This is me! I also appear on the Welcome Page proudly posing in front of the family garden. This kid is still having fun even as an old man. These photos give you an idea of what it’s like up north of everybody else in New York State. Black and white photography can capture most of the character of the shiver weather, but mosquito slapping weather here in the north is full of green that escapes that chemical retina.
Back when I was little, we northerners used to be insulated from mass invasion on nearly every side but one. Canada is just a whistle stop or two north of us. Our history has been impacted by this reality for as long as we have had a history to note. Not that we were noticed. That is until the Cold War caused an economic boom in Plattsburgh. Wow I remember my dad putting me on the roof of his car to watch the HUGE earth moving machines creating a runway for B 47s and destroying the insular character of our forest hide away. In the fullness of time, true to form, the Feds lost interest in that Air Force Base and handed it over to local authorities to play with as they saw fit. The damage was already done and we are now no more isolated than any other part of the country on the Interstate Highway System. By the way we are noticed now. TV shows call our town a Hell Hole and the citizens here Rock Eaters. Also by the way, those TV shows who have us on their radar screens originate from New York City. We think of them as to the extreme south. Read my words to mean southerners.
The natural beauty of The North Country goes a long way to recommend this area to prospective citizens, and blessed we are in that department. I’m really happy about this because it was that natural beauty that inspired my wife’s father to settle his family here. Well that’s not the only reason I’m happy God blessed this part of the world with outstanding natural attributes, but it’s a good one.
I want to introduce my Dad:
He and the plastic animals behind him are no longer with us. My Dad died a few years back. I miss him a lot. He supported me in everything I did as a kid until he caught me stealing apples. He was a kind and generous man who didn’t have much, but was open handed none the less. He even provided a pool when his brothers and sisters would come by to visit. My Dad had only one child. That be me. (a little north country speak) The rest of his siblings who got married worked a little harder at populating the Earth. Come to think of it, I believe that even the unmarried ones had a go at this project, and who can say they didn’t surpass my Dad’s efforts?
These kids soaking with me in the canvas pool represent a very small percentage of the cousins I can claim as family. I lost count a long time ago. Tenor that I was to become I knew that front and center was the power position. There I am down center front in profile with the dark hair. Would you look at that hair. Things do change don’t they.
Those shinning simple days in the 50s gave me a rock solid opinion that life as a poor person was certainly blessed, BUT!!! How much fun we all had with near nothing and I had clear evidence that our parents were also well entertained. I acquired an ability to escape a personal predicament that seems to be a national torture in the USA today. Well I will admit that History did not start with my birth and this problem has been with us even longer than the USA has been around. I’ll get to that in the blogs that follow.
Did I mention I’m a tenor? I love tenor jokes. I also suffer from the deficiencies these jokes exploit to make you and me laugh. I’m going to leave the rest of my story to the many Blogs I hope to write as I overcome, little by little, the intrinsic laziness with which we tenors are branded.
