Hubbard & Clarks Christmas Eve 2010

Tom O'Hara And The Deluge

In the spring of 1948 there was a short but very heavy deluge of rain in the area of Hubbard Hill.  I remember getting up in the morning and seeing a swiftly moving brown stream of water in the ditch in front of our house and, later, the three to five feet deep canyon the water had carved.  This was in a ditch that was usually dry and even in the heaviest storms in my memory,  only swelled the stream to about a foot of water.

Across the road and barnyard, the creek behind the barn was a rushing torrent and all this water was coming from the just the very top of the watershed.

Lower down the mountains and rolling hills, the Flat Creek valley accumulated all this water and more as it drained the whole area around Hubbard Hill and fed if finally, into the Gilboa Dam or, the Schoharie Creek flowing into Middleburg.

We drove down through Flat Creek to get a look at the damage and I remember lots of water in the flats around the Merel Hubbard and Pickett places. Further down the road where the grade increased, the road was partially washed out with a deep and wide gully cut through by the rushing water.  Out in the middle of that creek,  caught on a large rock in a cluster of small trees and sitting there crookedly, was a brown coupe that was owned by Tom O’Hara.

It seemed that the previous night, Tom had been seeing my first cousin Betty at Merel Hubbard’s farm and decided to drive back to Prattsville during the storm. The flood somehow got his car.

I remember him talking about it and I asked him how he escaped.  He said he had climbed through the trees out of the creek and, at the time, the branches he used seemed about the size of his fingers. He held up his hand with spread fingers to show me.  He was kind of laughing while he said this and I can still see his face as he described his escape.  

In thinking about it now, his easy manner must have belied the truly harrowing experience it must have been when he felt the car, caught by the flood waters, moving off the road into the deluge and, the subsequent wind and rain driven escape.

In my mind, his story conjured up an image of him desperately opening the car door and scrambling back to safety through the finger-sized branches at the top of the trees above the rushing water.  To a nine year old boy, this was a heroic tale of danger, bravery and adventure and I never forgot it.  This only added to his degree of  “coolness” that I did not encounter again until James Dean came on the scene.

By the way, I believe this was the same car they used for their wedding get-away in June of that year.

Tom Ohara and Betty Hubbard's Wedding Reception

I well remember Tom Ohara and Betty Hubbard’s  wedding held at Uncle Merel’s farm on a very nice day in the summer.

Tommy had a very cool brown two-door coupe, I think it was a Chevy and of course, it was in impeccable condition.

As the reception was going on, several of the younger men at the wedding commenced to rigging the car for the drive-away.  They tied lots of tin cans and streamers to the under carriage of the car.  They then also somehow attached a large fire-cracker that would somehow explode when the car drove off.

I remember Tom and Betty emerging from the front of the house and making their way to the car parked under the trees along Flat Creek Road.  They were showered with rice;  noise makers and hand clapping accompanied them.  They were laughing and grinning.

I was standing close to the car and when they approached, I said, “Boy, you’re really starting off with a bang”.  Some of the people groaned.

As they drove off there was a very loud bang and the streamers, cans and junk attached to the car rattled off with them.

After they left,  several people including my sister Marilyn, told me that I had given away the surprise.  

I thought I had just expressed a clever pun.....

Swinging In The Barn

I was working around the west end of the barn one day.  It must have been about 1952.  Wayne was about six years old.

Something caused a disturbance and I remember Wayne walking down the road in front of the barn saying over and over “I think I’m going crazy” and he was obviously very distressed.

When we asked him what happened, he said that he had been swinging on the ropes in the barn and on one swing, he had crashed his head into one of the upright beams in the barn.

We used to take the hay ropes and tie them off on one of rafters, then stand on one of the large horizontal beams,  probably about 15 feet high, swing off the beam, arc up then drop into a pile of hay in the mow or stacked on the barn floor.

I remember Wayne being very pale and disoriented for quite a while.  I’ve often wondered if this accident contributed to the rather tortured life he seemed to lead.

A Darker Shade Of Blue, The Ballad Of Patty Russell

Hubbard Family & Friends: Remember When The Music

Hubbard Family & Friends Picking & Singing; Many Generations

You Should Have Seen It In Color

Hubbard Hill In Black And White
Photographs Remind Us Of What We Now Think We Once Were......

Natura non contristatur: A Horse Story

A Horse Story

Conesville—Mrs. Gamalia Hubbard met with a singular accident not long since, which might have proved very serious.
She was reaching in the horse manger after eggs, when the horse caught her hood and hair between it’s teeth and jammed her head against the manger with such force that her eyes were badly injured; so much so that for a short time she supposed that she had lost the sight of one eye; and they are still badly swollen and discolored.
..Gilboa Monitor, April 8, 1886

This was Margaret Ann Christiana, (1849-1933), married to Gamalia Hubbard, (1852-1883), who died of appendicitis when he was 31 or so. She was called Anna.

They met while both worked for Col. Zadock Pratt in Prattsville, of Pratt's Rocks fame. He started a leather tanning business in the area.

On April 24, 1882, they bought land on what is now known as Hubbard Hill. The middle part of the our homestead was the original log cabin that Gamalia and Anna lived in. Previous to that, they lived further up the mountain on the old foundation behind David's campsite.

Their children were Elmer, my grandfather, & John, who had no children. Gamalia & Anna are buried in Grand Gorge Cemetery.

She was apparently a much loved grandmother of Elmer's children and I remember my Dad talking about his visits to her.


This incident happened about 3 years after her husband's death, when she was about thirty seven years old. Elmer, born in 1882, was about one year old when his father died and about 3 years old when this incident occured. It also must have occured on Hubbard Hill.

Interesting that she outlived her husband by fifty years....... Also interesting to think about how many of the current generation would have died of appendicitis had we been unlucky enough to have been born a hundred years earlier.

Thanks To Bea Haskin For The Information

Reprise: Hubbard Hill Memories

I was born in late September and some things that I remember are a pair of new red rubber cowboy boots.

In the Catskill Mountain sunshine, I remember like in dream time how I ran the fields with happy shouts & hoots.
And in the summer on a sultry day,
While my mother worked the windrows making hay
I was still a baby on a blanket neath a shade tree and I played & napped the afternoon away.

When my father brought the horses then they stacked the hay in courses on a steel wheeled wagon that my grandpa made
As I rode down in the haystack and my father held the horses back, my mother sang a hymn or softy prayed.
And in the barn the dust and hayseed swirled,
As I reveled in this fascinating world,
Then my mother brought us all a drink from the hand pump by the kitchen sink while barnyard sounds & smells around us curled.

In the winter it was cold as hell and every week the boys as well as Dad would go to cut some firewood.
With that old Farmall and Mall chainsaw we’d find a tree and make a fall and cut it up as quickly as we could.
For the winter wind and chill was bearing down,
As we struggled in the that cold and muddy ground,
Then we loaded up a half a cord and shivered while the tractor roared and took us tired half frozen homeward bound.

In the springtime we would load manure from piles that we had to store because we could not get through winter snow.
When I think of all the jobs I’ve had and some of them have been real bad, well that job has to be an all time low.
'Cause the springtime winds could blow it in your face,
And every load turned out to be a race,
Between the spreader breaking down or getting stuck in muddy ground and leaving the whole rig there in it’s place.

The third time Wayne drank kerosene from old Coke bottles he had seen sitting on the shelves in the wood shed,
Grandma Bessie said to Mom, "I know you mean nobody harm, but if he keeps doing that, he’ll soon be dead".
Doug’s eye got hurt while hunting from a car.
When Marilyn burned her hands it left some scars.
Merle Jr chopped my middle finger, thoughts of all that blood still linger, those are things that made us what we are.

When LaVerne turned over that old milk truck on Earl’s hill when black ice he struck, what happened after always makes me smile.
As I drove the Farmall to the spill I hit that same damned icy hill and skidded almost to the milk can pile.

To turn that old truck upright took an hour.
And on the road the milk began to sour.
Then I put that Farmall in low gear and towed that wreck till almost near the barn where we just stared at it awhile.

In the fall we’d often kill a pig and hang it from a tripod rig and gut it out to take inside to treat.
When mom would cook the tenderloin with home made pancakes we’d all join in dining on a meal called “ fit to eat”.
And the rhythm of the family filled our veins,
And the autumn breezes hummed in soft refrain.
Then we laid on the grassy lawn to look at stars until we’d yawn then go to sleep and start it all again.

Sue could take a .22 and hit the nail heads that popped through that old wood shed roof baking in the sun.
And we shot rats and dogs and chipmunks, hunted squirrel and deer and woodchucks, some for food and others just for fun.
And we hunt 'coon on Autumn rainy nights,
With dogs and guns and beer and big flashlights.
While that hound dog pack was barking "treed", we’d crash half drunk through brush and weeds, to get that scared raccoon in our gun sights.

Susan sat with a BB gun while all us kids were having fun looking at Bonanza on TV.
A big gun fight at a mountain shack and Susan thought she'd fire back, she hit an outlaw with one brass BB.
The television set just buzzed then died.
While Susan grinned and looked around wide eyed.
And we stared at that tiny hole till Carol dropped the popcorn bowl then we all laughed until we almost cried.

Thanksgiving came with hunting season and lot’s of family found a reason to come “up home” to join in meals and song.
We gather around that old piano, Dad sang bass Mom sang soprano and uncles , aunts and cousins sang along.
And the old time Christian hymns would soar and chime
With harmonies so sweet and so sublime.
Then all the men went to hunt deer while all the ladies helped to clear the table for the meal at supper time.

Of the windows in that old farm house, some faced directly west and south and all the family many times a day,
Would check that eighteen mile view to guess the weather coming through and then you’d usually hear somebody say,
“When the rain comes it’ll be to wet to plow",
Or “The snows too deep there’ll be no school bus now",
And those windows from that farm house knoll were also windows to our souls and taught us love of hills and life somehow.

In this age of space and cell phones with those idiotic ring tones I return to those old times on Hubbard Hill.
And of often think of going back but now the house is just a shack and so I know I probly never will.
Still thoughts of friends and family gently bind,
As I think about those pure and peaceful times.
So when I need a quiet spot to go when troubles are a lot I go to Hubbard Hill just in my mind.
So when I need a quiet spot to go when troubles are a lot I go back to the Catskills in my mind.
So when I need a quiet spot to go when troubles are a lot I go back to my old home in my mind.