A Little Country Side in South Hamilton

As always when ever I have a party, everyone ends up in my kitchen. Aptly named the ten year kitchen as it took about ten years to remodel it many years ago now.
I had a two seater round tavern table in the kitchen in between the two front windows. Bill always hated this table as he likes to sit with his feet touching the ground. To bad. I bought the tavern table anyway.
At Nick's 21st birthday my mother mentioned the oak table down in her basement and why don't I measure it to see if it would fit where the tavern table is as it would seat more people. So I did. It would fit! Mom was really generous and also gave me the four chairs that were once in Grandma Swan's dinner house. I'm just thrilled to have this set! I learned this oak table was the first piece of furniture Gram and Gramps ever bought. I remember this table being at Dad's camp on White Lake for years. Dad always loved this table and I'm just so happy to have it in my home!!! It was meant to be!
My Grandfather worked at IBM for many years and after all my aunts and uncles moved out of Gram and gramps large farm house in Glen Aubrey...my grandmother, being the blazing siren that she was, turned the down stairs of the whole house into a dinner house complete with open fireplace, organist and a service bar. She called it The Country Side! I fondly remember many busy nights being upstairs over the dining room with my face pressed to the old register's on the floor trying to catch a glimpse of people dressed up and being seated at their tables. I remember the little red hot candies in the kitchen, the huge industrial mixer that was always beating up mashed potatoes and most of all Grandma's chicken and biscuits. Oh my god the best in the state of New York! Many years later The Cracker Barrel restaurant chain opened up and the first time I ever walked in to one...I felt like I was walking into my grandmother's Country Side. This is where my love of the restaurant business all started for me. When I was under the age of ten. I loved to be in the kitchen. I loved helping at all the pancake breakfast's at the Glen Aubrey fire house and I LOVED my grandmother's Country Side.
Sadly the business got to hard and after maybe 10 years they turned the Country Side back into their home. They remodeled the kitchen wing into an apartment and mostly lived downstairs. Sadly on blustery day my grandfather was trying to get a fire going in the fireplace. The log just wouldn't catch so he took it off and put in back on the pile of wood stacked outside on the back porch. Sure enough the wind caught the log fanning it to flames and the whole house burned. Gram and Gramps got safely out and the only thing saved was a box of slides from all years of family and traveling. The box was stored on their field stone porch where Grampa used to stand with his beautiful white hair, freshly ironed shirt with a bolo tie cinched loosely around his neck, warmly welcoming diners and hanging their coats on wooden coat hangers on the coat rack. Old Florence was seated behind him playing the organ and Gramma, hostess with the extreme most-est running around directing her waitresses like the queen of England that she had come to be in her Country Side dream house. I cringe to think of the antiques and Swan family history stored in that upstairs attic and the whole house for that matter, up in smoke. All lost.
So here we are. 2010. Nick's 21. My father deceased and my queen of the Country Side grandmother, still alive. sitting in a wheel chair down in some nursing home in Endicott with not even a clue of what her name is. I try not to think of her this way. She was such a strong woman.
My Aunt Loretta and my Uncle Ken just got through many movie nights setting up the screen and the old carousel sorting out slides of family and shots taken on the road when Gram and Gramps did a lot of traveling. The sorted box of the family shots is coming my way this winter as I have committed to scanning the slides in to get them on DVD. Its a job Dad and I were supposed to do last winter but we sadly didn't...Wouldn't it be nice and shouldn't it be a given, that we know just how long we have with especially the ones we love the most!
So back to my new/old table. I'm just thrilled to have it. While sitting at the table the other night It was fun to imagine Gram and Gramps sitting there too, on a cozy dark night, after a long day, having a meal together with their plates and folks and spoons laying on the same grain of wood my hand was now resting on.

Nick's 21 Stitches and all...

The drama. It never ceases round here. Several days before Nick's 21st birthday he mangled his fingers good on Oma Swan's electric hedge clippers. Six stitches later. But he lived to be 21...Mom and I almost didn't. It was another crazy busy weekend. Packed crowd at the Georgetown Inn Friday night, busy bar till after midnight at Michaels Saturday night and Nick's birthday on Sunday. Nick wanted steak so Bill bought 70 dollars worth of rib eyes for the party. (Bill's punishment for being a total golf lush after his tournament) What I don't go through being in the middle of a 21 year old and a 67 year old. I'm convinced men just never grow up...any man I've ever met anyway. So I made a chimi-sauce out of fresh parsley, garlic, lemon and a few other ingredients for the steaks. It was nothing fancy just a meat and potato meal for the twenty one year old.
Nick made out with new clothes and a new leather jacket and if he doesn't get his ass home to clean his room soon. I'm gonna throw it all out in the street! His room looks like a college dorm room. I wish I could move away and change my name and not tell anyone my new identity. Honestly!

Lucky Labor Day Horseshoes

Honest to god the horseshoe fairy was perched upon my shoulder this past Saturday. Up to Stillwater on the last Labor Day weekend of summer and to the 2nd annual horseshoe tournament in memory of a fella I never had the pleasure to meet, who sadly left his spot on this planet several winters ago when he and his snowmobile sped into his fatal death coming back from Beaver River. Mike James. MIke left behind a lovely wife and two beautiful, then preteen daughters. Such a tragedy.
So the fine folks of the tiny hamlet of Stillwater got together and put on a horseshoe tournament to raise money for a scholarship in the memory of Mike James. They hired me to play and run the sound last year being the first year and raised quite a bit of money...not to sure the exact amount, but enough to make them want to have the tournament again this year. And what a day it was...rained out and extended to day two. I payed my ten dollar entrance fee...met up with my arranged partner by the name of Kayla who was celebrating her nineteenth birthday and eager to throw some shoes. Knowing that I was in realm of horseshoe addiction territory, I quickly for-warned Kayla that I hadn't touched a horseshoe since the last tournament a year ago. But Kayla in all her youngness said not to worry as we were gonna rock those horse shoes out! I decided that one beer was good for the day as these people are serious horseshoe throwers and I needed to stay sober as possible in respect to the sport. Mind you now there is hardly an ounce of sport in me. I generally HATE most sporting events. In the past I have been know to roll gutter balls in the next lane and when told to keep my eye on the ball while playing softball, the ball hit me between the eyes and I woke up pretty disoriented with two black eyes and bent up eye glass frames in my dirty hands in the nurses office.
Then theres Chet...God love this fella who travels the world over building ski resorts on mountain sides and has pretty much the best top of the line toys-for-him everything, flashing red white and blue shirts with stars and stripes and hauls ground granite from Virginia to frost the horseshoe pits around the pins. Chet and his lovely wife Carol spend many weekends boating out to Picnic Island or what ever island they can get to, to set up horse pits and spend the day sipping wine and throwing shoes. Die hard. I guess someone has to do it.
So wouldn't you know it...Kayla and I play our first match. I wasn't bad....She was awesome making most of the points and we won. The second match we were up against Chet and Diane. Diane is my new role model of an elderly Adirondack woman. I just love the way she looks in all her Adirondackness and can she throw a mean shoe.
Well as luck would have it...I threw three ringers and a whole bunch of extra points. We won that match too. Chet had a strange look on his face cause all I could do was laugh like a woman possessed at all these lucky shots I was making.
So, 8:00 rolled around...long day, cold, windy and rainy. The tournament was put on hold till the next day. I told Kayla to find another partner as I had to get the laptop and music equipment out of the rain. I was bushed.
Sunday morning rolls around and I'm up to the Inn and theres happy faced Chet telling me the game was far from over and my team is still in the running. What could I say? No! Nope! Back to the pits I went. Kayla and I played four more games and won the show!!! At one point Kayla was over throwing the shoes so I told her to take a step back then throw. Three times I told her this and each time I did she got a ringer. Chet was as red as his shirt! We won! I've never won any kind of sporting event in my life!!! I even got a trophy. All Bill could do was shake his head. Honest to god I've never seen him so proud of me!
I just have one more bone to pick with Chet, who was nice enough to donate all the trophy's. The little gold figure on top of the trophy is that of a man...this must change by next summer!
Saturday while all this was going on, Nick decided to go for a kayak...turning out to be a bad decision being as windy and raining as it was. He capsized the kayak and had to swim quite a ways to land in his new heavy leather chippehwa boots weighing in at least ten pounds a piece. Duh Nick. Kayaking with leather anchors on your feet is not the smartest thing you've ever done. He lost his cell phone and almost his life. I was a mess for hours thinking of him out on that water. We almost had the ranger go out after him. But Nick managed to get to shore and just happened to find a plastic baggy with some matches in it. He made a fire and dried out some of his clothes and got the courage to get back in the kayak where he kayaked to an island that had a camp with some nice people in it who drove him and his soggy assed gear back to Stillwater. The whole next day was shot for him as he was sore from such a heavy swim. I have to think his guardian angel was looking over him during his whole ordeal. I know Dad was with me on that horseshoe pit...He loved to play in his younger day. Actually knowing Dad...he was pulling a double shift making sure Nick was OK and winning that horseshoe game for me. Thanks Dad! Miss you.

August Going Out Like A Lion

In heat I should add! Central New York is hot Hot HOT!
I hate to wish summer away but I'll be glad when Labor Day weekend is over. Two more gigs then my life will slow down a tad.
Mom, Nick and I took a short road trip to Syracuse to visit my Aunt Loretta in her lovely, new home outside of Syracuse. Her Old Forge friends, The Propers joined us along with my cousin Terry. Great food and a fun day. She toured us at a stop on the old Erie Canal. Sadly the museum was closed but we got to see the new aqueduct which was built recently over the Nine Mile Creek.
Quite an impressive structure built the way it would of been built back in the 1800's with a grant from New York.

Some Summer Shots and Oma's Seventy One!

Jen came over for a visit! An so we cooked out! Thats what we always do when we get together. We cook. I got Gary to man the grill this time...Great night! I also played another farmer's market in Norwich NY. AND my mother is seventy one. I had her over for a birthday brunch. Home fries, ham, freshly baked cinnamon buns and an omelette with organic eggs, onions and peppers from my garden. Aurora and Nick joined in making it a lovely morning indeed!

Author's Night Long Lake

It's been over two years since I wrote and recorded Song's From Mountain's East And West. Bill and I needed an Adirondack fix early this spring so we loaded up the kayaks and headed north to Long Lake. Buttermilk Falls was in full force with the melting spring snow and the ice, thinly transparent but not yet gone from the northern end of the lake. A cold kayak! The northern end of the lake being where the Cold River flows and further up 8 or 9 miles or so, thirty years of Noah John's life spent in hobo meditation and seclusion. Lucky dude. I became smitten with this old hobo and have read everything I could get my hands on about him in my pursuit to know and understand the history of the Adirondack mountains
Visiting Hoss's general store, I got talking to a store clerk and got hold of a business card to the store's buyer. I came home and said...Well here goes another ten dollar business card and mailed out a copy of Songs From Mountains East and West in hopes someone would like it enough and deem it worthy to sit on the shelf of Hoss's most famous general store. The CD MADE IT!
They wanted 6 copies and invited me to Author's Night always the second Tuesday in August.
So Tuesday, I packed up and headed to Long Lake and sat under the same pavilion as Anne La Bastille and many other famous Adirondack authors sat. I got all choked up and weird when I made this realization, eating the simple but tasty picnic prepared for us before the event.
With two hours to kill before hand, I got lucky finding a parking spot in the Adirondack hotel parking lot. Route 28 runs through the small town of Long Lake and was loaded with tourists, camper trailers, kayaks, canoes and barking dogs.
Running across the road in between traffic and over to the beach area I found myself right in front of Helms, the little cabin with pictures of the aviation history of their service on Long Lake. Thirty dollars for a twenty minute ride. This was a no brainer and the best thirty dollars I ever spent flying over the Blue Mountain area of the Adirondack mountains. I could see as far as Raquatte and almost to the site over Noah John's camp. I was in heaven over heaven! The bluest sky with the whitest, fluffiest clouds shadowing over the wild greens and gray bouldering erratics of the Adirondack park. Love Love Love LOVE!!!
Anyway...the Author's night was a tremendous gathering under a large red and white circus tent. Books written about anything one would want to know under an Adirondack sun stacked up on tables with their proud smiling writers backing them.
I met several infamous Adirondack musicians. Dan Berggren whom has played up there for years and storyteller/balladeer Bill Smith of Colton NY. I also got a chance to perform my song Up The River Cold, Rim Of The World and the two covers of Stewball and Eye On The Prize.
What a fine night. A night I'll alway's remember. Dad would of been so proud!

The Clearwater

Saturday. Day two of my busiest summer weekend. I pushed Roland (bambambambambam) down the wooded, splintery dock of Arrowhead Park and boarded a beautiful boat called the Clearwater. Setting up on the top deck behind the smoke stack (I guess that is what you would call it) I performed to a group of 80 people, young and old, celebrating a Bar mitzvah...of all things...Luckily my folk music went over well. The jewish rabbi loved it! And he and I exchanged some good "I once had a gig here" stories. I got the call only a few hours before to change my boarding location from the Old Forge dock to the Arrowhead dock in Inlet an had no idea I was playing a Bar mitzvah...which is a good thing, I guess, not knowing squat about Jewish culture much less their music. Don't they break wine glasses and stomp around in the broken glass? Or am I thinking about My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I don't know. I'm still in a state of total exhaustion. A lovely gig indeed playing as the Clearwater proudly chugged up and down the Fourth Lake of the Fulton Lake chain. My mind wandered back to times gone by. Woman and children in their long petticoated skirts and flowered bonnets standing lakeside outside woolen tents and men smoking pipes leaning against trees. Logger's, ice cutters and indian's. The Great Adirondack Camps mostly now burned down from a time so exciting and prosperous when people figured out that coming to the mountains was good for not only their bodies but also their simple sweet souls. Works for me.