Nostalgia and hope

To the editor:

After reading this week’s (well, last week’s, I suppose, as I am a mail subscriber) C-S-E, I just wanted to drop you a note and tell you that after so many years being gone from Canajoharie, what a great pleasure it is every week to see what is going on in my home town and how proud I am to be able to say hey, this is where I grew up.

First, in politics: Although he was not successful, I am so pleased that Tom Quackenbush gained the notoriety and respect to be nominated to run for the Legislature in New York. Our area has a history of passionate and dedicated public servants.

My classmate Francis Avery has done an exemplary job as Canajoharie’s mayor. Both my father, Earl, and my brother, Joel, served on the Canajoharie Village Board and last week’s obituaries noted sadly the death but at the same time the exemplary service of Miles Frasier to the community. Such people who give of themselves to serve deserve both our praise and our admiration.  

It is also interesting to note that Hugh Farley, Senator in the legislature from your area for years, was also my Professor in Business Law at U at Albany about a thousand years ago in his “pre-politico” days.

Second, it is heartening to see businesses such as the Fowler’s Antique Shop being part of the revitalization of the downtown Canajoharie business community.  There is no question that the Wal-Marts of the world have dealt a crushing blow to so many local businesses and those that have the courage to decide “enough. I can make a difference in our town’s business resurgence.” deserve both our admiration and our support.  

I was also pleased to see Skip Barshied mentioned in the Fowler article. In ‘68 after graduating from U at Albany and awaiting basic training at Fort Dix I worked for Dick Burgess and C.J. Burgess Construction running a jackhammer. One of my assignments was to work with Skip on a farm he was restoring in Stone Arabia where he needed a jackhammer to break through the shale in order to be able to sink fenceposts and contracted with Burgess for this task. But so many years later, Dick, I must tell you that the shale strata was not as bad as we suspected and for some of the hours those afternoons I spent as much of the time fascinated with  Skip’s stories of local history as I did on the working end of that Ingersoll-Rand compressor running that jackhammer.

The story of the Fowler’s Antique Shop being in the former Billington Hardware brought back many memories of those old downtown hardware stores with the scent of oiled wood floors in which whatever geegaw or knickknack you were seeking would surely be found in one of the innumerable bins that lined the walls.  

Billington’s has especially fond memories for me because at Christmas they always featured a circle of American Flyer electric trains running in the front window, and a visit there before Christmas emitted many pleadings with the old man as my brother and I ogled the numerous Flyer items lining their shelves inside.

In “Down Memory Lane” I am frequently surprised to see me as well as my brother and friends in the 50s and 60s, in situations ranging from pre-teen baseball and soap box derby racing to high school activities, that I look at them and say “my god, did I ever look like that.” before looking in the mirror now and saying “my god, do I look like this?”  

But on a more serious note, it is so much more poignant to look at the obituaries and see parents of classmates who have passed on or more sadly, as times go on, classmates themselves.

I am also proud to see and to be able to donate to the efforts to restore the West Hill School to its former stately condition. My hats go off to the efforts of Dee Jacksland, Tolga Morawski, Katie Boshart, and so many others to restore this building to which I walked every day in the early 50s from upper Maple Avenue to attend Mrs. Eileen Prosper’s kindergarten classes — can you imagine in this day and age a five year-old walking that far to elementary school through downtown stoplights (yeah, I know, only one, but it was our classic dummy.) with no crossing guards?

The C-S-E is not only a nostalgic trip through my past but also an uplifting view of what so many probably think of as one of those dying upstate NY milltowns being reborn with vibrant, relevant activities and a breath of fresh air in a downtown business district that not so many years ago had been given up for dead.

I thank you so much for this weekly paper that not only links me with my past but gives me hope that my hometown will continue to remake itself and thrive.

John Canfield,

Virginia Beach, Va.

B & B = revenue

To the editor:

Recent tabulations indicate that the 2011 average expenditures of tourists traveling through eastern states vacation routes came in at an estimated $7.4 billion — and — 3.1 percent being spent patronizing established, as well as newly created, bed and breakfast sites.

The conclusion is obvious. Bed and breakfast operations have finally become a recognizable, steadily expanding industry, which primarily is rescuing grassroots towns and villages from facing ultimate financial ruin.

A properly maintained B & B service, not only accommodates visiting tourists with welcomed food and shelter, it can also introduce guests to what the rest of the small town or village has to offer.

Motivational incentives always attract the lucrative tourist dollars. B & B locations, which know how to cater to the needs of visiting tourists, can also prove to be a welcomed incentive gold mine to the community’s overall economic growth as well.

Anthony Biscotti,

Amsterdam