Comrades,
Tonight, after a chicken dinner at Brooks’ Restaurant, I headed out of Oneonta, NY, away from the sun, bound east on route NY 7. My Chevy carried me along the Catskill foothill country, along the Susquehanna river as far as East Worcester, pronounced wo͝ostər according to the sign and the clerk at the local Dollar General store where I bought a pack of gum. I felt like I was drifting through a Tom Waits song, “In the Neighborhood”, “The House Where Nobody Lives”, “Widow’s Grove” or maybe “Never Let Go”. Floating downstream, I passed stone houses built in 1792, sagging houses whose oak structural beams had grown high along the river in 1843, haunted houses that were abandoned in 1956 and a ‘For Sale’ house that once belonged to President James Garfield’s parents. In Maryland, NY, there were three abandoned early 20th century train cars parked in someone’s front yard, vaunting ragged curtains and rusty panels. There’s a trout fishin’ stream on the outskirts of Schenevus, a hamlet named after a largely forgotten Iroquois Indian chief whose name means “speckled fish”. A flat wooden likeness of the old sachem’s head swings idly in the shiftless breeze above the door of a restaurant that also bears his name. The town was first settled in 1740, maybe, and it’s current population is 551. Schenevus has a crumbling cemetery where black crows are a-cawin’ and blackened sandstone headstones are abidin’, many of which share the name “Goddard”. The marker dates reach all the way back to 1748 when Josiah Cass was born. The cemetery has an obelisk that must have been towering when it was erected on Memorial Day, 1894. It’s dedicated to the 208 regional volunteers who served in the War for Independence, the War of 1812, the Spanish American War and the Great War of 1917-18. But, with 255 names, the list of souls who served in the War of Southern Secession alone outnumbers all the names of all the other conflicts put together. Veterans of World War II are honored by a second monument located in front of the Andrew S. Draper School building on Upper Main St. in the village. I had a cold one in the restaurant under the watchful gaze of Chief Schenevus and imagined the speckled fetlocks of horses slogging through the muddy streets on the rainy afternoon of Alida’s funeral. A one-legged lieutenant in a Mexican War forage cap with a gold watch and chain was my companion. I couldn’t remember if he was Alida’s brother or cousin. I felt cold and shivered, blinked my eyes, bumped my head hard against the steering wheel, came to my senses and realized that the only saddle I was mounted in was the driver’s seat of the car. I heard a feint “Hasta pronto primo,” hit the gas and beat a hasty retreat back through time to my hotel room where I write this. “You can send me to hell, … I’ll fall from your grace, but I’ll never let go of your hand.”