Charlie Shue

My friend and relative Iva Standish Calkins was the daughter of Winnifred Lawton Standish.  Winnifred had a brother Stowell Lawton.  He married Minnie Garn and they produced a daughter Leah Lawton, a first cousin to Iva.  Leah married Charles Shue who wrote a short autobiography.  The following are excerpts from it.

I arrived September 6, 1907.  This information I received from my mother.  She was much older than I and she should know.

When my father saw me, I think right then and there he decided—this is enough!

My mother told me she was born in Westminster, Maryland in the year 1869 on the sixth day of February.  Her mother must have told her too—I can’t believe she remembered all this.

I don’t know much about my father’s life until he married my mother on July 4, 1885.  I wasn’t around then so I have to rely on my memory of what was told me.

After my parents were married, they waited thirteen years before any babies came to their home, and the first was stillborn.  Then two years later Joseph came and he got a free pair of shoes.  All babies born in 1900 in Mason County, Michigan got a free pair from Groening’s Department store in Ludington.

My mother said she had prayed for a baby after waiting so long.  As I was the third born, I asked if she had prayed for me.  She said, “No, you were just thrown in extra.”

All of my aunts and uncles have died, but there is a large group of cousins, second cousins, third cousins, more cousins, some “kissing’ cousins,” and some not so kissable.  All in all it is a fairly decent group to belong to.

My brother Chester said he remembers when he was born; he said he drove the doctor’s horses.

Love Shall Conquer

When George Lawton immigrated to Rhode Island in 1639, along with his brother Thomas, as far as is known he was a single man.  However that didn’t last too long as he married Elizabeth Hazard shortly thereafter.  By 1660 they were the proud parents of ten children, of which Mary was the third born child in 1645.

In the meantime a young man named John Babcock, wanting to also try his luck in the Colonies, indentured himself to George Lawton for several years for the price of his passage to the new world.  John was just one year older than George’s daughter Mary.

John and Mary fell in love and asked George for permission to marry.  George, believing the young indentured servant should not even be considering marriage, much less to his daughter, told them the marriage was unthinkable.

In 1662 John and Mary decided to take things into their own hands, and one dark night they stole away from George’s home to strike out on their own.  They made their way from Portsmouth to Newport, and in some manner came by a small boat.  Climbing aboard they began to row along the coast westward.  Through the open ocean they traveled until they felt they were far enough away from home that they would not be discovered.  They then entered a sheltered cove of what would be known as the Pawcatuck River, dividing Rhode Island from Connecticut in the future.

The young couple married themselves, calling on the moon and stars to witness their solemn vows.  Settling on the east bank of the Pawcatuck River on Mussatuxet Cove near what one day would become Westerly, Rhode Island they had no neighbors except the Niantic Indians who were friendly to them in all manners.

It was several months before George and Elizabeth heard anything about the headstrong couple, but finally after enough inquiry from the Indians they were to locate them.  All was forgiven, but the couple continued to live there.

About 200 years later Mary Anne Salisbury wrote a ballad about the young couple titled “The Pioneers” which is 70 stanzas in length.  One stanza is:

Two hundred years have sped apace,

and wrought in man’s behoof;

and thousands now their lineage trace

to John and Mary’s roof.

Fisher

My brother-in-law and I were on a fishing trip Saturday, April 2, 2011.  Had it been a day earlier I might have wondered if it were some sort of prank, but it was not April Fool’s Day.

As we drove along Route 458, a couple of miles before getting to St. Regis Falls, a black animal crossed the road.  It was perfect sight conditions about mid-morning, and we both saw it for several seconds.  We came over a small rise and it appeared right in the center of the road.  It moved off of the road going from right to left, but not running hard.

Neither of us was quite sure what we had seen, but in no way questioned our sanity.  It was more of a, “What was that thing?”  It was too fast an event to get a camera in action, yet we each got a good sighting of it.

I spent some time today searching for photos and information that matched what we had seen, and there is no doubt in my mind now that we saw a Fisher, or Fisher Cat as they are sometimes known.  I would estimate that the entire animal was about 3 feet long, and a foot and a half tall.  About one third of that total length was the tail.  Although there may have been other colors on it in small amounts, I saw nothing but black, or possibly an extremely dark brown.

To the best of my recollection this is the only one I’ve ever seen in most of a lifetime.  The photo is merely representative, as we had no chance of photography.

Trout Seeking

Trout season opened here in northern New York April 1, 2011, which was a Friday.  Big plans were made by my brother-in-law Ronnie, and myself to get ourselves a monster trout on opening day.  Something about plans of mice and men is appropriate here.  My grandson Alex practically begged us to wait until the next day so he could go too as we wouldn’t let him skip school to go.  So we waited until Saturday, April 2^nd.  Alex awoke sick and couldn’t go so with heavy hearts we left him home.

When we arrived at picturesque St. Regis Falls Ronnie and I were able to note there was yet snow in the area.  That’s Ronnie on the walking bridge.  Note the few snow flakes (tiny white sideways streaks on bridge) scattering as they fell on the fools.  Also to be spotted is the orange bobber just above the rock closest to the bridge.  Yes, we were being snowed on while fishing.

To the left of the bridge, or behind Ronnie in the first photo, is the falls that the village is named for.  There’s a man standing near the bottom left of the falls, while the complete right side of the falls is frozen solid.  Beautiful!

The third photo is to the right of the bridge, or downriver from it.  I never tire of seeing this view, and I’ve gone there dozens of times over the past forty years.

As our fishing luck was running somewhere between poor and non-existent we decided to try another area a few miles away.  We crossed the St. Regis River on the Mill Road Bridge about two or three miles below the Falls.  The fourth photo was taken upstream, toward, the falls, from that bridge.  The series of small islands add to the scenic view.

After a couple of more hours of washing worms we wended our way toward home, but in no hurry to get there.  I chose to pass Lake Ozonia on my way to Hopkinton.  Photo five is of that lake.  Yup, it’s still completely frozen over, and there was snow up to two feet deep with six foot banks in places near the lake.

We made it home by mid-afternoon with no fish for our excursion, but secure in the knowledge we had a wonderful day experiencing the great outdoors of northern New York.  We agreed a creel full of fish was unnecessary for a great day.  (What else could we say when we didn’t get any?)

Talking Turkey

Mr. Tom Turkey is strutting his stuff, and telling the dozen or so hens how great he is.  He is obviously the dominant male in the area.  Clicking the photo will enlarge it, as nearly all photos on this site.

If the dozen or so hens are not enough, these six were running toward them, but in the next meadow.  The male can service many hens that store his DNA.  Then as the hens go off by themselves one at a time, they can lay an egg a day.  With the use of the male DNA they can self-fertilize their eggs for external incubation.  The hen will thus raise her brood sans any further interest from the male.

Maple Syrup

My father was born in 1905.  When he was a young man, say between 1910 and 1920, his father taught him the art of making maple syrup.  When I was of that same age, during the forties, we didn’t ever make any, but by the sixties dad had taught his eldest son, Bert, how to make syrup.  I learned from Bert in the seventies, and enjoyed it as a hobby.

In early spring, when the days are thawing, and the nights are freezing, a maple tree draws sustenance from mother earth, mostly in the form of water.  Through some chemical process sugar is added, and it is then called sap which is circulated throughout the tree adding new growth and causing the tree to bud and leaf out for another summer.

The Native Americans taught the early settlers that a portion of this sap could be extracted from a tree, and the water boiled away leaving a remainder of a sweet flavorful syrup.  A rule of thumb is that about forty gallons of sap will produce one gallon of syrup after thirty-nine gallons of water are boiled away, but this is not a hard and fast rule.

My sons used to help me when we boiled sap each spring only for our own table use.  In this manner they, too, learned the witchcraft of producing this elixir from a tree.

Photo number one, taken March 6, 2010, shows my son Carl boiling sap the way we did it back in the seventies.  It is merely a flat pan suspended over a wood fire.  Sap is put in the pan, and a hot enough fire maintained to boil it.  More sap is added to keep the pan from boiling dry.  After enough of this is accomplished you draw off the syrup remaining.  Quite simple.

Photo number two is a more modern system.  Klay Crossett (in photo) and Carl manufactured this system in an attempt to commercialize production.  Out in the woods trees are tapped, and plastic tubing is attached gravity draining the sap into a large vat.  The sap is then pumped into a tank on the back of a pickup truck and transported to the sugar house.  It is again pumped into a holding vat at that point.  Once again it is pumped to yet another tank above the boiler where a controlled gravity feed introduces it to the boiling tank.  Here the sap passes through a series of pans, ever increasing its density.  It is drawn off from the final pan as syrup.  As it is working at the moment they are able to produce about one gallon an hour of maple syrup.  I’m sure they will further perfect the system as time passes.

Pond Life 3-20-11

About midafternoon I rode back to the pond hoping I might capture a photo or two of our newcomer, Bucky Beaver.  Such was not to be, but I did happen upon another swimming creature.

As soon as I arrived at the pond I noted this rascal in the first photo happily going about his business, paying seemingly no attention to me.  He left that clump of grass as I neared, but returned to it again shortly thereafter.

Photo two shows the little critter after his return.  There was something about that particular section of real estate he seemed to prefer above all others at the moment.  It seemed to be digging into the roots of some sort of plant life I could not see.

Photo three shows his sudden interest in the goings on above him up on the roadway.  He circled over toward me, but immediately returned to his chosen island.

Photo four though shows that while he was surveying me, his buddy (or lover) appeared and began eating at his favorite spot.  He didn’t like this and so they had a small spat.  I took several photos of that, but as luck would have it, I was pointing in the general direction and snapping away as fast as I could, and none of them were any good.

So it seems that Bucky Beaver has created a nice home for a pair of finely furred Muskrats.  We’ll work on photos of Bucky in the future.

On the way back to my home I noted that rabbits had been working on some apple tree limbs that my son-in-law, Ben, had pruned last fall.  It seems like it was a ready food supply for some of them.  I thought all of them were surviving on my wife’s birdseed, but apparently that was only desert.  Photo five shows the results of their labors.