A brief history of Germantown citizen access to the Hudson River and the 'riotous' spirit espoused 105 years ago.

Down the rutted dirt road, toward the rice fields, past the trotting pack of dogs and past the Nipa hut in the morning haze were the roosters being raised for cock fights.

There's a lot more background and information about Oak Terrace that I hope to share here in the coming weeks.

But for the meantime, I'll let the story in the Old Gray Lady speak for itself.

Freshly plowed fields where there were once berry patches and cornfields in the area, proved “highly productive of stone artifacts, and have been visited by collectors for many years, most notably Kenneth Mynter of Claverack, and the late James Shafer of Poughkeepsie.”

Not everyone began at Elizaville Falls, however, and not everyone made it to the finish line—or the halfway point. One canoe didn’t survive the first half. Another canoe team opted to stop racing at the halfway point at Bingham’s Mills. And a few others helped raise money but decided to begin at Bingham’s Mills. 

"There were a lot of trees to go around. Knees were scraped up, a lot of bruises suffered and Dodge got a bump on his head, but it went off as planned," said Pabst.

The storm continued all day Sunday, July 1.  Plastered on everything at the summit was a thick coating of ice measuring as much as eighteen inches in spots.  Attendees stayed inside all day, content with the thought that, given the brutality of the storm, Curtis and Ormsbee would have turned around early on and returned to Crawford Notch.

And the reason she was strange was ’cause all her life, over fifty years, she kept telling stories to the people. She even sang songs about it. She was telling the folks that if she ever left this island, she’d take it with her. People thought she was crazy. But it happened. 

And from there, I went to Memphis, Tennessee. I was in Memphis when Doctor King was killed. 

Not that I knew that much about Doctor King at the time. But I was there at that time.

Absurd as it is, Old Joe's association of Big Island with the maybe real, maybe legendary 16th-Century Indian leader Hiawatha persists to this day.