Tuesday, November 30, 1965
Cloudy, 3 inches of snow, roads bad. We went to Cobleskill and to Mother's for dinner. Had Wayne's car and got it lined up at Parson's. Finished Christmas shopping for Marilyn and family.
Comment: Probably the roads looked a lot like this. When the snow banks were 4-5 feet high along the roads, I remember bouncing off the banks after intentionally skidding around some of the sharp turns on the way to the Hill. Also remember loading rocks and any thing else heavy we could find in the trunks of those old cars just to get up the hill when it was slippery. All of us boys have a bunch of stories to tell about those incidents......
Monday, November 29, 1965
Cloudy, cold, three inches of snow late. Clifton, Sue and I went to Oneonta on business and shopping.
Comment: Not sure what the business is about....here is Dad with Marilyn and me at the Clarence Barber farm probably about 83 years ago in 1940......
Sunday, November 28, 1965
Partly cloudy and rainy. Rudy's, Howard's and LaVerne's came here for dinner. Girls and I went to church and Sunday School, Sue and I went at nite.
Comment: That must have been quite a crowd for dinner...and she still went to church for hours on the same day.....Rudy, Winny, Rudy Earl, Beth and Randy; Howard, Lorraine, Marsha and Roger; LaVerne, Roberta, John...that's thirteen without counting the people who live there....Lorraine and Howard quite young on the front porch of Elmer Hubbard's house....this was her second marriage, her first did not last very long because of some sort of abuse.....
Saturday, November 27 1965
Milder, We cleaned, I baked and cooked for Sunday. LaVerne's and Earl here for supper.
Comment: I'd bet that LaVerne and Earl had been deer hunting....How it might of looked after supper...from left, Norm, Clifton, Frances, Earl, LaVerne, David...probably early sixties...
Friday, November 26, 1965
Cloudy, 30's, rain at nite. I washed, girls did house work and I made navy dress for Carol. Looked for Gerald and Mary Ann at nite, but they called 8 pm and said Gerald had to work Saturday and they couldn't come. Doug and Louise came about 8 pm, she picked him up in Kingston.
Comment: Guess we're missing Thanksgiving day weekend but I'm probably getting time and a half for working Saturday. I was on salary at Ford, but because they were afraid of a salary union, they paid their salary people overtime if they worked more than forty hours. Doug keeps riding that train from Norfolk to Kingston just about every weekend. Not bad duty....we were all so lucky during that time. Vietnam war and racial unrest cranking up, and we just kept on skating through it all....hardly knowing the turbulent sixties were going on.....
Thursday, November 25, 1965
Thanksgiving, Cloudy, 42. LaVerne, Roberta, John here for dinner. Laura here at night. Called Marilyn, girls had chicken pox and they had had 11 inches of rain in Southern California. Gerald and Mary Ann called and said they were planning on coming home Friday night.
Comment: Rain and chicken pox would seem to be a bad combination....a quiet thanksgiving on the hill...on this same day Arlo Guthrie had dinner at friend Alice Brock's deconsecrated church in Great Barrington, Mass, and got himself arrested for littering after the clean-up and afterwards wrote his famous "Alice's Restaurant". Take a look and a listen: "you can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant...." The Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice's_Restaurant#Incident
Wednesday, November 24, 1965
Sunny, Girls home at noon. I baked pies and cut out Carol's dress at nite.
Comment: Hump day, seems quiet......Carol as a toddler......
Tuesday, November 23, 1965
Cloudy. We went to Stamford to Carl's and on to Cobleskill and did some shopping. Girls went to ball game at Middleburgh. Lyle and Madelyn went to prayer meeting with me.
Comment: Lyle and Madelyn Blakesley were good neighbors and pretty good friends. We used to get eggs from them most of the time because we did not usually have egg layers on our farm. Lyle was all hobbled up from old injuries and probably arthritis and had a pretty severe limp. Like all the small farmers up there, they were very hard workers and about the only time I remember seeing them is in their barns or outside. Lyle was an uncle to Rudy Blakesley who married my dad's sister, Winifred. Her name was really Margery Winifred but everybody called her "Winnie" or "Winifred. Aunt Winifred used middle names to commemorate her loved relatives. She named her last child Randolph Lyle. She named her daughter (Beth) Elizabeth Agnes (her mother's name) and first son Rudolph Earle after husband and brother. We always called him Rudy Earl and still do.
Lyle and Madelyn at their fiftieth wedding anniversary...
Monday, November 22 1965
Cloudy and light snow and rain. I washed and sewed. Clifton cut some wood.
Comment: Probably not a very pleasant day in the woods...snow and rain...from Hubbard Hill Memories:
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 winds and chill were bearing down,
As we struggled in the 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...
Sunday, November 21, 1965
Cloud and warm, 40's. Girls and I went to church and Sunday School. Marsha, Paul, Howard, Earl, LaVerne, Roberta, John were here for dinner. David took Doug back.
Comment: Sounds like a bunch of deer hunters dropped in. Howard Vaughn and daughter Marsha, Paul Ellis, Uncle Earl, and LaVerne's family. All the men were deer hunters and it's still deer season....and this is kind of how it went back then...
Saturday, November 20, 1965
Cloudy, 30's, light snow at night. Girls cleaned, I baked and we went to Roberta's and Grand Gorge in afternoon. Girls went to ball game at school at nite.
Comment: And life goes on...here is the oldest picture of O'Hara's gas station that I've ever seen....Only one service bay....I only recognized it because of the tree...very famous in it's time,
Thursday, November 18, 1965
Partly cloudy and windy 30. I had a paint party, 9 or 10 here. Sue went home with Roberta and I went to prayer meeting at nite. Anita went with me. LaVerne's here in evening.
Comment: Another paint party, the last one was Aunt Ella's... In the1930 census, Ella's birthday was "about 1909, and it lists one daughter 1 year old, Betty Yvonne. Must have been a sloppy census taker because Uncle Merel is listed as Merel Hulbard...but it is in Gilboa so it must have been them...here is the Merel Hubbard family, probably in the early forties......Ella, Merel, Betty, Merel Jr.
Friday, November 19, 1965
Cloud, light snow in am. I washed. Roberta, John and I went after Doug 10 am. Home 130 pm. I had a sick headache in am. Girls went to basketball game at night. Clifton home late, laid off in Albany.
Comment: Her under scoring. Does not sound like a nice day. I think "home late" is code for a bender that he sometimes went on and being laid off does not help, especially when combined with a sick headache..and trip to Kingston to pick up Doug. Good thing Roberta was there to help out....Mom as an infant with mother Bessie....
Wednesday, November 17
Very windy with heavy snow flurries in pm. Roberta and John were here. I baked rolls, pies and cupcakes. Louvilla, Alice, Phyllis, Anita and Mrs. Mayo went to P.T.A. with me. Road slippery. We were on refreshment committee. Wrote to Marilyn.
Comment: I guess it was the school Parent Teacher's Association but I never remember her being active at the school.....rolls, pies and cupcakes, tough to beat....
Sunday, November 14
Sunny day, cold. We left Ella Mae's 3 pm and arrived home 5:30. Nice trip. Sue and I went to church at nite.
Comment: Terse entry.....
Tuesday, November 16, 1965
Rainy, 40's. I cleaned, wrote to Ella Mae, Sandy over at nite and I cut out lame' cheer leading suit and got it started...apparently for Sandy......
Comment: The lame suit was probably purple and gold if it was for the Gilboa School...here is a picture of Marilyn when she was a cheerleader for the school.....
Monday, November 15, 1965
Cloudy 30's. Washed in am. Boys all home to deer hunt. LaVerne, Roberta, Sharon, Coleen, Diane and John here for dinner. David took Doug to Kingston at night.
Comment: Deer hunting was a big deal. On the first day, we usually stayed home from school and were out at dawn somewhere either driving a section of our woods or driving around in cars to hunt from the road. There were always a lot of "city" hunters out even earlier than we were so the deer were on the run. I shot my first deer when I was fourteen. Schoharie County was shotgun country so we did not use rifles. I had a sweet 16 gauge, clip loading Mossberg bolt action with a variable choke barrel. Can't remember where I got it...we were always swapping and borrowing shotguns from Uncles and other relatives. I think we used Grandpa Elmer's shotgun often, an old, double barrel 12 gauge that would kick like a mule when fired. The tighter you held it, the easier it was to take the jolt but if you fired often, you would still have a sore shoulder at the end of the day......
Saturday, November 13 1965
Cloudy and cool. Clifton, the girls and I left for New Jersey 745 am, rainy and foggy most of the way. Arrived Ell Mae 1030 am. Did some shopping for her in pm and rode around some. Did some cleaning for her.
Comment: Mom and Dad were always very responsive to Ella Mae. She was always very good to Mom when Mom was younger, including trips to New York City. They went to see Al Jolson one time . In the 30's Al Jolson was the world's most famous and highest paid entertainer. He starred in the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer, where he appeared in black face. He was also the first star to entertain troops overseas in WWII and the first star to entertain GI's on active service in Korea. Mom was not swayed and I remember her saying she did not think very much of him. Nelson Eddy was one of her favorite singers......
Friday, November 12, 1965
Cloudy, 42 high. I washed in am. Girls cleaned. Took David to work with Wayne's car so if Doug called we could pick him up. Wayne drew mail again. I baked three pies and beans.
Comment: And the weekend begins.....here is Doug, (middle) somewhere while he was serving in the Navy....five of the eight kids served in the military and all skated through without injury or war zone postings....only lucky people get old....
Thursday, November 11, 1965
Veteran's Day. Cloudy and cold. Girls and I went to Cobleskill shopping and to Mother's for dinner. Got my (?) and two chains. Girls and I went to prayer meeting at nite. Laura here for supper. Jim Dods spoke and showed slides at church. Janet and two girls and family called in pm. I cut the girl's hair.
 |
| Where I Served.... |
Comment: Although I don't remember it, Mom must have been a decent hair stylist. Seems the friends and neighbors often visited to obtain her services. On Veteran's day 1965, the Vietnam War was ramping up with about 200,000 troops in country and only a fraction of the impending 58,220 deaths and 303,604 wounded Americans occurring.
If we had known then what a debacle it was to become, I wonder what we as a country would have done....I'm not too confident that we would have done anything significantly different.....When I was in language school in Monterey, recruiters swept through the school looking for potential helicopter pilots. I volunteered and passed all the tests but the physical. My poor eyesight probably saved me from an early death in Vietnam. The first clandestine pilots in the late fifties and early sixties did not live very long.....
Wednesday, November 10, 1965
Sunny, 42, No wind. Wrote to Marilyn, sewed all afternoon, cleaned in am. Two radios came in the mail. Wayne took David to work and picked up ham and bacon in Jefferson.
Comment: Wayne picked up the cured meat from the pig they had slaughtered in Jefferson.....when we butchered the pigs by ourselves, Dad would cut out the long tenderloins along the pig's backbone and we would breakfast on pork tenderloins, pancakes, eggs and locally made maple syrup...doesn't get a lot better than that....
From my Hubbard Hill Memories:
 |
Wayne & Shawn, Catskill Game Farm?
From Austin Hubbard |
In the fall we'd often kill a pig and hang it from a tripod rig
Then cut it up to take inside to treat
When Mom would cook the tenderloin with homemade pancakes we'd all join
In dining on a meal called "fit to eat".....
Tuesday, November 9, 1965
Cloudy and cold. I went to Oneonta with Roberta and John, home about 5 pm. Madalyn went with me to Phyllis's to plan Christmas program at night. Power failure in Northeast. Lights flickered off and on and dimmed for about 2 hours from 5 to 7. Parts of Pennsylvania, all of New England, parts of Canada and New York state were affected.
Comment: Weird...Mary Ann and I were not affected by the blackout even thought we lived in Niagara Falls just minutes away from the plant that started it all: The Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant.The plant was a prime attraction for friends and family who often visited us while we lived there and we went there many times. A small surge from the plant tripped an improperly set relay on the heavily loaded transmission lines into Southern Ontario disabling it and that somehow tripped relays all through the eastern US shutting down various power plants in the region. Strangely enough, the two large cities closest to the initial event, Buffalo and Niagara Falls remained powered up because the relays servicing our area through Niagara Mohawk did not trip.....we also missed the 2003 power outage in the NE and Canada by living in Ohio at the time but were present in Italy in 2006 in the European outage.....btw, today in 1938 was also the date of "The Night Of Broken Glass" in Germany when 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps starting the Holocaust..https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-night-of-broken-glass
Monday, November 8, 1965
Nice in am, becoming cloudy at noon and rain at nite, 30's.
I washed and ironed and cleaned some. Madalyn, Mrs. Mayo and I went to Louvilla's at nite on nominating committee.
Comment: Chores and church stuff...never ending....
Sunday, November 7, 1965
Cloudy and warm around 50. Girls and I went to church and Sunday School. Church nearly full. Wonderful sermon by Mr. Malles, "Follow Me". Were all at LaVerne's for dinner and supper, rode over to Grand Gorge to see their kitchen in pm. Wayne and Laura took Doug back. Sue sang in church.
Comment: Active Sunday with family......and
Jesus said
"Follow Me".....
Saturday, November 6, 1965
Nice day, 52. Clifton and Wayne cut a little wood in the am. Clifton, Sue and I went down to LaVerne's about 1230 and ate lunch with them Sue stayed down and they were here for supper. Clifton, the girls and I went to church at nite,
Comment: We heated the house with wood and later a combination of wood and fuel oil so we usually cut wood every couple of weeks. Our first chain saw was a two-man Mall that seemed to weigh a ton after handling it for awhile. LaVerne or Dad usually handled the heavy motor end and I the blade end. I remember it pretty much like this picture. It was heavy, unbalanced and dangerous as hell to use in the woods with unsure footing. In the third verse of my Hubbard Hill Memories I say:
In the winter is 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 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.
Take a listen if you've got the time, it is loooong.....
http://hubbardfamilymusic.blogspot.com/2011/06/hubbard-hill-memories-100th-posting-on.html
Friday, November 5, 1965
Nice day, about 50 and no wind. I washed in am. Wayne and I went to Middleburgh in pm shopping, home at 1 pm. Doug called 4 pm and Wayne and Laura here for supper then picked him up at Kingston. The girls and I went to church at night.
Comment: The weekend begins....Wayne and his first two girls, Christi and Michelle..guess I'm not sure who the baby is.....
Thursday, November 4, 1965
Lovely sunny day, 50 but very windy. I cleaned, washed windows, cut and cleaned up iris's and lilies, etc in am. Went to Missionary Meeting with Madalyn to Phyllis's in pm. Wayne went to Albany for LaVerne. Carol and I went to church at nite. Called Mary Ann at nite, she was in hospital for tests.
Comment: Right out of school, Mary Ann got a a job as Assistant Professor at the Niagara County Community College and had to take a physical with the result that her red blood cell count was low and the doctor put her in the hospital for tests making us miss her parent's wedding anniversary party back in Gloversville...and she is still pissed off about it. Seems she has an inherited genetic trait that helped people in the Mediterranean, Greeks and Italians, better resist malaria. Mediterranean Anemia or thalassemia (which by the way, means "sea in the blood") is relatively common and both her mother and sister share the trait. She has minor thalassemia which doesn't have any health effect other than startling doctors who don't know about it......first snow of the winter on Hubbard Hill....from Michael Hubbard
Wednesday, November 3, 1965
Partly cloudy, warmer. Finished ironing, did mending. Wrote to Marilyn. Clifton, the girls and I went to church at nite.
Comment: Must be some sort of event at church with the guest preachers and all...Here is a picture of the Catskills near Lexington from Harvey Truesdell. I remember lots of mornings like this in the late fall..crisp, clean air, snow on the mountains, and a very good, long life in front of me that I did not know about at the time....only lucky people get old.......
Tuesday, November 2, 1965
Election Day. Cloudy in pm, 32, 1 inch of snow but some melted. I ironed nearly all day and cleaned downstairs. Wayne gone to Central Bridge. Clifton home early. David voted for 1st time. Clifton and I ate supper at Mrs. Flugrems and he, the girls and I went to church at nite.
Comment: This was the first election under the 1965 Voting Rights Act: From Wikipedia:
"The murder of voting-rights activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, gained national attention, along with numerous other acts of violence and terrorism. Finally, the unprovoked attack on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965, by state troopers on peaceful marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, en route to the state capitol in Montgomery, persuaded the President and Congress to overcome Southern legislators' resistance
The days and months leading up to Bloody Sunday were very chaotic and stressful as blacks were being targeted by whites as they went to register to vote. Most blacks were laughed at or harassed, but some were even beaten or killed. The black registered voters were also hit hard economically, in addition to physical abuse. Some were refused federal food aid, some refused credit at local banks and stores, and some were fired from their jobs."
Woody Guthrie said, "Some rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen"...with the recent Supreme Court decision, at least we evolved into voter disenfranchisement without overt violence and terrorism but the intended result is the same.....As I look back at the significant events that happened during my young adult life, I'm kinda amazed how mostly unaware I was of what was going on and the significance of it....recently married and just starting jobs out of college seemed to draw all our attention...."callow youth", I guess..
Monday, November 1, 1965
Cold and windy. I washed and hung clothes upstairs and did some ironing. Wrote to Gerald and Mary Ann. Girls and I went to church at nite. Rev. Malles here all week.
Comment: And another weeks commences with Monday chores....the family in California on Valentines Day, 2003. Wayne and my mother only had a couple of years to live...they both died in 2005.....Mom died in June and Wayne died in December..better live life while you can......
You're always young in your mind it is said, No matter the face in the mirror, That you see with surprise then say to yourself, "What is that old man doing here?"
