Late in the morning my mom and I drove out through La Grange towards the Taconic Parkway. We passed Sprout Creek Farm where both my daughters and their cousin and learned to milk cows, take care of sheep in summers gone by. They used to sell some swell cheese there in the little shop they had. My mom reminded me that, not unlike the Poughkeepsie Day School which my sister had attended and which I’d considered sending my little one to, as recently as this time last year, had closed permanently, during the pandemic.
First proposed by FDR himself, in 1925, the Taconic State Parkway wasn’t fully completed until 1963. Apparently, FDR was one of the first politicians to tour the state in a car during his 1910 state senate campaign. After he lost use of his legs to polio in 1920, he became more reliant on automobiles than ever and it was apparently at this time he began to consider a north-south highway connecting New York with the eastern Hudson Valley.
Scenic, certainly. Drawn up and over mountainous woodlands, with thin lanes and tight corners, the parkway was originally envisioned for day tripping, sight seers, not as a major thoroughfare with drivers taking mountain turns at eighty-five miles per hour. Fortunately, there are no trucks allowed on this particular artery, just cars, some of which are content proceed well below the limit and others, sometime me, barrel through in the speeding lane trying to get where they’re going as quickly as can be reasonably legitimated.
My friend grew up near the Parkway at the bend in the valley near a turn off for Peekskill. I can remember a graduation party at her house, the only time I ever visited, and we all put candles in paper boats out into a pond that lay near her home once the evening drew on. She passed away a few years back, one of the earliest of my friends to go and I think of her and her father every time we angle by here.
Wednesday, 7/01/20
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