The Woelfle spread

My love for the life in Beaverkill could be covered by three chapters—Chapter One starting about 1930 when, at my age of five, my family began our camping adventure; Chapter Two from 1945 to 1986 when I returned from military service until my retirement from Rutgers University to set up permanent residence at 46 Ragin Road in Beaverkill; and Chapter Three from 1986 to the present.

Camping in the early 1930s provided the opportunity in the post-depression era for families to be together enjoying the many benefits of clean country air and pure nature. It was in the Beaverkill Covered Bridge pool that I learned how to swim in water so pure it could be swallowed with no concern about pollution. Fishing this famous trout stream began with the cut branch, string from my mom’s grocery purchases from the Livingston Manor store (named Scarlet, I believe) and a bent safety pin. Didn’t catch much then! Of course, there was the walking by the riverbank and in the fields and woods searching for frogs and snakes to scare our moms. A joy never to be forgotten was an evening by the campfire, sometimes to keep the evening cold away but always to toast marshmallows, to tell stories, to sing and enjoy the camaraderie of family and fellow campers. Of the fellow campers, regular summer campers were a Swiss couple who played their accordions and sang to our delight before climbing the mountain and yodeling along the way.

As the years wore on and the mother-borne chores of campfire cooking and the like became burdensome, my family began renting. First, there was Andrew Ackerly’s cabin located between what is now the Adams house and the Lawrence’s. It was then that I first met one who has become a life-long friend, Richard Fischer who was in a nearby cabin with his mother and sister. Early on, our interests were not exactly aligned—Dick was into bird-watching and for me it was pursuits less productive.

The Ackerly barn

Come to think of it, though, I did take Andrew Ackerly’s cows from his barn to the up-stream pasture taking the narrow path along-side the Beaverkill. And, as I got a bit older, I did help with Andrew Ackerly’s haying from field to barn.

One summer, Dick and I were working together at this haying when we both went for the same pile of hay at the same time. My pitch-fork got there first, causing Dick’s to ride up my handle and through the palm of my hand! No fault of his. That injury turned out to be a plus as my sympathetic parents extended our stay in Beaverkill.

Our next summer rental was a cabin that Ike Kinch built on Fred Woelfle’s newly purchased farm spread. It was located on what had been a calf pasture and overlooked an 18 acre meadowland with the Beaverkill River on the far side. Back in the early 1880s, in the days of the Henry Ellsworth Tannery by the bridge, this meadow was a log pond created by a dam on the up-river side of the bridge.

It was around 1934 that Fred and Edna Woelfle purchased from Frank Kinch some 150 acres of farm land on Ragin Road, including Kinch’s old farm house, the small barn we call the “Annex” and the old ice house (now a pool house). This property now belongs to Bebe Loizeaux. Pieces of the Woelfle property were then sold to family friends, the Bergstroms (now the Obecny’s), the Den Hollanders (now Mike and Sheryl Sori), the Deans and to Bud and Dorothy Fielder (now owned by John and Bonnie Fielder Klein and Doug Fielder).

The Woelfle barn

Fred Woelfle was a vocational agriculture teacher in Paterson, N.J. and had aspirations of tenant farming his property. Across from the big barn, he constructed what was to become the home of George Emery and family. As this venture proved unsuccessful, the Emery family moved and the house and property were purchased by another family friend, Pete and Florence Passaro. Upon their passing, the property went to their daughter, Leonore Passaro Casagrande who sold it to Bill and Fran Sharpless, whose love and association with Beaverkill goes back many years.

Fred Emery had a son Fred and two pretty daughters, Pauline and Mary. Mary became an interest of mine not only because she was a nice, attractive young girl, but also, I should admit, because she had a horse and buggy! Riding by Fred Banks’s Trout Valley Farm and golf course one day, we spotted some apple trees across the way that we thought would provide some treats for her horse. A sky-directed blast of Fred Banks’s shot gun convinced us to vacate his property!

It was in Woelfle’s small barn that Dick Fischer spent many hours observing the behavior of the chimney swifts that would eventually lead to his PhD in ornithology at Cornell. This was the beginning of my many nature lessons. On one occasion, I became fascinated and wondrous. He glued a white feather to the back of one of two nesting birds in his quest to differentiate between the sexes, and the poor bird flew around the barn looking like a sailboat. This was one of my first lessons in sex!

The Woelfles enjoyed many overnight house guests including relatives and friends from the Beaverkill and elsewhere. Among them, in those days, there were many smokers of cigars and cigarettes. Before one of the many outdoor picnics my sister Dot (later Mrs. George Fielder), Woefle nephew and my life-long ’non-brother’ Bob Hafner and I adjourned to our private smoking cliff off Ragin Road with a stolen cigar or two. When it was time to join the picnic with the adults, dizziness overtook our expected arrival. Eat something, we thought. The only available morsel was, sad to say, green apples!

Picnics with the Woelfle family and friends were always happy events, aside from aforementioned disasters. Many were held at the Ragin Road location, but many others were held at Little Pond, Slide Mountain and other places nearby. Included in our neighbors were the Rogers, the Osborns, and yes, the unforgettable Jessica Foote. As young as I was, I was always impressed by her elegant appearance. No shorts or slacks for her! She always looked like she should have been at a South Hampton croquet party with her broad-brimmed white hat, gloves and a frilly dress. (Chapter Two, once I get to it, should include an account of my son Carl’s work experiences with Jessica Foote.)

Chapter One’s memories concludes in 1943, when my sister Dot with three of her girl friends, and I, with three of my buddies, including Bob Hafner, set up a ’bon-voyage’ camping party in Beaverkill. (Separate campsites, of course!) While we thought it appealing to return to our camping roots to round-off our eleven years of camping, it never occurred to us that we would be giving up digging for fishing worms for the digging of fox holes!

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