That’s it. Fall is here. Mrs. Violet Wiggins, anxious but loyal doggy companion, accompanied me on a walk to town on a gray, not-too-cold day and there is no denying it.
There were a handful of deep red Empire apples left on a tree in the yard of a home that will have a new owner by this weekend. No leaves, just apples. Other apple trees, wilder, less tended ones, are nothing but bare branches now.
We live on a hilltop town in the western Catskills. Winter is no joke here. The wind is a near-constant presence. This is a town where, according to a history book I just read, the town’s entire industry of nationally-renowned long-hair sheep was wiped out in a vicious wind storm sometime in the last century. I cannot even imagine. But the locals switched to cows after that. Presumably they’re a bit more likely to stay on the ground in a heavy gale.
Yes, reader, I do want to know more.
Last year, even the locals were stunned when we had a twenty degree below zero night in November. The forecast for next week actually includes snow.
Mountain farming people are a self-sufficient bunch, but they also clearly know the value of social connections. When winter comes, the Farmer’s Market is over. But the artists meet every week at the local restaurant. The market crowd meets there once a week, too. There are social organizations, community organizations. Even the garden club meets all year. Winter meetings are about seeing friends and dreaming of flowers in the spring.
It’s also smart to have winter projects; things you enjoy that keep you occupied when the weather is so fierce that going outdoors unnecessarily is just plain stupid.
This year I’m going to find out about my house.
It’s a puzzle, this place, an architectural puzzle and an historical one. It’s known in town by the name of the people who most recently lived here longest – the Hillises. The people who bought it from them are already forgotten, it seems. They were only here five years.
But I want to know about Ernest and Flora Hunt. According to my deed, this was their home from the 1920s to the 1960s. My neighbor remembers Mr. Hunt as a gentleman farmer, someone with a small place, a few cows.
“He was a nice fellow,” he recalled. “Always there to help when his neighbors needed a hand.”
From what little history I’ve found so far, Mr. Hunt was a photographer. He owned a studio in a town that is about 30 miles away. That is quite far for those days. I wonder if it was the same person, or perhaps father and son.
I’d like to see pictures of the Hunts, and if I can find pictures of this house it would be amazing. The Hillis family modernized it and removed all the original woodwork and details. I’m sure it seemed like a wonderful thing at the time.
I’m hoping, in time, to restore this old farmhouse to the one Ernest and Flora would recognize. Until we’ve been here long enough to be remembered as the people who belong here, I think, for me, this is Flora’s house – the old Hunt place.
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