Mountain Home, October 2018

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We Love NY Cider From the Heart of the Finger Lakes, Garrett Miller and Melissa Madden Take New York’s First Governor’s Cider Cup

By Alison Fromme The Ghosts of Woodlawn Cemetery Corning’s Days of Incandescence The Southern Tier Outdoor Show

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OCTOBER 20181

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Mansfield University Symphony Orchestra Choral Collage PRISM Concert $ (Homecoming Weekend) Jazz Ensemble & Mansfieldians Concert Wind Ensemble The Magic Flute @ Straughn Auditorium Mansfield University Piano Competition Mountaineer Brass Band Veterans Day Concert @ VA Hospital Auditorium in Bath, NY The Magic Flute @ Straughn Auditorium The Magic Flute @ Straughn Auditorium Holiday Concert $ Holiday Concert $ Jazz Ensemble Concert Wind Ensemble Holiday Concert Mansfield University Symphony Orchestra

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Volume 13 Issue 10

12 Aunt Marie’s Black Walnut Cake

We Love NY Cider

By Diane C. Seymour Nuts for because of nuts.

16 Give ’til It Helps

By Gayle Morrow

Halloween is the perfect time to donate— blood, that is...

26 The Southern Tier Outdoor

Show

By Jennie Simon

6

By Alison Fromme From the heart of the Finger Lakes, Garrett Miller and Melissa Madden take New York’s first Governor’s Cider Cup.

12th Annual Expo is right on target.

History’s Harvest

Mountain Home Wedding

30 Fruit of D’Vine

By Michael Banik Bales of fun are in store at Tioga County Early Days.

By Lisa Howeler

A Columbia Crossroads family turns vineyards into venue.

36 Don’t Whistle Past the

Graveyard

By Don Knaus

Our writer reveals that cemeteries are not just for the dearly departed.

18 Sweet Tooth Bakery

40 The Friendly Ghosts of

Woodlawn Cemetery

By Jennie Simon Canton team turns cakes into works of art.

By Nicole Landers

History comes alive—sort of—during Ghost Walk.

46 Blondie at the Stove

By Cornelius O’Donnell

A comic inspiration for a mile-high meal.

50 Back of the Mountain

34

By Mary Sweely

The Legend of the Gathers

Autumn voyage.

Cover by Tucker Worthington. Cover photo courtesy Melissa Madden.

This page (top): Garrett Miller (pictured) courtesy Melissa Madden, (second) courtesy Tioga County Early Days; (third) by Jennie Simon.

42

By Peter Joffre Nye Corning celebrates Gaffer history during Days of Incandescence.

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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 Publisher George Bochetto, Esq. D i r e c t o r o f O pe r a t i o n s Gwen Button Managing Editor Gayle Morrow S a l e s R ep r e s e n t a t i v e s Robin Ingerick, Linda Roller, Richard Trotta, Alyssa Strausser Gallery Manager/ Circulation Director Michael Banik Accounting Amy Packard D e s i g n & P h o t o g r ap h y Tucker Worthington, Cover Design Contributing Writers Maggie Barnes, Mike Cutillo, Elaine Farkas, Alison Fromme, Carrie Hagen, Paul Heimel, Lisa Howeler, Don Knaus, Nicole Landers, Janet McCue, Dave Milano, Cornelius O’Donnell, Brendan O’Meara, Peter Joffre Nye, Linda Roller, Diane C. Seymour, Jennie Simon, Karey Solomon, Beth Williams, Dave Wonderlich C o n t r i b u t i n g P h o t o g r ap h e r s Ray Alvarez, Bernadette Chiaramonte, Diane Cobourn, Bill Crowell, Bruce Dart, Lisa Howeler, Michael Johnston, Jan Keck, Mike Kissinger, Nigel P. Kent, Roger Kingsley, Jonathan Mack, Tim McBride, Heather Mee, Bridget Reed, Stacey Salter Moore, Jody Shealer, Deb Stafford, Linda Stager, Mary Sweely, Sue Vogler, Sarah Wagaman, Curt Weinhold, Ardath Wolcott

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Alison Fromme

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We Love NY Cider From the Heart of the Finger Lakes, Garrett Miller and Melissa Madden Take New York’s First Governor’s Cider Cup

By Alison Fromme

I

n a long-stemmed glass, tiny bubbles first cling to the sides, then float, with a wiggle and wobble, up through a liquid the color of pale sunshine. At the surface, they soundlessly pop.

Unless, of course, you sip, and the flavor of candied lemon peel and crab apple grabs your tongue, bubbles bouncing in your mouth. You lean on the painted concrete bar, then glance out the window, gaze upon a flock of turkeys, a quiet pond, hoop houses, and there, in the downslope before Cayuga Lake, lined up and trellised, are the apples trees.

This is what it is to taste the Kite & String “Pioneer Pippin” at the Finger Lakes Cider House in Interlaken. This champagne-style hard cider just won the first ever New York State Governor’s Cider Cup. The Cider House is emblematic of a growing industry. Across the country, an estimated eighteen million people consume hard cider, and retail sales topped $1.5 billion in 2017.

Cideries in New York State number nearly 100—the most of any state in the country—and they produce more than five million gallons of hard cider per year. In Pennsylvania, fortythree cideries reported $25.6 million in sales in 2016.

What’s In The Bottle?

On a recent morning after the rush of the Labor Day weekend, cider maker Jimmy Hamer wheels a stack of boxes into the tasting room shop and pauses to explain what it took to create the award winner.

The multi-step “traditional champagne” process began with fresh fruit—but not just any apple. Pioneer Crab, Newtown Pippin, Golden Russet, Manchurian Crab, in this particular cider, were grown on site and purchased from local growers, like Red Jacket and Cornell Orchards. These unfamiliar varieties, with the flavors desired in a boozy bottle, are much different from those you’d want in a lunchbox apple.

After apple pressing, the juice fermented in a tank with added yeast. The yeast—living organisms—gobble sugar and produce carbon dioxide and alcohol. Next, the juice was See Cider on page 8

7

Alison Fromme

Celebrated creator: Cider maker Jimmy Hamer may not have formal training, but with experimentation, lots of reading, and using past experience he’s no longer an apple amateur.

Cider continued from page 7

filtered, transferred, then bottled with additional yeast and sugar. Each of these steps took somewhere between a few weeks to a few months.

The cloudy yeast accumulates in the bottle, but customers expect a crystal clear final product. To get there, the bottles were shaken, then left upside down for a couple of months to let the yeast, which was still doing its work transforming sugar into alcohol and bubbles, settle. Then, the necks of the bottles were frozen, and, in a labor-intensive process, each bottle was opened one-by-one.

Pressure from inside the bottle popped out the frozen yeast plug, leaving the beautiful bubbly behind. Bottles were topped off and corked like champagne.

“This is a dry cider, just about one percent residual sugar,” says Jimmy, who grew up nearby in Dryden. Each bottle sells for eighteen dollars.

“We’re just learning as we go,” he says. In one early experiment during his first year, he tried to make a sweet champagne-style cider with pasteurized juice. Too much carbonation made caps pop off bottles all over the storage room.

Jimmy admits he has no formal training in cider making, and he had only brewed beer for fun in his basement before turning to cider professionally. Now, he relies on reading about the process, consulting with 8

friends at Sheldrake, Eve’s Cidery, Hosmer, Swedish Hill, and others, and even drawing on what he learned in high school biology and chemistry. Apparently, he’s no longer a novice. In the Governor’s Cup competition, Kite & String ciders also won Double Gold, Gold, and Silver in additional categories.

Jimmy’s brother Garrett Miller (who also has a hand in the cider making) and Melissa Madden bought the land here in 2008, when conventionally farmed corn and soy sprawled across the seventy acres.

Over the years, they aimed to improve both the land and their business plan.

They added organic material to the soil, dug a pond, planted apple and peach trees, built hoop houses for crops like ginger and turmeric, raised turkeys for specialorder Thanksgiving harvest, intercropped asparagus between orchard rows, mowed meadows with their team of horses, and achieved organic certification.

At first, community supported agriculture formed the basis of their business, and members paid a seasonal fee for diverse fruits and vegetables. But they soon branched out to cider.

“The Cider House started as a love letter…to the orchards that do and will cover the landscape of New York and the greater Northeast,” Melissa wrote on the farm’s blog.

When the tasting room first opened

four years ago, it operated something like a co-op, offering ciders from multiple producers. But the setup proved logistically challenging, says tasting room manager Michelle E. Wright, and the owners preferred to spend their time focusing on cider-making itself. Now, they tend 4,000 trees representing fifty varieties and produce about 10,000 gallons of cider annually.

Visitors to the Cider House can taste Kite & String ciders, plus those from a guest producer, on a monthly rotating basis. The tasting room also offers a menu of drinks by the glass, as well as lunch and snack items.

On a recent holiday, an estimated three or four hundred tourists and regulars made more than 160 purchases, evidence of the strong market for cider.

Michelle was especially excited about the recent release of a Honey Crisp ice cider (11.6 percent alcohol) featuring fruit from DeFisher Farm on Lake Ontario. The juice is “cryo-concentrated”—frozen and then thawed to use only the portion with the highest sugar content, creating a “light, bright, and zesty” cider “the color of golden orange peel” without bubbles that drinks like a dessert wine.

Growing Matters Champagne-style, ice-style, and other craft ciders are very different from the commercially produced ciders available from large producers. And at a Cider Week event last year (ciderweekflx.com), Autumn Stoscheck from Eve’s Cidery in Van Etten, explained why.

In the waning fall sunlight, a dozen or so guests seated at roughhewn wooden tables on a hill behind Indian Creek Farm examined slices of different apples Autumn provided. Each was from an unfamiliar variety, rough-skinned or misshapen or blemished, and nothing like a perfect round and ruby red supermarket apple.

When guests nibbled those slices, most only chewed for a moment or so before spitting out the flesh—mealy, starchy, mouth-dryingly tannic, untenably acidic.

The objectionable flavors or textures stood out, and guests alternately exclaimed with wonder or muttered and spat.

These apples, she explained, are sometimes called “spitters,” and although these flavors are tough on the tongue, they embody the qualities desired in cider: flavors and mouthfeel that add body and character to the final cider beverage.

For those who wanted to get a little nerdy about these traits, Autumn offered a simple chart, developed in the United Kingdom, with one axis representing a scale of low-to-high tannins and the other low-to-high acidity. Different apples fall within different quadrants on the chart, named sweets, bittersharps, bittersweets, and sharps.

Sweet eating apples, like Gala, usually have low tannins, medium acidity, and a lot of sugar. That’s not great for cider because yeast will eat the sugar and the remaining flavor compounds aren’t robust or plentiful enough to hold up in the fermentation process. The resulting cider will be thin and bland.

But, cider apples, like the Ellis Bitter—a bittersweet apple with low acidity and high tannins, or the Stoke Red—a bittersharp, with plenty of high acid and tannins, both contribute lots of flavor and body to the beverage in the bottle. Cider apples can contain ten times more tannins—think of the mouth sensation you experience while drinking strong black tea—than eating apples do.

“I’m a big proponent of farming in harmony with nature,” Autumn says, explaining that growing method, in addition to apple variety, is important to the quality of cider. “And apples are always at the top of the list for pesticide residue. It’s a chemically-intense crop.”

Autumn estimates that 80 percent of pesticides used on apples are purely to preserve perfect cosmetic appearance. In the supermarket, customers want picture-perfect fruit. But for cider apples, looks don’t matter, so those pesticides are unnecessary.

After seventeen years of growing apples, producing cider, and selling it at markets and festivals, Autumn has noticed an evolution at the marketplace. At first, many people did not know anything about hard cider, and she spent a lot of time explaining to potential customers that the product was alcoholic, not sweet, cider. About four years ago, that changed.

“Now, most people know what hard cider is,” she says, “but there’s a downside.”

The cider industry has grown faster than cider apple trees can. Most producers in New York use sweet and sharp dessert apple varieties, according to a Cornell report, because they can’t find enough specialty bittersharp, bittersweet, and heirloom dual-purpose apples. Much of the widely available commercially produced cider is made from eating apples culled from packing lines due to bruising or blemishes that make them unsaleable in the grocery store. In other words, they’re chosen because they are cheap (as low as eighty dollars per unit, compared with eight hundred for prime eating Honeycrisp) and widely available, not because they’re ideal for cider.

“There’s nothing to them, so producers add sugar, hops, artificial flavor, forced carbonation, put it in cans to look like craft beer…Now people sometimes say that they’ve tried cider and it’s too sweet, it’s not for them. They see it as a sweet, cheap beer alternative,” Autumn continues. She aims for something much more than that at her orchard, which is only open for tastings by appointment. So far, connoisseurs are pleased. A Washington Post reviewer called one of her traditional champagne-style ciders “mind-blowing” and Mark Squires from the Wine Advocate said, “If you’re looking for exceptional American cider, this is a great place to start, and it’s certainly a place you have to know if you See Cider on page 10

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Cider continued from page 9

care about cider.”

After spending last summer on sabbatical at Forge Cellars in Burdett, and participating in the white grape harvest in France, Autumn says, “It’s obvious in France that you don’t grow a wine grape the same way you grow a table grape, and it’s the same for apples…The terroir really matters, the minerals, water, how that gets expressed in the fruit…You can taste the difference.”

Deep Roots The groundwork for the growing cider industry was laid a long, long time ago, when the glaciers that covered this region receded, dropping rocks and pebbles full of minerals as they melted. Soil with these rocky deposits, known as “glacial till,” is still here, under the trees at the Cider House and Eve’s Cidery.

Nearby at Black Diamond Farm, owner Ian Merwin says that glacial till soils, like Honeoye, on his sixty-four-acre farm are ideal for apple growing: deep, fertile, well drained, and full of minerals like calcium, potassium, and magnesium.

“The bottom line is that we have fabulous soil almost too good for growing apples,” he says.

Although a couple of crab apple species are native to North America, most apples were introduced to the continent

by European settlers, beginning in the 1600s. Johnny Appleseed is credited with planting apple nurseries starting in WilkesBarre and throughout Pennsylvania during the late 1700s. But in New York, Native Americans spread seeds westward. By the time Europeans reached the Finger Lakes, orchards were already established in Cayuga and Seneca indigenous communities, according to Cornell University archives.

When General Sullivan raided these communities in 1779, he recorded seeing seventy apple trees that appeared to be about fifty years old in an orchard in the western part of what is now Romulus, near Seneca Lake. (And then, in his attempt to destroy these communities, he felled them, leaving only stumps behind.)

Today, when Ian walks the diverse fruit orchards he planted after he bought the farm in 1993, he introduces apples trees as if they are family members. “This one is the granddaughter of…” or “Here’s the mother of…” and “You can tell this is the 10

half-sib of…

“I don’t have a favorite, but if I had to choose, it would be this,” he says, stopping at a Cox Orange Pippin, an apple found in England and named in 1825. It’s a sweetsharp with famous offspring in the grocery store, like the Gala and the Suncrisp. Plus, it’s dual-purpose, he says, great for eating and cider, which is important for growers who want flexibility.

As a retired Cornell professor, he knows the relationships among the trees and the years of breeding and science that have created new varietals, trees that are disease-resistant, apples that are especially crisp, or with flesh that doesn’t brown when cut. Scientists, farmers, and breeders at the NYS Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva (now Cornell AgriTech) started studying apples in the late 1800s and have since developed at least 250 varieties, in addition to testing fertilizer and pesticide regimes.

But rare and heirloom cider varieties are mostly ones that have been propagated from cuttings without change. Take the Golden Russet, a brown-tinged sweet-sharp with rough skin, named in 1845, or an even older one, the Roxbury Russet, the oldest named variety in North America, dating back to 1640. Both have characteristic scarred skin that Ian says adds flavor to finished cider. Ian grows both russets in his high-density orchards, where trees are precisely spaced, trellised, and grown according to the Integrated Fruit Production guidelines. To keep these varieties thriving and to meet the new cider demand, he sells “bud wood”—cuttings from desirable trees—to nurseries that graft them onto rootstock adapted to specific conditions. Hundreds of thousands of cider trees growing around the country trace back to this orchard, he estimates.

Black Diamond Farm began producing cider just four years ago and now produces 4,000 gallons annually. The farm’s ciders range from the best-selling bubbly semidry Jaywalker (8.4 percent alcohol) to the dry traditional champagne-style Golden Russet Porters Perfection (8 percent) to the Normandy-style dessert cider Porter’s Pommeau (20 percent). The brand has won awards in the New York Wine Classic and the Great Lakes International Cider and Perry Competition.

“The beauty of cider is that nothing is wasted,” Ian says. Apples dropped on the

Alison Fromme

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Finger Lakes family: Black Diamond Farm owner Ian Merwin identifiesCordial apple competition: Vinny Aliperti, head varieties as though they winemaker, washes wine barrels for his have family trees.boss and competitor, Ted Marks.

ground can be used. Although not all apples are ideal, any apple can be made into cider.

Ian says his operation doesn’t make much money. It’s small, inefficient, and his wife reminds him he’s supposed to be retired, he says. Still, he has plans to create a tasting room and might someday plant more trees in a field he’s left fallow while it naturally builds fertile soil.

“Many of my colleagues at Cornell thought cider was a joke in the 1990s,” he says, but he was still granted permission to travel to France and Spain for sabbatical, learning from farmers and producers there.

Since then, consumer interest and a favorable regulatory environment (the Federal CIDER act, passed in 2015 and the NYS Farm Cider Law in 2013) have set the stage for cider to thrive in the marketplace.

But will it last? A Cornell report cautions that the growth of the hard cider market “may be hampered by the lack of supply for specialized cider apples.” Small, craft brands have grown by 30-40 percent since 2015, but total cider sales in the US have decreased in the same time.

Still, Ian is optimistic. “Around the world, people who really know cider will tell you that the best ciders in North America are Finger Lakes ciders.”

Alison Fromme is a science writer living in Ithaca, NY, who occasionally has a gallon or two of homebrew cider fermenting in her basement.

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Aunt Marie’s Black Walnut Cake Nuts For Because Of Nuts

By Diane C. Seymour

E

very few seconds, I ducked as the green balls thudded down around me, thrown off by the two towering black walnut trees on our farm in Sugar Run. As they bounced with varying velocity down the hill, I wondered why no one ever picked them up. Maybe I’ll make a black walnut cake, just like Aunt Marie used to do, I thought. And, just like that, my adventure began.

With bucket in hand, I once again braved the falling missiles, ready to gather enough nuts for several cakes. In flashbacks to childhood, I saw black walnuts lying in the two tire tracks of our dirt driveway, waiting for the car to run over them. I chose a more immediate hull-removal method, stepping on older blackened balls and twisting my foot until the hulls broke loose from the nuts. In a little over an hour, two buckets of hulled, wet nuts sat on the front porch to dry. I could almost smell

12

black walnut cake.

A few days later, ready to start cracking, I found two bucketfuls of molded nuts!

Disappointed, but determined, I gathered and hulled again. This time, I washed and scrubbed each nut individually, taking off pieces of hull clinging to the hard, jagged shell. Not taking any chances, I laid each nut on a drying rack making sure they didn’t touch each other, the better to dry properly. With blisters on both thumbs, four hours into the process, and black hands that lasted for days, memories of Aunt Marie urged me on.

Time to crack! With the first whack of the hammer, the uncracked nut flew left out of reach. Another whack, and the second uncracked nut popped equidistant to the right. There must be a better way, I thought, holding a nut with pliers this time. Whack! Whack! Whack! WHACK! Finally, my first nut cracked open, but not

like those wonderfully easy to open English walnuts we crack at Christmas time (first try, and two perfectly shaped halves ready to pop out of the shell). Apparently, black walnuts are the Fort Knox of nuts, nearly impossible to get into and equally impossible to get precious goods out of!

If the nut cracked into two halves, tiny, intricate labyrinths clung tightly to the nutmeat making it difficult to pick out pieces any bigger than a baby aspirin.

Cracking the half again smashed the meat, leaving black walnut crumbs. I moved inside, watching videos of two people and one squirrel, desperate to learn from experts. All three made it look easy; it wasn’t.

So, for the next two hours, I whacked, whacked, whacked, picked, over and over and over, only driven forward by a promise to honor the memory of my aunt.

With sweat pouring down my back, heart

By Vmenkov [CC-BY-SA-3.0], from Wikimedia Commons

pounding like I’d run a five minute mile, and teeth clenched in desperate defiance of defeat, I finally swirled the tiny nuggets of black walnut gold around in the dish, and laid my hammer down.

After seven total hours of effort, I had gathered enough black walnut pieces to make my cake. I was triumphant!

The day before baking “The Cake,” I visited with Aunt Marie’s sister and two daughters. Launching into my woes of black walnut harvesting, I proudly proclaimed my reason for persevering: “Because Aunt Marie always made black walnut cakes that way.”

Total silence followed until they laughed in unison, “She never made black walnut cakes, she made hickory nut cakes!”

I never made the cake. I did make delicious black walnut cookies that could only be shared with my husband and very close friends, who were warned to bite lightly to avoid pieces of whacked shell impossible to see before baking. With free material and minimum wage, my nuts cost a whopping $106 per pound compared to a ridiculously reasonable price of $15 per pound at Amazon. I flung my remaining uncracked nuts into the woods where they belonged—with all those squirrel experts who know what they’re doing.

Aunt Marie made hickory nut cakes? Maybe next year…

Mountain Home contributor Diane Seymour lives in Towanda and writes short stories about life in the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania.

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By TRANSYLVANIA [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons

Give ’til It Helps

Halloween Is The Perfect Time to Donate—Blood, That Is...

By Gayle Morrow

W

here can you go to get a mini wellness check, a feeling that you’ve done something worthwhile, snacks (guiltfree!), and find that it doesn’t cost you anything but a little bit of your time?

A Community Blood Bank blood drive, that’s where.

Community Blood Bank, around since 1966, is a non-profit providing volunteer blood (the best kind) to patients in need. It is a member of America’s Blood Centers, which provides half of the country’s blood supply. Locally, Community Blood Bank began partnering with UPMC Susquehanna in 2017, and provides blood and blood products to a number of regional hospitals, including Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hospital in Wellsboro and Charles Cole Memorial Hospital in Coudersport.

In essence, the Community Blood Bank relies on local donors to meet the needs of local patients. Those patients could be your friends, neighbors, or a family member. They’re trauma victims, newborns and new mothers, cancer-fighters, folks with acute illnesses.

“This blood supply impacts my loved ones just as much as yours,” says Lora Cope, Community Blood Bank mobile drive coordinator and a familiar face at local drives.

Blood Basics Like water, there is no substitute for blood. Acting as the body’s transport system, blood consists of red cells, white cells, and platelets, all mixed up and flowing along in a lovely liquid 16

known as plasma. The red and white cells are manufactured in your bone marrow, most especially marrow in your vertebrae, ribs, hips, skull, and sternum. These cells carry oxygen, fight infection, and help control bleeding. The plasma schlepps the cells, water, and nutrients to the body’s tissues.

Across the country, the daily need for blood is 40,000 pints (not counting vampires or zombies). One estimate is that every two seconds someone in the United States needs blood. Women carry around about ten pints in their bodies; men have about twelve.

Blood Type O- is the universal donor type. About 8 percent of the U.S. population is O-, and less than 10 percent of the eligible population, regardless of blood type, donates annually.

The (Sometimes Icky) History of Early Blood Donations Way back in 1492, the attendants to Pope Innocent VIII, who was ailing at the time, thought if the Pope had some fresh blood, literally, he might perk up a bit. There wasn’t much known in those days about how blood circulated throughout the body, or about how much blood a donor could safely provide. Suffice it to say, neither the Pope nor his donors fared well.

Fast forward to 1665 and the first recorded successful transfusion—physician Richard Lower kept a dog alive via transfusion of blood from another dog. There were, in the ensuing years, a few somewhat dicey successes with animal to human transfusions. In 1795 an American physician conducted a humanto-human transfusion; then in 1818 James Blundell, a British

obstetrician, managed a successful transfusion for a postpartum hemorrhage. He used the patient’s husband as the donor, and evidently luck was with them as they both reportedly survived (getting the wrong blood type can be fatal). In 1867 Joseph Lister, of Listerine fame, pioneered the use of antiseptics as a means to forestall infection. When, in 1900, the Austrian physician Karl Landsteiner discovered the first three human blood groups (he was subsequently awarded a Nobel for his work), the blood donating and blood receiving situations improved greatly.

The first blood bank was established in 1932 in a Leningrad hospital; the first one in the United States was in 1937 in Chicago’s Cook County Hospital.

What Are You Waiting For? Giving blood these days is a piece of cake (and you might even get one when you’re done). When you show up at a Community Blood Bank blood drive—visit fourhearts.org or call (814) 4564206 to find out where and when the next nearby drive will be—you’ll be asked to fill out paperwork which includes questions about your health, your recent international travels, and your, well, sexual activities. Nobody wants to be nosy, but everybody involved wants to make the best decisions about whether your blood is safe to use and whether you are healthy enough to give.

Once your paperwork is cleared, you see a nurse who takes your blood pressure, tests a couple of drops of blood from your finger (no pain) to determine your iron level, and asks you a few more questions. Some would-be donors get a little annoyed about the inquiries, and really annoyed if they’re told they can’t donate, but even something as minor as a sore throat or an infected cut may be a reason for deferment. Lora Cope explains that an infection which an otherwise healthy immune system can easily handle could be deadly for an infant or a cancer patient who received blood from that person.

“We’re conservative for your health and the health of the recipient,” Lora says.

Finally, you’re directed to the next available donating chair, where a nurse decides which vein looks the most promising. He or she will swab your arm with a disinfectant, you’ll get a tourniquetsort-of-thing tied on, you’ll get a squishy ball to squeeze, then (it’s OK to turn your head here—I always do) a little pinch that lasts about a quarter of a second, the needle is in, the blood is flowing, and you’re on your way to helping save a life. Easy peasy.

Some folks fill up their pint bag in ten minutes or so; it takes others a bit longer. When you’re done, your nurse will ask you to remain seated for a few minutes, just to make sure you’re not queasy, and then you can mosey over to the snack area to enjoy a beverage and a goodie. You’ll be reminded to have extra fluids for the next day or so, to take it easy with the arm that had the poke, and you’re good to go.

If you donated in Wellsboro, your blood will be transported to Erie where it will be separated into platelets, whole blood, and plasma, then shipped back out to the various local hospitals Community Blood Bank serves. Whole blood can be stored for forty-two days, platelets for five days, and frozen plasma has a shelf life of one year. In fifty-six days, you are eligible to donate again. Please do.

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17

Courtesy Tioga County Early Days Son of a third generation farmer: John Pino III (grandson of Early Days cofounder John Pino) and his son show off their contribution to the show.

History’s Harvest

Bales of Fun are in Store at Tioga County Early Days

By Michael Banik

A

re you ready to take a step back in time and ponder life before TV, cell phones, and social media? Then the fifty-third annual Tioga County Early Days may be the place for you. This year’s celebration is October 12-14 at the Tioga County Fairgrounds in Whitneyville, about halfway between Wellsboro and Mansfield.

The early days of the Early Days date back to 1965. That was when Ross Pino brought to life his idea for Tioga County Early Days at the family farm near Mansfield. His goal was to bring people together who were interested in antique tractors, “hit and miss” gasoline engines, tools, household items, and machinery that depicted life during the 1800s and early 1900s. That first event featured an antique steam-driven sawmill that showed how logs were turned into lumber, and a yoke of oxen hitched to a covered wagon.

Over the years, the event has grown to become a virtual living history of life back in the old days. One of the working demonstrations visitors can expect to see is an 1889 sawmill, one of the oldest on the East Coast.

“During the show’s opening ceremonies 18

on Friday evening at 5:30, we are honoring the hometown heroes,” says Gary Comfort, Tioga County Early Days president. Police and fire departments, EMTs, and the sheriff’s departments of Tioga and Bradford counties have been invited. “The Tioga County Honor Guard, a fireman’s Honor Guard, and the Wellsboro Boy Scouts will be on hand, and bagpipers from Corning will also be there to perform.”

Some of the exhibits and activities expected to be at the 2018 Early Days include apple cider pressing and tasting, compliments of area resident Mark Empson and his 1915 throttle-governed International Harvester mogul engine. A magnificently restored 1947 New Holland left-handed straw baler, compliments of Donna and Bob Wagner, will be seen in action, with volunteers feeding loose hay and straw into the seventy-year-old beauty. There will be an antique shingle mill, and farm machinery such as antique corn choppers, threshing machines, and a wide array of tractors, including John Deere, Ferguson, Case, and Allis-Chalmers, along with some of the not-so-common brands like Rumely, Silver King, and Fordson Major.

Local blacksmith Darryl Kotz will be on hand, along with Dale “The Hammer Man” Palmer inside the Grange Building with an amazing antique hammer collection. See hammers, sledges, and all sorts of forged iron hand tools. If you have an oldie of your own, bring it on up and find out about its place in history.

The 7th New York and the 4th U.S. Light Artillery will put on a demonstration.

Other activities and demonstrations include a pedal tractor pull, flea market, quilting, and woodcarving.

There will be plenty of dining opportunities throughout the weekend as well, including barbecued chicken, apple dumplings, and other home-cooked and home-style delectables. A spaghetti supper is set for Friday evening from 5 to 7 p.m.

There will be live music Saturday evening.

Gates open at 8 a.m. all three days.

For more information contact Gary at (607) 259-6234 or go to tiogacountyearlydays.com.

Tioga County native (and former farm boy) Michael Banik is Mountain Home’s circulation/gallery manager.

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COLORFUL MERLOT SKY CREEPERS by byBernadette Sarah Wagaman Chiaramonte

WINE MOON

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A Seasonal Palate When summer’s seemingly inexhaustible shades of green have morphed to yellow and brown, when the carnelian-colored leaves make their grand entrance, when the brilliant azure clarity of a cloudless midday sky tells us in no uncertain terms that Aestas has ceded command to Autumnus, we know October has arrived.

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25

Courtesy Southern Tier Outdoor Show

The Southern Tier Outdoor Show 12th Annual Expo Is Right On Target

By Jennie Simon

C

reated to be a regional sportsmen’s expo a dozen years ago, the nonprofit Southern Tier Outdoor Show has grown from sixty vendors to over 140, with attendance over 7,000 last year. At this annual weekend event—it’s October 13-14 this year—recreational experts share the best of products and services with which to enjoy the great outdoors. Outdoor sports enthusiasts from the Empire State, from neighboring Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, and from as far away as Maine and South Dakota come to Steuben County Fairgrounds in Bath to set up, share, and promote nature activities. The board of

26

directors, show manager Carla Dawejko, and dedicated staff and volunteers have one aim with this event: to highlight the diversity of the region’s natural resources and connect visitors with outdoor recreational opportunities.

At its inception, the outdoor attraction was geared for the avid sportsman. Since 2007, Carla, and her right hand, Darlene Spencer, have seen sponsored activities become family and youth centered, with more female participants.

“The focus is to get our youth involved, to pass the enthusiasm for enjoying the outdoor elements on,” Carla says. “Also,

we are very committed to bringing in as many local business vendors as possible. The show is a vital way of linking community to family by stimulating interest in what nature has to offer.”

With assistance and coordination from Cornell Cooperative Extension, board members and volunteers seek out products and services from new vendors each year, as well as continuing longstanding relationships with local sponsors and partners. Until 2017, Brian Wilkins of Wilkins RV in Bath offered his business location as show site, but, with more vendors and more attendees every year,

there was the happy dilemma of needing more space. There is oodles of parking at the fairgrounds, and room for growth.

“Show me something new in outdoor equipment every year,” says Carla. “That’s what we strive for. Last year disc golf was one of our popular draws. People want options for outdoor fun.” Thanks to Carla, fellow board members, dedicated volunteers, and public support, the Southern Tier Outdoor Show has become a mecca of outdoor recreation ideas. Who wants to do some rope climbing this year or see the new DockDogs—the latest in canine performance sports? You can improve your archery aim, watch the younger set have a blast at the youth indoor fishing pond, see beekeeping demonstrations (and get some honey), or try your hand at tomahawk throwing.

There are living history activities, air rifle simulators, and laser shooting sites. (Keep in mind all activity areas are within safe perimeters and are well supervised.) A multi-state carry permit class and a New York permit legalities/firearms safety class are being offered for a fee. Fun contests for all ages include 3D tournaments, buck mount scoring, dog retriever challenges, and turkey calling. Some will miss ice fishing camp this year, but Ben Blegen of the U.S. Ice Team is on assignment in England.

He will bring his ice camp back in 2019.

And don’t forget the good stuff at the food court.

Your pets, trained and polite, of course, are welcome. Past and present furred, feathered, and scaled attractions involve dogs, bear, falcons and other birds of prey, snakes, and deer.

Get close with wriggling bass and trout in the fishing pond competition. You never know what will be reeled in for each year’s event.

The weekend is affordable, at ten dollars per day per car load, with no maximum, or just five dollars per person. Entry grants visitors chances to win a four-person Finger Lakes fishing trip, and quality outdoor sporting equipment. Volunteer opportunities abound, and include survey collection during the event, parking assistance, photography, registration, and working throughout the year to add to the sponsor/vendor list. Carla mentions that extra hands are always needed and appreciated for the set up and tear down.

“Don’t forget the perk you get if helping out on Saturday—a free admission on Sunday,” she says. “And for students, community service hours can be earned.”

There will be “tails” and “tales” galore from the Southern Tier Outdoor Show. Make a plan to fill your backpack with outdoor awareness, natural resources education, free hands-on activities, and ways to care for the environment and improve quality of life.

Carla says she is grateful to have the support and sponsorship of local, state, and national businesses, as well as local broadcast and bank partnerships. Local 4-H, Boy Scouts, and National Guard are also a committed part of the outdoor event team. The resulting extensive lineup of entertainment is an outdoor lover’s ticket for best show. Check out southerntieroutdoorshow.com for the latest updates, or call (607) 664-2300.

The art of writing has provided Jennie Simon many outlets of expression in this Bradford County native’s career. Links to her work are found at authorjenniesimon.com.

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© Ray Alvarez Wedding Photography www.weddingsbyray.com

ochester, New York. Home to Genesee Brewery and its history. Also home to the Bride and Groom captured here in this photo. The appreciation that the newly married coupe have for their hometown is a great feeling. Soon after the ceremony ended, they decided to have a stroll around some of Rochester’s iconic landmarks, starting out with photos from the amazing “High Falls,” followed by photos inside and out of the historic Genesee Brew House.” ~Ray Alvarez of Ray Alvarez Wedding Photography, a traveling wedding photo journalist in New York state.

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SSM Photography courtesy D’Vine Vineyard and Winery

Fruit of D’Vine

A Columbia Crossroads Family Turns Vineyards Into Venue

By Lisa Howeler

W

hen Dave Page found himself interested in growing grapevines and developing various kinds of wine on his property on Garnert Road in northern Pennsylvania’s Columbia Crossroads, he had no idea the four-acre plot of land he’d set aside to cultivate the cultivars in 2008 would become a sought-after wedding destination for brides and grooms across the Twin Tiers region.

Dave’s wife, Denise, a full-time nurse, says it was their niece who started the now thriving wedding venue business by declaring in 2014 that she wanted to have her wedding at the picturesque location with the rustic barn and open green fields. The Pages agreed and began to clear out the barn and make the space ready for wedding guests. A well-known local photographer photographed the wedding, shared the photos on social media, and the rest, as 30

the saying goes, is history.

Now the vineyard, located about forty miles south of the New York Finger Lakes region, has booked close to fifty weddings, from mid-June to October (it’s a seasonal space), since 2014. Denise feels the quaint, rural, and oh-so-romantic location is what makes it a premier wedding destination for many.

But she and her husband never expected their site to become such an attraction.

The land was used as a dairy farm more than 100 years ago, and is one of the few century farms in Bradford County. The farm was passed to Dave in the 1970s by his grandparents, Max and Louise VanVeghten. His great-grandfather, Fred, built the barn.

In the 1980s, Dave sold the dairy business, but he kept the See D’Vine on page 32

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Bridget Reed Photography courtesy D’Vine Vineyard and Winery

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D’Vine continued from page 30

land. Over the years, as their children grew, the Pages traveled and educated themselves about food and beverages and how to make both. It was after the children—Brandon and Denee—grew up and left home that Dave began to explore how to establish and operate a successful vineyard, and to make wine, Denise says. Dave named the winery D’Vine as a fun way to play with words and combine both of their names, which, of course, each start with a “D.” Dave planted 1,800 grapevines of eight different varieties, but he and Denise didn’t quit their day jobs. Dave still works as an American Holstein Association classifier and Denise is still a nurse.

They operate the wedding space on the weekends with assistance from their two children and their daughter-in-law.

That space includes the historic and picturesque barn, the vineyard, the apple and peach trees, the pergola with a swing, and a pond. The Pages rent the space; the renters are able to decorate and set up for themselves. In addition to weddings and receptions, the space is available for birthday parties, anniversaries, reunions, and other special occasions.

“It’s a ‘do it yourself operation,’” Denise says.

The Page family’s strategy for their future, and that of the venue, is to open a winery, vineyard, and event space to the public on a more regular basis once Denise and Dave retire. For Dave that is planned for two years from now. Until then, he is continuing to test wines (a tough job, but someone has to do it), experimenting, and sharing with a select few as he develops his skills and expertise, the couple says.

“He’s been making what you might call practice wine,” Denise says. “We have a license in holding but we don’t bottle. We make wine for our own use. In the future probably we will do festivals and not actually have a tasting room, because the wedding venues take up the weekends.”

To learn more about booking D’Vine Vineyard visit dvinevineyardandwinery.com or call (570) 297-2946.

Lisa R. Howeler is a mom and professional freelance photographer and writer from Athens, Pa. She writes about life in rural America, faith, photography and motherhood on her personal blog.

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(4) Jennie Simon

Canton cakers: Glenda Beadnell and daughter, Sylvia Adams, serve up sweets with attention to detail and a can-do attitude.

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Sweet Tooth Bakery

Canton Team Turns Cakes into Works of Art

By Jennie Simon

A

short walk from downtown Canton, at 60 Brann Street, is, perhaps unexpectedly, a bake shop. The “open” flag above the side door waves “Hello, enter here.” Welcome to Sweet Tooth Bakery, where peanut butter pies fly out the door, and cakes become works of art.

“We’re open to any design style,” owner Glenda Beadnell remarks, pointing to display cakes. “Often customers come in with a picture of what they want. There’s nothing we haven’t been able to create in the last seven years.” She gestures to an order ready for pick up—two dozen cupcakes dressed in violet and hot pink roses adorn a fairy house with a roof made of, yep, roses. The head caker smiles at daughter and partner, Sylvia. “Our versatile cake decorator is quite good at making roses.”

This eye candy brings flashbacks of local storefront bakeries of the ’70s—Dunham’s in Wellsboro, Biddle’s in Troy. Stainless steel work tables and white, shelf-lined walls are organized in a space that screams clean and efficient.

Sweet Tooth offers free tastings of two samples of each flavor of cake, with a collection of icings and fillings. Favorite cakes now are white, chocolate, yellow, red velvet, peanut butter, lemon, coconut, strawberry, and spice. Fillings can be apple, strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, Bavarian cream, and lemon. The selection of homemade buttercream icings and the bakery’s own fondant top off the variety. When it comes to wedding cakes, Glenda notes that “the grooms like peanut butter and chocolate lately.”

“The largest order delivered was a six-tier wedding cake, shipped in three parts to a local farm,” Glenda says. “The current order trend is a small cake with a lot of cupcakes. The rustic theme is being replaced by more formal designs. We’re ready for anything.

The bride decides.”

Glenda made her first cake for Sylvia’s third birthday, and continued baking for family and friends while working full time as a retail store manager. Sylvia grew up, got married, became a mom of three. She also mastered the art of cake decorating. In 2011, Ricky Beadnell urged daughter Sylvia and wife Glenda to pursue a baking business together, and built their first commercial kitchen.

“He’s our not so silent partner!” Glenda says. The ladies chuckle.

Sylvia and Glenda share photos of a whimsical topsy turvy cake—one with a funky Alice in Wonderland twist, and some of several dozen teal-colored cupcakes, trimmed in gold and white, and embellished with small black elephants, all Glenda’s handiwork. “Details are important,” she says. “If we can’t find it to purchase, we make it ourselves.”

The bakery slogan is “We turn cakes into works of art. What’s your superpower?” “Keep watch,” the ladies say. “Wait till you see our next wedding cake!” The gleam in the dynamic duo’s eyes says it will be a work of art and, yes, they are superheroes.

Find Sweet Tooth Bakery on Facebook or call (570) 673-5005.

The art of writing has provided Jennie Simon many outlets of expression in this Bradford County native’s career. Links to her work are found at authorjenniesimon.com.

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(3) Courtesy Inn at Taughannock

Don’t Whistle Past the Graveyard

Our Writer Reveals That Cemeteries Are Not Just For The Dearly Departed

By Don Knaus

I

love cemeteries. Okay, they can be sad places from time to time, but I’ve had a love for my local resting place since I was a lad. I hark back to the days when a kid would race out the back door and, before the spring slammed the screen shut, he was gone. Moms didn’t worry about their progeny until dark. It was Baby Boomer time. Every neighborhood in town was filled to overflowing with children in my age group. On sunny summer days, after we’d built enough forts to house the 7th Cavalry and shot enough Nazis to win the war, we’d slap a couple of pieces of baloney between some bread and throw them into the bicycle basket. Remember the wire baskets that used to be mounted to handlebars, and the fat-tired one-speed bikes? (I have a “modern” bike now that has so many gears and speeds that I’m not 36

smart enough to ride it.) Anyway, basket filled with lunch, we’d speed to the cemetery to dine among the tombstones. The place was way across town, so we coasted down East Avenue and crossed Main Street. (We didn’t need pedestrian “Walk” buttons; we just used common sense.) Then we pumped uphill to the cemetery. The picnic entourage was a mix of boys and girls. Mostly we took the girls along because they had better lunches.

Several years passed and I was in high school riding the splinters on the football team. I took a shine to the cheerleaders, but the only one who smiled at me was the beefy blonde who was the solid base for the pyramid. Still, she was a girl, and after the evening’s pep rally bonfire, I walked her through the cemetery, just past the flickering light of the fire, toward town to

her aunt’s place. Did I mention she was a country girl, and that country girls were much advanced in the ways of love? When we reached a spot in the burial grounds that was covered with soft moss, she tripped me and beat me to the ground. Kissing commenced, and though I didn’t advance past first base, so to speak, I had found a whole new use for the cemetery!

The cemetery was (still is) next to the high school, and my pals soon discovered that it was a great place to find some parking privacy. It evolved into a Lover’s Lane. Then, the local constabulary got involved. There were not enough drunks fighting on Main Street, so they re-directed their patrols to the tombstones. Most guys escaped at the east entrance on Riberole Street. That is, until the cops locked the gate. There were only two new cars among the parkers—Tommy

Bernadette Chiaramonte

and Ron each had brand new Chevy Corvairs. Well, a race just had to decide who had the fastest. Around halfway past William Bache’s four wives, they met the flashing red lights of the patrol car. Both boys headed for the east gate, only to find it closed. They gunned up the hill to the new section. Tommy edged out Ron and forced Ron to hit the brakes. It turned out that Ron nearly slid into an open grave.

Of course the cop caught him but couldn’t figure what offense he had committed. The next day, a speed limit sign was pounded into the ground at the west entrance.

When I hit middle age, I discovered that half the seasoned townsfolk used the cemetery for exercise. Someone had gauged the perimeter road on the odometer and it measured exactly one mile. My lovely bride and I had tried the twenty-one-speed bikes.

You know what they say about you never forget how to ride a bike? That is not true.

So we took to walking. That’s when I began to read names on the tombstones. At first the strolls were roots oriented, and I pointed out four generations of my family. Then I noted a few “famous” folks. Now, I don’t mean Nessmuk, the noted outdoor writer,

or Senator John Mitchell. I thought it was fun to find regular folks, read their names on the tombstone, and imagine they were those real famous somebodies.

Famous or infamous, luminaries or legends, those with fairly common last names are easy to find. My local cemetery holds less than 9,000 souls but there are some pretty big names among those dead.

Any cemetery can produce John Smith (but probably not Pocahontas) or the Mormon leader, Joseph Smith. John Jones is a regular, and I always imagine his middle name is Paul. We have a guy who was the fast Jack Robinson. Oh, and Jack is next to his brother, Tom Robinson, Atticus Finch’s client in To Kill a Mockingbird. And don’t forget coo-coo-ka-choo Mrs. Robinson.

And we have Bernie Williams, the Yankee baseball hitter.

We have the guy they named the 1955 John Ford movie after—Mr. Roberts. Most graveyards have a Glen Campbell or that meadow bird, Bob White. Great Biblical names were common first names in the long ago. Eli Yale is an example, but we only have Moses Yale. Then there’s what I figure must be twins buried side-by-side,

Asinath and Abiatha. (I looked it up; they’re in the Bible.) I was elated to find Mrs. Butterworth. We have Bobby Kennedy, George Burns, the English author who wrote under the nom de plume George Eliot—Mary Ann Evans (actually Anne, but close enough), and Charlie McCarthy, the famous ventriloquist’s puppet. There’s a Myrna Loy Somebody (I was so struck by the gal’s first and middle name I didn’t write down her last name.) We have a Franklin Benjamin, and I imagined the guy lined up for Army basic training where names are called last name first. Then he’d be Benjamin Franklin. And there’s NBA Hall of Famer Bill Russell. I found politician Al Smith, actor Robert Shaw. But my all-time best was the country singing great George Strait!

You never know who you’ll find on a stroll through your cemetery.

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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(4) Courtesy Chemung Valley History Museum

Grave recollection: Alan Caum portrays the life of Truckson LaFrance during the Chemung County Ghost Walk.

The Friendly Ghosts of Woodlawn Cemetery History Comes Alive—Sort Of—During Ghost Walk

By Nicole Landers

F

or over ten years now, walkers in Elmira’s Woodlawn Cemetery have been reporting incidents of apparitions appearing before them. This seems to happen around midOctober. The men, women, and children who visit the passersby are always anxious to tell their stories. These ghost-like folks are, in fact, actors portraying historical figures who are now residents of the cemetery. It is what you will encounter if you participate in the annual Woodlawn Cemetery Ghost Walk organized by the Chemung Valley History Museum in collaboration with Friends of the Woodlawn Cemetery and Elmira Little Theater.

A sprawling 184 acres, Woodlawn Cemetery was chartered in 1858. It is beautifully landscaped, with winding paths lined with mature trees and dotted with family plots, mausoleums, decorative statues, and intricate ironwork. Mark Twain is likely its best-known resident; other locally famous figures include Elmira College founder Simeon Benjamin, and freed slave John W. Jones.

A long list of Underground Railroad participants is mapped on a black granite monument; visitors to friendsofwoodlawnelmira.org can view an interactive map.

Though most people buried here are not well known, they do have interesting stories about their lives as, say, inventors,

40

business owners, and philanthropists. Erin Doane, Chemung Valley Museum curator, explains the Ghost Walk was created “to bring Elmira’s rich history to the community in a new [and creative] way.”

Each year members of the Chemung Historical Society choose four historic Woodlawn Cemetery residents to depict, and write the scripts for the actors. Erin stresses that the people portrayed are not necessarily famous, but their stories provide a rich patchwork of relationships and events that solidify Elmira’s place in history.

Erin is often asked if the tour is scary, and she’s quick to point out that this is not intended to be spooky, but a serious recollection.

While standing near the subjects’ graves, visitors “get to hear the personal stories of those who passed away many years ago. Add the wonderful performances by the actors of the Elmira Little Theatre, done by lantern light, and it can bring chills. Sometimes the stories are tragic, but there is often humor in them. Many people have told us how much they enjoy the event and keep signing up year after year.”

The Friends of the Woodlawn Cemetery provide volunteers to lead the tours through the dimly-lit paths, visiting the ghosts along the way. At times, wandering ghosts walk along with tour groups, interacting and adding comic relief. The show will go on, even if

the forecast is rain. Ruth Bruning, from Friends of Woodlawn Cemetery, says the mood takes on a more authentic feel in a rainy atmosphere, especially when accompanied by a hooting owl.

A member of the Elmira Little Theater, Gail Lewis has played a number of historical figures, and coordinates the actors each year. She describes her most memorable character, Esther Baker Steele, as “a feminist before it was cool to be a feminist.” Mrs. Steele and her husband, Joel Dorman Steele, founded the Steele Memorial Library in Elmira. Gail praises her fellow actors, many of them doing additional research and some bringing photos and newspaper clippings to share on Ghost Walk night.

Haunting seems to run in the family. Gail’s daughter, Casey Winston, began as a script writer through her job, at the time, as curator of the Chemung Valley Museum. After switching jobs, she continued on as a ghost via her involvement with Elmira Little Theater. She and her real-life husband, Steven, portrayed a world-famous married circus couple, Valora and DeHollis. The two donned nineteenth century circus costumes and juggled while humorously recounting stories of travel and intrigue.

Steven recalls playing a German-American piano manufacturer, Jacob Greener, but was most affected by hearing the story of Roy Rutan, a fourteen-year-old boy killed in a factory explosion in 1903. Equally moving was the portrayal of men and women buried in the Free Ground or Potter’s Field. Casey explains that is “where they buried people who didn’t have enough money for their own funeral, women of ill repute, or those who had no past.

There are no gravestones to mark they are there, but it’s full of Elmira’s history.” She and Stephen were amongst eight actors who walked out of the darkness into the light during one Ghost Walk, each reciting a brief account of an individual buried there and emphasizing that these former Elmirans are lost but not forgotten.

A fellow Elmira Theater Company actor, Ivy Robinson, portrayed Leah Sittenfield, helping shed light on another lesser known section of Woodlawn, the Sons of Abraham, where members of the Jewish community are laid to rest. Sittenfield was one of the county’s 12,000 individuals to join the Red Cross during WWI, helping care for and feed the over 126,000 troops passing through on their way to war. Ivy also recalls depicting Mabel Flood, one of only four women in her class at medical school. After war broke out in Europe, she, and her cousin, Dr. Regina Flood Keyes, founded their own hospital in the Balkans, earning medals from the U.S., France, and Serbia.

“It’s the collaboration between these organizations that brings this to life every year,” says Casey Winston, “and we are all very proud of it.”

The twelfth annual Woodlawn Cemetery Ghost Walk is on October 19 and 20. Museum doors open at 6:00 p.m., then participants board a mini-bus that takes them to the cemetery.

Each of the evenings’ eight tours lasts about half an hour, the first starting at 6:40 p.m. For a chance to walk amongst Elmira’s most fascinating historical residents, contact the museum at (607) 734-4167. Tickets are twelve dollars per person, and advance registration is required. See chemungvalleymuseum.org for more details.

Leah Sittenfield

Esther B. Steele

Mabel Flood

Nicole Landers is a freelance writer in the Finger Lakes. Her interests include the arts, agriculture, nature, and community involvement.

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Courtesy of the Corning Incorporated Department of Archives & Records Management, Corning, NY

Blown bulbs: A 1921 re-enactment of blowing the first Edison lightbulb.

The Legend of the Gathers

Corning Celebrates Gaffer History During Days of Incandescence

By Peter Joffre Nye “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.”~Albert Einstein

W

e learn early in school that Thomas Edison devoted years to experimenting with thousands of materials in his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey, all in his tenacious quest to invent an incandescent electric light. He finally found a filament in 1879 made of carbonized cotton threads that chased away darkness. Overlooked in the legend surrounding the iconic inventor was his need for a special glass “envelope” to protect the filament.

By the summer of 1880 Edison had improved electric lights with carbonized paper that burned for 600 hours. His incandescent light held enormous potential for improving the way people lived.

He dispatched a representative to Corning, New York, home of the Corning Glass Company. The business had earned a national reputation for producing the glass in the mechanical railroad signal lamps standing along rail lines crisscrossing America. These lamps guided engine drivers for running speed or for when to halt.

Edison’s point man climbed aboard a train to Corning to visit Corning Glass. Like many businesses, the company employed a 42

crew of adolescent shop boys. They labored under an experienced master glass maker, called a gaffer.

Shop boys shoveled coal to fire ovens that made glass in the ancient tradition of heating sand and other materials to their melting point, above 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Shop boys, called gathers, were entrusted with sticking a long, hollowed metal pipe into the oven to pull out a gob of orange gas, hot as lava. Gathers rolled the pipe in their hands to keep the gob from dripping on the floor. After a few minutes the lava cooled enough to blow into the pipe and form a bubble, which the gaffer shaped with tongs and paddles into a finished product.

As Dave DeGolyer, communications manager for the Steuben County Conference and Visitors Bureau, explained, Edison’s deputy met with the top gaffer, James Lear, about designing a prototype light bulb. The glass had to be tougher than windows or Mason jars.

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Gathers continued from page 42

gather, loaded with a gob of hot glass at the end, in the air. Then the boy blew into the pipe and made a bubble of glass. At that moment, the representative from Edison’s company said that was more on point than what James Lear was doing. That was what they went with.”

In a movie, that eureka moment for Edison’s original light bulb would be highlighted by a camera panning faces and expressing astonishment, all as orchestra music swells. But on the shop floor that day it was just business as usual—once the problem was solved, workers shifted to production. Lear’s gathers and gaffers teamed up to blow more bubbles and shape them with tongs and paddles. They needed a whole day to turn out 165 bulbs. By late October, Corning Glass sent 3,600 handmade bulbs by rail to Edison’s Menlo Park lab. Corning’s bulbs enabled the inventor to provide more affordable electric lamps to the masses.

“Those light bulbs changed the world,” notes Coleen Fabrizi, executive director of Corning’s historic Gaffer District. “We all take the technology that we have in hand for granted. To think about that backstory is incredible.”

Later three gathers each claimed he was the shop boy who inspired Edison’s deputy to make his call. All three may have been right. It’s possible that Edison’s delegate had the time to observe them casually pull molten glass on a blow pipe from the oven, wave the pipe in the air, and blow a bubble—demonstrating the reliability and simplicity of the process.

Corning Glass soon developed high-speed machines that boosted production of light bulbs. In the 1930s the company had grown into a major international force and developed bulbs for radios. Corning Glass produced bulbs for cathode ray tubes in television sets, then television glass, and the white glass-ceramic CorningWare dishes famed for going from hot baking ovens straight into freezers. Today Corning Glass supplies thin, damageresistant cover glass for smart phones, personal computers, and flat-screen TVs. DeGolyer recently published a chapbook, The Legend of the Gathers, with a dash of mystery about the events behind the pivotal day a young gather accidently created the first incandescent light bulb. The Steuben County Conference and Visitors Bureau, with support from Corning’s Gaffer District and the Gaffer District Business Association, has created a new twelve-day celebration, Days of Incandescence, based on The Legend of the Gathers, from October 20 through Halloween on October 31.

The celebration in the Gaffer District includes a period costume contest, walking tours, and an urban arts crawl to visit local art studios, galleries, and the Rockwell Museum.

Activities are all punctuated by mysterious lights shining after dark in unexpected places. Events culminate on Halloween night downtown on Centerway Square with a reading of The Legend of the Gathers.

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Peter Joffre Nye is author of The Fast Times of Albert Champion: From Record-Setting Racer to Dashing Tycoon, An Untold Story of Speed, Success, and Betrayal. He has updated Hearts of Lions, The Epic Saga of American Track and Road Racing for a thirty-year anniversary edition in 2019.

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“Dagwood Sandwich” by laurarod, Glogster EDU

Blondie at the Stove

A Comic Inspiration For A Mile-High Meal

By Cornelius O’Donnell

I

admit it, I still read the newspaper’s comic strips. I had just finished a rough draft of this article and, it being Sunday, I fished the papers from the front of the house. I save the colorful funnies to read last, as that offsets the alarming news in the front sections.

For me, maybe my interest in the funny papers is because I am a distant (very distant) relative of Abigail, the wife of Ernie Bushmiller. Ernie was the man who created the comic strip Nancy back in 1933. And, although Ernie, born in 1901, is gone (1983), the strip continued.

Here’s how our family knew the Bushmillers: Ernie was married to my parent’s brother-in-law’s sister. Even I can’t get my head around that connection. That brother-in-law (our cousin Edna’s husband) we called “Uncle” Jim, and I remember he used to volunteer to take my brother and me to the zoo. He’d drop us off at the legendary Rumpelmayers on Manhattan’s Central Park South and, while we enjoyed our ice

46

cream treats, he would nip a few doors away and grab his nip at the St. Moritz Hotel’s bar. He is enshrined in my memory.

Family lore has it that Nancy’s aunt in the strip, the elegant Fritzi Ritz, was modeled on Abigail, although with a lot of research I found that Ms. Ritz had a strip all by herself way back in 1922. A fashion researcher would do well to check out some of Fritzi’s ensembles—she was a “fashionista” before that word was coined.

Bushmiller took over the strip in the ’30s and eventually the youngsters, Fritzi’s niece Nancy and Nancy’s pal, Sluggo, became the leads.

Brace yourself for more trivia: Phil, Fritzi’s boyfriend in the strip, had distinctive wavy red hair. Ernie had distinctive wavy red hair. Here’s another example of a comic artist (as well as writers) plucking people from their family tree for characters—a sort of in joke. Our area’s own Johnny Hart (B.C., Wizard of Id) was himself a whiz at this.

Nancy Schmantzy, What About Blondie?

I started writing this column after seeing yet another image of Blondie (as in Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead) standing at the stove wielding a spoon and stirring the contents of a saucepan. A little curlicue spirals upward, so the contents are hot.

Blondie’s last name in the early days of the strip was Boopadoop. She was a flaming flapper who captured playboy Dagwood’s heart. He was the son of a millionaire, but his disapproving family disinherited him.

I’ve got to hand it to the strip’s originator Chic Young. Food, making it and devouring it, was a big part of the strip. Even today, Dag is often drawn visiting with a chef over a lunch counter. A running gag has Bumstead loving spicy hot food and this hash-house chef is happy to accommodate him.

Blondie films, and there were twentyfour of them, featured Arthur Lake and Penny Singleton. The strip also spawned

comic books and even bound books. Big biz for sure.

Although Dagwood most often wore a bow tie, I’ve seen a copy of Blondie magazine that depicts Dag with his long tie being inadvertently fed into a food mill. Maybe that’s when he switched to the bow.

But we remember Dagwood Bumstead more for his famous sandwich than anything else. Granted, Blondie and her pal Trixie have opened what appears to be a successful catering business.

But from the looks of the often-open refrigerator, Mrs. B. must schlep home all the leftovers, the ingredients for her husband’s concoctions.

The Classic Dagwood Sandwich I found this on the disposable plate maker Chinet’s site, and it sounds right. Feel free to substitute or eliminate ingredients. ½ c. mayonnaise 2 Tbsps. mustard (I use Dijon) ½ tsp. minced garlic 10 thick slices sandwich bread ½ lb. each thinly sliced Swiss cheese, roast beef, turkey breast, pastrami, and salami ¼ lb. each thinly sliced provolone, mild cheddar, and pepper jack, or Monterey jack 5 strips thick-cut bacon, cooked crisp and halved 1 medium tomato, cut in 5 slices (I use drained, canned when I’m out of tomato season) 10 whole green leaf lettuce leaves (I use Bibb), washed, patted dry, and stem end removed 3 red cherry tomatoes 3 small pickle slices 3 long metal skewers Potato chips (accompaniment) Combine mayonnaise and mustard in a small bowl. Stir in chopped garlic. Arrange 5 bread slices on a large cutting board.

Spread two tablespoons of the mayo mixture on each slice. Layer the meats and cheeses evenly among the bread slices in this order: Swiss, provolone, roast beef, cheddar, pastrami, pepper jack and salami. Fold the meats so the sandwiches will stack evenly on top of each other.

Top each sandwich with tomato slices and the remaining bread slices. Spread one tablespoon of the remaining mayonnaise mixture on top of each sandwich and lay two bacon halves on top.

Place one cherry tomato and one pickle slice through each skewer.

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Now Comes the Tricky Part Carefully build the Dagwood by stacking all five sandwiches on top of each other, separating them by placing two lettuce leaves in between. To keep the sandwich tower from falling over, skewer it all the way through the center. To serve, pull off the desired amount and serve with potato chips on the side.

To be perfectly corny, throw a party with someone (Dad?) playing the main character with gelled cowlicks, and a blonde (Mom?) featuring (real or a wig) blonde curly tresses.

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STUNNING PINE CREEK HOME! Completely renovated 3 bed/2 bath boasts an open floor plan with lots of natural light, a large master suite, walkin closet and hardwood floors, roomy living room overlooking the creek, nice kitchen and dining area.

New flooring, roof, 10 x 20 deck, electric, central air, plumbing, siding and close to state lands and is .5 acres and has a 2 story, 2 car garage.

MLS R131350A

www.mvrwellsboro.com

570-295-1083 • Lock Haven, PA 17745 swalker@hearthstonehomes.com • www.hearthstonehomes.com

Dream Home

Hearthstone features an unmatched ability to create any imaginable style of custom, luxury, hand-crafted Log and Timber Frame homes or Heavy Timber commercial structures.

Scott Walker, Project Manager

570-295-1083 • Lock Haven, PA 17745 swalker@hearthstonehomes.com • www.hearthstonehomes.com

Hearthstone features an unmatched ability to create any imaginable style of custom, luxury, handcrafted Log and Timber Frame homes or Heavy Timber commercial structures.

Scott Walker, Project Manager: 570-295-1083 Lock Haven, PA 17745 • swalker@hearthstonehomes.com

www.hearthstonehomes.com Winter Storm? Downed Power Lines? Extreme Cold?

814-435-7788 • 814-274-2218

Be Prepared for the Next Power Outage!

Home Power Systems Offers a Complete & Detailed Maintenance Plan Designed Specifically For Your Guardian/Generac® Generator.

CALL TODAY for your FREE In-Home Assessment!

Premier Dealer

All Installed Generators Backed By Our 24/7 Emergency Protection Plan Your #1 SOURCE for Generators

1127 Corporate Drive East Farmington, NY 14425

585-421-0203

WWW.HOMEPOWERSYSTEMS.NET 48

CIMINO HARDWARE

Buy online at Truevalue.com. Pick up in store.

Make Fall Cleanup A Breeze

F ro m R a ke s t o Tr i m m e rs, G ra s s S e e d t o B i rd Fe e d , a n d Law n B a g s t o Le a f B l owe rs. . .

We H ave Yo u C ove re d !

16 West Street • Galeton, PA 16922 • 814-435-9911 159 US Route 6 • Coudersport, PA 16915 • 814-274-2218

B LOS S

H A RD WA RE “A Little Bit of Everything”

CANNING • PICKLING • CROCKS 218 Main St • Blossburg 570-638-2600 Serving the Community Since 1981

Im hi Ve cle Lis tin

Visit our Website at

gs!

Any Color Metal Roofing • 1” x 12” Siding Boards For Sale

Builders Parts • Custom Ramrods Service & Repairs • Old Trapper’s Products

ved

Westfield Pa WWW.BESTEXCAVATING.COM

We Also Custom Build Customer Satisfaction is our Priority Kiln-Dried Pine Board & Batten Siding

Muzzleloading & Trapping Supplies

pro

814-367-5682

MILLER’S MINI BARNS — Andy Miller 124 Cook Hollow Road • Woodhull, NY 14898

North East tradE Co.

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Driveways • Basements • Septic Systems Retaining Walls • Patios Stone • Gravel

No Sunday Sales

SERVICE DIRECTORY

Ne

BEST EXCAVATING

Delivery Available

Mountain Home

www.matthewsmotorcompany.com Matthews Motor Company is a family owned and operated full service car dealership. We have an on-site NAPA Service Center and a AAA Approved Body Shop. We also have the largest Car Rental Fleet in Tioga County. County.

1980 John Brady Drive • Muncy, PA (570) 546-2061 • www.northeasttradeco.com

CARRIE HOOPER Voice or Piano Lessons

Studios on the Square • Horseheads

607-732-6788

Hauber ’s Jewelry • Diamonds & Quality Jewelry • Bulova & Seiko Watches and Clocks • Fenton, Charms, Trophies and Engraving “We do watch batteries!”

Morris Chair Shop .com 54 Windsor Ln., Morris, PA 16938

(570) 353-2735

The Finest in Hand-Crafted Furniture

238 Main Street • Blossburg, PA

570-404-8770

Our work has appeared on celebrities, videos, TV and publications around the world!

CarlHesse

CarlHesse1

Dawn’s Dogs, etc.

Liberty book Shop

Critter Care When You Can’t!

Pet Sitting Service Private Boarding ALL PET TYPES WELCOME Dawn Day 570-787-3852

1 East Park St., Avis, PA 17721 • 570-753-5201 www.TheLibertyBookShop.com

Used, Rare and Out-of-Print Books.

Your source for unusual books on any subject.

Browse our in-stock selection of over 40,000 hardcover books and paperbacks.

wydawn56@yahoo.com

You could promote your business here!

Spend the night in a bookshop!

See listings on Airbnb.com.

HOURS: Thurs & Fri 10-6; Sat 10-3

Call (570)724-3838!

(or by appointment, feel free to just call)

Great Games & Gifts for Kids of All Ages

25 Main St. Wellsboro, PA • 570-723-4263 www.popscultureshoppe.com 49

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

Autumn Voyage

By Mary Sweely

I

t was October and my husband, Curt, and I were fishing in a Tioga County Bass Anglers tournament on Hammond Lake. I heard a noise and looked up to see these geese preparing to head south.

50

NISSAN SUPERSTORE 224 COLONIAL DR.,

HORSEHEADS, NY

607-398-6666

ND

OUR 2 N LOCATIO OPENS

October 2018

SIMMONS-ROCKWELL NISSAN

HORNELL, NY

SALES • SERVICE • PARTS S TAT E - O F - T H E - A R T

NREDI 2.0 FACILITY

w w w. s i m m o n s - r o c k w e l l . c o m

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer. The best way to treat and defeat breast cancer is catching it early. UPMC Susquehanna recommends to begin getting a mammogram at the age of 40, or sooner depending on your family history.

UPMC Susquehanna offers various breast screenings at locations throughout Lycoming, Clinton, Tioga, and Northumberland counties. Schedule your mammogram and have your risk assessed for breast cancer.

UPMCSusquehanna.org/Breast