country station wagon. It is one of the biggest care on the road at the time. I begin to get out to let him move the car when he says "You can move the car." I must of smiled the biggest smile in my life at that moment. I'd only dreamed of  driving as something far away, like being grown up. One day it would happen, just not today. My brother Karl had only just begun to learn to drive, now it was my turn to get behind the wheel. I start the car. I'd been starting the car and warming them up on cold winter mornings for a while now, never moving it. My heart beats a little faster as I put my foot on the brake and slide the on the column automatic down to D. The Door of the car remained open, it was being moved such a short distance. I gently touch the gas with my foot, the car's engine doesn't seem to notice, RPM's stay steady. I push a little harder and everything seems to speed up, I'm moving! The Car starts to roll the ten feet it needs to move. For me the excitement is all consuming. I've covered a few feet and my Dad is encouraging me to go a little faster. I'm trying to make the car go a little faster, but my foot can't press the petal any harder. Finally the car is where it needs to be and my dad tells me to stop. I touch the brake and the car jolts to a stop and my first time driving is over. I didn't break any land speed records that day, though to me I was moving at an amazing speed.
     I was about fourteen when I started driving the driveway in our car upstate, when we'd leave to go to town. My Mom would always say that it was best if as many people as possible could drive if something ever happened to her. I would drive down the driveway and stop before I got onto the public dirt roads, getting experience driving.
     When the Girls came over from Russia, I cheated a bit and let them drive on the dirt roads like in that Bruce Springsteen song 'My Hometown'
 I'd sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through town
He'd tousle my hair and say son take a good look around 
This is your hometown
I had them sit on my lap, I think the first summer we had them home. The excitement they got from steering the car, sitting on my lap warms my heart still almost ten years later.

Karl's car upstate looked something like this, the color ?

     One Year, I think Karl was about sixteen, I was thirteen or so, my Mom and Dad decided to get him a car to drive up and down the driveway upstate. Rumor had it that Roger Dibble, the son of the man who cut our grass had a cheap Corvair for sale. The Rumor of the Corvair hung around in the air for what felt like years. On an unremembered day a 1956 or 1957 Ford showed up . And the car was,without a doubt Karl's. I don't know if I felt too young to drive it or if Karl made it clear it was his to drive, I don't remember. I do know I never drove it. The Car always seemed to have something wrong with it. It would overheat, I think mostly. I don't know how many years it was used. Eventually it was parked out back,off the south west corner of the house. In later years it would become a target to be shot at. When Eric took over fixing up the house, before he bought it, Him and a friend buried it in the back yard after flipping it over several times to smooth out all the bullet holes. So if your digging upstate behind the house, there is a 1956-1957 Ford buried back there. There are no bodies or treasure hiding in it, that I know of.
       I turned sixteen and waited six months to get my learners permit. I don't know why, I just did. It wasn't that I studied for a hard test, I didn't crack a book. The Test then as now is a joke and anybody with basic basic road skills would pass and I did. I took my road test in New City, I think. My Parents made me take driving lessons before they would allow me to take the test. And on top of that I was made to wait until I could prove to my parents that I could control my temper. I think I aced it, it's been a long time, memories have, do change.
       I think it was in the fall of 1975 about and we had a 1960 Jeep Wagoneer that could be notoriously difficult to start. My Dad calls me into the house to tell me something that should have pissed me off. I remember saying, "Well, I guess I'll just go back and try and start the Jeep and I walk out to the driveway between our house and Uncle Ken's house. Later that day I am told I can schedule a road test.
     OK, now I have my license. Now I want a car. My Dad says to me, why buy a car when you can share the wagon with your mother. I still had no money and no choice. So I started driving the car taking my sister and I think one year, Eric to school. Leaving my mother again without a car. I also used her car to deliver milk after school. I delivered to the Pearl River area off Middletown Road.

I used to drive something like this

The only reason I remember that is the people in Pearl River would put their leaves on the street to be picked up and I used to drive through them because, A-it was fun, B-I thought they shouldn't be putting their leaves on the street and C-it was fun. I also learned and got comfortable in a sliding car. I would drive through the leaves and hit the breaks and if the pile was wet, the car would slide. I managed to become very comfortable in a sliding car. I don't know if it kept me out of any accidents, but if a car slides, I can handle it.
     One Year, Ruth, maybe Eric and I are leaving school.Traffic out of South would line up from the intersection of Demarest Mill road and Brewery back up into the school. We get behind Madeline, at the time, Karl's girlfriend. She is driving a Ford Fairlane. It is a small two door light blue car. I'm driving a Ford Station Wagon, one of the biggest cars on the road at the time. Well, I think it would be funny to bump her car. So I go to Ruth, "Watch this." and I slowly go up and bump her car. I hear her give a little yell of surprise. I thought this was funny, so I did it again. Ruth and I think it is funny. So I think I tap her car...three times. I remember it got funnier each time I tapped her. I think I stopped when we got close to the intersection. I drove that big car to deliver milk for several years until my Dad purchased the Van.
     The Van was a 1977 Ford F100 delivery van he bought from Bill Tony Ford in Stony Point. I didn't buy it, I still had more debts than money, but I treated it like it was mine and my Father, to his credit, never said a word about what I did to it.
   

Back in the late 70's it was popular to customize Vans. So I went out and replaced the seats in the Van with more stylish captains chairs. They were black, had high backs, were made of genuine imitation leather, had armrests that you could flip up and down and they would spin. They were great. I also built, out of wood a unit that I placed above the windshield. There was space for a radio and I put switches in it for lights and I think I wanted to pad it with some of that wonderful imitation leather, I think it was also called Naugahyde,but I never did. I build a box in the back, past the sliding side door, that eventually I wanted to become a bed. My brother had installed speakers in the walls of the van that I had to remove and I installed in the wall facing the front of the van. Later I heard from my mother that I had hurt my brother Karl's feeling when I'd taken down the speakers he'd made. The Speakers had a wood case and a hole in the front that was covered with material that was associated with speakers. The Speakers were angled toward the front of the van and enclosed. Generally a very nice job. It's just my plans had changed and for two brothers who didn't spend much time together any more I should have been more respectful and thoughtful about them. I did use his design when I moved the speakers to the wall facing the front of the van.
     I was a regular visitor to a place in West Haverstraw called Van Village. I went there for all of my Van needs. Van Village lasted a few years longer then the Van personalizing craze.
     One time there I purchased plans to put up paneling in the Van. I bought the plans that showed how it was done. All You had to do was put the piece of paper from the plans on a piece of paneling and trace it out and then cut it. I used cheap wood paneling

12 S. Harrison Ave. Dining Room 2004

( look if  You don't know what paneling is look it up. I can't do it all for you. Fine, OK, it is imitation wood about a sixteenth to an eighth of an inch thick that was put up on walls to make them look natural. Yeah, I know, but back then it was really cool. I know, not so much now.) I cut out the shapes to put them up in the Van. The Van interior was not flat and I had to push them against the ribs of the wall. Every time I did, they would break apart. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I had to run the lines on the paneling horizontally, not vertically. Paneling flexed across, not up and down like I was doing, but I didn't want the lines to go across, I wanted them to go up and down. I kept trying to do it my way, even to the point of having my friend Rob help me put up the panels. I got so angry that it would not cooperate that I burned the plans in our fireplace in the living room. This was of course to show who was the boss and final decider on how things would go. After a few years and a little too much money I quit trying to fix up the Van and anyway the Van craze was over. The Van did have a neat sunroof, I installed, well until I hit a low hanging branch and cracked it. The Captains chairs were real cool until the Naugahyde on the arms split and the arms didn't want to stay up. And then one day I took a turn too tight and crinkled the side doors. The Van was coming to the end of it's useful life.
   

My CJ 5 with Eric's Ford Torino in the background

 Like everything in my life up to that time my first new car would be a spur of the moment decision. Ruth's boyfriend Bobby Hamilton was getting a Jeep CJ 7. I thought it would be a good idea if I went to the same dealership and got one too. Unfortunately I couldn't afford a 7 so I bought a 5. A stripped down 5, no decals,no radio, a hard top, no soft top, just the basics. Jeeps were extremely hot at the time and the dealership in Nyack at the corner of Route 59 and 9W where I got it had none in stock and had to order it. Hamilton's was ordered too. A few Months later the Jeeps had not shown up. Hamilton gets itchy for his Jeep and the dealership keeps telling him the same story, they're on order and they will be there soon. Hamilton goes up to the dealership in Spring Valley at the corner of Rt 45 and Rt 59 and they get him a Jeep. He says it was a better deal. I go with him, but I didn't switch. Hamilton loses the deposit on his Jeep from Nyack, but Spring Valley makes good on it. A week or so after he gets his Jeep. the ones in Nyack come in. Mine is a wonderful dark blue, with a white hard top. Someone gives me a brown soft top tp put on it.
     After I'd ordered the Jeep, I remembered that I wanted carpets in it. Joe jr the son of the owner sees an opportunity and charges me full bust out retail, $100.00 on the carpet.
     There was a promotional interest rate to buy the Jeeps, but it only lasted for a few short weeks and when my Jeep comes in, it's over, but these Geniuses, that charged me bust out retail for the carpet and kept Hamilton's deposit makes all sorts of ill will make out the loan agreement for the promotional rate, I sign and leave. A day or so later they ask me to come in and announce that the rate on the loan was wrong and they tear up the paperwork in front of me. Did I just get a car for free? Well maybe, I was told later. They tell me They will honor the rate, but they will lose money on the deal. Me, being the good sport I am and I think having the words SUCKER written across my back then take a few day to decide what I want to do.
     In the late 70's Jeeps were really cool and they were not very well made. My Jeep had several issues, like loose knobs and such so when I go back to the dealership I tell them I will sign the new contract if they put a radio in my jeep for free and put the soft top on my Jeep, which they agree to. They got away cheap, but you know, I was a nice guy and I would need them to work on my Jeep over the next several months to get it right. This Jeep would be one of the best vehicles I would ever own. When it was all said and done I paid a little over $9,000.00 for the Jeep CJ 5. Payments were a staggering $191.00 a month for something like four years, plus I had to pay insurance.
       In the Spring I would put the Soft Top on and use it until it got chilly sometime in October, then switch to the hard top. During the warmer months I'd drive with the roof down and the doors off. When it would snow hard, I'd go out in the Jeep, putting it in four wheel drive. Doing that consisted of turning the hubs on the front wheels to engage them, then getting the Jeep to roll a little and using the second smaller shiftier, put the vehicle into four wheel drive. There was a four high and low.Low would let you crawl along at like five or ten miles an hour. I got caught in mud one and used it to see how it worked. I put it in gear and as the vehicle's tires turned, I got out and help push it out of the mud.
 

   I'd take the Jeep upstate and go four wheeling with it. My first serious girlfriend, a girl who was not really an outdoors type used to enjoy going. We'd go down long abandoned trails, going places on the mountain I never would have gone. Sometimes We'd go off trail across former hay fields,through breaks in stone walls just to see what was on the other side of the tree line.
   
Sometime around 1985 I saw a TR6 for sale in Nyack. It was sitting just off the corner of Rt 9W a little way west on Rt 59. It was a beautiful blue and with its black soft top and red line tires I fell in love. The Owner was getting the engine repaired, I don't remember what the repair was, but it was a major engine repair. My thought was, "Well at least the engine is now in good shape." Hell, engines weren't the problem with TR 6's, it was the wheel wells and fenders, they always rusted out and replacements were unheard of. I'd found that out when I'd bought a brown TR 6 a couple years earlier. I only got to drive the brown one home ever. This blue one was in great shape. Like always this was a little thought out spur of the moment decision. I wanted the car and I had to have it. I negotiated a price and went and sold some stock I'd purchased over the last few years. I'd buy stock and except for one time I'd usually manage to sell it at the wrong time or for the wrong reason. More on that in an other blog. So I sold my shares in GM, IBM, Foster Wheeler and maybe others to buy this car I loved. If You have never been in a TR 6,you don't know what your missing. Triumphs were always the poor relations of British sports cars. There is a long tradition of car makers and I'm not naming them all, MG, Austin Healey, there are quite a few and of course my memory goes blank, but they were the poor relation. Most British sports car companies were decimated by Britain's 1960-70's flirtation with socialism. Their Labor force became so bloated that they could not sell their cars at a reasonable price and make a profit. Triumph was taken over by British Heritage an arm of the government. It's job was to keep Triumph and any other car company taken over to keep their patents and sell anything they could.
     It was 1985, I owned a blue Jeep and a blue TR 6. I drove the TR 6 every where I could. I used to love taking it up the Palisades Parkway, getting it up to like 60 then flipping the overdrive on and watch the RPM drop and the speed pick up, it was like magic. I remember driving the car to the City, I don't remember if I was visiting Mike and Dot in Queens. I drive up to the toll booths, back then you tossed quarters in a bin and the gate raised. I threw in my quarters and the gate didn't go up So I moved the car close to the gate, the nose of the car slipping under the gate gently and I reach over the windshield and lift the gate over the glass and drive under and away. Hell, I paid my toll. I know I didn't miss count......  I drove the car to Iona College, more on that in an other blog. Coming over the Tappan Zee Bridge one summer? fall night I notice their is a problem with the clutch, (I've explained clutches before, you'll have to look it up) Every time I shift I'm getting less and less clutch.I end up pulling over into what had been Miller Dairies,I find a phone, (yes, they weren't invented yet, I didn't get a cell phone until I was 43),I call my Dad and ask him to come over with my tool box. He get there and I'm not in a good mood and I think he is angry to be disturbed like this so I get under the car and see that the slave cylinder on the transmission has come loose. A Simple fix,which I do. Then for some reason I jump in the car, thinking I need to get this home now and with out even saying anything to my Dad, I go. All these years later I can't explain why and I still feel bad about doing it. He did ask me why I left without even telling him I was going. I think I might have said I needed to get the car home quickly, which I may have, but I still could have said something. One time I had the car in the driveway, now more a part of the lawn, next to my Uncle's house when I put the car in reverse and all I got was a grinding of gears. The Transmission was gone.
         The Triumph for all the love I had for that car was not a healthy car. The Engine problem the repair shop was fixing was only half that engines problem. They fixed the top half of the engine. I think the crankshaft in the bottom of the engine was bad too and they might have told me too. I would pull that engine out of the car, switch it with an engine from a brown Triumph I'd bought several years earlier.

It took me several months and some luck, but I got it switched. Some of the luck was noticing certain plates to hold the engine and transmission in place needed to come off the blue car engine to go on the brown car engine. I was smart enough to look and discover things and to switch the engines without any knowledge and experience. God did watch over me as I undertook this adventure, while I'm sure having a good laugh or two. Like the time I hung the engine off a tree in the backyard because I didn't have an engine hoist. I'd found a come along while four wheeling once that I attached to a hook on top of the engine. I found a rope put it over a convenient limb and cranked away. I can picture that engine hanging from the tree. I wish I had a picture of it. God looked over my shoulder when I worked on the axle of the car. I took bolts off, replaced washer and grommets without care or concern. I remember looking at the coil spring for the front wheel and noticing I'd disconnected every thing that would stop it from flying out into my face. Then one day it was done. I don't know how or why, but I had it all back together. The only Problem now would the engine even start? I didn't know because I only had the vaguest idea of what I was doing. No One told me I was doing it right or if I was doing it wrong, I just did it. Don't get the wrong idea here. I had no business doing what I did, I just knew I had to do it. Looking back at this time in my life I was doing things I'd never done before, but I wasn't getting the knowledge through books,I guess I needed to do it hands on, I guess that is the story of my life. I couldn't sit in a classroom ,I needed to do it. I'm better now.
      I had the car back together. I didn't know where to go from there. Well, yes I did know where to go. I stuck the key in the ignition and stepped on the gas pedal, maybe pumped it several times and turned the key. The Engine turned over and turned over and turned over, but didn't catch. It wouldn't start. A Family Friend, Jimmy Vines ( more about the Vines Family in other entries) had stopped by and told me I had to crank the crap out of it to get it going. Just keep on turning it over until it catches. And I did. Eventually it did start and I took it out for a drive. Issues, like the tail lights would prevent me from getting the car inspected right off, but this was still small town Clarkstown and I drove the car without an inspected for a while. I had a habit of doing that often. When It was finally all came together and the lights were figured out and the overdrive working it would run and run until the transmission went that day sometime around 1987.
     I put the car's front end up in the air to get as much space as possible under the car so I could work on the transmission. This was the original Transmission to the car. So it turns out that I bought a TR 6 with a bad engine and transmission, some deal. There was a repair shop that specializes in British Cars. It was located on Franklin Street, just off Main. I would develop a relationship, sort of with the guy. He was helpful, I was not very outgoing and didn't have a lot of money. I went down to him one day and asked him if he knew of any transmissions for a 1973 TR6 with an overdrive. He said he'd check. A few days later he came back with nothing. He gave me the phone number I think so I could call and see if anything came up. A few weeks later I called and they had a transmission. So I bought it. Slight problem and if your seeing a troubling trend in my life, know I don't like it either. I seem to be reacting to things without all the facts or having done the homework or even forgetting to ask the necessary questions. Well in this case I'd done the homework, I needed a transmission with an A style transmission. I'd bought the other style. My first mistake. The second one was leaving the part that activates the overdrive on the transmission I traded in for the rebuilt one. The Final mistake I made was keeping the transmission without the overdrive from the brown car. I should have given that one in and kept the broken one. Why You ask rightly, It was OEM, Original Equipment Manufacturer (I think). Having the original engine and transmission, even not working made the car more valuable.
     I install the transmission, the overdrive doesn't work, but it is running again. I have grand plans to figure out how to fix the overdrive as soon as I can get/ find the part that engages the overdrive. Then the clutch starts to give me trouble, it's sometime around 1988.
    Sometime in the 80's I had two working cars and the last few months of car payments on the Jeep. My brother Eric had gone through some rough times and was in need of a car to get to work. I don't remember if it was the supermarket Pathmark as part of the night crew in New Jersey or if it was Meineke Muffler in Nanuet. So one day my mother comes up to me and asks if I would sell my Jeep to my brother or maybe it was loan it to him, either way I kind of felt I had no choice in the matter, it was the unspoken mother guilt. Mother guilt is not as powerful as catholic or the most powerful Jewish guilt, but it makes you do things that you wish you didn't have to do, but I did it. I offered the Jeep to my brother for payments left on the loan. I was the good brother. To his credit and I think at that time he had little or no money, he asked me if I was sure I wanted to sell him the Jeep that cheap. I couldn't imagine selling it to him for any where near full retail price. I think it was around $1,000.00, maybe as much as $1,800.00 on a Jeep I'd paid $9,000.00 on.
     I don't remember the exact details of the of how my next car happened, but Sometime in 1987 I bought a black Pontiac Grand Am. It was a cool car and I had some fun with it, but I also owned it during the bad times after my father's death and on a subconscious level the car reacted to my mood.
    One day I see a full page ad in the Journal News, the local paper Mike's dad used to work for. It proclaimed amazing deals on their cars. So I went up to a Pontiac dealership in Spring Valley at the corner of Route 59 and Route 306. I don't know why I went. I don't know if it was because the TR 6's clutch problem had left me driving only the Van, or maybe I was borrowing my mom's car, I don't remember. I went up to buy a car, maybe I even ordered it, I don't remember. What I do remember is it was not a very well thought out idea again. It was a spur of the moment decision.  Unlike the Jeep, where I remember every detail, here I don't. I don't remember how much I paid, why I bought it or how much the monthly payments were. I am sure they were a struggle.
     I'd never owned a Pontiac, I'd never even thought about owning a Pontiac. I liked some Pontiac's, like the 1969 Firebird Rob owned. It was white, simple, but it was a classic. He sold it in the early 80's. I should have bought it.

It looked something like this car, except it was black and had a pinstripe running down the side.

    I walked into the dealership and met with a salesman named Jay. I remember this because a friend Maria worked there and she kept calling him Jay bird. We talked about the car, dickered over the price and agreed on how much I don't remember. I don't even remember the payments. I do remember the payments for the Jeep, they were around $190.00 a month, but my second car, no. When I go in to the office to finalize the paperwork I meet Maria. She is the sister of my friend Louie and the cousin of Michele, a former girlfriend. We talked about this and that. I don't know if I asked about Michele or was too afraid to. In the end She very sweetly gave me pin striping for the car for free. I thought little of it until I saw the car with pinstriping. It looked so much sharper with it. I drove it home a few days later and was very happy with it... for a while.
     Sometime before the four year loan was paid up it started to backfire on me and it felt like it was losing power. I'd hear popping sounds when I put me foot on the gas and at other time it would backfire like an automatic weapon. Pop,pop, pop... I took it in to the dealership and they could find nothing wrong with it. I took it back several times and finally they thought they fixed it. It was fine for a while then it started again. Pop,pop,pop... it was making my insane life, my Dad had died in 1989 and I was still grieving his loss, I was easy to anger, easier than normal anyway. I felt it a waste of time and money to take it to the Dealership any more so when it would backfire I'd floor it, you know, put the pedal to the floor, even tried to put it through the floorboards once or twice, maybe several dozen times. What was I trying to do? Burn the car up? backfiring could cause that. Or maybe I was controlling or at least trying to control the narrative. Good luck on that. The more you try to control the narrative, you know the story, the more you try to control events, the less things are controllable and the more they will slip through your fingers. It's like trying to fill a sieve up with water, can't be done. But try to tell that to someone who is grieving and angry even before his car starts to backfire, well it's impossible. The Car eventually did get fixed. I don't remember if I still owned it, I think I might have. The Problem was the computer chip was installed crooked. Either at the factory or when maintenance was done on it early in my ownership. I had the car when I first started dating Teri in late 1992, so I guess it was fixed.
       The Grand Am had lost a side mirror just before I closed the Video Store when some dirt bag came too close to the car when it was parked in front. I ran out to see what had happened. I accused the closest car, an armoured car pulling into their parking lot. I was wrong, The Lowlife who'd hit my car was long down the road. The piece of trash who'd hit my mirror had clipped the upper outside curve of the mirror, just enough to smash the mirror, but not enough to take and destroy the rest of the unit. A new unit in 1990's dollars was way too expensive. If I remember it was something like $92.00. This was when I was renting videos from my store for $1.59.
      I was deep into grieving my father's death and I was a very angry person. I had no money to fix the mirror, so I bought a child's plastic mirror and a tube of glue made to attach metals together. I cracked the plastic backing off the mirror and since I didn't want the mirror to ever come off I used about all the glue in the tube to glue the mirror onto what was left of the side view mirror. I lived at the time in Stony Point. The next Morning I came out to find a large clump of glue hardened on the pavement next to my car. I gave the mirror a firm tug and it stayed, a rare success for the time.
      One day I was drinking a beer, I guess I was sitting in my car. Instead of throwing it away I threw in on the floor of the back seat. I was dating Teri at the time and she didn't know what I was doing. I had mostly come out of my morning for my Dad by 1992, but the act of throwing that beer can in the back was one final 'Fuck You' world, you took my Dad. I let the can collect back there. I don't remember driving drunk during that time, but I guess I must have. One Night I got pulled over for some infraction and the Police Officer points out the cans in the back. I mumble, "There old" In my mind I'm asking myself why did I put them back there. He thinks I'm some useless drunk who does not deserve a break and yes I got a ticket and yes the next morning all those beer cans were thrown away.
      I married Teri in 1995 and she wanted a new car. She made great money for the time and she wanted a Ford Explorer. It was a fine car. She told me I could have her baby, a red 1990 something Toyota Celica. I didn't want it, but she made a real case for it. The Toyota had less miles then the Grand Am and so forth. I relented and sold the Grand Am to my brother's wife's sister's boyfriend Tim. He was more into car care and had a little more money then I did, so he fixed up the car. Replaced the mirror, got it detailed, made it look so nice I was sorry I got rid of it.
     One time a light on the dash of the Toyota cames on telling me something minor needed to be fixed and I didn't wanted to fix it. So knowing Teri would complain I put a piece of black tape over it. It covered it perfectly until Teri noticed the tape and asked about it. I said it's a funny story and told her, she didn't laugh.
 I drove Teri's Toyota until the fall of 1999. At that time I got it into my head that I wanted a Mustang convertible. It was to be blue, have a large engine and a stick shift. For those of you who don't know the joys of driving a stick, my heart weeps for you. Driving a stick, driving any sports car with a stick is almost as good as sex. I had the most fun driving my TR6, and none of the mess of sex. No One telling you don't get a stick shift unless you don't want me to drive the car. Hey, wait a moment. I did get a Mustang with a rag top, but wait...the stick...HEY! someone castrated my car! It's an automatic, with a smaller six cylinder engine... oh crap, I'm married and I do remember someone saying something about getting a stick shift if you don't want me driving it. I also remember a debate about the color. We might have been on the same page on that one. I don't think there was any question about the rag top, but the stick, there was an issue there. Compromise, the definition of the word is where no one is happy. Well that was just a joke because I loved the car, castrated or not It was lots of fun. The Car was very popular in the fall of 1999 and I wanted a specific car and was told if you go in making it clear that you wanted to buy a car and were not shopping, you'd get the best deal. That's what I did. I want in to Schultz Ford on Route 304 and said I want to order a Mustang Convertible. We went over size, shape and color. And I felt for around $19,000.00, I got a good deal. I put down a deposit and several months later, October 15, 1999 I get a call my car is in. Teri and I go to pick it up. I think we catch the end of a warm spell for about a day and we drive around with the top down. Amanda is a small kid and she sits in her car seat in the back with the top down looking at the underside of the Thruway bridge in Nyack as we are heading home. She mistakenly calls the car a chandelier. For a short while I drove a chandelier. In the Winter of 1999, Muller Dairy in nearing its end. I just don't know it at this point. I'm over at a lot in Conger's in front of Rockland Lake State Park. It's a nice set up except there is no electric run that can support my need. So I am forced to used diesel and I bring ten gallons of gas to the trailer every day or every other day depending on the weather. Life it pretty good at this point.
     A Snow Storm hits in December. I'm an old pro at these and even with quite a few inches of snow down on the ground I finish my route. In the past I would have shovel around my car and drive it out of the snow bank it was stuck in and I wouldn't be gentle. Well without thinking I do just that. I shovel around the car and get in start it up and start rocking it back and forth none too gently until it comes out.

Leonard and Anya with Elena in the Mustang.

As it slides out of it's snow bank I remember I have a two month old car, that I love and I should have been gentle with it. This was but the first of the unwarranted treatment this car was to receive. A few years down the road the top would start to leak and after every rain storm the back passengers floor would be wet. I thought it was the window that was letting the rain in. Soon the other side was getting wet too. One day a tear in the roof opened. Finally I looked into getting the roof fixed. The car place I went to told me if I didn't have a tear in the roof he could have stopped teh leaks. Down near the window in the back where the top comes together is an area that gets brittle after a while and all that is needed to be done is to glue the hole closed.
     

The Mustang in a Yankee Stadium parking Garage

 I purchased the Mustang in October of 1999. By February of 2000 I was working for a milk company that provided me with a car. The Mustang became my second car. So as of 2019 the car has less than 60,000 miles on it.
       The first car I was given by my new employer was a Ford Explorer. It was old, but fun to drive. I drove it for only a few months before they got me a Ford Taurus, Over the five years I was with Consolidated I drove several different cars. Most of them were Tauruses. I'd put a lot of miles on them and haul milk around in it sometimes.
       When I was fired in February of 2005 I drove the Mustang again. When Marcus Dairy hired me the Mustang went back to a second car and I drove a Ford Focus Wagon. I put a ton of miles on the car and I got over 26 miles a gallon in the summer. I'd fill the car up with gas near the office on Monday, Wednesday and,Friday. On Tuesday and Thursday I'd put enough into the tank to get me to the office. Tom, my boss never seemed to trust me. I'd tell the truth as often as I could, by because of his incessant I'd always make sure that I had a story or a lie prepared for his expected nastness. You could never just have a bad day with him around. I never lied or stole gas from Marcus Dairy. I did take some cakes we were selling for a while and eat them. I think it was the only thing I ever took from Marcus.
       Marcus moved out of the location it had occupied since it became a dairy sometime around 2011. Marcus moved its offices from that location to north Danbury. The trucks were moved to Guida Dairy about an hour to the north. Milk came out of that location and if a mistake in an order was made a relay was set up. A salesman would haul the milk from New Britain to Danbury then someone else would haul it further south if one of my stops needed it.
       To get your car serviced you needed to head north of Danbury to a repair shop set up by Marcus. Any time I went there it was an hour trip and Tom had to be notified. He'd always say read through you trend or study your trend. The Trend was a printout of all of your stops and the amount of business they'd done with Marcus over the be  last few months broken down by weekly sales and product. It was very handy, except when you were consistently denigrated by your boss and were spending most of your energy preparing to be attacked by him instead of building the business you were hired to. I should have studied the trend. I didn't I was always trying to please him and when you do something in a panic, like I was all the time during my time at Marcus Dairy You can't do your best. That's why Marcus failed, because of Tom and because his bosses thought he walked on water. Tom was very smart about the milk business, he just didn't know how to deal with people. He always thought sales people were like truents who needed to be kept an eye on. He alway suspected the worst from you.
       Around 2008 or so I got fed up with Tom and called  George from Consolidated asking if he was hiring, he wasn't, but he'd keep me in mind. Finally after I turned him down once he asked again in 2013 and I went back to Consolidated. At Consolidated the first car I drove was George's brother Johnny's car from the early 2000's or maybe it was Ronnie's car who'd left Consolidated a few months earlier because he couldn't take the stress and he'd gone to Cream O Land.. I drove the car for a few months until one day George tells me he is buying new cars for Paul and myself. Paul complained to me he'd always gotten grey colored cars from Marcus and he wanted some other color. I didn't care. George told me it was my choice which car I wanted. One car was a nice red color and it had a tow hitch. The other car was grey. I let Paul choose the car he wanted. And yes he choose the red car. Escapes were known for transmission problems. The red car would have a transmission problem the grey would be fine. In the long run it didn't matter, Consolidated would get the
transmission fixed.

         
         


 














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The Farm upstate, beginning to end

It was the summer of sixty-six or maybe the summer of love nineteen-sixty-seven, after all these years it is hard to be sure. I always thought it was the summer of sixty-six, but all the pictures say sixty-seven. Whenever it was, our Neighbors, the Cockcrofts invite us to their farm in West Fulton, Schoharie County upstate New York. I am eight, nine years old, Ruth is about 6, Eric is about four and Karl the oldest is around twelve.
     The Cockcrofts moved into the house next to our's a few years earlier, maybe 1964 when the house was moved out of  Nyack or something like that. My Mom has memories of kids riding sleighs under the house, set up on blocks while the foundation is being finished during the winter. My Brother Karl quickly becomes friends with their son, Brian. My Mom became friends with Holly, Brian's mom. Karl got an invitation to go upstate first. He spent a weekend, a week, or a few days, I don't remember. What I do remember is an invitation coming to my mom from Holly Cockcroft to spend sometime upstate at their farm. It was the mid-sixties and my Dad was still in his faze of getting cars my mom couldn't drive. He'd buy or was given a car by someone. He'd bring it home and my mom would ask if it is an automatic or a standard? My Mom could never drive a standard shift car. Invariable the car would be a standard.
     For all You future people who don't know what a standard shift car is, because they are becoming rarer than hen's teeth these day, A Standard shift car would have a shiftier. It would either be on the steering column or between the seats, forward a touch, on the floor. A long metal rod with a ball on the end would extend up to a comfortable height. There would also be a third petal to the left of the brake on the floor. The first thing you would do once your were in the car would be to make sure the shiftier is in neutral. If it is it would move freely back and forth. If You start a car in gear it would buck forward out of control. Next You start the car. To move You would step on the clutch, that new third petal on the left,using your left foot. That is why You learned to drive using only your right foot. If You are still learning to drive a cars. The left is for the clutch which you press down to the floor,while your right is on the brake so the car doesn't roll. Then You put the shiftier into first slowly easing up the clutch and when you hear the RPM's of the engine decrease you take your foot off the brake and give the car a like gas. You continue easing up on the clutch until the car starts to move, adding more gas as needed.When RPMs get high and the engine sounds like it is racing, it is time to shift to second, then to third and on some to forth. Standard shift cars are fun to drive, but they have lost their audience and now are more expensive to order then automatics, just the opposite of before.
     My Mom had no car to go upstate, so Art Cockcroft, Holly's husband drives us up in his black hearse.
     Arthur Cockcroft was one of the characters on a street of characters, in a town of characters in West Nyack. Growing up there, it all seemed very normal.
     Mr. Cockcroft picks us up, packed us into the back of his black hearse and I assume the kids just hung out in the back of the hearse. It had no seats, there was no seat belt law,so why not. About three hours, one hundred twenty-three miles later we were at the almost peak of Rossman Hill, Schoharie County, New York. The trip was about one hundred miles up the Thruway to exit 22. Exit 23 at the time was closed for repairs. We then headed on mostly back country roads to the town of Middleburg. There You could get gas or a burger at the Middleburg Diner. Just outside of town after passing the closed movie theater you came to a fork in the road after passing the new convenience store. One way took you to Cobleskill, then to Richmondville and the long way to the farm or the left toward the Toe Path Mountain State Park and the unpaved Rossman Hill Road. When We first started coming up there, the eastern side of the mountain had emptied out for some unknown reason. Most of the houses were empty and some had begun to fall down. Mr. Cockcroft ever the adventurer took the route to Rossman Hill road. And he proceed up that dusty dirt road into what looked like the opening of a horror movie. Family of five turns onto dirt road and is never heard from again. Come see what happened to them!! Rossman Hill Road seems stuck on the edge of a mountain, much like an after thought. The First hundred yards you look over the too close edge of the road to the reseeding road below until blessedly some trees have seen fit to grow and obstruct the view. Some of the first houses you see are small hunting cabins surrounded by empty partly grown over fields where Cows must of grazed not too many years earlier. The First abandoned house comes up on the right not soon after, I think we are told it is owned by the Milengers who have been fighting over the property since their father died. Words that should have been remembered twenty-three years later when our father would die.
     After climbing the dirt road hill going around puddles and large divots in the road you come to a flat area where the car can pick up a little speed, sending a fish tail of dust behind it, the taste of it gets in your mouth and you wonder why are they torturing you, just kill us already. The final leg of the trip is a half mile road/driveway full of washouts, mud holes and drive arounds all accompanied by a high center of the road that you hear scrape against the underside of your car. When You think you can't take it any longer you turn a bend in the road, pass an out house and arrive at the farm. You open the car door to stretch your legs and the absolute quiet hits you in the face. Grasshoppers jump up as you crunch through the recently mowed grass. Blood pounds in your ears and you feel you will never hear anything but the pounding of your heart in your ears again.
     I don't remember much about the time we spent up there.We slept in a former living room,We went down to the ponds and swam in our sneakers because we were told to. Something about the rocks in the pond. We caught frogs, salamanders and grasshoppers. We hunted for fossils and picked blueberries. Before We knew it it was over.
     One Story I need to write down, it is funny and it is a what the hell were you thinking story. It started one day when Mrs. Cockcroft asks us if We want to paint the outhouse. We say heck, yes, who wouldn't. She brings out a barn red color paint and off we go. Its 1966 and I'm eight, Ruth is like six and Eric is four. Some time during the painting I am just watching. Ruth and Eric are getting paint all over themselves. So I say to them, "Why don't you paint your arms?" and they do. They paint them up over the elbow. I leave and head back to the house and they follow a few minutes later. They walk into view thinking this is funny. Mrs. Cockcroft and my Mom, I think in unison ask what have you done. I hear Eric after he realizes this is not funny say, Joseph made us. Thank God this comment is only heard by me. Now this paint is a 1960's lead based paint that doesn't come off with water, I didn't know that. For the next hour or so Eric and Ruth are scrubbed with turpentine and soap and water. I imagine their arms were a little raw for the next several days.
     Sometime in the not too distant future, I mean it was still 66-67,something like that, suddenly my Mom and Dad are looking into buying a place up there.I remember they even asked Karl and I to open our piggy banks. They shuffled through the money taking all the bills. In my exuberance to contribute I pushed all my change into Karl's change. After that I never remember having a piggy bank. I wonder if Karl got it all?
     That Summer, most likely the next one, my mom and the four of us accompanied by Mrs. Cockcroft and Brian are shown several pieces of property. One a fishing cabin,with a stream running through the property, an other is a hunting cabin and a farm located on Beards Hollow road near the Cobleskill fair. We see several properties and the one my mom picks, because my Dad is working, is the farm just down the hill from the Cockcroft owned by Bill Vines.
     I remember the first time I ever saw the farm. I was staying at the Cockcroft's and I went down to the Vines' to play with Bill's kids. I went down what once was a farm road, now overgrown with high grass and a few wild trees. The farm road started clearly at a line of trees west of the Cockcroft's house. It meandered over some flat land, into a little gully around some trees , then it started down the hill to the Vines property. An easy trek, Can You guess where this is going? The Trail/ road ended  as it passed the Vines barn on the right side. I see Bill taking a piece of clapboard off what was left of the garage to put on the house. I felt that was not the right thing to do. I remember ending the day getting mad at Billy, Bill's son and leaving, getting lost on the way home. I was so lost I crossed their driveway at least twice before finding my way home. An outdoorsman I was not.

     The Farm was purchased and We went up to it in I think 1967. There is a cloth calendar from 1966 that the Vines left that has hung in the Dining Room forever. Hopefully it is still there.  The Picture on the right was taken the first day we were there.
That Summer I don't know how long we were up there, but We were introduced to Mr. Dibble who would come by and cut our grass for us and over the next few years Later,We would spend most of the month of August up there learning card games and spending a lot of time together doing stuff like going to the County fair.

The Horse barn

 During the Day We'd play outside in the cow barn or shoot bottles and cans we'd set up on the exposed rafters of the horse barn with Karl's 22. A Game was invented called keep out. How it was invented and by who is a mystery. It's premise is simple. One person or maybe two would be outside and those inside would keep them out. After all the windows were locked and the doors closed the one fly in the ointment that no one counted on or considered was the insider. Yes the insider, the one who wanted to add a little spice to the game by going around without anyone knowing and unlocking a window or loosing a door, but who would do such a dastardly deed? Well of course, our Mother. She'd sit at the Kitchen table engrossed in a book seemly or sipping her tea all innocently and by some magic a window would become unlocked.
    It was always the four or five of us up there mostly. At Night We'd  play games, mostly play card games. My Mom taught us Canasta and 500 Rummy, games that filled the nights with family fun and memories that I still can look back on and feel. The slap of a hand as someone stole from the discard pile a card they didn't realize could be put on someone else's cards.
     We used gas and kerosene for lights. There was no electric and you could only get one TV channel on the radio. Yes the radio. I remember listening to the Merv Griffin Show on the radio one hot summer day walking down the driveway to meet expected guests and I didn't even like the Merv Griffin Show.  A Few Years later We would buy a portable battery powered TV to use upstate. It was an amazing evening. A strict rule was no TV until night. The Battery didn't last too long. When it needed charging We'd bring it over to the Dugas' Farm. We watched the moon landing on the set, the battery dying, no sound, the picture slowly shrinking as the battery slowly die. I had trouble telling what was going on. All I could see was shadows on the black and white TV,  like above, yet I know where I was when man first stepped on the moon. Once my Mother allowed us to bring the battery over to the Dugas' farm in a cart we called Herbie after the Disney movie. These two former Brooklyn residents came up to West Fulton in somebody's distant pass and became farmers. Mr. Dugas worked the night shift at GE in Schenectady to help make ends meet. In later years We'd go over to the Dugas Farm to watch TV in the evening. In 68 and 72, presidential election years the frustration of having to sit through the Democratic and then the Republican Conventions on all the channels. TV shows, so close yet so far.
     Around this time, one bright sunny afternoon, a snake was discovered between the milk house and the northern end of the house, a little toward the back of the house. I don't remember who discovered it, but of course we all had to run over to see it. There are some dangerous Snakes in the north east and no one knew if this was one, so if memory serves someone decided to try and trap it with the pitch fork and in the process nearly took its head off. We all consoled ourselves with the thought that we didn't know if it was dangerous and the nearest Hospital was in Cobleskill about forty-five minutes away and no one wanted to make that trip with a person who may be dying of a snake bite. Later that day or the next We find out it is a milk snake and harmless.  
     Necessity is the mother of invention; I don't know who said it first, but it was something We practiced regularly upstate. The Bathroom upstate, when We bought the house had minimal plumbing. The Toilet flushed and the Kitchen sink had running water. None of us did plumbing at that time. The minimal crawl space under the bathroom and wood shed of less than three feet didn't encourage anyone to try either. So one rainy afternoon it somehow became time to wash our hair. You went outside on the porch, as the rain poured off the roof and onto the porch roof and off toward the ground and wet your hair. Then a little shampoo, some rubbing and rinse before the rain stops.
     Friends and Neighbors were invited upstate to spend time with us. Our Friends the Fishers who would drive us to Church on Sundays when we were younger came up. It was night time when they got there. The Road to the House back then even in the best of times was overgrown and trees hung over it occasionally scratching against your car. Driving down our driveway at night is a little like the "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,"  if you thought about it too much, a headless horsemen would jump out to scare you away. They managed to get to the house, then turn around and leave after about ten minute though it was after nine at night. I remember being excited to have company, then confused that they left. Mom saying something like they were uncomfortable being here. I didn't understand why.
     One person who came up and stayed was Uncle Buddy. He married a much older women and looking back on him it was obvious he married Aunt Helen so he would not have to grow up. He was like a big kid, always very friendly and willing to be just one of the group. I guess he came upstate to visit us to get away from Aunt Helen for a few days. It never hit any of us kids why he might have been there, we just enjoyed his company. Years later He would divorce Aunt Helen when she was up there in age in a move that still looks cruel, but you can never tell looking in from the outside.
    One Summer my brother Karl did not come up. Suddenly he no longer liked going upstate. He said he rather spend his time at the beach. I don't know,but I think he had a girlfriend.
     My First trip up state I took without my parents was with my cousin Joe. Everyone told me I knew the way up there so I'd be OK. Well after a few wrong turns, one heading up Route 81 I did manage to get us there.
     The late 70's was the start of the four wheeling years. It started with Ruth's boyfriend,Bobby Hamilton getting a red Jeep CJ 7. I heard about them going off road for a season or two. And so in 1979 I bought my own Jeep, a CJ 5 for $9,800.00, more than my parents paid for their house in 1952-3. The Adventures heading out on unknown,untraveled and unmaintained roads is exciting. During the late 70's and early 80's the top of the mountain and the side toward Middleburg is largely empty. One Trip down an old road ended at a point were several huge trees had fallen across the road. Another trip took us off the mountain onto route 145 about an hour from the farm by regular road, it is a boring trip back. Friends are finally coming upstate. It is a cool place to go. Everyone comes up in large groups. There are several who have Jeeps and it seemed everyone has a rifle to shoot. No One seemed to ever want to go hunting, at least during these trips.
     As the middle 80's bloomed, the place upstate starts to become a battle ground. It starts small at first. One person would do something and another person without knowledge of what the other had done would undue it or make it useless. The Outside shower with brush covering it from the road and me coming along and cutting the brush down. Our Parents had quit coming upstate by the mid 80's. I think my Father had not been up there since the very early 70's and my Mom has not been up there at least since my Dad died. Instead of a large group of friends and family coming up, coming together several competing groups form.
     Then my Father died.Things changed as I have said in several other posts. The Farm upstate becomes a major flash point that never recovers from his death and our family would come out the other side of it different. Little things became unusually large problems. The Four of Us were all in our late twenties and early to mid thirties and should have been better people. We were all grieving our father's death in different ways. My way was anger. I was so wrapped up in it that I can't tell you how the other's dealt with their hurt. It continued to spiral downward. Alcohol and Guns were very big up their at the time and Thank God we were all smart enough to keep them separate. What We could not keep separate was our disapproval of other family members.
     One Night Eric decided to come up in the middle of the night. In his effort to be quiet he goes onto the field road near where the remains of the Barn and the garage are, near the route to the Cockcrofts/ Koenigs property. He gets stuck on some logs hidden in the grass. He revs his engine rocking his Jeep to get it out of the fix it is in. Instead of sneaking in quietly he manages to wake everyone in the house up. Tempers being what they were at the time it is blown up and it may of not been the start of Karl and Madeline not talking to Eric for several years, but it was a contributing factor. Things would only get worse as it devolved into who was not talking to who and whose feelings were hurt. Something happened and the distance of time has caused me to forget, but after it happened Karl took his family and was not around for several years. He would talk to everyone except Eric and he and his family quit coming over to Mom's house. They disappeared and everyone let them go. I did nothing and I don't know why. Maybe I was still processing the grief over the death of my father, I don't know. What this period of time did to our family still resonates in the family today. Karl and Eric get along, but the relationship is a little distant. They are friendly, but not close. They go upstate to their respective homes and even do things for each other, but it seems a little polite, if you know what I mean. My Mother's relationship with Kristen never recovered. They are not as close as they were or could have been. My relationship with Karl and Madeline is good, but my relationship with Kristen is distant and I am her Godfather. It is a very sad period of life to look back on and I don't think anyone is at all proud of it.
     At some point Karl is given several acres of the farm to try to keep the peace by my Mom. Ruth tried to stay out of it to the point that she said I could have her third of the remaining property. It was in name only and I tried to keep that in mind as I navigated the suddenly rough waters of my family. This was something new for the remaining five of us. We had never been extremely close, but We were always there for each other before, now I wasn't sure. My Mother tries to stay out of it and just let us work it out like the adults we were supposed to be. She is dragged into it by Karl writing her letters detailing his complaints about everything. I don't know if he was not talking to her or if he didn't feel heard by her. Karl, Madeline and Kristen started to spend more time with Madeline's side of the family. This would go on for several years. No One ever thought to bring up the Milengers.
     Peace was never declared, no one got together, shook hands, hugged or forgave each other, well at least not publicly. The Combatants just sort of lost steam and realized they, all of us had changed and the damage that had been done to the family would never end unless they ended it. Tentative feelers were extended to all sides. Invitations to family gathering, offers of help on each others places upstate. Eventually everyone reconciled and life went on in it's new version until it became the norm.
       At this point in time, everyone is more or less friendly with each other. If They are not, they keep it quiet. There is no open warfare among the survivors. Everyone carries around their scars quietly. Maybe I am being overly dramatic here, but I remember the days We would all go upstate to the farm and the disappointment I felt when my brother Karl was old enough to not want to spend time with us there. And later when We all seemed to drive four wheel vehicles and would drive all over the mountain discovering trails and old roads. That is all gone now. I haven't been upstate in five years, Ruth ten or more and my Mother hasn't been up there in nearly thirty. It's just all different. The Place I grew up in and loved was purchased by Eric, or at least the remaining two thirds of it during the dark days. He used money he had and completely rebuilt the place. He replaced aging windows who's panes were held in by nails after the putty covering them had dried and fallen away. He insulated the house, put back the interior to the way it was before Bill Vines had taken down some walls to make a living Room with a fireplace. He expanded and rebuilt the kitchen adding the wood shed as part of the living space. He moved the bathroom and completely renovated it. It feels like a house back home until you turn on the water and it just trickles out of the faucet like it is coming down off a mountain from a spring. And I guess that is the problem, it's not the house I grew up in and loved. It's my Brother's house that he rebuilt.
     The last Time I was up there I wanted to get away from everyone in the kitchen. What I used to do is go to the Living Room and read. It would be quiet and everyone in the Kitchen would seem far away and muffled. I quietly leave the Kitchen closing the door quietly behind me like I always did. I walk through the Dining Room looking at the cloth calendar from 1966 still hanging in the window shaped section of the wall dividing the Dining Room from the Kitchen, it hadn't changed. I walked toward the front door and stopped to look at it. It too had remained the same, solid still standing the test of time. I looked behind the curtain covering the stairs to the second floor,it is dark up there like it always is, it smelled a little musty. I am reminded of a time when we had poodles and I'd throw a ball from the bottom of the stairs and they'd run up the stairs to retrieve it. The whole House back when it was ours had a particular smell to it. A combination of kerosene and age. It was a comforting feeling of sameness.The Stairs to the second floor had a memory of that still. I turned to enter the Living Room and I am confronted by someone's bedroom. The Room I was heading to had ceased to exist several years ago and I'd forgotten. The Room I'd spend many hours in reading curled up in a big overstuffed chair, or sleeping in, getting up in the middle of the night to put another log on the fire is gone. It's Eric and Lynn's bedroom now. It's too late to hold a funeral, the dead have been buried. Reborn in its place a vaguely familiar clone of the house I spent many summers in has replaced it. Outside the stars are still bright, giving the night sky that familiar milky haze, but inside it's someone else's house.














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