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The idea for this segment was similar to a cake mix that had
all the ingredients in a bowl but have not been combined to a
substance that can be poured into a pan. Or, for you football
buffs similar to Tony Romo taking over at Drew Bledsoe's
meltdown last year but not yet utilizing all the different
components that have led him and his team to have one of the
most winning seasons for the NFC East. (Darn those Patriots!)
While creating the Thanksgiving and Christmas grocery lists
with my daughter, we got on the subject of baking cookies.
Now, for those who have never met me, I can get long winded
and many times will tell the "extended" version of
things instead of getting right to the meat of the subject. I
asked my daughter if she was going to make Christmas cookies
with her oldest daughter who is not quite 3 years old. Imagine
my horror when she mentions she is going to buy prepackaged
cookies and make them. WHAT?!# Oh, that just wouldn't do, to
my Type A personality, that believes there is a place for
everything! Yes, I am known as the "neat freak" in
my household. I sometimes go to another room so I won't have a
meltdown. Though I love my sweets, and think Pillsbury cookies
are great on any other given day, I believe dishes should be
made from scratch for the holidays. Well, O.K., maybe not the
cranberries. I made a very plausible case about traditions,
and asked her, do you think Alyssa is going to remember she
made cookies with mommy when they were store bought, or when
you both get in the kitchen and work for a couple of hours
making
the worst possible mess, and create some cookies that chances
are might be all types of strange shapes and probably not too
appealing to the eye? My bet, the crooked mess with uneven
blobs of icing and little mounds of color sprinkles. Those will be
the best cookies and her little chest will puff up with pride
at the job she has done. About 30 years from now, she will be
sharing and telling her own children of the first batch of
cookies she made with Mommy.
Following the cookie conversation, I started reminiscing on
people and things that have touched my life. Frequently,
I think back to family gatherings or family trips, and some of
the darn crazy things I did as a kid. Many of these stories I
have shared with my daughter. On a lazy day or sometimes
tucking her in at night, she would say "Mommy, tell about
when you ..." and I would end up telling her the story of
her choice. She would shake with laughter and ask even more
questions.
I hope you all enjoy my trip down memory lane.
Since Autumn is my favorite season, I will start here...
Autumn in New York
On Sundays, I would sit with my Dad and watch football. I
didn't understand it much as a kid, but I picked the rules and
lingo up by
listening to him talk about the game. I loved sitting with my
Dad because it was time that I got to spend time with him. Now
retired, he was very busy back then, working at the mill and doing
multitudes of chores to get ready for each season as it
passed. Planting potatoes, cutting wood, and maintaining the
fields just to name a few. My mom and dad would visit my Uncle Bernard and Aunt
Marie Lashway and their children who lived in Lyon Mountain. I
loved making that trip, and trying to get a glimpse of those
pesky beavers building their dams. Sometimes the water would
be dammed up so high, I felt like it would breach the bank and
trickle in over the car floorboard. One visit Aunt Marie made a big batch of spaghetti. The
spaghetti didn't have the traditional red color from too much
sauce. That spaghetti, was the best spaghetti I have ever had!
Each time, I have a dish of the slippery pasta, I always
compare it to that spaghetti from many years ago, but it never
matches up to the batch Aunt Marie made. Maybe one of these
days I will remember to ask her for the recipe. My Aunt Shirley and
Uncle Carl's house was like another home for me. As a kid, my
Aunt Shirley would pick on all the kids and cousins. She did
it in a playful way. Little does she know, I do the same thing
to my oldest granddaughter. That little one loves playing and
me picking on her. She looks for me early in the morning,
after I have worked all night. Even though I am tired, I
pander to her playtime and pick on her. As I got into my teen
years, I spent a lot of time at my Uncle Carl and Aunt
Shirley's house. They live right across from the Drollette
Homestead. I miss the jokes that Uncle Carl and Aunt
Shirley would tell. Sometimes Lawrence Seney would be
visiting. He was a comic in his own right. I remember his
always teasing my Aunt Linda when she came down to the house. There
is a stonewall that runs full length between Aunt
Shirley's and Aunt Rosie's house. It was the perfect cover for
pulling pranks on people! Especially on Cabbage Night. My
cousin and I would start months early saving tomatoes and potatoes in
baskets, and let them ripen to the point that was nauseating.
We would hide the rotting concoction in the cellar until the
Halloween season arrived. Its a miracle we didn't come down with
pneumonia laying on that cold ground, waiting for the oncoming
sight of car headlights. Not to mention, Uncle Carl and Aunt
Shirley, probably wondering what that dank moldy smell was
coming from their cellar. Frozen Monkeys After
my brother was born, our family of five moved to Cadyville, NY
next to my Uncle Prosper and Aunt Veronica's house. After a
decent snowfall, which usually didn't have to come late in the
year, my sister and I would tackle the cold. Our driveway was
always lined by snow banks, from shoveled snow, that seemed to
be about a story tall. We would dig little holes, until
we finally made a snow fort. We would make two rooms, so we
each had a room, and would play house for hours. It always
broke my heart when the weather warmed up, and the fort melted
into the ditch or into the gravel driveway. My sorrow
was short-lived however, because we had the best dog in the
world, Mickey. We received Mickey from my grandmother, Mimmy.
That dog loved snow, and would twist and dance in the air to
get at the snow as it was being shoveled. Through the
years she survived porcupine quills, and getting a meat bone
stuck in her throat. She lived a long life, but didn't survive
the car that struck her on the Bucks Corners Road. I truly was
heartbroken when Mickey died. During those frozen days, my
Dad somehow always managed to come home with the best
Christmas tree. Nothing spindly like what comes out of most
boxes these days. I think he went to the pasture to pick the
perfect tree. I loved to watch that tree get dragged in
through the front door and those old Christmas ornaments
come back to life year after year, and the twinkling star at
the top. My first tree that I had after leaving home,
had an almost identical star. I had that star for 13 years,
until most of the lights were missing, and it finally wouldn't
light properly. Spring in Saranac After
freezing winters, Spring was always a welcome sight. A
sense of urgency could almost be felt in the air. Everyone was
getting the fields ready, seeds were to be planted. Those
spring days were always very chilling. Nonetheless, my
siblings and cousins would love going to Mimmy's house to play
in her huge yard. Mimmy had a huge rosebush that never
died, not even through the dead of winter. Stones walls were
one of my favorite places to play. How we loved
those stone walls! As young children, those stones were
everything a mind could imagine. From school buses, to cars,
to grocery stores, to a house complete with a stone bed. It
was a country girls dream come true. At the end of the house
closest to Bucks Corners Road, there is an elevated piece of
property that is encompassed by thick rectangular slabs of
stone that Nazaire put in place more then a century ago. In
those slabs are a set of steps that exist to this day. Off to
the right of the top slab step, there is an old ring that
Nazaire somehow pounded in. I remember playing
cowboys and Indians and tying our horses up to that ring. Of
course, the horses and Indians all ran away at the sound of my
Aunts calling us for a treat of Oreos or some soft pink candy
with "Canada" imprinted on them. As we got
older, we moved to the upper field from Mimmy's house and
built our version of a tree house. We would play house, go to
school, and climb those stones back to our two story house
with invisible grocer bags in tote. Summertime, Summertime,
Sum-Sum Summertime Summertime was a wonderful
gathering for a lot of the family. You would find us in the
fields, mowing and baling the hay. Early in the morning while
the hay was drying from dew leftover from the previous night,
Mimmy, Aunt Linda and Dad could be found at the old shop which
still stands today. There was a big old mounted millstone that Aunt Linda and Dad
turned to sharpen each one of those little blades on the
mower. Sometimes they took turns with the millstone and file.
It helped the blades to slice through
the hay easily. Aunt Rita would be in the house making
Kool-Aid and sandwiches to take to the fields. I remember
scrambling those stone walls with Aunt Rita, my mother and two
other siblings making the long walks to the upper fields. When
I was real little we had to sit under the sumac trees.
Especially down at the Lower Place. The sumac trees were
really the only source of shade. Other patches of trees were
too dense to be near, and sometimes we would see black bears
in the fields, making their way back to the dense woods. As I
got older though, we were allowed to be in the field with the
grownups. Uncle Prosper and Aunt Veronica's five boys would
help in the fields. I could sling a hay bale up on the wagon
for that first tier, but past that forget it! The Barber boys
would sling those bales up on the higher tiers like feathers.
They were real characters and had wonderful senses of humor.
Once the wagon was full, we would get on the top tier, and
make that slow lumbersome ride back to the barn Nazaire built so many
years ago. Going up Badger Hill was always risky business. Hay
toppling off the back of the wagon with a bunch of little kids
in the mix, was always my biggest fear, but once we made it to
the top, I knew we were home free. Arriving back at the
barn made the rest of the hot labor filled day worthwhile.
Once the tractor and wagon were maneuvered in, everyone
took to jumping in the hay mow. Bales of hay would come
slinging off as quick as could be. One summer, my folks had
bought some new flip flops for me, my brother and sister.
Those flip flops were my favorite...a cherry apple red (my
favorite color). During the bale pitching in the barn, I
slipped between some bales and lost one of those flip flops
that I loved so dearly. I dug and dug but my little arms
couldn't locate the sandal. I found it the following
year, after the cows had ate most of the hay during the
winter. The flip flop was so bent and distorted, that no
matter how I tried, my bigger size foot would not fit in it. Take
Me Out to the Ballgame Two of my cousins, Charles
and Scott and some of their siblings, along with myself would
congregate down in the old potato field on late spring and
early summer days. The field is right next to the Gerald and
Rosella Magoon residence. We would play baseball until we were
almost too tired to go back to our own homes. In the fall, we
would repeat the same process but would end up in Aunt
Shirley's back yard mucking up her grass playing tackle
football. ZZZzzzz During downtimes, my
Dad took us on drives on the weekends. Sometimes it was just
to see the scenery. Other times we would visit family.
Occasionally we got a real treat by going to Uncle Paul and
Aunt Joan's who lived in Schenectady, to Auriesville or to Santa's
Workshop in Wilmington, NY. I loved those trips.
Especially because Mimmy and my two Aunts would go with
us. I loved spending time with my grandmother. She was a
devout Roman Catholic, and I know she enjoyed going to
Auriesville, even though it was a rather long drive. Regardless
of the destination, I would always fall asleep before we made
it. Follow-up Issue To prevent this
newsletter from becoming a novel, I will be publishing a
follow-up issue to coincide with the Christmas Season with
more stories and traditions.
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