Yesterday I dropped my daughter off and decided to get lost. Her babysitting gig is over in Lyonsville. After you pass the Roundout Valley High School, you turn right on 209 and then proceed down till your second left, which is the unfortunate assignation: Kripplebush Road. I took a quick look. Perhaps the Kripple’s were a family. Perhaps they had a prominent bush. Perhaps it is not in any way a disparaging term meant to suggest a shrub of less than its full potential. But that’s the road we drop her off on and yesterday, when I backed out of babysitting domicile, I kept on west to see what I could see.
Well, you pass a bunch of swamps and you just about come to Krumville. Presumably Robert Crumb would have appreciated that you took Kripplebush Road there into Krumville. But before you get to whatever it is that defines that hamlet, there is a plot of land on the corner that is formed with Route 2A. And if you’ve ever read “Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel” but Virginia Lee Burton you’ll know what I mean when I say that there, on the corner a rusting hulk of a steam shovel that was precisely the anthropomorphic protagonist that dug himself a hole he couldn’t properly extricate himself from. I took a right.
I didn’t know it but that was big, old Slide Mountain I saw up in the distance Beautiful. And when I turned right on 213 I should have turned left as it would have brought me to the shores of the Ashokan Reservoir. At every twist and bend there were unexpected expressions of self: An Irish flag, a BLM sign. A Trump & Pence banner. A building that looked like it had sagged into the woodside like something ill-maintained by Tom Bombadil which gave way to another property landscaped just so. Kids here. Old folk trotting along there. I was conscious of being lost and of having a call in thirty-minutes. Soon though, I rode right out on to Route 209, which I knew. From there I headed home without any need for artificial assistance.
Today I dropped her off and went back along Bone Hollow Road and met my dad at the Mohonk Preserve Testimonial Gateway. I missed it the first time. But I found it. It’s a pretty remarkable structure and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it before. My pop explained that back at the turn of the last century, people took the train from New York City and crossed the river in a ferry and then horse and buggy’d it over in what must have been all ofa twelve-hour journey. Just how did turn of-the-century ladies relive themselves in those absurdly long dresses during a journey of that length? Somewhere near the carriage house they’d start taking orders for dinner which would be waiting or them when they mounted the hill. What then is it, that we do today which will seem a quaint waste of time in 2120: preparing a dinner? flying oversees? . . . as the full day journey from Manhattan to the Mohonk Guest House appears to us today. Krumville presumably was secure. Almost certainly it was too far out beyond anyone at the Guest House concern.
Friday, 08/14/20
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