4. STARKVILLE:
The first settler in what was to become Starkville was Johannes Smith who built a log cabin in 1788. The settlement was originally called Southville and it wasn't until a plank road was built from Fort Plain to Cooperstown in 1848 and 1849 that the name was changed to Starkville.
Life in Starkville was good. Everyone in town knew everyone else. We had a gas station run by Skip Crews, a general store which also sold gas, two churches, and a radio and TV repair shop run by Gil Moyer.
All the kids played together, and age wasn't really a factor. We had a baseball diamond and would play ball in the summer until it was too dark to see the ball. In winter there was sledding, tobogganing, and skating on the creek or ponds. Wagner Hill Road was a dirt road which wasn't plowed in the winter. It was great for sledding; you could really sail down the hill. If conditions were right, and you went far enough up the hill you could slide all the way to Rt. 80 and then some. One time I was sledding with my cousin Dick Douglas who lived next door, across the creek. I had gone down the hill and was standing at the bottom. He came down and his sled hit me in the back of my legs. The next morning I couldn't move my legs at all. My mother thought I was faking to get out of school but soon realized I really couldn't move. They took me to Little Falls to the hospital and my father carried me in. Apparently it was some sort of nerve damage from the impact and it got better in a few days.
I inherited a newspaper route from my brother. It was a weekly newspaper called "Grit". I got to keep a portion of the money I collected selling them. One winter day when I was out delivering, a car was parked in front of the Methodist church. The guy in the car called me over and said his family was inside and he had all these fudgesicles that were melting. He gave me a few of them. Since it was winter, I figured they'd be ok and stuck them in my pockets. Then I went to Clarence Ripple's to deliver the paper. Clarence sold honey and, of all days, that was the day he decided to invite me into his barn to show me the honey making process. Naturally it was hot as could be in the barn. Being the polite kid that I was I patiently watched his whole presentation with the fudgesicles melting away in my pockets. Instead of having a free treat, I ended up throwing them away.
We had a "character" in town named Bill Phillips who was mentally retarded and was referred to as "Looney Bill". He would ride around town on his bicycle and he had a watch that was either broken or that he never wound because it always displayed the same time. Whenever he went by we would yell, "Hey Bill, what time is it?" He would dutifully look at his watch and reply, "Ten after three." He might go by again later and it would still be "Ten after three."
In November 1965, we had the "great northeast blackout". Power went out in the entire northeastern US and parts of Canada. I remember us walking over to Gil Moyer's shop to get batteries for the transistor radio. We also got out our Coleman lantern from our camping gear and lit it in the kitchen. The neighbors kept coming over to see how we had lights. They thought we had power but it was the propane lantern. We were better off than many people since we had gas for cooking and hot water, and oil for heat.
Most of my adventures in Starkville were with my cousin Kit. My mother's brother, my Uncle David Smith lived in Starkville. His son was David Smith Jr. but always was called Kit.
We did all the boy stuff, from playing with trucks in his big sandbox, to building forts in the woods, exploring, riding bikes, shooting .22's, hunting woodchucks or squirrels, etc. We built and rode bikes everywhere. We would put together bikes from parts of different bikes, changing sprockets to make them faster, adding chrome, bobbing the fenders, etc. We rode them all over town, through the creek, up over the sand pile at the Town Barn, and even to Van Hornesville to use the school swimming pool in the summer. It was a three mile ride, all uphill to the school. But coming home was all downhill and you could coast the whole way.
I spent a lot of time at my Uncle Dave's house and often went places with them. One day I went with my Uncle and Kit to visit Clifford Snyder. The men were drinking quite a bit and left in my Uncle's red 1964 Studebaker pickup truck. Cliff Snyder came with us, so there were four people in the truck. Coming down through Hessville, just past Jim Crews' junkyard, my Uncle lost control of the truck and ran off the side of the road striking 17 guardrails and then a tree. The driver's door flew open and my Uncle and Cliff both flew out. This was winter time and they both fell or slid down over the bank in the snow. They came climbing back up the bank to where Kit and I were still sitting in the trunk. Fortunately no one got hurt except for maybe a few aches or bruises. The poor truck ended up in the junkyard.
We went to the stock car races in Fonda a few times and my uncle also took us to a special Grand National show they had there in the early sixties. Grand National was the series which would eventually become Winston Cup (now Nextel Cup). All the big name drivers of the day were there including Richard Petty and David Pearson. That may be what sparked my interest in NASCAR today.
My Uncle had a 1953 Harley-Davidson Hyrda-Glide. It was a full sized Harley with a hand shift and foot clutch. One day Kit decided I should ride it around the yard. We started it up and I took off up through the yard. Unfortunately I didn't turn when I got to the end of the yard and was heading toward a ditch and fence at the back of their property. Luckily the bike got hung up in the ditch and bottomed out, so it didn't fall over and didn't go through the fence. We couldn't move it, though, and had to get the garden tractor out to pull the bike out of the ditch. That was my last motorcycle adventure for awhile until I occasionally took my brother's 1967 Honda CB-160 for a spin when he was in the Army. I only did it to charge the battery, honest! Eventually I bought my own motorcycle, a 1972 Honda CB-350. After a short time I upgraded to a Kawasaki KZ-650, then a Yamaha XS1100. I guess that first ride all those years ago stuck with me because I wound up buying my own Harley, a 1979 XLS Roadster. I soon traded that for a 1981 XLH Sportster. I had an accident with that one, a story in itself that I'll tell later. I fixed that Sportster and traded it for a 1980 Harley FLHTC full dresser. I traded that for a 1984 Harley FXRT which was a really nice bike. I wound up trading it for a 1981 BMW 528i car. Eventually the motorcycle bug bit me again and I bought a 1997 Suzuki Marauder which I still have and enjoy.
My uncle traded the '53 Hyrda-Glide for a 1958 Duo-Glide which was a real pretty red and white. I don't know what happened to the Duo-Glide.
My uncle was a truck driver for Fort Plain Packing and drove to NYC delivering meat. He had done some work in his barn and was planning on quitting driving and going into body work. He and Kit restored a 1956 Ford pickup. It was bright red and looked great when it was done. Uncle Dave never got to realize his dream though; on one of his trips to NYC he called home from a phone booth saying he didn't feel good. He dropped dead at 44 from a heart attack. I was in bed when Alan Steenburgh came to the house to tell my mother the news.
One night Kit picked me up in his father's 1967 Chevy pickup. We were riding around and went past Roosevelt's garage in Palatine Bridge. There was a young couple there hitch-hiking so we stopped. They wanted a ride to the Thruway entrance in Canajoharie in hopes of getting a ride home to Boston. This was about 10:30 at night. Kit told them if they paid the gas and tolls we'd drive them to Boston. They agreed and we were off. We took them to an apartment in Boston where one of their siblings was having a Prom party. They gave us a steak sandwich and a beer and we headed back home. My mother woke up in the morning to find I hadn't been home and was all upset. The school bus came and went and I still wasn't home. We got back around 8 AM and I think I ended up going to school but I was sure tired. Mom said, "I thought you were lying in a ditch somewhere." I said, "If I was lying in a ditch you'd know it; when you don't hear anything, I'm alright."
Kit and I were known to "liberate" items from junkyards now and then. One time Chuck Mussmacher had run his father's 1961 Ford off the road and broke the windshield. He had bought a replacement and we told him we could put it in for him. We got it almost in when it cracked. We felt we had to replace it for him so we hit the junkyard. We found a '61 Ford convertible and popped the windshield out and took it back with us. Who knew that the windshield in a convertible was shorter than the windshield in a sedan? So we dumped that one out, went back to the junkyard, found a sedan, and popped that windshield out. We were getting good at it. We managed to get that one installed in one piece.
We may not have been angels but one time we were wrongly accused. Someone trashed one of the neighbor's tractors and they called the State Police. A trooper came to the house and had me in the back seat of his patrol car. He was giving me the old "someone saw you" routine and the "you better come clean now or I'll really lower the boom on you" speech. My mother told him I never lied and that if I said I didn't do it, I didn't do it. Aren't moms great? And that time she was right, I didn't do it and I did tell the truth.
Another time we had the '67 Chevy pickup again and had driven down into Skip Crews' junkyard which was down in a field out of sight from the road. We got stuck and couldn't get out. We tried jacking up the truck, putting boards under the wheels, etc. but could not get out. We walked back up across the road to Skip's house. There was a white '61 or '62 Corvair sitting there. It wasn't registered or anything, but the keys were in it and we got it started. It had no gas in it, so we went back to the junkyard and collected all the gas we could get out of the junk cars. Then we fabricated a funnel and dumped gas in the Corvair then drove it to Skip's garage back in Starkville. Skip was a little surprised to see his own car driving in. He had to tow us out of the junkyard with his tow truck, but I don't recall him being particularly upset about it or even questioning why we were there in the first place.
Kit still lives in Starkville in the same house his father had lived in.
A couple houses up from ours on Wagner Hill Road was the Flint's house. They had three kids, Gary, Linda, and David. David was the youngest but two years older than me. We did hang out though and play together when we were younger. Their home was actually an old farm. There was a barn and other out-buildings. One of the buildings, I think it might have been a wagon house, had become a playhouse. We spent a lot of time in the building. It was quite a place, there were ropes to swing on and there was a chicken coop attached to one end. There was a trap door down into the chicken coop. It was a great place to crawl around in. One time we tied a rope out of a second story window and planned to climb down it. When my turn came, I grabbed the rope, climbed out the window and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back on the ground looking up.
We camped out in a tent in their yard a few times and my cousin Kit camped out with us too. We would get up in the middle of the night and ride our bikes through town.
When David got older he got a 1951 Plymouth. We'd polish it and work on it. It wasn't registered and he might not have been old enough to legally drive but we took it up the dirt road. He got in big trouble with his mother over that. David ended up marrying Pat Bednarski who I'd had the love scene with in our school play and he is now living in Texas and writes Colonial novels. He has a website here: http://www.dbflint-colonial-wars.com/index.html
Gebhardt's lived next door to us. Rainer was in Margaret's class so he was about two years older than me. He had the coolest scooter that had an upholstered seat and inflatable tires like a motorized scooter although it wasn't motorized. I remember watching him catch trout in the creek. I was at their house one day and he brought out sandwiches for himself and me. It was a lard sandwich! Yuck! Gebhardt's operated a dairy farm and they would let me drive the tractors real slow while they picked rocks or loaded hay. I thought I was pretty big stuff.
My mother had a brother and sister, my Uncle David who I wrote about above, and my Aunt Jennie. My mother's mother died when she was 2; her father remarried and had Marion (Bunny), Eva (Whoopee), Rose (Rosie), Carol (Tucky), Floyd Jr. (Johnny), Kathy, and Elizabeth (Beth). My Grandfather, Floyd Smith, operated a farm in Hallsville. Bunny's kids were always there. Harold Jr. (Bubby) was about my age, Rodney was little younger, and there were Karen and Chris, Ginny, Donna, and maybe other younger kids. They loved to fight and it seemed like that's what we did whenever we visited. We would leave there dirty and exhausted. My grandfather would stop and visit us too. He always smoked cigars and he was deaf. He couldn't here the engine in his truck so he'd wind it up, then pop the clutch and take off spinning the tires. He did the same when he had a Dodge car with a push-button transmission. I'm surprised it held up.
My Aunt Jennie married Bob Hewett who was a contractor and built many houses in the Rotterdam and Schenectady area. He built the Esquire motel on Rt. 7 in Latham. Her daughter Alyce married Ivan Linscott and we took my grandfather to the wedding. He smoked a cigar in the car and when he turned his head he nearly burned a hole in my brother's suit. The reception was at the Linscott's home and they served some mighty wicked punch. My grandfather starting drinking it, and his face started bleeding where he had cut himself shaving in the morning.
He moved to Crum Creek near Oppenheim to another farm where he raised pigs. It was the same when we visited there. We'd have fun swinging on ropes in the barn and running around, but we still seemed to fight and wrestle most of the time.
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