6. COMMUNITY HOUSE:

          The Community House was quite a unique concept. My Uncle Cliff Cook (my father's brother) ran a farm in the Brookman's Corners area. He lived in a house down the road from the farm so the house on the farm was vacant. All the brothers and sisters on my father's side of the family brought their old furniture and furnished the house. Then instead of having family get-togethers at someone's house we would have them at the Community House so no one family got all the mess and clean-up. My Uncle Dick Cook (another of my father's brothers) and his friend Huey would play guitars and call square dances and all the adults would dance. The women would all bring food or cook it in the kitchen and we'd have huge meals. We kids would run around outside and play, sometimes running through the fields at night, and sometimes sitting in a car and listening to the radio. Music is tied to a lot of my memories and one song I remember hearing on the radio while we were there was Gogi Grant's "The Wayward Wind". We would have bonfires or fireworks. I remember people putting firecrackers under empty beer cans and launching them into the air. It's a wonder no one got killed or maimed! The entire family had a lot of good times at that old house. We were lucky in that our family got together a lot. The brothers and sisters were close and so all we cousins were close too. A lot of people don't even know their cousins.

          I would occasionally stay with my cousin David Cook who was my Uncle Cliff's son. It was a big change for me because we would get up early in the morning and go to the barn and do the morning milking, then go back to the house for a big country breakfast. There was on old (I think 1952) Ford sitting in the yard. I think it had a cracked block. My cousin and I would fill it with water and run it up and down the dirt roads until it overheated then fill it up and start over. They had an outhouse too, but it wasn't as convenient as ours at home, you had to walk down a path from the house to use it.

          My Uncle Cliff's oldest daughter, Beverly, married Roger Douglas at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Frey's Bush in 1959. My mother had borrowed a suit from David Flint for me to wear. During the reception, I managed to bump into someone carrying punch and spilled it all over the suit.

          On another occasion we had a family get-together at my Uncle Bill's (yet another brother) farm near Salt Springville. He had an old Jeep station wagon parked in a field. It didn't run, I think the crank was broken. All the cousins would pile into it and roll it down the hill, then push it back up the hill and ride it down again.

          Another family ritual was a "horning" which is an upstate NY term. It other parts of the country it's knows as a belling or a shivaree. When my Uncle Bill's daughter, Carolyn, got married to Gordon VanAlstine, the whole family snuck all around their trailer which was on the VanAlstine farm outside of East Springfield. When they went to bed, everyone started making all the noise they could, blowing horns, shooting shotguns, lighting firecrackers, etc. The tradition is that you do this to newlyweds.

          My Uncle Kenny worked for Chase Bag and they moved from Canajoharie to Hudson Falls and in order to keep his job they moved up there too. It seemed like it was a million miles away. The Northway (I-87) had not been built yet, nor had the Arterial (Rt. 30-A) in Johnstown. Whenever we went to visit them is was a two day trip. We'd drive up on a Saturday, stay overnight, and come home on Sunday. Today we think nothing of hopping in the car and driving up to Glens Falls or Lake George. They had a nice home there, with a patio and fireplace out back and an attached garage. Unfortunately my Uncle had a huge 1954 Chrysler that wouldn't fit in the garage. I used to really enjoy riding a bicycle up there because of all the streets that were nice and flat. There was a canal that crossed Maple Street which was a great place for adventures. Hudson Falls was the first place that we'd seen a Stewart's Ice Cream Shop. Now they are everywhere. There was a dragstrip at South Glens Falls that became a place that we would go over the years. I raced there a few times in my 1965 Impala, my 1970 Camaro, and my 1972 Monte Carlo.

          One time when Uncle Kenny and his family were down here visiting, just before they were going back, my cousin Alan and I took off and hiked into West Creek, a big gorge up in the hills outside of Starkville. The parents were all looking for us. We followed the creek down to where it came back into the Otsquago Creek and followed that until we came to Rt. 80 at the dirt road where Wichowski's lived. We thought it would be a good idea to walk down to my Grandmother's house further down on Rt. 80. When we got there, she called my house to tell them we were there. Our parents arrived and were not happy campers.

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