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I have a tremendous resistance to change. I guess that’s why, in my 50s, I had the same bicycle for 43 years, the same power lawn mower for 40 years and the same old Chevy convertible for more than 30 years. Alice, my wife of 27 years at that time, must have felt pretty secure knowing my propensity for maintaining the status quo.…
Once a year, Dad would let the Buick down and get it started, not without a lot of trouble. It was always a group effort. Roger’s father and a couple of other guys on the block would help push it out onto the driveway. They’d inflate the tires and trickle gas into the carburetor.…
For several years, my wife Alice and I have been attending a summer concert that takes place at the Windfall Dutch Barn in Salt Springville, New York. There’s always a different group that comes to entertain, but musician and composer Carlton Clay usually enthusiastically presides over the event. One year, conductor and pianist Charles Schneider, accompanied by four singers, came to explain and then demonstrate how Leonard Bernstein almost mathematically put together “West Side Story”—not to mention words by Stephen…
I knew they didn’t like American soldiers in Germany, but I didn’t encounter unfriendly vibes from the French until attending the Running of the Bulls in July of 1966 in Pamplona, Spain. I am a Francophile, due to my maternal grandmother’s origin being a French mountain village in the province of Auvergne.…
Iron String Press is the sole remaining independent and locally owned newspaper publishing enterprise in Otsego County. Through its print publications and its digital counterpart, AllOtsego.com, Otsego County households have the benefit of local news in local hands at a time when the U.S. is losing an average of more than two community newspapers each week.…
I was working on construction in a high-rise building in lower Manhattan. My partner, “Roidney” Bunion, was 10 years younger than me, an ex-football player and a product of the “tune out and turn on” generation.…
Riemenschneider worked in a Gothic style and produced figures whose faces clearly expressed sensitive, complex inner emotions. While looking at the altar you could almost hear Christ saying, “One of you will betray me.” The various “Not me!” expressions on the faces of the disciples are easy to read.…
It seems this one-legged guy they knew was up in an oak, building a tree stand, when his new prosthesis, which he didn’t secure properly, fell to the ground and rolled into a ravine.…
While I was taking care of the horses, Runty was racing through the building like The Road Runner. A few minutes later he stopped short and jumped up on my leg for a pat on the head.…
Christmas songs were melting out of the radio as a cold wind howled outside. I pictured Patches’ Pond working on the turkey. After a little coaxing, Alice admitted that I had come up with an ingenious last-minute solution. The kids would be arriving the next day.…