Party Line

I was a youngster, but can remember, as far back as the early WWII period which of course was the first half of the 1940s decade.  Undoubtedly there are others who can stake a claim to far earlier memories than that, but I can only tell you what I recall.  Our telephone at the time looked like the one in this photograph.  It stood on a shelf about three feet from the floor between our living and dining rooms.  While using it, which my mother dearly loved to do, she sat on a nearby chair in the dining room.

There were four family phones on our party line, but only two party rings could be heard, our own, and one of our closest neighbors the Mayne’s.  If our own ring was heard, my mother of course picked the speaker part off of its hook which opened the phone line to the calling party.  Gladys Mayne also heard our phone ring, so in order to keep up with the neighborhood news she would also pick up her receiver and listen to the conversation between mother and the calling person.  It follows that my mother never passed up an opportunity to listen in on Gladys and her friends.  Common manners said you only listened, but once in a great while possibly mother or Gladys might join the conversation if it was a mutual friend.  It was easy to explain that mother thought it was her ring rather than Gladys’.

Beneath the phone shelf, mounted to the wall was a black metal box about 6” wide and 8” high.  It had a small crank protruding from its side.  If mother wanted to place a call she picked the receiver from its hook, listened to determine if anyone else was using the phone, if not she turned the little crank a few revolutions, and waited for the operator to say, “Number please?”  She then told the operator the number she wished to call and the operator made a manual connection between the two phones.  If perchance any of the other three parties were on the line, then of course she had to listen in to know when they were done with their conversation.

As we had no electric power, hence no TV, and only used the battery powered radio sparingly due to expensive batteries, the party line was mother’s sole entertainment source.  It was in the next decade before our family obtained that great advertising nightmare device, the television.

Water, Water, Everywhere

The village of Russell can be located in the town of Russell in St. Lawrence County way up there in northern New York.  Heading south from the village for a couple of miles will bring you to Whippoorwill Corners where if you were so inclined you could turn east on county route 17 and head toward the village of Degrasse which is five or six miles distant.  However no more than a half mile from the Corners on the north side of the road there is a marked State area where one can freely camp.  This area has a small brook running right through it named aptly Plum Brook.  I say that because it is a brook, not because I ever saw any plums in the area.  This first photo is a view downstream of the brook as it appears from near the camping area.  Small rapids appear here and there causing that sound that is so soothing to the ear.  I’ve camped there in the past and I had no trouble sleeping with the never-ending music of the water passing by.

The second photo is a view of the same brook, but upstream from very near the same place as the first photo.  The scenic value is wonderful and a tonic everyone should experience from time to time.  It is not uncommon to see wildlife at this wayside stop, including, but not limited to, deer.

Leaving that place (which isn’t easy for campers) and continuing east toward Degrasse one can locate the Silver Hill Road heading south to nowhere.  This third photo is taken right from the roadway at the first small bridge you come to.  Do you spot that boulder in the stream toward the right side of the photo?  I happened to catch the largest Brook Trout I’ve ever seen right in the eddy behind it last year.  Right between the camera and the rock my bobber can be spotted while my grandson’s is over nearer the left shore as we try again, but with no luck this time.  However, our fishing partner, and brother-in-law Ron, did manage to catch a fair sized Brookie here which he tossed back to grow some more.

Continuing along the Silver Hill Road past Cook Road and the McCarthy Road soon you will come to this breathtaking spot as shown in photo four.  The brook passes right under the road, but this is to the upstream side a 100’ or so from the road.  This is Brook Trout fishing water at its best, and a summer day in the Adirondacks is never a day wasted.  The stream comes cascading down over rocks, through sylvan glades, under forest causing dappled sunlight on its floor.

From the lower right hand corner of photo four the brook tumbles next over this small set of rapids, quickly dropping four feet or so to a new level.  I got a nice bite here Sunday, June 26^th, but it got my hard working worm, and I got nothing.  Swim on oh great piscatorial wonder, maybe we’ll meet again another day?

These is a little fished brook of pure mountain waters winding its way down to the Degrasse River which flows to the mighty St. Lawrence River, and on to the Atlantic Ocean.  We fished the various spots on it for some four hours, and never encountered another fisherman in our travels, or maybe that should be travails.

Joe Bonaparte

Corsica is an island in the northern Mediterranean, and furthermore is the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte whom I will assume most readers will have heard of this gentleman.  However, it is also the birthplace of Joseph Bonaparte in 1768, the not-quite-so-well-known elder brother of Napoleon.  So, “What did Joseph ever do?” might be a fair question.

Joseph, a bit of a rogue, married and sired three daughters by 1802.  He also fathered two more children with another lady, not his wife, by 1808.  In 1806 Joseph’s brother Napoleon installed him as the military commander of Naples, and shortly thereafter made him King of Naples.  This lasted for two years at which time Napoleon gave that title to their sister’s husband while Joseph was entitled King of Spain.  Joseph tenuously held that position until 1813 at which time he abdicated the throne he never really held.  Taking the Spanish Crown Jewels with him, he next showed up in Switzerland before moving on to America from 1817 through 1832.  Here he became the father of two more daughters with his mistress Annette Savage.  He lived in New York City and Philadelphia before settling in Bordentown, New Jersey, located between the two former cities.

Along the way he acquired a fair amount of land in northern New York surrounding a large lake in Lewis County.  Joseph named the lake Diana after the goddess of the hunt, but it was known thereafter as Lake Bonaparte (mentioned in the previous post) as it is today.  He first built a rather modest home at a place called Natural Bridge some 20 miles west of the Lake, so named because the Indian River disappears underground at that point for a hundred yards or so leaving the natural bridge over its flow.

Using his Natural Bridge home as a base Joseph set about building a much more luxurious building on the lake shore.  This he named “The Hermitage.”  His and Annette’s eldest daughter had died, but the second daughter, Caroline, ultimately married  Zebulon Benton.  Benton was born and raised in a wee village named Oxbow, on a bend in the Oswegatchie River resembling the yoke used for oxen, only a few miles from Natural Bridge, even though eventually in a different county.

Joseph Bonaparte grew tired of living in the woods of northern New York and built a new home for Annette and himself back in New Jersey.  He left her there and returned to Italy where he died.  Annette ultimately married and moved to New York City.  Zebulon Benton went bankrupt, mostly squandering his wife’s legacy, in an attempt to smelt iron ore around Lake Bonaparte.  Caroline lived out her days as a teacher in northern New York. 

The Onion Van

As happens in life we all grow older as time passes.  In my family that also often means that our hearts will succumb to the ravages of time before we are of a normal retirement age.  My brother Bob, while yet in his early fifties, was forced into an early retirement for this reason.

Although I had a heart attack when I was 41 I had been fortunate enough through surgery to be able to return to the work force again, and was a general repairman for a servicing mobilehome dealer.  In this business the repair work necessarily took place at the home site so I spent a good part of my time traveling from place to place around the northern parts of New York.  Having spent a year of my life unable to do much of anything after suffering the heart attack, I knew what Bob was going through day after day with nothing to do of consequence.  So it was my habit to pick him up on some occasions when it appeared I would be spending much of my day traveling along the highways and byways.

On one such occasion I had to travel to a lakeside area in the Adirondacks.  It seemed like a ride that Bob might enjoy, and I liked the company while driving as well.  So it was that we rode together to my designated home needing repair along side the beautiful Lake Bonaparte (named after Joseph, brother of Napoleon).  The home owner was working, but I had permission to enter the home to complete the necessary repairs, and so it was that Bob was free to wander the surrounding area among the woods and lakeshore to whatever degree he had the strength to do.

Possibly as much as a couple of hours passed as I effected whatever repair work the homeowner had requested.  Upon completion of  my tasks I finally returned to my work van to go on to the next stop of the day.  As I entered my van it smelled like I had entered a giant onion.  The air was pungent to say the least.  Bob sat within the van, non-concerned as to this overpowering odor.  My first words were, “What is that awful smell in here?”

He nonchalantly replied, “I’ve been picking leeks.”

I suggested it smelled more like he had taken a leak, but he assured me it was merely a plant and he had picked a bunch in the nearby woods to take home.  I was not familiar with them at the time, but they are apparently related to the common onion as they smell nearly identical.  Since then a neighbor made some soup from some and brought a sample to my family, and I must report that it was very good, but the particular day that Bob placed them in my work van I was not so sure about their goodness.  In fact the odor could be detected for many days thereafter.

Sunday Rock

Somewhere between those who felt they were civilized, and those who were considered less so, there had to be a dividing line of some sort.  Otherwise how could one have told what status they held in the wilderness.  Sometimes there was little difference between the factions, but still, since the beginnings of civilization the world has been divided in some sort of class distinctions so this was little different.

When the Revolutionary War was over the State of New York had tremendous wartime debts to contend with.  It was decided to confiscate all land of former Loyalists (British sympathizers) and sell it to the highest bidder.  Thus in the latter half of the 1780s decade pioneers began to settle in central New York on this newly available acreage.  Yet it was a slow process as there were vast tracts of land to fill, and not that many pioneers to fill them.  The trend of settlement continued with those who went north along the western side of the Adirondack Mountains into the fertile valley of the St. Lawrence River which divided these lands from Canada to the north and west.  Thus the Valley was settled long before the mountainous interior of northern New York.  There, only the hardiest of individuals attempted to make a living via trapping fur-bearing animals or in the lumber industry.

Those in the St. Lawrence River Valley soon decided they were much more civilized than the riff raff of the mountains, and this is where the division of classes began.  On the northern outskirts of what is now the village of South Colton there is a BFR.  In nice terms this is a big foolish rock.  It was here that the line was established separating the heathens from those civilized folks in the Valley.  The heathens were those from everywhere and nowhere that sparsely populated the mountains no matter what their race, creed, or color.  Soon it was known as heathen rock denoting its status as the dividing point.  In later years the term heathen was somehow determined to be a harsh term, so its title is now the Sunday Rock, but the meaning is still the same.

Recently it has been named to the National Registry of Landmarks.  Previous to that it had been listed in the State Registry of Historic Sites.  It is now the only rock designated as a National Landmark.

Rare Deer Photos

Saturday afternoon, June 11, 2010.  I was driving slowly around my local area to see what I could see.  I was in my farmer neighbor’s corn stubble field untouched since last fall.  As I approached my own land, which is the woods part, suddenly a deer stood up from her bed.  Noticing how suddenly gaunt she was as compared to a pregnant belly a couple of days earlier, I knew she had recently given birth.  She certainly was not in any distress by my presence as can be noted by her merely standing still with tail dropped.

In the second photo you can tell she has walked a few steps, but still not showing any alarm, just walking away slowly.

In the third photo a small udder can be detected by careful examination proving the recent birth of a fawn or fawns.

In the fourth photo she has raised her tail, but not in the classic flag alarm manner.  It seems more of a half mast effort.  Also if alarmed her head would be held high as she searched for danger.

In the fifth photo she had done something I have never seen before.  She squatted down on her haunches.  I thought she looked like a kangaroo in that position, although I’ve never actually saw one of those either.  She remained like that for at least a full minute while I snapped several photos.  She is looking into the trees on my land, but there is precious little there to hold her interest.

After a minute or so she once more stood up with her tail straight out behind her.  All of this time I had no idea what was going on.

Then raising her tail a bit higher she trotted off to explore some other area while I moseyed on up to where she had committed this strange act.  I found a rather large wet area where she had obviously urinated.  Having watched deer all of my adult life I had never witnessed this on any prior occasion.  I would have never guessed a deer would squat to pee if I had not witnessed and photographed her in the act.

Downsizing

Last Thursday, June 9, 2011, while at the beaver pond on my farmer neighbor’s land, I espied Bucky Beaver doing his thing, namely adding a bit of building material to the blockage of the sluice pipe under the road.  This blockage has caused the water level to rise somewhere around a foot on the north side of the roadway.  Bucky’s plan of a higher water level also caused the pond to enlarge as it overflowed its banks.  All well and good as far as Bucky was concerned, but this plan was not acceptable by Mr. Farmer.  He didn’t believe Bucky needed the extra room as it was being subtracted from his crop field.

Monday, June 13^th, when I arrived at the pond on my almost daily journey I discovered a waterhole.  That hole in the water, with the surrounding water circulating in a counter-clockwise direction, is located at the end of the sluice pipe where Bucky had his blockage.  Some act of man or nature apparently caused Bucky’s hard construction work to disappear.  This caused a sudden water flow from the north side of the road to the south side.

This is a view of the same water hole, or vortex, from a slightly different angle.  Hundreds of gallons of water are disappearing down that hole every minute.

The discharge end of the sluice pipe on the south side of the road appears like this.  The water flow is quite spectacular to see.  That green dashed line on the side of the pipe that is now approximately 4” underwater, was about 8” above the waterline the day before yesterday.  The green line is very close to the identical height of the dam just out of sight in this photo, which means the water is flowing through the pipe faster than it can flow over the dam causing the level to rise.

In this view the original dam is over to the left side where the water is flowing over the top of it hiding the actual dam.

This is one last view of the 8” diameter hole in the water caused by the rapid drainage of the north side of the pond.  It remains to be seen what Bucky’s response to this catastrophe will be?  To be continued, someday.