November 2016

EwEind Fs R the

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Lincoln Wins!

In 1860, with the Union in Peril, Tioga County Sent the Rail-Splitter to the White House

By Carrie Hagen The Seneca Lake Wine Trail Turns 30 Our Photographers Find November A Veteran Remembers

NOVEMBER 20161

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Volume 11 Issue 11

Lincoln Wins!

14

A Veteran Remembers

By Carrie Hagen In 1860, with the Union in peril, Tioga County sent the rail-splitter to the White House.

By Gayle Morrow

Ray Kerr, of the greatest generation, looks back.

16

Old Hickory

By Donald Gilliland

A Coudersport landmark finds a savior.

20

Freaks and Tragedies of the Whitetail World

6 Blak Forge Armoury

By Roger Kingsley

22

By Don Knaus Turning history into something special (left, partner Bill Bennett).

First Fridays Forever

By Maggie Barnes

From feeble to fantastic: Williamsport finds its heart.

36

Cat Tales

By Maggie Barnes

There’s nothing like a little veterinary emergency to add spice to the holidays...

39

Gingerbread Invitational

26

By Maggie Barnes

Decades of Delicious

40

By Holly Howell The Seneca Lake Wine Trail turns thirty.

No Car? No Problem.

By Gayle Morrow

Another way to race at the Glen.

42

Offbeat Books

By Cornelius O’Donnell

A good cookbook doesn’t necessarily mean a book of recipes.

32

Cover by Tucker Worthington.

3

Home is where life happens.

Build for life. w w w. m o u n ta i n h o m e m ag . co m Editors & Publishers Teresa Banik Capuzzo Michael Capuzzo Associate Publishers George Bochetto, Esq. Maggie Barnes Managing Editor Gayle Morrow O pe r a t i o n s D i r e c t o r Gwen Plank-Button Advertising Director Ryan Oswald Advertising Assistant Amy Packard D e s i g n & P h o t o g r ap h y Tucker Worthington, Cover Design Contributing Writers Melissa Bravo, Patricia Brown Davis, Alison Fromme, Carrie Hagen, Holly Howell, Roger Kingsley, Don Knaus, Cindy Davis Meixel, Fred Metarko, David Milano, Cornelius O’Donnell, Brendan O’Meara, Gregg Rinkus, Linda Roller, Diane Seymour, Kathleen Thompson, Joyce M. Tice, Melinda L. Wentzel Milton Standard Journal Reader’s Choice Gold Winner Best Home Builder

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The magazine has been published monthly, since 2005,

by Beagle Media, LLC, 25 Main St., 2nd Floor, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, 16901, and online at www.mountainhomemag.com. Copyright © 2016 Beagle Media, LLC. All rights reserved. E-mail story ideas to editorial@mountainhomemag. com, or call (570) 724-3838.

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5

LINCOLN

6

WINS!

In 1860, with the Union in Peril, Tioga County Sent the Rail-Splitter to the White House

By Carrie Hagen

7

8

This map shows the number of Electoral College votes available in each state by the 1850 census. Each color represents states won by the corresponding candidate.

hopeful of staking good land at a good price, and eager to facilitate the passage of a transcontinental railroad. Hundreds of pro-slavery Missourians rushed the territory for political reasons. These “border ruffians” wanted to colonize a new slave state, which prompted northern anti-slavery “Free Staters” to run south and combat Southern slaveholders and their ideology. Violent conflicts ensued in what became known as “Bleeding Kansas.”

In 1855, Irish immigrant and journalist Hugh Young left his Potter County home for Kansas, where he covered the guerrilla fighting for the New York Tribune. His “letters,” syndicated nationally, did much to inform the American public about the violence provoked by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the smaller-scale civil war that brewed in America’s heartland. It was in part due to Young’s correspondence that New England abolitionists and Tioga sons moved south—as settlers and as Free Staters.

Eight years before Horace Greeley, Young’s colleague at the Tribune, popularized the phrase “Go West, young man,” Frank Root followed it to Kansas. In April of 1857, he disembarked from a Missouri river steamboat and walked to Wyandotte (now part of Kansas City, Kansas, in the county of Wyandotte), a town with several frame buildings in its three-block business stretch and less than 2,000 people in its immediate

surroundings. The closest railroad depot was over 250 miles away. Root settled for a while in Atchison, the center of the border wars. There, he began working for the mail service, becoming a deputy postmaster and chief clerk. As an agent for the post office, he traveled across the plains from Atchison to Denver, passing through the Rocky Mountains.

On December 2, 1859, Root went to hear Abraham Lincoln give a speech in a Methodist church in Atchison.

For two hours and twenty minutes, the Congressman challenged the Democratic narrative that Republicans were radicals in a speech that became famous two months later, after Lincoln delivered it to leading Republicans at the Cooper Institute in New York.

To challenge the presumption that radical Republicans wanted to change the American identity, Lincoln spoke about the Founding Fathers and their fight for basic human rights. He considered the role of each significant framer of the Constitution as he argued that it was the Southern slaveholder who departed more from America’s founding philosophies.

“I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did,” said Lincoln. “To do so would be to discard all the lights of current experience— to reject all progress—all improvement.

Courtesy Joyce Tice

“T

he Union Saved.”

“Lincoln Elected by the People.” Telegraph wires flashed with election updates throughout the sixth of November 1860. Congressman Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was running for president against three candidates, a competition fueled by the decision of President James Buchanan—a Democrat and Pennsylvania’s only presidential son— not to run for re-election. Of particular note was the race between Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, a Northern Democrat and the Senator of Illinois, an office that Lincoln had lost two years before. Their 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates had put the tall man from Illinois in the national spotlight.

On November 7, the Wellsboro Agitator announced America’s sixteenth president to Wellsboro’s population of 809.

It praised Tioga County’s Republicans for doing their civic duty, a responsibility that the paper had feared people would ignore in the months leading up to the election.

“You have covered yourselves with the glory of another victory,” it wrote, “by increased majorities over the advocates of Disunion, Slave Labor in the Territories, and Free Trade. You have been vigilant and faithful and to you belongs the honor.”

Twenty-three-year-old Frank R. Root was the living image of these words. He had traveled 1,500 miles from his Kansas home to vote in his native Wellsboro.

• In the 1850s, Kansas had a mythical draw for young Tioga County men like Root. Their wanderlust had as much to do with ethics as it did fertile soil, a calling that many scholars say fueled Lincoln’s election and the start of the Civil War. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had opened the frontier territories to settlers, ignoring the government’s promise of the land to Native American tribes. The legislation sparked instant controversy for other reasons. Located north of the 36’30 parallel, the Nebraska territory lay on the abolitionist side of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which prohibited slavery in the north. At the hand of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the KansasNebraska Act usurped this “Compromise” by declaring “popular sovereignty,” a doctrine that meant the people of the new territories could decide for themselves whether or not to permit slavery.

Some pilgrims were true entrepreneurs,

What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.”

Lincoln spoke directly to the border ruffians that fought hard in Atchison to protect slavery. “Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient enough to hear us deny or justify,” Lincoln charged. “Your purpose, then plainly stated, is, that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.”

He addressed Republicans.

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.”

Six months later, in May of 1860, Frank Root read that the Republican convention in Chicago had indeed nominated Abraham Lincoln for president. But he had a problem. Because Kansas wasn’t yet a state in 1860, residents couldn’t vote there in a national election. It would be the first time that he could vote for president, and Frank Root wanted to support the tall, skinny man who so moved him in the pioneer church.

“I wanted to cast my first Presidential vote for the famous “rail-splitter,” Root wrote in “The Early Days in Wellsboro: Recollection of Frank A. Root, a Wellsboro Boy, Now Long Years in Kansas” (printed in the Agitator). “I was determined to vote for him.”

• In the months leading up to the November 6 presidential election, the Republicans knew they needed to secure Pennsylvania and Indiana. Prior to his nomination, Abraham Lincoln had not given a speech in Pennsylvania, although readers of newspapers had heard of “Tall Abe,” “Long, lank, lean Abe,” “Abe, the giant-killer” from coverage of the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates. With only the printed word as a primary source,

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See Lincoln on page 12 9

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Lincoln continued from page 9

Pennsylvanians respected Lincoln for the strength of his rhetoric. Republicans had not held the state since 1856. To ensure its support at the gubernatorial and presidential levels, the party turned to Senator Simon Cameron, a politician credited with crafting and operating the state’s “Republican machine.” A one-time frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Cameron emphasized the importance of local elections and encouraged his powerful colleagues to campaign for those with less political capital; the strategy built a strong Republican brotherhood. On the eve of Lincoln’s election, Cameron guaranteed Pennsylvania’s convention votes to Lincoln’s advisors, but only if they would give him a cabinet position. Without Abraham Lincoln’s knowledge, his team agreed, and a midnight caucus turned Pennsylvania into a swing state. Senator Cameron became President Lincoln’s first Secretary of War, before scandal dismissed him from office.

Little local archival information on this period may suggest that politics was a larger urban concern, that rural, village life focused more on agricultural duties and family provision. But this isn’t so. Tioga County’s forests of oak, maple, and pine trees may have offered an isolation from the fierce slavery battles that Hugh Young and Frank Root witnessed in Atchison, Kansas, but its people certainly cared about the themes of Lincoln’s campaign phrases: “Free soil, free labor, free men” spoke to the individual’s agrarian connection to land, the importance of one’s land ownership, and the integrity inherent in hard work. As evidenced by editorial pages of the time, Wellsboro felt a sharp patriotic anger at the threat of the Southern states to secede from the Union should Abraham Lincoln win the election.

During the summer and early fall of 1860, Lincoln and Douglas crisscrossed Pennsylvania, holding campaigns full of speeches and patriotic songs that rallied voters.

“The great debates between Douglas and Lincoln were eagerly read by my father to neighbors,” remembers Governor William Stone in his memoir The Tale of a Plain Man. He was a young teenager when Abraham Lincoln ran for president.

After Stone and his friends played sockball, or stained their faces with the juice of

elderberries and pretended to be Native Americans, or absorbed themselves in dime novels of western adventures, or helped their neighbors with potato hoeing, corn husking, haying, he would pay attention to his father’s political activities. As the election approached Wellsboro, “Dad would write out tickets or ballots and pass them out.”

With two months to go before the election, the Wellsboro Agitator worried that Lincoln’s momentum would keep people from voting, as evidenced from its perceived lack of excitement surrounding the occasion. By now, Hugh Young had returned home to Tioga County after contracting malaria in Kansas. He purchased the Agitator in 1858. The paper’s frustration with the pace of political activism reflects Young’s recent return from an uncivilized land of guerrilla wars.

“It is frequently remarked that the present political campaign is unprecedentedly quiet,” the paper said. “There is comparatively very little excitement, and many are wondering why it is so, when all allow that the decision to be made this Fall has an importance perhaps unparalleled in our history under the Constitution.”

The Philadelphia Daily News agreed, voicing the same sentiment in a very different location.

“The party, or rather the combination of parties, supporting Mr. Lincoln are too confident of his success to be noisily demonstrative, even if it was their nature to be so. Confident assurance of triumph indisposes them to be loud or to appear concerned.”

The Agitator echoed its election fears throughout September and October.

“If the Republicans desire a solid and permanent victory, now is the time for action. If the government shall remain in the hands of thieves, slaveholders and dough faces, four years longer, it will be the fault of the strong Republican districts in Pennsylvania, where the people are too confident, simply because, in the same districts, the fool is weak.”

The paper issued a seven-point guide for citizens to use in properly organizing their voting districts: 1st. To make a list of the Republican voters in alphabetical order, with doubtful voters in a separate list.

See Lincoln on page 49

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W W W. K N I T T L E A N D F R E Y. C O M 13

Ray Kerr cruising at 150 mph in the Wildcat. (That’s the speed he had to slow down to so the photographer in the adjacent Beechcraft could get the shot.)

A Veteran Remembers

Ray Kerr, of the Greatest Generation, Looks Back

By Gayle Morrow

R

ay Kerr is a great storyteller; as his stories attest, he has not always had an ordinary time of things. When he was a kid in Brazil, Indiana, the parents of Olympic medalist Jesse Owens were on his paper route. He once had to resort to corncobs as fill for a flat tire on his Model T. What are the odds of running into a childhood neighbor on an island refueling station in the middle of the Pacific, in the middle of a war? It happened to Ray. Back in August, Ray thought a trip from Wellsboro to his hometown in Indiana was just for a family reunion. What the almost-ninety-four-year-old former Navy fighter pilot found waiting for him at the Terre Haute airport was a surprise hero’s welcome—complete with a motorcade that included Freedom Riders, state police, Boy Scouts, National Guard, and a general.

“Dad was thrilled,” says his daughter, Sue Niles, who helped coordinate the celebration honoring Ray’s World War II service to his country.

“I put my life out there hundreds of times,” Ray says matterof-factly, which is also how he recounts the extraordinary events of his time as a fighter pilot flying off the U.S.S. Makin Island.

“As a pilot, I’ve got hundreds of stories.”

You don’t have to be of a certain age to realize that the living memory of that time will soon be gone. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates there are about 620,000 American World War II veterans still alive. So it is important to get these stories down.

For this Veteran’s Day, here are a few of Ray’s.

14

Ray was nineteen in 1942 when he enlisted in the Navy—he knew it was either enlist or be drafted. He and three friends took a three-month road trip; each then went into a different branch of the service. As a kid Ray had liked the idea of flying—one of his uncles had had a plane. The Navy at the time he enlisted desperately needed pilots and was allowing high school graduates to enter flight school. Less than 5 percent of those who started the Navy’s pilot program finished it, Ray noted, and 50 percent of pilots who graduated couldn’t fly off aircraft carriers.

“Navy pilots are pretty special,” he says. “There were no better pilots than Navy pilots.”

It was January of 1943 when Ray was called up to begin pilot’s training. He and his peers came in as cadets at DePauw University, Indiana; they went from there to Northwestern, Iowa University, and the University of Minnesota. The need for pilots was so critical that students from DePauw were moved from their dormitories to make room for the pilots-in-training. It was intense.

“If you dropped a pencil you missed a chapter, so to speak,” Ray says, adding that as “just a high school graduate” he had some trouble with the coursework but not so much with the flying, perhaps because “I wanted it more.”

At Iowa, flying practice and classroom instruction were coupled with plenty of physical training. Ray played football— briefly. The Navy brought in four players from the Chicago Bears team and “they taught me not to like football.”

“It was a nice sunny day, and all I saw was stars,” he says of

POTTER COUNTY Celebrating 29 Years

welcome to one pigskin encounter. “You played for keeps, you know.”

And you played hard, without much consideration for whether you were in pain. He was a competitive swimmer and once had to have three wisdom teeth pulled then swim a mile.

He boxed, and recalled that one opponent had fought the Golden Glove champion of Chicago. A soccer field collision with another player left that guy with a leg broken in three places.

“You had to do things—maybe you shouldn’t have, but you did,” Ray muses. “We were exceptional.”

At the University of Minnesota, the same place where George H. W. Bush was a cadet, Ray honed his flying skills in an opencockpit plane. It was winter in Minnesota but, fortunately, “they’d ground us at zero degrees.”

It took about eighteen months for the young pilot to earn his wings.

“Now I’m commissioned and I’m an ensign,” Ray says. “We were the first class to go through as V-5 cadets [a classification based on the 1935 Naval Aviation Cadet Act].”

It was in Florida, at the Bloody Baron Training Field, where he first met the Wildcat. With that plane he was able to do “things I didn’t know you could do with an airplane.” The Wildcat held one person—the pilot. He was navigator, bombardier, communications officer, gunner. With a thirty-eight-foot wingspan, the plane was twenty-nine feet long, thirteen feet high, and weighed 6,000 pounds empty. It carried 117 gallons of fuel in an internal tank and another fifty-eight gallons in each of two external droppable wing tanks. It had four fifty-caliber machine guns, a 1,350 horsepower motor, and a cruising speed of 180 mph. During a “dive” the plane could top out at 400 mph and “things happen pretty fast at 400 mph,” Ray says.

After Florida came the Great Lakes, where pilots practiced landing on an aircraft carrier, which has a shifting, pitching landing surface of just 200 to 300 feet. To qualify as a carrier pilot, five successful landings were necessary. However, as Ray noted wryly, “there are a lot of airplanes in Lake Michigan.” His were not among them, though.

In Hawaii, awaiting final deployment, Ray and his cohorts had some fun-with-fighter-plane activities, including flying down into a volcano on Maui. And there were the inevitable pranks.

One of Ray’s friends during this time was a fellow named J.J. who, for reasons Ray never knew, used Ray’s name rather than his own during a romantic assignation. Ray was certainly surprised when he received a phone call from the girlfriend he didn’t know he had, telling him he was going to be a father.

About 5,000 miles from Hawaii, Ray and his squadron, the VC 84, arrived at the U.S.S. Makin Island, named for an island targeted by the Marines earlier in the war. Navy admirals, Ray says, had come to realize the value of the airplane in combat and so, around 1942, began building aircraft carriers as well as battleships. The Makin Island was small, about 500 feet long, with a cruising speed of twelve to fourteen knots. She had a crew of about 900, with forty pilots, thirty-forty days worth of airplane fuel, and twenty-eight aircraft. The commemorative “yearbook” commissioned by Ray’s shipmate, navigator R.J. Reynolds, of tobacco company fame, praised the Makin Island this way: “Her ability to solve the problems of a sea borne airport with smoothness and efficiency, her cooperative spirit, her courage, composure, See Kerr on page 46

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OLD HICKORY

A Coudersport Landmark Finds a Savior

By Donald Gilliland

T

here’s no romance to a stately old ruin when it’s in the center of town. Coudersport’s Old Hickory, an 1870s Italianate manse, is stark in its decrepitude. The south face lost most of its siding years ago; what remains elsewhere flakes gray paint. Weathered plywood fills some windows, but not all. Only pigeons call it home.

This icon of the town’s lumbering boom—and once a popular tavern—endured multiple owners and years of neglect and is now a denizen of Internet sites devoted to “creepy houses.”

“It’s been painful to watch,” says John B. Leete, Potter County’s senior judge.

But the spectacle of dissolution is about to change.

The Old Hickory changed hands again in August, and the new owner is already at work restoring it.

Wasyl Mauser, who has long owned a camp nearby, is a Northampton County contractor with restoration experience,

says County Commissioner Susan Kefover. She recently toured the building with Mauser and says he plans to turn it into a bed and breakfast and wedding venue; his daughter, who’s completing a dental residency in New York City, will run it.

“It’s such a good thing,” says Kefover.

F.W. Knox, an attorney and one of the region’s early capitalists, who made money in lumber and railroads and financed the creation of the Potter Enterprise newspaper, constructed the house in the 1870s. It was one of the first truly grand structures in town.

The home was converted into an inn for travelers in 1928 and renamed the Old Hickory Tavern, a name it retained through various owners until the business closed in the late 1980s.

“It was such a huge part of the community,” says Leete, a friendly place where lawyers, teachers, merchants, and tradesmen gathered after work on a Friday night, and where they took their children for lunch on a Saturday afternoon.

See Old Hickory on page 48

16

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Freaks and Tragedies of the Whitetail World

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A

number of years ago, Alan Walsh was deer hunting on his parent’s property in Bradford County during Pennsylvania’s statewide firearms deer season. Here’s how it happened: four deer suddenly approach Alan’s stand, and one has nice antlers.

He wastes no time finding the antlered deer in the sights, and instantly the blast from his Mossberg shotgun echoes through the hardwoods. The deer reacts to the solid hit and is momentarily on a death run until all is quiet.

As Alan approaches the animal, he notices something odd about the antlers. It’s a ten-point rack, but most of the tines are still covered with velvet, while some of the main beams are bloodstained from peeling. Velvet peeling usually occurs in early September, so it’s a puzzle to Alan why the deer hasn’t removed it. As Alan admires the unusual antlers, his brother Dick appears. Pointing to the oddity of the rack, Dick’s response is, “Is it a doe?” The two men take a closer look by lifting a hind leg. In disbelief they eye each other.

This he is a she! Or is this she a he? Alan shot at a buck, but is this buck a doe or is this doe a buck? What’s going on here?

That evening Alan left me a phone message describing his freak deer. The next day I did some research on the phenomenon and found that antlered females do occur, but are very rare. Supposedly, the antlers most females sport are simply velvet-covered spikes caused by a hormone imbalance.

20

According to Leonard Lee Rue III, in his book The Deer of North America, antlered does fall into three categories. “In the most common of the three, the antlers never harden, nor does the velvet ever come off. Such a doe can breed and produce milk to feed her young. She is a true female. The antlers are formed under the stimulation of the pituitary, but the doe, lacking testicles, does not produce the male hormone testosterone needed to harden these antlers and complete the cycle.

“The second type of antlered ‘doe’ is basically a male, but its sex organs are abnormal. Usually such a deer has both reproductive organs, but not all are visible because they are up inside the body cavity. An animal of this sort never bears young. The antlers are like a typical male’s, often well developed with tines. They harden and the velvet is peeled off.

“The third condition is very rare. It occurs when a tumor in the doe secretes male hormones. Both male and female reproductive organs may be present, and the antlers may or may not complete their development. Most often they remain in velvet.”

Even with that information, it’s still difficult to determine which category Alan’s antlered doe would fall into. Only professional examination of the reproductive organs could have determined whether the deer was a true breeding female.

Other freaks among whitetails are white deer, black (melanistic)

deer, and deer with manes. Referencing again The Deer of North America, Rue explains that most of the white deer seen are not true albinos but are mutations. In his words, “Protecting mutations is a disservice to the deer herd. Mutant deer are definitely inferior, degrading the deer they breed with by passing on harmful recessive genes.”

As freak deer occur, so do tragedies. Deer have been found dead from such things as being wedged between two trees, and impaled with sticks. They die from insect bites, predators, diseases, poachers, highways, and weather.

I have a copy of an old newspaper clipping that reported the bizarre tragedy of deer sliding to their deaths after a winter snowstorm turned to freezing rain, covering the hills and mountainsides with a thick layer of treacherous ice. In that Associated Press article, officials in Elk, Cameron, and Potter counties reported that deer were slamming into trees and logs from uncontrolled falls. Norm Erickson, the Cameron County game protector at the time, discovered twenty-six deer that had died in such slides in one twenty-four-hour period. Erickson feared there may have been 250 to 300 dead deer in areas which he could not reach.

Sparring matches between two bucks can sometimes turn tragic from antlers locking together or from one buck goring the other. I once found a ten-point whose left beam was held in place only by the hide that surrounded the pedicel. Severing the hide with my knife, I pulled the antler free. Attached to it was a large chunk of skull. This was the scene of a battle between two bucks that left one dead. Was it a knockdown drag-out fight, or did panic set in when their antlers became locked together? Whatever took place, the buck I found died instantly from a fractured skull. He had also suffered a broken ankle to a hind leg.

Fences are known to be tragic obstacles in the paths of deer.

My brother Ronnie once found the frightful sight of a deer’s leg hanging between two strands of barbed wire. The snow-covered ground surrounding it served as a dinner plate for the scavengers who had completely consumed the rest.

A hunter named Wayne Anderson, from Milan, would have been better equipped if he’d slung wire cutters over his shoulder instead of his rifle. On the third day of hunting season one year, Wayne and three of his friends surrounded an area of thornapples and hardhack near his home in Ulster Township, Bradford County.

Two of the men waited in ambush while Wayne and another man entered the opposite side. As Wayne followed an old fencerow through the thorny tangle of trees and brush, he came across the skeleton of a trophy buck. Wayne discovered that the deer had somehow become entangled in the fence and its twelve-point antlers were repeatedly wrapped with yards of barbed wire. What took place at this scene is anyone’s guess. Did the buck die a slow death after it was unable to free himself, or did the panic-stricken deer sustain a fatal injury in an effort to get loose?

Wayne finished the drive while carrying the barbed wire buck out without a shot being fired. His friends jokingly accused him of having his buck “fenced in” long before the season started.

How about you? Ever happen to witness any whitetail freaks or tragedies?

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Judy Olinsky poses with the first public art piece the committee supported with a grant. Artist Jason Burgess installed his metal heart on West 4th Street in 2002.

First Fridays Forever

From Feeble to Fantastic: Williamsport Finds Its Heart

By Maggie Barnes

“T

his is pathetic.” Judy Olinski grins when she recalls that comment, made by a restaurant owner at Williamsport’s inaugural First Friday event in 2001.

As one of the founders of the happening, Judy agrees that things were slow to start. But that humble beginning bears fruit to this day, as First Friday is now a tradition, bringing people to Williamsport’s eclectic downtown every month of the year (www. williamsportfirstfriday.org).

A native of Scranton, Judy and her neurologist-husband, Stuart, came to town for his job with the hospital. They planned to stay three years. That was more than thirty years ago.

“We and the town shared values,” she recalls. “We believe in being kind, moral, hard-working. The schools were good and the streets were safe, so we stayed.”

In the 1990s, downtown Williamsport was seeing the same troubled times as other northeast cities. Families had fled to the suburbs, taking retail businesses with them. Crime began to creep up. Buildings were languishing.

“I became concerned that Williamsport was losing its urban core, so I volunteered to do something,” Judy says. The “something” centered on the city’s prominence as an arts center, primarily for music, but also the visual arts.

“We stole First Friday from Philadelphia,” Judy laughs. “It was a way to get people to come downtown.”

22

Once folks started coming out to see artwork, hear musicians, and meet authors, the business community bought in as well, hosting events in their shops and restaurants.

“Otto’s bookstore would bring in writers. A craft store had demonstrations,” Judy remembers, “We meant it to be a summer event, but the cold weather came and people kept coming, so we moved it inside.”

Today, there are several offshoot committees from the First Friday group, and the arts community has a seat at the table when the city talks about planning. The Lycoming Arts Council serves as the umbrella organization to coordinate efforts.

Judy is still involved in the arts, including running Gallery 425 at her husband’s former medical office. “Three years ago, I said, ‘until we sell the office I’ll hang art,’ and here we sit,” she laughs.

Judy’s efforts to nurture a vibrant arts community have not gone unnoticed. In 2011, the Williamsport Sun-Gazette named her its very first “Person of the Year” in honor of all that has happened on Judy’s watch, including the painting of colorful murals downtown and the addition of more galleries.

As for the future of First Friday, Judy says the program is in good hands, both now and in years to come, thanks to younger volunteers coming forward. “And,” she affirms, “my generation has another ten good years in us.”

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Blak Forge Armoury

Turning History into Something Special

By Don Knaus

A

s a kid, Zack Buck was livin’ the dream. The local unit of the Old Bucktails, a Civil War re-enacting group, would dress him up in the correct clothing of a Union soldier, and he’d march in parades. He would dress up as an Indian like the other kids did, but he was interested in the Native American lore, which led to his desire to wear historically accurate garb. One of his Boy Scout leaders, Bill Bennett, was a re-enactor, and, when Zack was about fourteen, introduced him to re-enacting a la the fighters in the French and Indian War. When he wanted a real eighteenth-century-looking knife, a re-enactor with a forge took 26

the kid under his wing, teaching him the process. Bill encouraged Zack in his pursuit of and interest in history, and Zack continued blacksmithing throughout high school. He began using a forge on the family farm near Lawrenceville to make knives.

Zack (above) is now a partner in Blak Forge Armoury. “Blak” is an archaic, old English spelling of black. When things progressed to include firearms, he added “Armoury” to the business name, also using the older spelling. Today, Bill Bennett, Zack’s former Scout leader, is one of the major partners in Blak Forge Armoury.

Zack chuckles, “Sounds funny now, but I majored in

welcome to anthropology [in college]. And you know, I could steer that study to firearms history.” It turns out that his roommate was a Sullivan County country boy who also liked outdoor sports. The boys hunted and fished together throughout their college years. In the beginning, they dreamed of owning a sporting goods store. But the forge kept calling. They smithed and did minor gun repairs.

At graduation, they had decided on blacksmithing. The roomie, Nelson Lehman, worked at the forge for a while, but his home territory called. He now is devoted to working with at-risk youth.

Zack’s brother, Jake, is also a partner in the business but he is “on sabbatical” right now pursuing other ventures.

Zack confesses to having champagne tastes with a beer budget. He could always buy a well-used, maybe broken, gun and refinish it so it looked and worked like new.

“I knew I couldn’t afford really good guns, but I knew I could modify the ones I had and make them special,” he says.

“I’ve always worked with my hands.”

From time to time, Bill and the Bucks work over the forge and anvil, manufacturing rare parts for ancient firearms. They have even built flintlock rifles from the ground up. Their latest project is a blunderbuss used by cavalry officers in the 1700s. The barrel is the easy part. Fitting the stock to the barrel and hammer assembly takes tedious hours of fine filing.

The principals in Blak Forge Armoury did time in the military. Bill looks like a first sergeant in civvies. He signed up during America’s bicentennial year and served his hitch. Zack served six years and was deployed to Kuwait.

Describing the business requires taking note of the taxing, ultra-fine work necessary. The guys admit they’re pretty generous with their time. They try to set a fifty-bucks-an-hour rate but usually cut that. They mostly do gun repair. Roles are somewhat defined. Bill does the quick turnaround repairs. Zack has the patience to take on tedious tasks. For the fine works they build from scratch, they buy the basics and, they confess, spend way too much time filing and polishing. They can fabricate parts if need be and they have done some heavy modifications for sporting rifles. They do work from custom pistols to shotguns to antiques to rifles to flintlocks to finely machined AR semi rifles (that’s custom-made assault rifles). But they really like to do heirloom restorations. People bring in grandpa’s old shotgun and they fix it.

A visitor will note some used guns on a rack that are for sale.

They look rough, but they don’t do work on ’em until somebody wants one. Then they customize the firearm specifically for that person. They feel there’s no sense working on them until they know what the customer wants. They buy, restore, or rebuild.

Find Blak Forge Armoury just south of Wellsboro in Morris.

Why Morris? The owners put up a map of the area and placed pins where there were gunsmiths. Morris was the furthest from competition—and it also had an inexpensive building. Going south on Rt. 287, it’s on your right as you leave town. Coming north from English Center, it’s on your left.

Stop in and be amazed.

Retired teacher, principal, coach, and life-long sportsman Don Knaus is an award-winning outdoor writer and author of Of Woods and Wild Things, a collection of short stories on hunting, fishing, and the outdoors.

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Bernadette Chiaramonte-Brown

Sara Wagaman

Considering November

W

Curt Weinhold

Linda Stager 28

hat’s the weather like around here in November? Ice? Rare occasions. Snow?

Sometimes. Indian summer? From time to time. And because of those wide seasonal parameters, it sometimes seems almost impossible to pin it down to a color or a mood. Add in a primary reputation as a month that encompasses not only Thanksgiving but nominal holidays Black Friday and Deer Season as well, and November becomes a month that can be difficult to conjure in the mind’s eye beyond those more material pastimes. But when we asked our photographers what November looks like, we got a much more sublime answer. From Seneca Lake’s Hector Falls to the Pine Creek Rail Trail, this is our November.

Look Who’s Behind the Herd

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10th Annual Artists Exhibition & Sale

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Nationally recognized artists showing a broad spectrum of original art, a silent auction, limited-edition redware tiles, and the chance to win tickets to Williamsport Symphony Orchestra’s “Broadway Celebration” concert to be performed March 18, 2017.

ARTISTS: Joan Carroll, Carol Cillo, Michael Coppes, Dorothy Fisher, Steve Getz, Joan Grimord, Peter Grimord, Robert Hughes, Jeff Keiffer, Selinda Kennedy, Lynn Kibbe, Claudia Leo, Deb Parsons, Kris Robbins, Mark Robbins, Ken Sanford, David Seybold, Roger Shipley, Theresa Spitler, Deb Stabley, Kathy Sterngold, Bruce Storm, Nella Godbey Storm, Sue Swisher, Wynn Yarrow, and Judith Cole Youngman

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Early works: Bill Wagner and John Herbert push a cask into Wagner Vineyards’ cellar, during construction in the late ’70s.

Decades of Delicious

The Seneca Lake Wine Trail Turns Thirty

By Holly Howell

H

appy birthday Seneca Lake Wine Trail! It’s been a great thirty years of sipping and sightseeing. And the most exciting part is that the best is yet to come.

A “wine trail” is defined as a group of wineries within close proximity to each other that have joined together in an organization to help develop and support themselves collectively. The Finger Lakes region is a land of many different “microclimates,” meaning each lake has unique growing conditions and a distinct geological make-up that set them apart from one another. The individual wine trails help to identify those characteristics when it comes to the wines they produce and the experiences they offer.

For travelers, wine trails offer much-welcomed guidance when planning trips. Plus, they put together great trail events like wine and food pairings throughout the year. Cheese, barbecue, chocolate, holiday—you name it. You might say that the wine trail is the ultimate party planner!

The Seneca Lake Wine Trail was established in 1986. Perfect timing, because the wine industry was just starting to boom. Here’s a little background.

Seneca Lake is the longest of the Finger Lakes, coming in at thirty-eight miles from the northern tip (Geneva) to the southern tip (Watkins Glen). The lake was born just like the others in the area, from glaciers carving their way through the region millions of years ago. The resulting soil deposits were composed of limestone and slate that would eventually make ideal planting grounds for vineyards.

The lake was named after the Native American tribe who settled there—the Seneca. The earliest record of a winery on the lake was in 1866, when the Seneca Lake Wine Company planted about

32

100 acres of vines on the western shore. Things must have gone well, because in 1882 the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station was founded in Geneva. That opened the doors, and by 1900 the wine industry was rockin’ with more than fifty wineries in the Finger Lakes region.

Everything came to a sudden halt in 1920 with the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment, though some wineries continued to grow grapes for “sacramental wine” only. But by 1933, when Prohibition was repealed, we were practically back to square one.

Then, in 1970, a man by the name of Charles Fournier planted about twenty acres of European vinifera vines on the east side of Seneca Lake for a company called Gold Seal. Charles was also working with Dr. Konstantin Frank on Keuka Lake, and they both were champions of the European vines such as Riesling, Chardonnay, and Pinot Noir. These vines were not indigenous to America and had to be replanted on new root stock to survive.

They took to the Finger Lakes quite well. Around that same time, Hermann Wiemer, a German immigrant, had begun propagating some vinifera vineyards on the west side of Seneca Lake.

The big breakthrough came in 1976 when the New York Farm Winery Act was passed, and grape growers were finally able to sell their wine to the public. Yahoo! Wineries started popping up like daisies, with Glenora Wine Cellars, Wagner Vineyards, and Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards being some of the first on Seneca Lake.

The trend has continued to this day, with every month bringing news of a new venture.

Enter the Seneca Lake Wine Trail. Today, as it celebrates its See SLWT on page 35

© “Expressions” by Darlene

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Lasting memories: The late Jerry and Elaine Hazlitt, original owners of Hazlitt 1852 Vineyards, were early members of the trail.

SLWT continued from page 32

thirtieth anniversary, it is the largest trail in the Finger Lakes, with members including thirty-five wineries, a distillery, two breweries, and a meadery (which makes delicious wines from honey).

Paul Thomas, executive director of the Seneca Lake Wine Trail, couldn’t be more enthusiastic about the Trail’s mission.

“We are a non-profit organization that is here to help all of our members prosper in every sense of the word—bringing in more visitors, helping the wineries to grow their businesses, and also supporting the wineries in educational advancement.”

Sometimes, the phrase “wine trail” can be a bit misleading. “I get a lot of phone calls asking me how long the hike is!” Paul says. It would definitely be a long walk because one thing they are not is a hiking trail. The best way to visit is by car, and even better with a designated driver who can keep you safe and on track. Better still, take a few days and stay in one of the region’s charming bed and breakfast spots.

Then you can take your time and savor all of the different Seneca Lake offerings at your own pace.

The wines of Seneca Lake are outstanding, consistently receiving top kudos world-wide. Of course, the Rieslings are the rock stars and have truly been responsible for putting the region on the map. But even though we are best known for our crisp and refreshing whites, don’t count out the amazing reds that have come into their own. The annual New York Wine & Food Classic awards a “Governor’s Cup” to a wine that stands out amongst all in a blind tasting. In most years, you can count on it

being a white. But for the past two years in a row, it has been a red from Seneca Lake.

Ventosa Vineyards Lemberger won in 2015, and Billsboro Syrah claimed it in 2016.

Paul tells us that “the current administration has happily acknowledged the Finger Lakes wine industry and has been extremely supportive. Wineries are opening at an amazing rate.”

Winemakers from all over the world have their eyes on the Finger Lakes. Paul Hobbs from California has partnered with Johannes Selbach of Germany to start a vineyard on the southeastern shores of the lake. Louis Barruol, owner of Chateau Saint Cosme in the Rhone Valley of France, has partnered with the folks at Hector Wine Company to produce Forge Cellars wines. And it is just the beginning.

History is being made right here and right now. If you have not yet had a chance to visit Seneca Lake, make a promise to yourself to do so. The Seneca Lake Wine Trail has a host of fun events planned for 2017. Some new ones include “Halftime Pairings” that will run the weekend of January 13-15, and “Savor the World of Seneca” which runs from February 1719. For information on all of the Seneca Trail events and a listing of participating wineries, visit www.senecalakewine.com.

Nicely done, Seneca Lake Wine Trail—here’s to many more celebrations in the future!

Holly Howell is a Certified Specialist of Wine (by the Society of Wine Educators) and a Certified Sommelier (by the Master Court of Sommeliers in England).

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Cat Tales

There’s Nothing Like a Little Veterinary Emergency to Add Spice to the Holidays…

By Maggie Barnes

“W

here’s Shadow?”

I didn’t process my husband’s question for a moment, as I was completely engaged in trying to decipher a recipe. I understand cooking instructions about as well as the nuclear launch codes, but it was Thanksgiving weekend, and I was determined to contribute something to our autumnal bounty.

“Shadow? I haven’t seen him all morning,” I replied while hacking away at a brick of brown sugar with a carving knife.

Shadow was our cat. Or rather, we were Shadow’s humans.

He ran the house, and, as long as that was clearly understood, we were free to meet his every demand. Upon reflection, I realized I hadn’t stepped over him in hours. A search was initiated, and I immediately heard the concern in my husband’s voice when he announced, “Here he is.”

Shadow was in Bob’s closet, crammed into the farthest corner he could reach. My heart dropped when I saw the clouded look in his eyes. I crawled toward him and extended my hand. Instead of the cheek rub and throaty purr I had come to love, he was still and silent. Something was wrong.

Bob leaned in and got hands on him, drawing him slowly forward with gentle words of reassurance. When the cat came into the light, the problem became clear. One side of Shadow’s face was bloated out so far he could only squint with that eye. His fur bore a long, angry-looking slash mark that parted the perfect black sheen of his coat. Bob tilted Shadow’s head as gently as possible and whispered, “Who’d you get this from, Shad?” The lump was warm to the touch, an infection for sure.

As a former resident of the streets, Shadow had learned to defend himself and usually gave better than he got when he tangled with a fellow feline. But this round would go to his opponent.

Remembering the holiday weekend, I called our vet’s office with little hope of a response. Sure enough, I got a recorded

36

message, directing me to call the emergency vet in another town.

After a description of what we were facing, the vet said, “Yep, sounds like he’s got an abscess. Can you get him here?”

“Here” was twenty miles up the interstate, but there was no discussion. Of course we were going.

I cradled Shadow in my arms without resistance and felt a stab in my heart when he just lay motionless, no meow, no leaning into me in affection. He was one sick kitty. “Do you want the carrier?”

Bob was putting on his jacket, one foot heading to the cellar stairs, but I shook my head.

“He doesn’t have the strength to go anywhere,” I answered.

“I’ll just hold him.”

“This will be the first long drive in the new car,” Bob mentioned as we went out the door.

The new car was a beauty, a Jeep Grand Cherokee that Bob had brought home less than a week ago. It was midnight blue with a gray interior and rode like you were sitting on the living room couch.

We joined a steady traffic flow of holiday travelers. Shadow was still as a statue in my lap, showing none of his usual curiosity about his surroundings. My husband and I spoke softly to each other, the concern for our beloved pet hanging heavy between us.

We had only gone ten miles when I felt a strange sensation of warmth on my leg. The next moment brought a downright uncomfortable feeling of something wet. I shifted Shadow a few inches to investigate my left leg and was startled into immobility by what I saw. Shadow’s abscess had ruptured. The vicious claw mark from his adversary had opened, and bright green goop was pouring from his face onto my jeans.

“Bobby! Look!” I had found my voice and was trying not to frighten the animal in my lap, while simultaneously spurring the man next to me to do something. Anything.

Bob managed to keep the Jeep in the lane while stealing glances at my predicament. A second later, my problem became our problem when the smell of the cat’s infection ballooned in the vehicle. (Marriage is all about sharing, you know.) Think of the most vile, putrid thing you have ever smelled. Think of the time your child left a gallon of milk in the trunk of the car in June and you didn’t find it until August. Or when your son came home at Christmas and opening his duffle bag confirmed for you that he had yet to find the college laundromat. You could bottle that and call it perfume in comparison to what had, by now, filled the interior of the Jeep. I was fighting a losing battle to contain both the cat and the slime on my lap, rather than let it contaminate the interior of the new car.

“Do we have paper towels?” I was hissing at my husband through clenched teeth, in an effort to not breathe through my nose or open my mouth too much.

“Not so much as a Kleenex,” he responded.

For his part, Shadow had sat up straighter and was showing signs of life. In fact, the lessening pressure on his face was making him feel so much better, that he decided to hurry the process along by rocking his head back and forth. Quickly. Streams of the green stuff flung around the cabin, hitting the dashboard, the roof, the side windows and me. Bobby, benefitting from a life spent in emergency response, managed to duck and dive around the bombardment, all the while keeping us in the center of the road.

It was as if his body had gone into a serpentine pattern—moving targets and all that. He was making fish-like movements with his mouth and, I felt sure, thinking fondly of his firefighting gear in the back.

I was desperate to get the cat to sit still. “Shadow! No!” I held him tighter and felt the sticky gunk seep deeper into my sleeves.

I considered opening a window, but was too fearful of Shadow deciding he no longer needed medical attention and jumping.

My eyes began to water and my Eggos were gonna leggo of my intestinal track in another minute. My husband and I looked at each other in that special, unspoken language of long-time couples.

My message to him was, “I don’t care if they ban you from owning as much as a skateboard for the rest of your life. Do whatever you have to do to get to that vet’s office.”

The marriage mind-meld was intact, for, a moment later, the Jeep started eating pavement like a hobo on a hotdog. I think we took the final turn on two wheels and screeched to a stop at the door of the animal clinic. In dismay, I counted six other cars already parked.

When we walked in the door, Shadow now ruining the front of Bob’s favorite leather jacket, it was their noses, both human and animal, that turned every head to us. A cloud of green air floated around us. My jeans were blackened and shiny, hair matted, jacket sleeves bearing evidence of an apparent battle with a vat of pistachio pudding. All was silent. When the door opened and the assistant questioned, “Who’s next?” every finger came to us.

Shadow survived that day—and many more battles—to live out his years with us. Since then, Barnes Family tradition dictates that every new vehicle is christened with floor mats, an Atlas, and paper towels.

Lots of paper towels.

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The Hammondsport Hotel

The Gingerbread Invitational

H

ow long does it take for an event to become a tradition? The Rockwell Museum is banking on year two to affix the Gingerbread Invitational as a holiday must-do for local families. As a way to encourage families to think of the museum as a community center as well as an art collection, the Rockwell is again offering the yuletide bake-off.

Calling the response to last year’s inaugural event “tremendous,” Rockwell Museum Executive Director Kristin Swain and her staff are again planning to showcase the talents of local bakers, artists, and architects as they depict familiar landmarks using gingerbread. Last year featured the Seneca Harbor dock, the train station in Painted Post, the famed Presbyterian Church stained glass windows of Bath, including the winner, Amber Colby’s historic Genesee–Charlotte Lighthouse on Lake Ontario (above). All entries need to be based on an actual location in the Southern Finger Lakes and must be constructed completely out of edible materials.

Contestants submitted design ideas to the museum, and the staff had the fun of choosing which would become reality. This year, a panel of judges will decide three winners to be announced at a free December 1 reception, The Gingerbread Invitational Awards Ceremony. But, not to worry, visitors to the museum will have a vote, too. The Community Choice Award will be given out in early January, based on voting by the public. Each admission to the museum throughout the season includes a vote. The gingerbread creations will adorn every area of the museum, so visitors can enjoy selecting their favorite sweet structure while experiencing one of the finest collections of American art in the country. The exhibit will be on view from November 22 to January 3.

Adding to the enticement to make the Rockwell a holiday stop for families, gingerbread-themed activities will take place at an open house in the Family Exploration Studio during the Sparkle celebration on December 3. (On your way in, check out Artemus, the sculptural bison located on the façade of the building, who will once again be decked out for the season.)

Special admission pricing applies during the holidays (www. rockwellmuseum.org). The museum’s normal hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week. ~ Maggie Barnes

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Courtesy of RAPIDITAS, the official Targa Florio magazine.

Scholastic symposium: One presentation topic is “Vincenzo Florio and the Origins of the Targa Florio: 1904 – 1906.” This photo shows Louis Bablot in a Berliet 24/40. The team finished third in the inaugural Targa Florio race in Italy in 1906.

No Car? No Problem.

Another Way to Race at the Glen

By Gayle Morrow

S

o you’ve hiked around the falls and the park, you’ve done the Seneca Lake Wine Trail, and now you’re ready to see what else Watkins Glen has to offer.

Consider attending the second annual Jean S. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History, November 11 and 12, at the International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC).

The IMRRC may be one of the Glen’s best-kept secrets.

Opened in 1999 with a mission of preserving and sharing the history of motorsports, the 5,000-sqare-foot facility owes its existence in large part to Cameron R. Argetsinger. Called the father of American road racing, Mr. Argetsinger ran the first post-World War II race in America through the roads of Watkins Glen in 1948; in 1961 he brought Formula 1 to the track here. He died in 2008.

His wife, Jean, was a founder of the IMRRC and is a member of the governing council. The symposium is named for her.

There were just three academic papers presented at last year’s event; eleven are scheduled for this year.

“The increase from three in 2015 to eleven in just the second year is a clear indication of the need for an academic setting that discusses motor sports,” says Glenda Gephart, director of administration and communications for IMRRC. Presentation topics include racing in Cuba, early electric vehicle racing, NASCAR, and, what promises to be one of the more unusual topics, “Goodbye Four Hooves, Hello Four Wheels: Automobile Polo, the Forgotten Motorsports Pastime.”

40

Dan Simone, curator of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, will give the keynote address on Saturday, November 12; Patricia Yongue, retired professor from the University of Houston English Department and a women-in-racing expert, will serve as symposium moderator.

The event gets underway Friday evening at 6:30 with a reception—featuring, of course, the wines and cheeses of the Finger Lakes. Two papers will be presented that evening beginning at 7 p.m. Presentations start again Saturday at 10 a.m., with the keynote address scheduled for 1 p.m.

“We invite people to spend the day with us, or to just drop in,” Gephart says, adding that pre-registration is not required for this free event.

The IMRR is on 610 S. Decatur Street and is within walking distance of many downtown locations. The Center, in the words of Jean Argetsinger, is not a museum or an entertainment facility, but a place to collect, preserve, and distribute automobile racing information. It is the repository for a number of racing organizational archives, and owns archives for other groups. The Sports Car Club of America recently selected the IMRRC to manage its archives. That is, according to Gephart, “a huge honor.”

There is a 1968 Mustang Shelby Team Car on display at the International Motor Racing Research Center right now, so, go ahead—let your inner motorhead out and take a visit. For more information, cruise over to www.racingarchives.org.

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FOOD

Offbeat Books

A Good Cookbook Doesn’t Necessarily Mean a Book of Recipes

By Cornelius O’Donnell

I

haven’t written about new cookbooks in a while. It’s such a good Christmas or otherwise gift category for fledgling and experienced home cooks. Maybe it’s because my friends, who still like to turn out meals for family and friends, tell me that more and more often they get their recipes from the net. Well, so do I, but at the same time I still love to hold a book in my hands, gaze closely at the wonderful photography (getting better each year), prop it on the kitchen counter, and sauté away. After all, I’ve been collecting cookery books for years. Lots of years, lots of books.

And so many favorites.

Still, I get a thrill when I discover something new and helpful in the culinary category, a tome that transcends what you might think of as a “cookbook,” in the Betty Crocker, Jamie Oliver, Barefoot You-Know-Who, and Martha Stewart sense of the word.

So here are some suggestions that may or may not contain recipes but are rewarding to read as well as use as references. I think these

42

make great presents because they have great presence. Here goes: Still at the Stove at Ninety-plus Let me start off with a charmer. It’s called Dinner with Edward, written by Isobel Vincent and subtitled, The Story of a Remarkable Friendship (Algonquin Books 2016). Edward is the father of a Toronto friend of Isobel’s. When Isobel moves to Manhattan with her sullen husband and pre-teen daughter, the marriage is unraveling.

The friend suggests that Isobel have dinner with her father, Edward, who is ninety-plus and a recent widower after sixty-nine years of marriage. Imagine! Why dinner? “He’s a great cook,” his daughter confesses. (He had started cooking in his seventies after retirement, because, as he told his wife, “You’ve done this for fiftytwo years and it’s my turn.” So Isobel and Edward meet and he starts

cooking, usually once a week, for the forty-ish woman. She quickly realizes that “meeting Edward would change my life.” And it does.

Each chapter begins with a menu of what Edward cooked on that occasion. They are beautifully thought-out and include an appropriate wine. Isobel confides in Edward and, as she says, this friendship helps her navigate middle age.

Edward confesses that he approached cooking with “a passion and sometimes serious art form to be shared with a select few.”

Readers who are cooks of a certain age will fly through this book.

I forced myself to read one chapter (one meal) at a time and, while the menus made me very hungry, they also gave me ideas for crafting a satisfying repast. I didn’t want the book to end.

This is certainly not a cookbook, but I learned two techniques I hadn’t tried. Edward’s trick for the “Best Scrambled Eggs” (quantities are up to you) are as follows: he uses farm-fresh eggs and breaks them into a bowl, whisking with a splash of milk or cream, salt and pepper. He melts sweet (unsalted) butter in a hot fry pan, and just when the butter is “on the edge of turning brown” adds only half the egg mixture. After this begins to sizzle and bubble, “gently loosen the eggs with a spoon, reduce heat, and add the rest of the eggs, cooking until the eggs are light, fluffy, and completely coated in butter.” Try it!

Edward’s other tip involves the one martini he serves before dinner: he chills the martini glasses in the freezer and zests a lemon.

He adds this zest to the cup of gin that he has also chilled (in a Pyrex measure, I might add). After about ten minutes, he strains the lemony gin and adds dry vermouth. He returns the mixture to the freezer for a few minutes and then pours the cocktails into the chilled glasses “with a flourish.” Ah ha! Could that be the nonagenarian’s secret to a long life?

The Legacy of Two Extraordinary Women In the cooking pantheon, two women stand out: the late Marcella Hazan, for her state-of-the-art Italian cuisine, and Alice Waters, who blazed the way for today’s emphasis on healthy cooking using the best (and most local) raw materials. I would strongly recommend both books.

I’ve had the enormous pleasure of knowing Marcella and her husband, Victor (the expert on Italian wine, pictured with Marcella on previous page), for more than a quarter century. I even assisted in her classes. She prefaced these classes with talk about how to buy and use the best ingredients. And now we have Ingredienti: Marcella’s Guide to the Market, published by Scribner (2016).

This book is no-nonsense (just like Marcella). By that I mean the “ingredients” are illustrated with line drawings. It’s the prose that counts, and you should not miss husband Victor’s essay, “What Am I Doing Here?” and Marcella’s introduction, “How I Fell in Love with Ingredients.” No more vacillating in the vegetable aisles.

When those of us in the cooking world chat among ourselves, we constantly invoke “Julia,” “Marcella,” and “Alice,” three stellar stars in the gastronomic galaxy. Julia brought French (and other) cuisines to life in her books and TV appearances. I could happily binge-watch her French Chef reruns. As you’ve read (above), I’ve talked about Marcella many times and how you really only need her Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking to whip up practically everyone’s favorite foreign food.

See Offbeat on page 44

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Offbeat continued from page 43

Then there is Alice Waters, the buoyant Berkley chef who, along with other pioneering culinary ideas, championed the Edible Schoolyard Project, which teaches kids about how to grow and enjoy the fruits and vegetables of their labors.

Now we have Waters’ My Pantry: Homemade Ingredients that Make Simple Meals Your Own, written with Fanny Singer, Alice’s daughter, who also did the appropriate illustrations.

This book is a homerun for the home cook. Topics include spice mixtures and condiments; nuts, beans, and other legumes; savory preserves; whole grains; preserved fish and meats; cheese; and sweet preserves. See what I mean? What a great feeling to spend a little time up front creating some of these items, then being secure in the knowledge that you are prepared to cook well just by opening a jar, defrosting a treasure, adding something you made to create a memorable sauce, or spreading a topping on good bread (crostini anyone?), or taking someone a delicious present—with instructions as to use. The book is worth every penny if you sincerely want to cook better, tastier meals.

A Culinary Geography Book I must include The World on a Plate by Mina Holland in this list of suggested books. Published in 2014 by Penguin, it boasts 40 Cuisines, 100 Recipes, and the Stories Behind Them.

In the U.K., where it was first published, it won the “Best Culinary Travel Book at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards.” Heck, with this book you can travel from your market to the stove and try something new without leaving home. I can’t wait to cook “Shakshuka,” a newly heralded (in The New York Times) meatless dish from Israel. The recipe looks eminently doable and tasty, perfect for cool weather.

I’ll start the meal with a “Pickled Cucumber Salad” from Scandinavia. The “Fufu” recipe from West Africa I’ll save for another time. It’s seasoned and buttered yams. Thanksgiving maybe?

Be a great giver to a grateful recipient (and maybe snare a book for yourself ). One or more could change a cook’s life!

Now for that martini. And hold the Fufu.

Chef, teacher, author, and award-winning columnist Cornelius O’Donnell lives in Elmira, New York.

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Kerr continued from page 15

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and unfailing good humor in face of danger have earned our everlasting respect and warmest friendship.”

Being small, landing on her was challenging. As Ray recalls, when it was his turn to make his first landing the landing signal officer waved him off a few times. He eventually passed muster, but he was still one of the new guys and had to await the opportunity to prove himself. It came soon enough. Carriers travelled in groups of four with destroyers. The convoy was about fifty miles from Manila, with the pilots periodically flying “high cover,” looking for kamikazes. What they found during this particular reconnaissance were two Japanese destroyers. Ray was at 10,000 feet and headed down at 300 mph. With his fiftycaliber machine guns, he strafed the whole deck of one destroyer.

“I killed them all, then put rockets in the wheelhouse. It was quite a feat, that one plane could destroy a destroyer. And they didn’t get me. So, then, the admiral favored our division because he knew we’d get things done.”

As for Ray’s friend J.J., it was about a week after Ray was first on the U.S.S. Makin Island that kamikaze fire hit one of the adjacent carriers and J.J. was killed. Ray says when he and J.J. were still in Hawaii awaiting orders, they had hoped to be assigned to the same carrier. While an order change was in the works, the man typing the paperwork had to abruptly leave his post. Had the orders been finished, Ray would have been on the same doomed carrier as his friend.

Seven months after D-Day the Makin Island was headed to Luzon, the Philippines’ largest island. It was home to the capital, Manila, as well as airfields and airports the Japanese used. Ray recalled that on the day before the scheduled January 9, 1945, land invasion, he was flying high cover and saw the heartening sight of invading support ships. For several days prior, the convoy had been under attack, with the VC 84 squadron responding by shooting down Japanese planes and demolishing two enemy destroyers.

“The flyers were busy every day,” Ray says of the two and a half weeks his squadron was involved in the battle. “We kept hitting the airport at Manila. I flew many, many flights during the invasion of Luzon, and we lost some airplanes. It was our first foothold we had back in the Philippines after MacArthur left. The Philippines was the first time I was ever in combat.”

Ray went on to fly combat missions in the battles for Okinawa and for Iwo Jima, where he helped save the lives of about 100 Marines on Mount Surabachi and saw the iconic flag-raising.

Now he lives with his wife, Barb, at Pinnacle Towers. The couple had two daughters and a son—Sue lives in Wellsboro; Patricia lives in Elmira; Richard, who was born on Veteran’s Day and was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, died from Agent Orange-related cancer eleven years ago.

When I asked him if he was ever afraid in those days of battle I got the answer I expected: “No. I couldn’t be. You had a job and you figured it out and you got the job done.

“I’ve been positive all my life,” he says with a smile and a shrug, “I’m just happy to be alive. Since World War II, I’m just happy to be alive.”

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Old Hickory continued from page 16

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George Stenhach, an attorney who moved to Coudersport in the early 1980s, says he’s never seen any place like it before or since.

At it’s height, he says, the Old Hickory was “a place unique because, within relatively small confines, political enemies, people of different social strata, people who liked each other and didn’t all congregated.”

Stenhach remembers a local chiropractor removing a Viking helmet displayed on the wall, putting it on his head, and leading the bowling team around singing “We are the Champions.”

“And I remember a real Viking, Helge Lien, throwing axes at the dart board, while you had church-going ladies there applauding him,” he says.

Leete recalled being there on a Saturday afternoon with his kids and meeting the man who turned out to be the new minister: “The first place I met him—of all places—was the Old Hickory Tavern…it was just a vital part of the community.”

The irony of the Old Hickory’s decline is that it went to tatters while owned by the county’s richest family.

The Rigases, who founded and ran Adelphia Cable Communications, purchased the building in 1987, and they transferred ownership to Adelphia in 1995. Adelphia’s corporate headquarters was located directly across the street from the Old Hickory, and as the company grew into a multi-billion dollar enterprise, pigeons took up roost in the empty tavern.

It became a grim joke inside the company. An Adelphia executive once looked out the window at the eyesore across the street and declared it “the monument to corporate indecision.”

“We wanted to believe something would happen,” says Leete.

Local artist Maxine Shear, who had drawn all the major buildings in town, tried to embarrass the Rigases into action. She penned editorial cartoons of the Old Hickory for the Enterprise (the newspaper launched by Knox) with a sign in the yard that read “Help me!”

No help came.

Adelphia imploded in a $3.2 billion federal accounting fraud scandal in 2002, and before John and Tim Rigas were convicted and sent to prison, prosecutors used the Old Hickory as an object lesson for jurors. More than half a million dollars for antiques intended for the Old Hickory had been charged to the company books, but when a photo of the neglected and ramshackle building was put up on a screen, laughter rippled through the courtroom.

Adelphia unloaded the building in 2004 to new owners from outside Harrisburg, but they failed to fix it up.

At last, with the sounds of long-awaited renovation echoing through its emptiness, the Old Hickory has a new lease on life, and Coudersport residents a new hope for renaissance on Main Street.

“We all know it’s not going to go back to what it was before,” says Leete, but news of renovations is heartening.

“It’s the restoration—in all our hearts—of a treasure,” says Kefover.

Donald Gilliland was editor of the Potter Leader-Enterprise newspaper in Coudersport from 1998 to 2010 and was on the team at the Harrisburg Patriot-News that won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012.

He is currently assistant metro editor in charge of breaking news and national politics at the Tribune-Review in Pittsburgh.

Lincoln continued from page 12

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2nd. Ascertain who have not been assessed, and get them assessed at least ten days before election.

3 rd . A l l o t t o e a c h w o rk i n g Republican his special business.

4th. Have the tickets cut and folded and put up in a convenient form for distribution.

5th. Make provision for bringing out the infirm voters and even the lazy if there be any such.

6th. Appoint two or more suitable persons to superintend the outside work at the polls, who will understand how to keep the right men in the right places.

7th. Appoint one suitable person to check the names of the voters as their votes are pulled, so that it may be known who has not voted in time to bring them in.

• Frank Root completed his 1,500mile journey home to Wellsboro on November 5, 1860. The next day, on what he called “one of the proudest days of my life,” he cast his vote for president.

Abraham Lincoln won 56.7 percent of the Pennsylvania vote, and according to historian Dr. Gale Largey, carried Tioga County by a four to one margin.

The influence of Lincoln’s rhetoric on the region, and the patriotic fervor of its people, became only more evident in the following five years. Two months after the election, Kansas became the thirty-fourth State with the passage of the Wyandotte Constitution in January of 1861. That same month, seven Southern states broke from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. On April 12, 1861, Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, a Union post in South Carolina, initiating the start of the Civil War. In The Price of Patriotism, W. Wayne Smith writes that, according to the War Department, in proportion to population, Pennsylvania sent more volunteers to the Union Army than any other state, and Tioga County produced more Union soldiers than did any other county in Pennsylvania.

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49

B A C K O F T H E M O U N TA I N

Lyman Run State Park

By Curt Weinhold

A

n earthen Lyman Lake dam was deemed unsafe and was removed, with no plans to rebuild. But, thanks to the public inundating Harrisburg with requests to do just that, the dam was reconstructed and dedicated in the summer of 2008. I see the concrete spillway as a labyrinth of sorts, contrasting with the surrounding natural beauty. I’ve photographed here in all seasons, and that seasonal variety combined with the changing light always offers a new look to the spillway and to the lake, whether covered in ice or surrounded by autumn color.

50

WE’RE MOVING!

ART GA LLE RY & P UBL I S H ERS WHO: Mountain Home & Beagle Media WHERE: To 87-1/2 Main Street, Wellsboro WHEN: By the time you have this magazine in your hands.

WHY: So we can showcase for you the wonderful art and photography that until now you could only experience in these pages.

See you on Main Street!

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