that Thomas Wolfe was right" - Josh Joplin "Who's Afraid of Thomas Wolfe?"
In the 1850's, my paternal grandmother's ancestors settled in the White Lake Corners NY area. As the timber resources petered out, they sold off their sawmill, most of their property in the area and moved on. The family scattered. In the 1960's, my grandfather retired and he and my grandmother moved back to one of the last pieces of property remaining in the family.
As a youngster, I spent my summers there on Bear Creek Road. (Or, maybe it was only a couple of weeks, but in the time scale of a child it seemed like all summer).
Somehow, we managed to pass the hours without TV or Nintendos.
We often walked the mile from the house to the corner, where there was a post office/general store and a filling station - one that still had the old soda machine that kept the bottles of soda submerged in cold water to chill them. The walk in and of itself was entertainment enough.
Once a week or so, we piled in the car and drove over to White Lake to swim at the small sand beach.
Hours were spent catching frogs and crayfish in the creek (White Lake Outlet)about fifty yards from the house.
Water rushed through the small dam that held back the coffee colored water of the White Lake Outlet and we sometimes dared to walk across the concrete top, scared of falling into the waters below.
The wooden bridge over the creek made a "thump-thump" each time a car crossed it - announcing the passage of one of the few cars a day that drove down Bear Creek Road. The road sloped from the house down to the bridge, which made for thrilling bike rides (and sled rides in the winter).
After reading author John Huther's book about life in the area: "The Erie Canal's Long Reach Into the Adirondacks" I decided to take a walk (one sees much more on foot than behind the wheel) and explore the area again with an eye toward the history of the area - a history that encompassed both his ancestors and mine.
We parked at the "new" Post Office and started on foot from the corner - Rubyor's General Store is no more. The first part of the road is pretty much the way I remember it, but I was struck by how much more traffic there was.
The little bridge now seems like barely more that a glorified culvert and it's since been paved so it no longer announces the passing cars - and maybe with all the traffic, that's a plus, but kids today will never get to sing out: "Shave and a haircut......."! and let the "thump-thump" of the bridge fill in the last two syllables. (Maybe from a parent's perspective, that's not a bad thing).
The dam, that it once seemed so daring to walk across, is now sad and collapsed. From the perspective of scale of adulthood, the top is at least eighteen inches wide and it's only about two feet to the water below, which isn't even enough to get you wet to the knees.
The "hill" that we rode our bikes down is really little more than a rise of a few feet".
What was saddest of all was the condition of my grandmother's house, sold a few years ago to someone who obviously doesn't care about it's past as a peaceful place for someone to retire and a house full of adventures for young kids.
Just as the Herricks no longer would recognize the road where they farmed and harvested timber,(heck, they wouldn't even recognize the name - it's "Woodgate" now) so the world I inhabited as a kid has slowly changed, mostly not for the better.
Times change and the world moves on. All the Herricks left was this foundation.
