Christmas 2007

Craig, Brinton, Hayden & Elise: Fall 2007

Town Team Baseball 1928: Three Hubbard Brothers

From Left To Right: Merel Hubbard, John Henry Briggs,
Clifton Hubbard, (My dad) & Earle Hubbard. 1928
Dad was 20, Earle 18 & Merel about 23.

How the Current Hubbard Males May

Have Come By Their (Almost )Insufferable Cockiness.
From Maude Haskin As Quoted In The Fall

2007 Issue Of The Gilboa Historical Society:
“One time after a game, some of the boys had all the girls line up by the pavilion, and they chose three to go with them to Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady to see movie. The three, Earle Hubbard, Clifton Hubbard and Everett Wood. The lucky girls were Margie DeWitt, Lorraine Hubbard & Maude Haskin. The fellows told the other girls to go home. Everyone at the theatre looked at them like they were big-league ball players as they were wearing their uniforms and spikes.
For supper they pooled their money and bought Fig Newtons and bananas.
( Always the big spenders)
Everett Wood married Lorraine Hubbard, I think Clifton probably took Maude and Earle took Margie Dewitt.

My 27 Rules & Facts Of Life

27 Rules, Facts & Admonitions To Help You Reach The Point Of Being Old & Grey And Playing With Your Grandchildren (Which Is Probably The Point Of It All Anyway)

Eighty-Four and holding through this briefest flick of time
Still alive and kicking with more living on my mind
Because I’ve made it this far, I think I might have earned
The leave to let you know some things, important, that I’ve learned

1. Don’t hurt yourself or others, (this rule's among the stronger)
2. And figure everything you plan will cost more and take longer
3. If said “It’s not the money”, it’s the money I will bet you
4. If you think you’ll win in Vegas, there’s a bridge that I can get you
5. If your only tool’s a hammer, every problem seems a nail
6. If you think you’ll beat the system, I’ll come visit you in jail
7. The world will always be full up with lying politicians
8. If you walk in other’s moccasins, you’ll probably change positions
9. Each day will start much better if you see the morning dew
10. Make sure you teach your children they can love rich people too
11. When you deal with kids & old folks, you should opt for being kind
12. And men, you’re just not smart enough to know what’s on her mind
13. Don’t point a gun at anything you don’t intend to shoot
14. All guns are always loaded
15. The gun laws all are moot
16. Astrology, the drug war, and ghosts are all just bunk
17. There’s no “good” war,
18. You'l always lose, squabbling with a skunk
19. Eat to live, don’t live to eat,
20. Keep kids away from strangers
21. And just because you’re not afraid don't mean a lessened danger
22. There’s always someone tougher, smarter, meaner on the street
23. When your face is at a huge stone wall, the smart move’s to retreat
24. You’ll count your wealth much better by the things you live without
25. And lots of times a whisper works much better than a shout
26. Live to learn, you’ll learn to live, and dying’s part of life
27. Make sure the best friends that you have are husband, kids, and wife

That’s all I have to say right now, I hope it’s not too weighty
I’ll let you know more things I’ve learned the day that I turn ninety.

Siblings & Cousins Among The Flowers

Gerald Elmer & Marilyn Ann Hubbard, Glenn & Barry Taylor
Probably About 1943. Back Then, We Also Had Flowers In
Our Hair But Did Not Really Know It Was Cool.....

Safe Haven

Elise Roberts Hubbard At Two Months

Elise Roberts Hubbard: New Family Collage

She was born on June 11 at 12:42pm, and
weighed in at 8lbs 4 oz.
Craig, Brinton, Hayden, Elise & bottom right,
Rowan with his new cousin.
Rowan is the son of Abbey & Matt Clark,
Brinton's brother.

Elise Roberts Hubbard

Born June 11, 2007. Sister Of Hayden Clark Hubbard, Daughter Of Craig Evan Hubbard & Brinton Clark Hubbard

Me, LaVerne & Franklin Brown

Me, LaVerne & Franklin Brown

The first five bucks I ever earned was for selling scrap iron with LaVerne that we hauled in a 1919 Model T
Me, LaVerne and Franklin Brown searched farmer’s dumps all over town and picked up every piece of scrap we’d see

Franklin Brown smoked cigarettes when just a kid but I forget which brand of those damned cancer sticks he chose
At three am he’d come awake and grab that pack and then he’d take deep drags and you could smell it in his clothes

His dad had driven my dad’s trucks and one day had the worst bad luck to ditch a truck with a full load of cement
The load broke loose and hit the cab and crushed the chest of Franklin’s dad on the steering wheel which wasn’t even bent

We worked the spring of forty nine, I close my eyes and see those times and the memories we picked up just to sell
Worn out plows and sickle bars, tractor wheels with rotten tires and every piece of scrap had tales to tell

Of farmers dreams and farmers dreads as they worked their lives out in those sheds and hay fields in the shadow of those hills
Getting by on hope and sweat and doing all they could to get the family fed and pay the monthly bills

Milking cows and cutting corn, till old and sick and bent and worn and living every moment just on will
Shirley Richmond comes to mind, all stoved in and face all lined, he worked that farm on the road to Manorkill

I’ve made a little money since, in the third world I could be a prince, but I still can feel and smell those crisp new bills
My brother paid to Frank and me beside that black old Model T in 1949 on Hubbard Hill.

First Cousins...

Betty Hubbard O'Hara

&

Doris Ellis Palmer

In The Mid To Late 1940's

Like Father, Like Son

Hayden And His Dad, March, 2007

Otis and Myrtie

https://soundcloud.com/gerry-hubbard/otemyrtie

Otis & Myrtie

Ote and Myrtie were our neighbors up the road a quarter mile
Spinster maid and bachelor brother and you seldom saw them smile

Pinched lips, all prim and proper, all clothes buttoned to the top
But always free and easy with the rumors they would drop

Myrtie was a teacher long retired but taught in church
While Otis ran some “young stock” and I guess he never worked

Got the mumps when just a child and my Dad said they “moved down”
He said that was the reason that no children were around

'Cause I always thought them married when I saw them on the road
In that pretty two-door Chevy with their monthly grocery load

We usually did not see or hear them very much at all
‘Less our cows got in their garden then we’d get an angry call

Us kids and Dad would get the cows and try to fix the fence
But for gardens ruined and trampled, there is no recompense

“Good fences make good neighbors” are the words of Robert Frost
And we should have kept them better no matter what the cost

Then I get a slightest comfort when I think about it all
He also wrote “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”.

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it

And spills the upper boulder in the sun,

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there,

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there,

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors.”

Robert Frost

Uncle Clarence

Uncle Clarence could wield a splitting axe like Rembrandt used a brush
Split wood outside in the winter cold and never seemed to rush
He’d pick a block and set it straight then peer through squinted eyes
Then one quick flick with a single blade and a stove-sized chunk would fly

He’d size things up, another swing, and as the axe head hit
He would twist the blade to the outside edge and another chunk was split
Another flick on the other side and another piece would fall
He always used a single blade, abhorred a wedge or maul

He’d smoothly work around that block, axe flashing in the light
And he never had to hit it twice, he always hit just right
Precise and quickly fluid, split lots of wood and yet
All afternoon, he never stopped and hardly broke a sweat.

“Chop wood and carry water” are words that come from Zen
I understand that meaning now by thinking back to when
Uncle Clarence with axe and “Dickies” in that beech-wood forest stand
Worked mind and soul and body to that simple task at hand

Winter Mornings

Winter Mornings  Original by Gerry Hubbard

Winter Mornings

We boys slept in the attic on that Catskill Mountain Farm
And though the rain and snow blew in it seemed to cause no harm
We’d get up winter mornings, shake the snow off of our beds
Then grab our clothes and run downstairs where that old wood stove was fed

We’d dress as fast as young kids could, we pulled on several layers
And “Sword Of The Lord” from the radio blared out those Baptist prayers
Mom would bake some pancakes, fry up some ham and eggs
Then we brushed our teeth in the kitchen sink from the brushes hung on pegs

The only running water from the hand pump by the sink
We used to wash ourselves and cook and fill the pail to drink
We finally put a bathroom in when I was seventeen
But with ceiling low, you had to squat to get remotely clean

When younger, all us kids would group around the kitchen stove
And huddle with the oven open, as scents of wood smoke wove
All through the house and smells of ham and pancakes filled the air
I close my eyes, recall it all, it’s like I’m standing there

Marilyn fell flat-palmed one time upon that sizzling iron
And burned her hands with blisters while the rest of us looked on
She couldn’t balance, put her hands down several times at least
Till Mother finally grabbed her and salved her hands with grease

Those winter mornings come to me in Ohio winter’s cold
And seem to keep their clarity even as I grow more old
And the fireplace that burns with gas in our modern family room
Seems not as warm as that old stove on that run-down family farm.