Hi all and welcome to another exciting and thought provoking issue of this bi-weekly newsletter, The CORNERSTONE TRAVELER. Also available online at ww.cornerstonetraveler.com.

mid-Hudson Valley news: The people who live near the Wallkill River, especially on Springtown Road or near the flats in New Paltz should be thankful that we didn’t have much snow fall this winter, ( maybe a total accumulated snowfall of two inches max.) because the river is higher than usual . If we got the usual snowfall the River would have flooded big time as it usually does every spring. I am looking forward to spring so I can go to Randall airport in Wallkill and maybe get my license to fly sailplanes (gliders). In order to keep a pilots license, a pilot must have at least three takeoffs and landings every year. I haven’t flown sailplanes for over twenty-five years. Now that I am single (divorced) I can maybe join the mid-Hudson Soaring Club to get my license back. I will most likely have to have dual flight training and maybe five hours of solo flight to get my license back. I always loved soaring in sailplanes because it is challenging and so quiet.

The last time I flew from Randall airport, about 40 years ago, I always got good thermals off the Orange County race track for stock cars.
Please bear with me about my writing of soaring in sailplanes, but I loved it so much, I can’t seem to not talk , write about it.

observations: I decided I am not going to write about the comical farce of the Republican debates. I have written about these debates to death and only to say they are all a comical farce.
I am going to direct my attention to Flint Michigan. The water crisis there is almost tragic. I find it hard to believe that the elected officials in Flint decided to save money by changing the source of their water supply to save money. The health of the residents be damned! If the elected officials don’t know, but lead is a neurotoxin. i.e. It has severely negative affects on the brain, especially the brains of children.
I can’t believe how the elected officials in Michigan knew of this problem two plus months before it was revealed and did nothing about it. Did they think the lead in the drinking water would just disappear? I believe as Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders does that any and all elected officials or inspectors in the EPA should be fired.

sports: NBA: The Knicks have a record of 28-40 and are 17 1/2 games back in the Eastern Conference.
The Nets have a record of 18-48 and are 26 1/2 games back in the same conference.
NHL: The Rangers have a record of 39-23 -7 and have 85 points and 18 points back in the Metropolitan Divison of the NHL. The Islanders have a record of 33-21 -8 . with 84 points and are 19 points back in the same division.

other: As with all previous issues of this newsletter, everything printed here is either copyright protected or copyright pending..
The history of P&G’s follows this newsletter from when the building was first constructed in 1900 to about the mid 1930’s.
Following this history is a short story I wrote called The CHOST TOWN. I hope you like it .
Thank-you – Rik McGuire

The History of P&G’s from the Beginning

Travel back more than a century to the spring of 1900 as builder John H. Hasbrouck and his men construct a 50′ by 28′ building on the site of the current P&G’s Restaurant. Look around and begin to imagine.
The first floor features a fountain with water softly falling into a cobblestone basin. The exotic effect is enhanced with darting goldfish and blooming water lilies. Palms set liberally throughout the room, provide an air of privacy for those seated at the groups of small tables. Patrons, dressed in their finest, sit chatting, sometimes courting and enjoying the establishments fine refreshments.
The upper story is a promenade, opened to a full view of sunset over the Shawangunk Mountains. Live music gently eases you from afternoon into evening. Welcome to the ambiance and hospitality of the Casino.
The Casino’s owner, Mr. Steen, had correctly envisioned the areas many tourists, summer boarders and trolley passengers stopping to enjoy the unique features of his establishment. The terminal station for the trolley line from Highland is located just across Main Street. It is said that Steen patterned the Casino after the famous Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs.
On June 1, 1900 the Casino was officially opened. That evening “a large number of people enjoyed the ice cream, music and the lovely mountains views.” according to the New Paltz Independent newspaper. Music was provided by a band which included a piano and several other instruments. The Casino soon became famous for Saturday night dances held on the second floor of the open pavilion. It was decorated with flowers and vines suspended from the rafters. The crowds were so large that special late trolley cars were run to accommodate the guests and take the orchestra back to Poughkeepsie.
The electric power shut down at midnight. According to Independent writer Delia Shaw “…the time of closing and the departure of the last trolley (run by electricity) had to be reckoned with, but as was often the case, several folks ‘Missed the Last Trolley’… seems between intermissions the fellows would walk their girls down the street where numerous straw thatched summer houses were located on the banks of the Wallkill River and they were so preoccupied with making love by the light of the silvery moon that they forgot everything.” Shaw continued. “Saturday Nights In New Paltz Became A Legend! There was not a single hitching post available, nor an inch of space under any of the sheds of the five local hotels. The Casino drew people from surrounding towns and they came via hay loads and 4 seated carriages, while some men even walked and carried their dancing shoes. ‘Little Larry,’ the shoeshine fellow, did a landslide business on Sat. Nights! As did all the merchants and the stores open ‘til 9 p.m.”
By 1921 the Casino had changed hands and names, becoming the Blue Crane Inn. Ads of the era read.
The big Night at the Blue Crane Inn
Dancing Every Wednesday and Saturday Evening
In the Chinese Hall-Good Jazzy Music.

The cornerstone of nightlife in New Paltz continued to thrive.
In 1925, after 28 Years of service, the Highland to New Paltz trolley company folded. The demise of the trolley business and the affordability of the automobile meant peoples outings were no longer confined to the trolley’s narrow corridor. They could drive to any village hotel, restaurant, or scenic spot that caught their fancy. Indeed, New Paltz and the Blue Crane Inn lost their captive audience. The Inn, however, continued to accommodate people well into the 1930’s. Other establishments came and went until 1947 when it became Pat and Georges and ultimately was nicknamed the P&G’s that welcomes everybody.

The GHOST TOWN

The small, abandoned town in Western Nebraska didn’t even have a name. It was unknown to almost everyone except the people who lived in the neighboring communities.
Gregory Chambers thought the town to be an ideal place to live while he wrote his novels/short stories. He was able to move into one house in the center of the now abandoned town and he paid essentially nothing for it. The house had no electrical supply so he had to purchase a propane powered electrical generator to give him light and power for his electrical appliances. He had water well drilled so he could pump water from underground.
For television reception, he had a disk from DIRECTV.
He thought that he could live comfortably in his winter home and away from his home at Big Indian in New York.
His home had a stable where he could keep his stallion, Dusty. He would ride Dusty to a nearby town to shop for groceries or just have a drink at the Casino watering hole. He had no need for a car, as Dusty was all he needed to get around.
When spring arrived he would hire a taxi to drive him to the airport in Reno.
Considering most if not all of his short stories and novels dealt about life after death. He thought the ghost town to be the perfect inspiration. Little did he know how perfect the ghost town really was.
One night he saddled Dusty and rode him to the nearest occupied village, about seven miles away. The village had a barn to hold horses which is why he chose that town to revel in the community tavern.
After he finished four or five drinks, he didn’t need to guide Dusty back to his home. Dusty knew the route. When he arrived home and had Dusty comfortable in the stable, he would collapse on his bed.
Gregory didn’t really know the history of the ghost town. All he knew was that it was believed that gold was discovered in the creek that flows through the village. There were many gold bullions found, but it was little and not enough to keep the village financially secure and it was abandoned over one hundred and thirty years ago.
Chambers liked that the village was so abandoned, the reason why he chose to use the village as his winter quarters to write his stories.
Though his writings took many years to be accepted and read by the people, he finally thought he had achieved enough success to reside in a supposed ghost town to write his stories. It was ideal or so he thought, to write. It was ideal, but he couldn’t know the ghost town would give him even him more thoughts and ideas for stories. There was that much ghostly stories that wanted to be told in the town. And he would learn shortly of the ghostly tales from the spirits that occupied and haunted the unnamed town/village.
It was near mid-night when he finally got back to his home in the ghost town.
He learned much from local residents of a nearby town close to the ghost town. And of the many spirits that haunted his ghost town.
He dismissed those stories as drunken rumblings of the local town residents. But it wasn’t, as he was soon to learn.
Toby Miller, a local drunk and supposed historian in the neighboring community was regaling Gregory of the ghosts in his adopted ghost town earlier that night at the Well. He supposedly knew the entire history of Gregory’s ghost town, but not the name. Toby just called it the Ghost Town.
Toby claimed to have spent a drunken night with friends as a teen in the ghost town. He insisted he and his friends had seen dozens of spirits wandering the dirt lanes of the ghost town. He claimed that they saw the spirit of a man being dragged by rope around his neck by the spirit of a small child through the ghost town. They had no clue why the spirit child was dragging the spirit man through the town.
After hearing what Toby had said. Gregory decided that he would go to the county seat to check on missing children in the county from its beginning.

At the county seat he found a journal that was kept of local events, shows and criminal activity in the ghost town that was named Gold Creek one hundred and thirty years earlier.
He thumbed through page after dusty page of the journal searching. For what? He didn’t know, but knew he would know when he found it.
Because Gold Creek had a limited life span of maybe ten years, there was little in the journal at the county seat.
He did learn that the elected sheriff of Gold Creek was a Tom Willis and he had been the sheriff there the entire time the town existed. He also learned that Willis kept his own journal of Gold Creek that was somewhere in the abandoned ghost town. All Gregory had to do was find where Willis kept his journal. He would first search the town jail that was just down the dirt street from his adopted home. If he didn’t find the journal there he would have to find where Willis lived and search that home. He didn’t think that would be a problem because the county collected real estate taxes on everyone who owned land in the county.
After he searched the jail in Gold Creek, Gregory turned his attention to the home where Willis lived.
Here he was at loss because the county seat listed properties by lot only known to the county seat and the owners of the lots.
All Gregory could do was wander the dirt streets of the abandoned Gold Creek and think or wonder where the sheriff would live in relation to the town center.
He thought that Tom Willis most likely had his home near the town sheriff’s office and jail. He had only to search the nearby homes in the center of town and see if there were any clues of where Tom Willis had once lived.
He learned quickly that he needn’t break into the homes as most if not all had already been broken into by drunken teen’s years earlier.
He searched each home carefully and thoroughly looking for a clue as to if Tom Willis had lived in the home he was searching. But everyday he returned to his own home tired and frustrated that he found nothing in regards to the residence of Tom Willis. He would collapse into his bed each night thoroughly exhausted.
One night he had a dream of a young spirit boy pulling the spirit of a man with a rope tied around the man’s neck. The boy’s spirit of the boy pointed to a home with a barn just outside of the town. The spirit of the boy mouthed what seemed to Gregory were the words Tom Willis. When the dream essence of Gregory looked more closely at the home he saw a spirit of a man with dusty clothes and a worn cowboy hat standing in the doorway of the home. On the left side of the man’s chest was a sheriff’s star/badge.
Gregory woke with a start. He vividly remembered the dream and he couldn’t wait till morning, only a few hours away to check the house out. He grabbed his clothes and pulled them on. He then poured himself a burning shot of bourbon. After he downed the shot, he took a flashlight and walked to the home pointed out to him in his dream.
He was able to enter the home without a problem because like all the other homes in the ghost town, Tom Willis’ home and been broken into by drunken teens years earlier.
Gregory methodically searched the former home of Tom Willis. It wasn’t long before he came to a desk that held countless papers, pens and whatnot. He found the journal that Willis kept as his time as sheriff of Gold Creek. The journal was desert dry and almost crumbled in his hands. He carefully put the journal in a plastic baggie. Gregory thought to bring the journal to his home and infiltrate the journal with steam from his coffee pot. In this way he could read the journal without crumbling pages or so he hoped.
It would be a long process or so he thought, but he had to be patient. Patience is the being of any writer.
After he thought that the journal was hydrated enough that he could read it, he carefully opened the journals front sheet and read what Tom Willis had written years earlier.
He had a hard time reading the scratch that Willis wrote with what Gregory assumed was a quill ink pen, But read it he did and what was written was as follows.
April 19, 1876
The local town bank was robbed today for over one thousand dollars and the bank teller told me he was pretty certain the robber was Oscar North. This didn’t surprise me, as it is well known that Oscar North is a lay about and couldn’t be bothered with real sweat labor. His family is wealthy and owns or rents most of the property in Gold Creek. But Oscar North wanted money that he could claim as his own and not his families.
I found the body of young ten year old, Billy Harper, who was gunned down because he saw the face of Oscar North. North was probably afraid that young Billy would identify North as the robber of the bank and North thought nothing of killing an eye witness, Billy Harper.

April 25, 1876

I was able to find Oscar North and arrest him for the robbery of the town bank and the murder of Billy Harper.
He just cackled at me when I arrested him saying “His father would have him out within a day.”
I just nodded and said he would have to go to trial. He only laughed. “My father owns all of the county judges.”
I could only nod and thought there was one judge the North family didn’t own and that was Judge Lewis. I only hoped Lewis would preside over the trial of Oscar North

September 9,1876
Oscar North had been found guilty of robbery and more important the murder of Billy Harper.
His family had no influence of Judge Lewis and Lewis sentenced North to be hung by the neck until death.
The hanging of North happened at high noon in the village square. The often boisterous and braggart North walked up the steps of the scaffold crying and begging to be given leniency. His crying and whimpering didn’t stop until the trap door was released and he died.
Now that the son of that family had been executed, I think it is my duty to investigate other mysterious deaths in our community. And there have been many. Most of which were in land disputes with the North family.
The North family owned or rented their owned property at extravagant rents where the renters could barely scratch out what was owed.
Many of the renters had owned property in Gold Creek, but sold their property to the North family, pennies on the dollar. And many of these people who claimed that the North family robbed them were later found dead in the creek of gold that flows through the village. As much as I tried, I could find not one piece of evidence that connected their deaths to the North’s. But I am certain that the North family will find justice with God after their deaths. Which is certain.

Gregory didn’t know what to do with what he had first read from the journal of Tom Willis. So he just sat back and thought of a possible short story or novel.
He started to scribble notes into his ever present legal pad. But he knew that something was missing in his musing for a story.
That night he just wandered the streets of the abandoned ghost town, Gold Creek. As he wandered he saw the ghosts of the North family being led through the village with ropes around their necks by citizens of the old ghost town.
It was then that he learned that death is the final certitude of the living. And it became the essence of his newest short story.
Though the North family were never caught or tried for the murders of many of the residents of Gold Creek, they found ultimate justice after their deaths and in the court of God.
Here thought Gregory Chambers was the short story he sought about Gold Creek. It was eventually published in a national magazine, read by almost everyone in the United States.
Gregory Chambers was happy and knew that the short story would be included in his book of short stories to be released in a few short months.
He did learn that many of the spirits of the North family were not at rest because they were condemned in the court of God for their transgression against others in their community . Like Oscar North they hd no idea when the condemnation would end.
Because life after death is of eternity, the North family could never know for how long their sentence of condemnation would last.

Rik McGuire
10:00 p.m.
10/14/15
@P&G’s