Notes from Pappy's diary

Out of necessity I sold cars for 6 months and I'm ashamed of some of the things I did to innocent buyers
just to make the sale. I've hated selling ever since.

Actually, I'm kind of glad that I spent some time working at a dealership....it certainly opened my eyes...and probably saved me quite a bit of money over the years on my car purchases. I don't blame the salespeople...they are merely part of an industry that is geared to prying the maximum amount of money from the customers wallets. But then, that can be said of virtually every enterprise today....No company is in business to do its customers a favor.
 
Tuesday, December 25th, 1956 at 1:00 PM. My teenage bride and I are walking down the aisle at St. James Church in Norwich, NY. Rev Charters is our minister and the church is decorated with beautiful flowers from the Christmas service.

I Was home on a short leave, from the Army, and my girlfriend and I wanted to get married so that she could join me in Aberdeen, MD. Rev. Charters suggested that we marry Christmas. We thought it was a great idea as I only had two days left before reporting back to Fort Dix.

Needless to say, neither one of us had much money and had to take advantage of other people's kindness. The relatives gave us a reception at the Preston Grange Hall and most everyone stopped by to wish us well. Of course, there were a few folks counting the months to see if we had to get married and a few that said that we were to young and it wouldn't last. Sorry folks, on both counts.

As I write this, at 6:50 AM, I watching my bride on her I Pad and thinking 58 years ago we were just kids but as time went by, we grew into adults together. I won't lie and say it's been a smooth ride because there were a few rough years, but you know what ? I would do it all over again in a flash. Pappy
 
Happy Anniversary Pappy to you and your lovely wife, wonderful story, so happy for the both of you! :love_heart:


happy-anniversary1.jpg
 
Thanks, Jim. That brings to mind, while we were in the church, my so-called buddies were decorating my 49 Ford. The usual stuff, tin cans, just married sign, etc. what I didn't know was they had put on one of those little bombs, can't remember what they called them, to the spark plugs, so that when you start the car the thing goes off and sends up a cloud of smoke. Scared us half to death.

Okay, so everyone got a big laugh so bride and I take off to drive around town with horns blaring. Honey, what's that smell? Phew, it's getting worst. So I pull over and open hood and there it is. A big chunk of Limburger cheese on the manifold. My"buddies" in the car behind me were peeing their pants laughing.

After much hosing the engine off, things slowly got back to normal and right then and there I started plotting on what to do when my buddies got married. And that, is another story, to be continued.
 
Reminds me of when my "friends" put Vaseline under the door handles of my car at my wedding in NY. I wiped them off (they were the kind you lift) and thought I was done with them, but as we drove south on our honeymoon and the temperatures rose more of it started oozing down the door.

It did that for a week.

And yes, revenge WAS sweet!
 
I was rememinising about my home town, when we spent two years living by the railroad tracks. The freight trains, O and W, and the passenger train, The Lackawanna, ran right by our house on way to freight yards and passenger terminal. We boys, spent many a day climbing on parked coal cars, boxcars and oil tankers. You may have seen movies where they jump from one boxcar to another. Yep, we did. Sometimes we would find evidence of hobos in the empty boxcars. Clothing, bits of food and even traces of a small fire being used to warm things up.

From our house, you could hear the bells ringing, meaning a train was coming. We would try to run out and wave to the engineer and they always waved back. Once in awhile, we would find a dead horse along the tracks. To this day, I'm not sure why. Only thing I could think of, there was a dog food company in Sherburne, a about 15 miles north. Maybe somehow fell out?

Have a couple pics. of rail yards and round house. For us young ones, this was an amazing place to visit.
 

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I was watching Celebrity Ghost the other night and their guest was Vince Neil from M?tley Crüe. He was telling his time as a young boy and the thing in his room that lived in the closet. This story got to me as I had similar things in my room on the old house on West Hill.

I was 8 or 9 when these unexplainable things happened to me. I had a long walk in closet where I kept my clothes and most of my toys. This closet had the type of latch that you raised up ang the bar would fit in a groove. Impossible to open by itself.

I had an upstairs bedroom and the only light was moonlight that shown in my dormer window. Every night before I went to bed, I always looked into my closet and made sure the latch was shut. I could see the closet door from my bed and could see the outline of my room. One night, as I was about to fall asleep, I heard a slight noise. I had a small lamp on my bed stand as well as a Airline AM radio from Montgomery Ward. As I lit up the room, I noticed the closet door was open about 3 inches. I relatched the door and went back to bed.

Here is where it gets weird. A very bright light started coming through my dormer window and the closet door was open again. I saw something move across the room. What or who, I do not know. ET, shadow person or ghost.....I still have no idea but it did scare the day lights out of me. This was the start of my sleeping with my head covered up. I don't recall this happening again, but I did add two more bolt locks on the closet door.
 
Why I loved growing up in the country. The first picture was the view from my house. Easy to look at, right? The field was a cow pasture for the Evans farm down the road. Spent many days exploring the field and woods surrounding the area. Even got chased by a bull one time. I made it to the fence before he did.

The second photo is from the stone quarry, about a mile or so, from my house. I had to walk up behind the house, through our woods and cross another pasture to get to the quarry. The town below is Norwich, NY. A town of about 9,000 folks. You can see why the area is called Chenango Valley.

We were about a mile and a half out of town on what was called West Hill. I spent a good share of my youth growing up on the hill. We did live in town, by the RR tracks, for about two years. There were only two houses on West Hill that weren't related. My great grandfather and his brothers built many of the houses on the hill so it just grew from there.

I try to get down to Norwich at least once a year to visit my brother. We are Florida snowbirds and still go up to NY in the summers. Not one of the relatives live on the "hill" anymore. They passed on or moved away. My old homestead sets bare and barren. It doesn't look like anyone has lived there for quite some time. I see it listed in Zillow for $30,000, but it's almost beyond repair now. Sad, but life goes on and nothing is as it was.
 

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Yes it sure was beautiful country. A fine place for an old country boy like me to grow up. The hill itself was very steep and I can remember many a morning the school bus going down our hill sideways and we keep our fingers crossed that we got to the bottom of it in one piece. That White House you see down in the Valley was part of our bus run. Most of the country back then was farm country and sometimes the smell on the bus got a little bit overbearing but really didn't mind all that much.
 
There's nothing better than living in the country, IMO. I started life on a farm, then spent most of it in the city, and then retired back to the country. We are surrounded by deep woods, with nice neighbors...the closest about 1/4 mile away. The air is always clean and fresh, and there are always some deer hanging around. It is sometimes so quiet that one can hear a woodpecker working 100 yds away, or a dog barking a mile away. It's sometimes a little inconvenient when needing something one of the nearby small stores doesn't stock, but that's a minor issue compared to the daily hassles in most large cities. I hope to stay out here so long as this old body can take care of the place.
 
Family cruise

March 8th. 2015. Left Port Canaveral with my three children and their spouses. The second day was spent at Coco Kay, an island owned by the ship lines, Royal Carribean. The wife and I stayed on board and explored the ship, Freedom of the Seas, which up to a few months ago, was the longest cruise ship in the world. In total length, it was almost four football fields long at 1150 feet. Our cabin was a inside cabin on the seventh floor, room 7389. The total guest able to stay is over 4,000 not counting crew members.

The next day, we spent cruising and docked at St. Thomas. We did a short excursion and came back to ship a couple hours later. Purchased a t shirt. It was very hot and wife and I were rather tired so we spent the afternoon at ships poolside and in the library catching up on our reading. After supper, we took in a magic show in the auditorium. Cruised overnight and docked next day in St. Maartin, a relatively small island which is divided in half with the French claiming one half and the Dutch, the other half.

We had purchased a personal guide just for the eight of us and he turned out to be the nicest tour guide anyone could ask for. He took a tour around the entire island with many stops to point out special points of interest. The nude beach, on the French side, was the laugh of many comments. Our guide, Josay, said most of the old folks needed a good ironing to get the wrinkles out. It was a lot of fun and a great many laughs. We also ate lunch here. After a three hour tour, which turned out to be four and a half hours, we said our goodbyes and went back to ship. More food and ice skating show.

The next two days were spent cruising back to Port Canaveral. The seas got a little rough and the weather turned sour for one day but the second day it was much better. We reached home port about eight on Sunday morning.

As our 4000 people were deporting, 4000 people were getting ready to board. How they refuel, clean, stock food, etc. in less than eight hours is a mystery to me.
 
I am starting a new diary with more of my life experiences and a few blogs I wrote for my hometown paper several years ago. I will start it of with a blog I wrote about hurricane Hazel in 1954.


It was a beautiful fall day on October 15th, 1954. There was talk of a hurricane south of us but most folks didn't seem to concerned. A hurricane was what the southern states had to put up with, not us folks up north.The weatherman tried to explain, with their paper signs, felt Suns and clouds which stuck on a weather background.there was no Doppler or radar to warn people back then.


As the day wore on, the wind started to pick up and our wind had a name, "Hazel." As night approached it really got windy and loose objects started to blow around. Anyway, our gang decided it would be a good idea to drive around and see if there was any damage. We pulled into town and parked on West Main, next to Chapman Turner Bldg. Now the high wind and rain were starting to get dangerous and we decided we better get our rears home.


The next day was, well, a total mess. Our little town had a good taste of Hazel. As I drove into town, I notice a large part of the Chapmam Turner bldg. Was missing. My buddy had heard that was a car behind Bakers Garage and we took off to check it out. When I saw the car, my stomach did a couple of flip flops.


The part of the Turner bldg. That fell had landed on this car and instantly killed two people. The car was flattened and the site was not a pretty one. When we went back to check out the Turner bldg. My heart sank. My God, it was right where we had parked the night before. I still get the Willys thinking about how close we came to meeting our Maker that night.


Hazel caused damage as far north as Ottawa, Can. and caused 95 deaths and $281 million in damages total. Our town had received winds up to 90 MPH.
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