We
are frequently told that
the rocky road through
the woods up Laraway
Hollow is intimidating,
particularly after storms.
It clearly deters casual
exploration.
I could probably count
on one hand the number
of wholly unexpected
visitors over the years:
the troop of Boy Scouts
from a lake camp beyond
Elm Hollow
looking for the Campsite,
the 911 people with one
eye on the road and the
other on the global positioner,
the Beaverkill Fire Department.
checking whether their
trucks would fit (or,
more urgently, could
emerge
without scratches), and
the hearty Seventh Day
Adventists, possibly
practicing for wilderness
service with the Board
of Foreign
Missions. That’s
about it.
It
was therefore with curiosity
and doubt that, probably
a dozen years ago, we
watched a large white
Cadillac wallow up the
road and stop in front
of the farmhouse. A distinguished
white haired gentleman
emerged and asked somewhat
diffidently if he might
stop and look around. “My name is Gurden Smith,” he said, “I grew up here.”
We
welcomed him warmly and,
hanging on his heels and
every word, followed him
as he wandered around
the place. He said that
his boyhood at Laraway
was during the ’30s and that his family rented the property – I believe from Mr. Ackerly, the ubiquitous local landowner, who was a successor in title to the Laraways whose ancestor must have first built the farm, probably before the 1860s. I note that the raison d’être of the farm is a flat area in the hollow served by an unusual spring that comes out from beneath one of the series of sandstone and bluestone bluffs that surround the hollow in a series of steps and terraces marked by tumbled, angular, boulders “plucked” by the glacier – typical geology in the hills around Beaverkill. It appears that during the ’30s the place was let out for tenant farming, and Clarence Loucks, a long time Manor and Willowemoc resident, told me that he visited as a child when his uncle also farmed it and remembers a big barn in the middle of the hollow. Gurden pointed to the spot where the barn once stood and to our pond area where the farmyard lay. About all that was left of the farm when we took ownership were a rotting shed, sheep fencing around the perimeter, now welded into the maples and a peril to chainsaws, and an inordinate number of horseshoes in the area around the barn site.
To
my recollection, the family
consisted of the parents,
three or four brothers,
and a sister. Addie Miner
told me that she remembered
her mother climbing the
hill to assist in the
birth, I think, of the
sister. According to Gurden
this substantial family
managed to get its whole
subsistence from the farm.
They had the typical farm
animals, and my impression
is that sheep were the
main source of income.
He did not mention crops.
It was clear that the
family was very poor,
even in an age and place
of generally modest lifestyle.
The house, which was never,
as far as I can tell,
winterized, was, as Gurden
remembers it, cold and
drafty, and the floors
were covered by tarpaper.
The family spent much
of the colder nights throwing
wood in the old and drafty
stoves. Gurden told us
the number of cords of
wood that were used in
the course of a winter;
the number that I recollect – 30 cords – seems improbably high, and my memory may be wholly wrong, though after seeing what we burn in sealed stoves during a cold fall month, I have a feeling that the number is, if anything, conservative.
They
earned a little cash from
the sale of bluestone.
There was a small quarry
below the house, the cuts
and spoil piles of which
are still in evidence,
and once a month a truck
came up the road to collect
the pieces that had been
split out of the large
slabs with wedges, dragged
down, and cut. This was
a common sideline for
farmers throughout the
Delaware watershed. Even
today, individual landowners
sell small lots of bluestone,
and you will still see
in the offices of the
big stone suppliers on
the East Branch blackboards
showing prices offered
for cut pieces of different
sizes and thicknesses.
Another source of cash
income was, curiously,
the sale of ferns. The
family collected them
from the woods and pressed
them between sheets of
newspaper to be taken
by train for sale to florists
in the city who used them
in flower arrangements.
I later learned from Addie
Miner, who was a contemporary
and good friend of the
family, that the Smith
brothers were excellent
musicians who tutored
Addie and picked up some
cash by playing at dances
and parties around the
valley.
It
appears that as the Depression
deepened times grew even
harder on the farm, and
I suppose that the growing
family was becoming harder
to maintain. The brothers
got jobs with Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps which performed such work as the construction of trails and campsites, including the Beaverkill Campsite and swimming beach. My recollection is that they were not assigned to the Beaverkill project but worked elsewhere in the Catskills. When the war came Gurden entered the service. When it ended he took advantage of the GI bill. He eventually worked for General Electric at the big facility in Binghamton, and prospered. It is hard to imagine a better American story.
I
have been unsuccessful
in getting in touch with
Gurden again, and perhaps
the story was best left
where it is, though I
would have loved to know
more about the details
of how a living could
be wrung from the land
on that hillside and about
the social perspective
down the hollow into the
valley where golf, tennis,
and sociability held sway.
As
the visit ended we asked
Gurden about what had
impressed him most about
the place – we were somewhat proud of what to us were improvements, and, I suppose, were fishing for approval. He looked serious, considered, and said that his main feeling was disappointment. “It’s all overgrown”, he said, somewhat wistfully and clearly without compliment. He observed that when he lived at Laraway he could stand on the porch and look down to the schoolhouse and the Beaverkill road. The land between, which is now almost entirely wooded – and has already yielded a crop of sizeable cherry logs – was all meadow, with some orchard, and the Smith children would walk over the open fields to the school which was located on the bluff overlooking the campsite turnoff (A house now stands on the spot, built on the old foundation.) The areas of more level ground in the hollow above the house were also in meadow for the Smith animals, and you could see far up towards the woods that apparently have always capped the ridge.
We
had always felt that we
were sheltered in a wilderness
forest. Gurden made me
realize that this was
not remotely the case,
and further that, for
a farmer, woods have no
charm compared with a
field, cleared for crops
or grazing. Thinking further
about it, I see that the
most obvious physical
difference between our
own valley and the Beaverkill
of the first half of the
last century, as chronicled
in this volume and reflected
in its pictures, was the
absence of trees. Although
the hills and the ridges
have always been wooded,
all of the land that is
flat or rolling was in
grass. The entire bottom
of the bowl of hills that
surrounds Beaverkill was
meadow or, even, manicured,
to the culminating extent
of golf greens.
We
moved to Beaverkill assuming
from its somewhat overgrown
character that it had
always been a fairly wild
and woodsy place and that
its essential spirit was
that of the tanners, lumberjacks,
hunters, fishermen and
campers. In fact, the
era prior to ours was
one of the civilization
and domestication of the
valley which had by then
become bucolic rather
than wild. Our woods are
not part of a forest primeval
but the scene of reconquest
by the trees pushed back
in battles with the hemlock
loggers, the acid cutters,
the farmers, and the golfers,
and which are today in
a renaissance of an unknown
duration.
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