CT – 211                     CORNERSTONE TRAVELER                                            JUNE 11 ‘13

 

Hi everyone and welcome to another exciting and thought provoking issue of this bi-weekly newsletter, The CORNERSTONE TRAVELER.  Also available on the web at cornerstonetraveler.com.  My son, Justin, tweaked and enhanced the website so it is available on a smartphone or iPhone.  I don’t have a smart phone, so if anyone has access to this website through a smartphone tell me how it appears on the smartphone screen.  Thank-you.

 

mid-Hudson Valleynews:  I have noticed the sign verbiage in New York and how it differs from other states.  Take for example the naming of new state roads and the renaming of old state roads.  I constantly see signs that show a road to be the Old Rte.___ i.e.  Old Rte 32, Old Rte 208 and my favorite Old Rte 28.  There are at least eight Old Rte 28’s that intersect in different towns on Rte 28 West of Kingston.

Then there is that standard sign on the back of many trucks:

CONSTRUCTION VEHICLE

DO NOT FOLLOW

If the truck makes a turn (right or left) and you have to do the same, what are you to do?

On Rte 199 going east to cross the Rhinebeck/Kingston Bridge, the bridge is called the Rhinebeck Bridge.  But going west on Rte 199 towards Kingston it’s called the Kingston

Bridge.

Then there is my favorite sign when entering Rte 209, there is a sign that states ACTUAL BRIDGE CLEARANCE 14 FEET.  I have to ask is there a sign before this one that says: BRIDGE CLEARANCE MIGHT BE 15 FEET.

When entering Hurley the sign states “Building Permits Required” No!  Really!

When entering Marbletown the sign states ZONING LAWS ENFORCED.  Really?  If they have zoning laws, wouldn’t you think they would be enforced?

That’s about it for by thoughts of signs in the mid-Hudson Valley and throughout New York.

observations:

There were ricin laced letters mailed to President Obama and New York mayor Bloomberg from addled shithead because he doesn’t like their stance on gun control.  He obviously is brain addled or brain dead because almost all everyone knows that all letters to elected officials are prechecked for poisons.  This “man” said that he would shoot in the face anyone who tried to take his guns away.   People like that scare me because heaven forbid I take a parking spot that he wanted, he would hot hesitate to shoot me in the face because I took the parking space he thought was his.  Can anyone tell me if this man ( if you can call him that ) has any right to bear arms of any kind?  He is definitely a psycho, but was he ever evaluated by a trained psychologist to determine his mental stability?  Most likely not.

Unfortunately that are many people like him. Who think nothing of killing people they disagree with.  And they are not criminals, at least not until they kill/murder someone.

Many times I have seen people fire their rifles or pistols into the air, not caring where their fired slugs would land and they will come back to earth because they will never attain the speed of 17,000 mph to reach earth orbit.

Don’t get me wrong.  There is nothing wrong with responsible people owning firearms.  But how many do they need to own?  Like that man who bragged he owned 17 AR15’s and wanted to buy more.  Why?

That’s it for my observations.

sports:

Though the Yankees came out of the ate tough in the American League East they slipped behind the Sox with the number of injuries, but they are biting on the heels of the Sox with a record of 37-26.   They are 11/2 games back.  The Mets are still stuck in fourth place in the National League East with a record of 23-35.  And are13 1/2  games back.

As far as the basketball playoffs, I just can’t get into the games unless the Knicks, Nets or Celtics are playing.

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 spanning from when the building was first constructed in 1900 to about the mid 1930’s.

The short story that follows this history is called     JED… BILLY’s ANGEL.  I hope you like it.

                         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.

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.

 

                                JED. . .  BILLY’S ANGEL

 

Early April 1960

Little Billy was sound asleep in his tiny bedroom of a small two bedroom cottage in a small southern Pennsylvania town.  He was having comforting dreams of running through the fields and forest that surrounded the home of his parents.  He didn’t like the downtown of this small country hamlet because he and his parents were essentially snubbed by all the white shop keepers.

There were only a few black families in this small hamlet and it wasn’t unusual for his parents to rail and decry the hidden racism, in the middle of the twentieth century.  Billy heard his parents complain that the town was essentially run my one man with his henchmen.  His parents called him the grand wizard of something and this man hated all black people.

He had been sleeping comfortably when he heard the front door crash open.  He heard the shouts of his parents as they confronted the intruders.  He heard the intruders yell and scream at his parents.

They yelled many things, but what he remembered most were words like:

We don’t need niggers like you in our fine township.

Or

You are close to inciting riots and we will not allow this.

And finally

We have to stop you and eliminate your kind to keep our fine town peaceful.

After the last comment, he heard five ear splitting blasts.  He immediately got out of his bed and crawled under it.  He heard heavy boots tramping up the stairs and he thought they would find him and he forced himself not to cry or whimper in terror.

He heard the men crash his bedroom door open and only gave his room a casual glance before they went to his parent’s bedroom and trashed their bedroom.  He heard the men leave through the front door then he smelled the smoke as it drifted up the stairwell and he knew he had to escape.  He quickly pulled on a pair of jeans, a shirt and his sneakers then crept down the stairs to see his mother and father on the living room floor with puddles of blood all around them.  He kneeled down and tried to wake them, but he knew they were dead.

There was a fire at the front door, so he tried to drag them to the side door, but the smoke was getting too thick to even breathe.  He reluctantly left them and escaped, coughing through the side door.  He ran as fast as he could to the forest one hundred yards from the cottage.  He didn’t want those evil men to find him and he knew he could hide in the forest.  He was shivering in the cool April night when he heard the fire truck sirens.  He didn’t know what he should do.  There was no known family and his parent’s closest friends were on the other side of town.  A good five mile walk.  He didn’t know how his ten year old body could walk that great distance without collapsing from hunger and thirst.  He was also very uncomfortable because of the chill in the air.

He watched as the fire trucks came to his house, followed by police cars.  He was about to go to them to explain how men burst into his home,  murdered his parents and set fire to their cottage when a hand came down upon his shoulder.  When he turned to see who it was, he saw a tall man with long white hair smiling at him.  He was bathed in a brilliant white light.

“Your parents are dead, Billy and I am here to care for you.”  The man with long white hair said.

“But . . .  my parents were. . . .”  Billy stammered.

“I know.”  The man said.  “I have been guided here to help you because you are thought to be special.”

“Special?”  Billy asked.

“Yes.  Special.  I don’t know how or why, but the elders have decided you are special and I am here to guide you.”

“But . . .  ” Billy cried.

“Just follow me and I will take good care of you.”  The man said.

Little Billy reluctantly followed the man through the forest, looking back to see what he could of his burning home.

The man with long white hair guided Little Billy by the hand through the forest to an old abandoned railroad track and on this track was an old railroad car.  Billy had been this far into the forest many times and remembered the old abandoned railroad track, but never saw an old railroad car.  He just stared at it with surprise.

“That railroad car was not here before.”  He said pointing at the old car.

The man said.  “No, it wasn’t.  It was put here so I could raise and teach you.”

“Teach me?  Like in school?”  Little Billy asked.

“That and more.”  The man with long white hair advised.

Eight years later

Little Billy wasn’t so little anymore.  He stood well over 5’10” and was muscular in body and build.  The man with long white hair was able to go to social services and adopt Billy.  Billy went to the local middle school and high school and now was ready to graduate.  He was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania at Philadelphia where he planned to major in literature.  He planned to write.  He had scores of ideas for stories.  He only had to learn how captivate the reading audience.

His adoptive father, Jed, met him at the door when he came back from his interview at the University of Pennsylvania.  “How did it go?”  Jed asked.

“I was accepted.  Right on the spot.”  Billy said.  “I have a lot to write about.  Fiction of course.”

“You’ll visit regularly?”  Jed asked.

“Of course.”

Billy remembered when he was Little Billy and first started to live with Jed.  Jed never gave a last name because he said he was only known as Jed, so Billy kept his last name of Powell when he went back to school after his parent’s deaths.

But Jed taught him more than the schools offered when he came home each day after school.  Jed taught him things that school would never even think to teach to their students. Billy thought he learned more from Jed than he would ever learn in the public schools.

When Billy left for college, the last words from Jed were.  “You will not forget what I taught you, will you?”

  Billy looked straight at Jed and said.  “How could I?  You taught me the truth.”

What Jed taught Billy early on, was the truth of the human essence.  Jed taught Billy from the beginning that there would always be evil people in the world and the best way to defeat this evil was not through physical confrontation, but through wisdom.  And this wisdom comes through us from those on high.  Jed said pointing to the heavens.  It will be from them you will learn how to defeat evil.

 

There was something special about Jed, Billy knew.  Maybe even extraordinary.  Billy learned this one night when Jed was teaching him the beauty of the written word when Jed stopped talking and looked to the ceiling inside the railroad car.

“I am being summoned.”  He said as he rose and left the car through the door.  “Wait for me, I shouldn’t be too long.”  Billy only nodded because he was enthralled by the book by Washington Irving, The Headless Horseman.  Jed returned ten or fifteen minutes later to Little Billy, nose deep in the book.

The summoning of Jed happened many times before Little Billy got the nerve to peek outside to see who Jed was talking to.

He saw Jed look up to the heavens with his arms up and spread apart over his head.  Then there was a brilliant white light that bathed Jed and he just vanished only to return ten or fifteen minutes later when that same light shown down from the heavens.  Jed walked out of the light toward the railroad car.  Billy went quickly to his desk so that Jed would not know that he had spied upon him.  Though he was curious about Jed’s vanishing act with the brilliant white light.

After seeing this happen more than a dozen times. Billy finally got the courage to ask Jed about his vanishing act.

“I have peeked out the window when you claimed to being summoned.”  Billy said.  “And all I saw was a brilliant white light seemingly embrace you and you disappeared.  Then you returned ten or fifteen minutes later in the same brilliant white light.  Can you explain?”  Billy pushed.

Jed only nodded. “I was wondering when your natural curiosity would find this out.”

“And?”  Billy pushed even more.

Jed smiled.  “I am being summoned to the angels on high who instruct me.”

“Angels?”

“Yes.  Angels.  And I am what you may call an angel in waiting.  I still have to earn my wings, so to speak.”

“I still do not understand.”  Billy almost complained.

Jed smiled yet again.  “You are to be my final assignment and test.  I am to instruct you of the true meaning of life, away from prejudice and greed.  And those on high believe I am doing a very good job of it.  What do you think?”

“How can I know?”  Billy said.  “I am only fourteen years of age.”

“But you have learned far more than your peers.”  Jed said knowingly.

Billy nodded.  “Yes, I have and I have only you to thank for that.”

Jed smiled.  “Then I have done my job assignment well.  Am I correct?”

“Yes, of course.”

Billy remembered this conversation throughout his years of growing up to the man he had become.  And more importantly the writer he had become.

At the university, Billy excelled in all of his courses, especially the literature courses.  In

his senior year he managed to get a couple of his short stories published in the university student paper.  An editor of a small southern magazine saw one story and picked it up for one issue of his magazine.

The story centered on a small black boy growing up in a southern racist town, run by the grand wizard of the local Ku Klux Klan.  It essentially was what he remembered of that fateful day, twelve years ago when his parents were murdered.  He was paid the usual three hundred dollars for the story by the magazine.

A relatively unknown TV movie producer bought the story for a made for TV movie.  It was shown on national TV just before his graduation and his name was known by all within the university and in the town where he grew up.

Even Jed went so far as to purchase a TV with a satellite dish to see the movie and his adoptive son’s story.

Billy sat with Jed in the railroad car to watch the movie.  When it was finished, Jed turned to Billy.  “I read the story you wrote in that magazine and I was impressed on how you took painful memories and made them into a good, readable story.  Now your story is a made for TV movie.  You must be happy.”

“You can’t believe it.  I have stories coming out faster than I can write them.  Is that what you meant when you said that the elders thought I would be special?  To write short stories?”  Billy asked Jed.

“You are going to get some anger at your story because everyone here in town knows you

wrote about this town, even though you don’t name this town.”

Billy sat up.  “Why?  I deliberately tried to hide this town where my parents were murdered.   Do people still see this town in my story?”

Jed nodded.  “Yes.  The grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan will see himself in the story and movie.  And he cannot allow that or he will lose face,”

“So, I am in danger from this grand wizard?” n Billy asked.

Jed could only nod.

“What am I to do?  I know you taught me not to confront evil with physical confrontation, so how can I beat this grand wizard before he kills me?”  Billy asked.

Jed could only stare at Billy and smile.  “Remember what I said after that and that is to confront evil with wisdom.  You only have to find this wisdom and those on high will guide you as you think through the problem.”

The next day, Billy went into the center of the tiny hamlet to see and talk to old friends.  He was met by more than few friends from high school and they all congratulated him on his story making it to the big screen or more accurately they grinned, the small screen’s of their TV’S.

One of his friends in high school, Chuck Pauls came to Billy and shook his hand vigorously.

“We all know that what you wrote was about that night many years ago when your parents died.”  Chuck said.  “Yet in your story, you wrote that they were murdered.  How did you know?”  He asked.

Billy looked at the sidewalk.  “I was there.  I tried to drag my parents out of the burning cottage, but the smoke was too much and I had to leave them.  But I know they were murdered because I was upstairs hiding from the men who killed my parents.”

“I know.”  Chuck said.  “At that time my father was the chief of police here in town.  He was paid by that grand wizard, Clyde Duke to cover up the murder.  So Duke and his henchmen could get away with murder.”

“You know this, how?”  Billy asked.

“You know my father died a few years ago from cancer?”  Chucked asked.

“Of course.”

“Well, he gave me a box that he told me to keep safe because in it was evidence that my father kept that proves that Duke murdered your parents.  He told me to keep this hidden until my mother died then to release it to the state attorney general and the local papers.  He told me all this on his death bed.  And I promised him I would follow his wishes.  My mother died last year

and after seeing that movie on TV it made me realize I have to give what my father collected at your parent’s murder to the attorney general.”

“Don’t you fear for your safety?”  Bi9lly asked.

“I am well hidden.  I only came to town to see you and explain what my father did to protect Duke from murder charges.  I know my father was very bothered by what he did because there were tears in his eyes when he told me.  I must carry out my fathers wishes from his death bed.”

“As long as you are not in any danger.”  Billy accepted Chucks word.

“I’m free and clear.  Trust me.”

Two years later.

Clyde Duke and his four henchmen were convicted of murder in the 1960 deaths of Billy’s parents.

Billy had to testify of what he remembered of that fateful night and he was peppered by questions and accusations by Duke’s attorneys.  There were three of them.  But as they peppered him with these questions and accusations, Billy could only smile at the glaring Clyde Duke and his co-defendants.  He remembered what Jed taught him and to confront evil with wisdom.

In the end, Clyde and his henchmen were convicted and sentenced to life in prison

without hope for parole.  Billy knew he would have to leave because there were already threats on his life.  Leaving wouldn’t be too hard because Jed had already ascended to the heavens and an agent was interested in representing Billy in future book deals on his short stories.  So he moved to New York City and lived comfortably there with the occasional trip to a local coffee shop to talk with other writers, poets and artists.  And occasionally he went to the New York public library for research.

His uneventful life cane to an end when early one morning he woke in his bedroom to the room being bathed in a brilliant white light and in the light he saw Jed.  Jed was surrounded by a golden halo.

I have brought the spirits of two people who are very proud of you.  He whispered.

Before Billy appeared two spirits, who Billy knew immediately were the spirits of his parents.  “Mom, Dad.”  He cried.  “I miss you.”

The spirits of his mother and father smiled down upon him.  We know.  They whispered.  You have done well with your writing.  But do not stop.  There is more you must write.  Especially about prejudice and greed in your world.  Never stop writing what you see and witness.

“I won’t.”  He promised.