My Back Door Friends

Moving to the country has been an interesting experience on many levels.  Levels include in the winter just surviving the cold...the country is colder...having to brave the weather even for simple things like going to stores...they are a long distance away...and the costs of keeping up on things city people don't have to worry about like septic systems and water pumps is expensive.

I never thought about these when I moved here (Eaton) ....only about the idyllic settings, country scenery, and quiet.  (Well sort of quiet! Farm vehicles seem to have no mufflers!))

And so now 20 or so years later I can say...... I found that the country is made up of many things, but one thing is clear: people care about one another.  

Some say it is because they are all related, others say that it’s because the country folk are still untouched by modern city times.  For sure, many in the country are afraid of the city and its dangers.  I don’t know the answer, but the features that endear the country to me are the “people”, many of whom have now gone to the other side.

Neighbors came to the back door, friends just knocked and walk in. 

The relaxed atmosphere of the kitchen is where everyone gathers and still do, and in most of the older homes there is a woodstove that is all too inviting to leave the kitchen for another room.  Even in the summer somehow everyone congregates in the kitchen, coffee or tea offered with a bit of dessert that by afternoon becomes iced tea or lemonade or switchel  in the summer.  

So I etched the window of my back door to read, “ Back Door Friends Are Welcome Here!”  Out of that came a poem, my first in Eaton and now I have a full book of them...enjoy...

Back Door Friends

Back Door Friends are best,

They always know when to call;

Greeting you with a cheery “Hi!”

And “How did your day go?”

Dropping down in a fireside chair,

With enough time to sit and chat;

Telling you all about their day,

And discussing this or that.

Weather, gossip, or just a word of praise,

They always brighten up my day;

That’s why the sign on my door is clear,

“Back Door Friends Are Welcome Here!”

 

Animals I Have Known..

There is one thing for sure that I can say about every rural town:  there is always a town dog or cat.  The other thing that you can be sure of is that people drop off their stray cats thinking that they will find their way to a barn and become a barn cat.  Both of these scenarios I can personally attest to.

The stray cat issue, though, caused me much money and much pain.  It seemed, as I later found out, that the college nearby offered a psychology course that included behavior training or whatever, so the kids would get a cat and then, when they could not take it home, dump it in one of the villages close by.  These cats would have kittens, and the nightmare would start.  My first cat actually was a Siamese I brought with me when I moved to Eaton; he was very old and died there.  I had Chat for many years.  He was about 20 when he died and traveled with me everywhere. He loved to go in the truck.

The first stray in Eaton was Linky, which was named by my neighbor's son after a video game.  I eventually called him Lincus because of his serious nature.  Link wandered in during a blizzard and was full-grown, the vet thought about 5 years old.  He snuck into the basement where I had the wood stove the first winter in the house.  (This stove had to be moved in the spring because the floods filled the basement with water.) Link kept leaving in the morning and then returning.  I thought perhaps he couldn’t find his way home. 

Linky looked just like a lynx, and when I brought him to the veterinarian he exclaimed, “ a real cat!”  I didn’t quite figure that statement out. Linky also was the alpha cat and made all the other cats bow to him.  The younger males would lick his head and ears for him, and then he would put his paw out and they would sit next to him.  I told everybody he was the Godfather and they were all kissing his ring!

One fall I was sitting in the house, and what I thought was Linky was sitting on porch.  I went out to pet him, and he backed away.  I said, “Link, what’s up!”. He didn’t move.  I brought some food out, and he gobbled it down as if he hadn’t eaten in a week. Just then Linky walked up the side porch steps, looked at the other Linky, smelled him and walked away!

That afternoon my friend and I sat in the back yard on the deck, and the other Linky sat under foot.  She sat, drank her beer and said,  “Linky is pretty quiet today.”  I said, “That’s not Linky.”  She said, “Of course it’s Linky!”  I said, “No, it’s not Linky!”  She finally agreed when the real Linky walked by.  The other cats sniffed him and never raised their back or their paws, so all we could figure was that this cat was a twin of Linky’s.   When he died a few weeks later I assumed he had come back to the place where they were born to die!  It was certainly the strangest cat thing I had ever witnessed.

When Linky died on New Years Day at over 20 years old, I wrote an obituary about him for the Mid-York Weekly since most people in town knew him because he went out every morning and every night and made his rounds around the town, even until the week of his death.

The cat all of the adults and children loved was Curly.  Curly came to the house in terrible shape the week of Chanukah. I was making a Chanukah Bush for a young friend, who was studying this for a school project, when this sick cat appeared.  He was obviously wormy and starved and looked terrible.  I fed him and tried to clean him up, but no one would take him.  He had something caught in his throat like a bone, and it caused him not to be able to eat much.  Eventually by sheer feeding him small meals and by the bone or object moving, he recovered, and within a year he was the most beautiful black and white cat anyone had ever seen.  The same people whom I had tried to give him to came by one by one, and they all wanted to adopt this wonderful clean cat.  I laughed as I told each one of them that they couldn’t have him, that I was keeping him, and that he was the cat they hadn’t wanted.

The children of town could put him in paper bags and chase with him, and the little girls could dress him with hats and put him on a wagon.  And to really get him going, all you had to do was yell with a bit of a raised voice, “C-u-r-r-l-ee-y.”  Curly died an old and well-loved cat.  Even my friend Pauline a dog lover would sit and pet him; she said he reminded her of an old farm cat they had had as children. Curly was the kind of mellow cat that could just sit in one place and smile that all knowing smile at you, like a Cheshire Cat.

I miss them both! I now have a stray called Rascal who actually is quite like by people, he has his own Facebook page..Rascal Messere..friend him..he will friend you back!

Here is a spoof video we did on Rascal....

The golden rule of the country..don't talk about your neighbors as everyone is somehow related!

I started in earnest working on the broken down house I bought here in Eaton at the first break in the weather back in April of 1984. I soon realized there was no water in the well, that the house was miles from a hardware store even though there was a place in town that seemed to sell new and used stuff of all variety, and that in getting away from it all, “the city”, just moved me into a new place to try and get away from!

That week I met an interesting older woman named Nellie. She got her Volkswagen stuck in the mud (mud that was everywhere because it is also a flood area; I didn’t know that either: basically water, water, but not a drop to drink), so I wandered over and helped her get the car out.  A few hours later she came strolling down to my house and knocked on the door.  In her hand was a cardboard container with freshly made rhubarb muffins still hot from the oven.  

I can still picture her with floppy sun hat, flannel lined blue jeans and flannel shirt looking pretty natty in her work clothes.  She leaned against my doorframe and said,  “I’m going to give you a little advice if you want it.”  I, of course, said yes.  She said, “Never talk about anyone to anyone here in Eaton because everyone is related to each other and it will get back to them.” I tried to remember that rule.  Once I forgot this rule, and it came back to bite me.   What was more interesting is that I forgot the rule with Nellie!

I was working at her house on the side of her garage making some etched glasses, and an old man the town’s people referred to as “Old Zeb” came walking by.  I had tried to give the bent over old man with white whiskers who walked with a cane a ride in the past, but he would never take it.  He said he liked to walk and look for cans, which he would pick up, and put in the five-gallon bucket he carried with him everywhere. Later I was shown a picture of him next to a dump truck he had filled with cans!

Everyone knew him in town and told stories about him.  That day, he went walking by and struck up a conversation with Nellie.  I tried not to listen, but they got into an unbelievably hot discussion, which ended in a fight.  I had never seen Nellie like that.  Zeb walked away shouting and jumping up and down yelling, ”I’ll live to dance on your grave, old woman, dance on your grave.”

Nellie went into the house and after a while yelled to me to come in to eat.  As we sat eating I inquired, “Who is that strange old man they call Zeb?”  She gave me a grave look of disdain and replied, “He’s my gol’ dang brother, young Bill!” I had broken the golden rule and inserted my foot in my mouth, and this time it went all the way in.  

Elderberry time, a special time of year for friends in old Eaton!

Its late August and this time of the year always takes me back to thoughts of my old neighbors, Nellie Belle, Betty and Pauline.... great friends that I miss so much.

In the past when late summer came to the Eaton area, my neighbor Pauline would cart us all off to pick elderberries. Over these little purple clusters of fruit, Nellie and Pauline would spend hours talking as they used tweezers to pull each of the little stems off.  This was too much work for me, but picking them was okay.  

Pauline said that there was a huge patch of them next to the old barn building on Pauline’s property on Jack Ass Hill. So off to Jack Ass Hill we would go.  The brush was so thick that you got scratched and cut, but it was all worth it for those special elderberry pies that Pauline made.  As a matter of fact, Pauline was considered one of the best cooks in the whole area.  She had actually been the head cook for the Madison County Infirmary for years.  Everyone knew “Pauline’s Perfect Pies”.

The first time I came in contact with Pauline and elderberries was the second summer I lived in Eaton.  I heard a knock on my back door, and there stood my neighbor Pauline.  In her hand were two huge bags of elderberries.  She had come over to inquire if I knew how to make elderberry wine.  Seems it was a banner year for elderberries, and she and Nellie could remember their mothers making the wine for special occasions.  I guess I look like the guru of this type of knowledge.

Actually I did have winemaking supplies, and we did make Elderberry Wine! It was a banner year for elderberries, and I remember thinking it was a banner year for new friends too!

One time after Nellie’s death when Betty, Nellie’s daughter-in-law, lived in Nellie’s old house, Pauline came over to the house and said that she talked with a woman we all knew and she told her she could go elderberrying on her property. She said that there were loads of elderberry bushes up there and she didn’t pick them.  They wanted to know if I knew where her house and the patch of bushes were. 

Well I did, and I also knew why she didn’t pick them, but we will get to that.  

That morning I picked the ladies up, and off to the berry patches we went.  I took them down the slope to where the berry bushes were.... and sure enough there was a mess of berries.  We picked and picked and picked.  Finally we had filled all our bags full and were leaving when Pauline said, “Why, that woman leaving all these berries here like this--it’s a shame!”  

Betty said, “Why doesn’t she pick them!”  

I casually replied,  “Because of all the snakes that live in this patch of bushes.”  With that, old Betty kicked up her heals and beat a path for the car at double speed.  Betty claimed that if she had seen one of those wiggly creatures she would have made a path out of the patch the size of a two-lane highway!  

I miss my friends and all the fun..they are gone now and I would give a fortune for one of the Elderberry trips and the taste of those pies again.....

Enjoy life while you can and the people around you..because those times are golden!

P. S. I didn’t tell them that the kids told their mother there were snakes there just to scare her! 

I remember a wonderful..zany neighbor..Joan!

By far and away the craziest and best neighbor I ever had was a woman named Joanne who was referred to by her 80 plus year old mother as Joan-nee. I seriously think I could write a TV comedy show about her.

Joan was different; she had a sick nervous cough, crunched continually on ice, and had an interest in coupons.  As a matter of fact I labeled her a “Coup-a-holic”.  She worked a full time job,  clipping coupons, free offers and refunds in her spare time.  One room in her house was devoted to this hobby and I would help her. 

Sometimes she would arrange coupon rides where a group of us would take the family’s motorhome to the grocery store and go shopping.  Grandma and Joan however would lag behind having to cross every aisle while diligently souring her coupons.  We on the other hand would retreat to the motorhome to play music, sip beer, and eat popcorn while waiting. I thought it was a wonderful way to shop.

One night I took Joan and grandma to the Williams Store in North Syracuse, which at that time was the largest store in the area.  I purchased what I needed and then I sat outside waiting and waiting for them to come out.  Finally the lights went out.  I was mystified. Had I missed something?  It seems I hadn’t, Joan and grandma were in the back of the store and missed to closing announcements so when the lights went out they got locked in - in the complete dark.  Luckily the store had security lasers that went off and a short time later they were escorted out of the store…but alas, with no groceries.

Joan also had great credit and had purchased their house on a credit card from the church up the street.  The rectory was being changed and Joan bought it and had it moved next to her mother’s, which is how she ended up next to me!

The company Joan worked for was a credit and collection company that went through workers continually.  Joan had worked there for years and explained that she felt sorry for people and would try to help them with their problems encouraging them to pay her something, calling them back to talk to them about problems…a kind person who was stuck in a horrible job.  Joan claimed the only way she could keep doing it was because she could listen to country music to calm her. Country music that was banned from her workplace I might add.

So to get around this music ban she had a transistor radio strapped to her leg or where -ever and an earphone that was in one ear hidden by her long hair.  I remember many a morning when she would run over to my house so I could tape the wire to her with flesh colored tape so no one would see it through her cloths.

One morning she broke her short ear wire and had to tape a 25 foot long one to her, so she tucked the cord in her underwear.  Grandma had gone to breakfast with her at the dinner next to where she worked and noticed that after Joan came out of the ladies room she was dragging a tail.  That tail turned out to be the cord.  Then that very week she was informed that the big boss was coming to town and wanted to speak to her…she was sure she was going to be fired…. found-out because of the wire!

A gem of humor, Back Roads Bernie!

Bernie moved to Eaton after his mother’s death, and Bernie became another experience.  As a matter of fact there are so many stories about Bernie and when he grew up in Eaton that they could fill a book on their own.  Bernie had a metal plate in his head and had an arm that had been deformed because of an injury. These injuries were caused by one of Bernie’s wild escapades as a boy. But his disabilities never held him down...in his day he soldered intricate silver scrolling on Oneida Silversmith pieces.

In the days of Bernie’s youth, Walt, his father, and many of the men in town worked for the Milk Plant up on one of the hills overlooking the village.  The hill, even to this day, is one of the steepest hills, with an unbelievably steep drop into town.  The Eaton Train Station was located on it, and when the first trains came to Eaton Village, it was said that they had made the longest steepest sustained grade ever built east of the Rocky Mountains.  The town’s parents forbade the children to ride their bikes down the hill, but, of course, that would not stop Bernie.

On this particular morning the boys set out with the lunch pails for the milk station as usual, but after delivering their cargo Bernie decided to take the breath-taking daredevil ride to town.  The boys gasped as they watch Bernie go swooshing down the hill.  Just then a car crossed the intersection at the foot of the hill, and Bernie slammed into it.  The terror that gripped the boys made them slip off and watch the goings on from the safety of some bushes.  The tears flowed and their little bodies shook as after a while, Bernie’s motionless body was put into a hearse that sped away.

I met one of the boys, now an elderly man, one day when I was working in town, and he said he had run home and hid in his bedroom.  He was terrified that his mother would find out he was with Bernie, and he knew for sure it would get him into trouble. He thought that the overwhelming sadness and shock of losing his good friend was too much for his young heart to take.

The story behind the story was that the town’s undertaker was playing cards in the gas station, once a pleasant pastime in that era.  The gas station was at the foot of the hill where the accident took place, and the men, seeing the horrible accident, removed a body from the hearse which the undertaker had parked to play cards, locked the body in the gas station bay, put Bernie into the hearse and beat a fast track to the Utica Hospital, a ride that saved Bernie’s life.

Another time Bernie and one of his friends crawled through the window of the old furniture shop on River Road that made coffins for the Madison County Poor House, which was located a short distance away.  They stole one of the coffin bottoms and took it for a ride on the old pond out behind the buildings, enjoying a sail and playing pirates! 

The stories go on forever, and one I can contribute myself.  When Bernie became ill and couldn’t drive, I would volunteer to take him to the doctor in Oneida. Nick-named “Back Roads Bernie” for a reason, he would make me take this road or that so he could show me this person’s farm, or where he did this or that, basically filling me in with history tidbits, I guess.  On the way back, he would ask me to stop at the Munnsville Legion.  Since his  appointments were early in the morning, our stop at the Legion would be at about 9:30 am.  This tradition of course was not unusual for a farm area, but was for most people like myself.  He would say, “This is Back Street Mary, the writer”, everyone would nod and tell me some history tidbit, I would have a beer on Bernie, and then everyone would buy me a beer, which I didn’t drink, so I was given wooden beer chips to use in the future.

One time I could not take Bernie to Oneida and asked my housemate Chris to do it.   She agreed to do it and asked Bernie what time she should pick him up.   Chris didn’t know better and so took him straight to Oneida.  He looked at her and said, “how come we’re so early; my appointment isn’t for another 45 minutes?” 

Later that night I saw Chris.  She told me what happened and asked if he had ever asked me to stop for a beer at 9 in the morning.  I replied “yes”.  I opened the drawer under the kitchen counter revealing a large number of wooden beer chips and said, “Where do you think all of these came from?”

For the Bicentennial of the Hamlet of Eaton I invited the Town Supervisor and the Board members back to my house, which was referred to by the locals as the “Back Street Bar”, for refreshments. Included in the invitation were members of the Bicentennial Committee, which included Bernie and his wife Betty.  I can still picture old Bern sitting on the stool next to the town’s supervisor telling his whole repertoire of Polish jokes.  The dignitaries were sort of embarrassed, fearing the repercussions of this type of humor. I pointed that out to Bernie, and he blurted out, “Why, I’m Polish!”  He was, and we all laughed, me thinking, boy Bernie, you really are!!

Bernie was loved by all and regardless of what was wrong...he made me laugh!

         

Introduction of Blog

This blog is designed to show you that people are GOLD, that individuals have made differences that cannot be believed, and that sometimes having a few good friends is enough to overcome a hopeless situation....inspire your life....make you smile....or to help you when you are down!

Over the years I have tried some interesting things and each time there have been people around me to help me accomplish them..some supported my efforts...some wished me well and encouraged me...some helped me do things that I never thought possible....some just made me laugh..this blog will tell their stories.

So watch this blog site and be prepared to smile...