Fort Ticonderoga - Iroquois Meaning the Place Between Two Waters

Upstate New York is ALMOST as chock full of American history as coastal Virginia.  The last stop of our mini-vacation to up-up state New York was Fort Ticonderoga.  This is a place that rings some tiny bell in the back of your mind.  You KNOW you've heard of it, and you know it was important for some reason lost in the mists of your memory.

This place calls itself "America's Fort", but it's really not.  It was built by the French, renamed by the British, and captured by the Americans.  This fort is all about the military strategy of the 18th century.  In an era of few roads, whoever controlled the waterways controlled vast areas of land.  Sitting at the southern end of Lake Champlain, this fort was fought over six times and changed hands three times.  With the advent of the railroad, the gasoline combustion engine, and a reliable road network overland, Fort Ticonderoga fell into disuse, and was literally falling down when a privately funded non-profit group decided to restore it.  Their restoration efforts started in the early part of the 20th century, and  continues today.

For Americans, there is a fascinating story associated with Fort Ticonderoga and the American Revolution.  Washington, the Continental Army Commander, had problems not only with an untrained army, but also with a lack of material to fight the war against the British.  (That's why the victory at Saratoga was so important - it convinced the French to finance the war.)

It's 1775, and the war has just started.  Two young, impetuous Patriots present a crazy plan to Washington.  Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allan, with a small force of men and by using the element of surprise, propose to capture Fort Ticonderoga from the British.  Washington agreed.  To the astonishment of everyone, they succeeded on May 10, 1775!  The British retreated back into Canada.  As amazing as that feat, it's really not the story.

In early winter, 1775, Henry Knox, a 29 year old bookseller from New Hampshire went to Washington, whom he had met in the Bunker Hill/Breeds Hill battle in Boston, with an REALLY insane plan.  Knox convinced Washington he could bring the artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to the hills overlooking Boston

and thus drive the British out of Boston.  Again, with nothing to lose, Washington requisitioned $1000 dollars and sent Knox north to the fort.

Knox arrived at Fort Ticonderoga on December 1st, and he promptly began directing the removal of the cannons from their carriages. 

Knox lashed the cannon onto large sleds, planning to use oxen to pull the sleds when he couldn't use the rivers.  He devised a route consisting of floating the cannon on rafts, sliding them over frozen rivers and creeks, and sledding them through snow on a route between Fort Ticonderoga and Boston.  He called it his "Noble Train of Artillery", and it consisted of 59 cannon and other assorted artillery pieces together their carriages, cannonballs, black powder canisters, and all the other sundries necessary to the firing of 18th century artillery.

This gives you an idea how large the cannon are

As always, the weather refused to cooperate!  First, he couldn't get snow for his sleds to get started, then, several feet fall all at once.  He barely rafted the cannon across Lake George (a small lake just north of Saratoga Springs) before it froze solid.  The farther south he traveled, he discovered the large rivers such as the Hudson River weren't frozen solid enough to bear the weight of oxen and cannon.  He tried to cross the Hudson River on January 5th with one cannon on a sled pulled by a team of oxen. The ice cracked, the oxen were cut loose so they wouldn't drown, and the trial cannon wound up at the bottom of the river.  It was a shallow place, so the valuable cannon was  fished out by Patriots from the tiny village of Albany.  

Knox waited, testing the ice each day.  In a few days, he was able to slide his precious cargo across the river on ice.  Then, he went up and down hills and the Berkshire mountains dragging the artillery across Massachusetts.  He covered 300 miles in the dead of winter with thousands of pounds of artillery.  When the British awoke on March 7th to discover the  hills around Boston ringed with American cannon, they had no choice but to evacuate the city.  Not too bad for a bookseller!

Post revolution, the Knox's cannon dispersed over the Eastern seaboard and all the way down into the Caribbean.  In the 1930's the Fort Ticonderoga restoration group went on a cannon search and returned the cannon to the Fort.  Some of the cannon are British, some are French, and some are Spanish, but they represent some of the original cannon as well as others from the same period.  They all date back to the 18th century.  

Slowly, the Fort has been restored, and the foundation has scored a donation of a collection of period weapons including swords, powder horns, as well as muskets which is outstanding.  

Collection of swords

I thought the carved powder horns were the most interesting.  These were not carved by ordinary soldiers sitting around the campfire.  Instead, master carvers followed armies and sold the carved powder horns to soldiers as mementos of their service.  Here's an example:

The restoration has been done by utilizing as much of the original material as possible.   The fort was literally in ruins when the restoration started.  

I thought the most fascinating aspect of the Fort were the people.  I've been in other citadels and forts which have college kids dressed up parading around, but at Fort Ticonderoga re-enactment is taken a step farther.  The re-enactors are full time employees of the foundation and each brings an 18th century skill to the table.  Visitors as they take the self-guided tours meet these people as they perform their specialty skill.  Here's one of the cobblers.  They make the shoes of all the re-enactors using 18th century tools.  The cobbler told me he trained with a master cobbler for three years using tools which are over 300 years old.  

He's putting new soles on a pair of shoes

The cobbler told me in the British army of 1750, a soldier was issued a pair of shoes and five pairs of soles.  His shoes (and soles) were expected to last for three years.

When I asked him why he wasn't portraying the American army, he replied they switch each year.  One year they are the French army of 1740; the next year the British army of 1750, and the following year, the American army of 1775.  Next year they will be Americans.   I noticed a wooden bowl and spoon on the bench behind him, and I found out there are cooks who make 18th century recipes for lunch for the staff and re-enactors.  If you are eating outside the break room, you're expected to be eating the type of food someone of the period would have been eating.  The cobbler had pea soup for lunch the day we visited.  Vegetables for use by the cooks are grown (on a smaller scale) in the King's Garden which is adjacent to the fort.

Equally interesting were the tailors.  They make all the uniforms and clothes for the re-enactors.  The day we visited, they were working on miniature uniforms for children who visit to try on. 

In contrast to the cobblers, the tools used by the tailors have really not changed much in 300 years.

There was also a cannon firing demonstration.  It took a well-oiled team to fire a cannon successfully with more steps than I thought possible.  

We have an American loyalist officer (green), a regular British Army officer (red), and a lowly British seaman in high water trousers.  This small cannon has a range of 400 yards - that's four football fields.  Cannon generally shot a six pound ball (think small bowling ball) or a three pound ball (think tennis ball) propelled by a canister of black powder which was ignited by flame applied to a flammable material jammed up next to the canister of powder.  Muskets shot a ball the size of a marble on the same principle.  Here are some examples of actual 'shot'.

Yes, that's my foot & the shadow of my hands.
I couldn't quite get the big cannon balls on the back row

I also enjoyed the mini-history lesson of the fort presented with maps, pictures, and sometimes life sized figures such as these

This is a Mohawk warrior, a British ally in 1750

Here's David Perry, a British citizen of the Colonies, fighting with the British against the French in the French and Indian Wars.

In twenty five years, David Perry, might be a Patriot/Rebel fighting against the British.

Our last tour were the King's Gardens.  In the 18th century, the gardens were less about flowers and more about feeding the army occupying the fort.  Reduced in scale these days, it still is representative, complete with heritage plants, of the types of vegetables which would have been grown in the late 1700's.  Today, it's not only veggies, but also about flowers as well as having a quiet place to enjoy nature.

This gardener was out picking strawberries

And there were beautiful flowers in the 21st century

All in all, this was a great way to end our small trip.  The Fort and its history was really interesting and well done.  As always, there are pictures.  Using the slideshow feature will give you picture captions.  Click on the below link to see the pictures.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/SPNNSnR28RdmiELi9

  

          

 

Lake Placid and the Adirondacks

We took a mini-vacation to see Lake Placid, New York.  This tiny town hosted the Winter Olympics in 1932 and in 1980.  Today, its Olympic sites of ice rinks, bobsled, luge, and skeleton track, and ski jumping towers make it a major training facility for Olympic athletics.  There are also World Championships held here for luge and skeleton.  The weekend after we left there was a 'half' Iron Man competition.  The full length one is held in the Spring.  There's also a first class Olympic Museum.  Thank heaven the museum was great because the rest of Lake Placid was a real let down, especially for Drake because this was a 'must see' place for him.

Lake Placid is in the heart of the Adirondacks. This map of the Adirondack Park shows how glaciers raked back and forth across this area gouging out streams, rivers, and lakes.  Lake Placid is one of the bigger glacial lakes.  What surprised me was the Lake is in the shape of an "H" with two islands in the center of it.

  

Lake Placid isn't even in the town of Lake Placid.  The lake inside the town is called Mirror Lake, and it's really just a big pond.  It's where the town beach and swimming area is located. 

This town is an Eastern version of a ski town.  It's all about the snow and ice here.  Everyone awaits the snow for skiing, snow shoeing, snow mobiling, and, of course this close to Canada, for the hockey season to begin.  The Olympic sites provide good paying jobs for the people who maintain them since they are New York State employees.  The day we went to see the facilities, I talked to a woman who was resurfacing the enclosed areas of the bobsled track.  She was guzzling water since it was enclosed, and the heat and humidity was taking it's toll on her.  Terrible weather (hot/humid) has been the norm this summer.

All people could talk about in Lake Placid was the weather.  They've never seen such a hot summer.  In the Lake Placid area, which is just a few hours north of Saratoga Springs, the weather has also been without rain.  Here it's been hot, humid AND rainy.  The summation of the coming autumn was:  "Well, it's been so darn hot here, I expect there won't really be any leaf color.  The weather will plunge, and the leaves will fall off the trees.  That happens sometimes."  That made me feel better since I've been trying to figure out how to see some 'color' up here before we leave.  It's just not going to happen.

We toured the outdoor venues left over from the 1932 and the 1980 Olympics, as well as the Olympic Museum.  I will say the ski jump site was just flat scary.  First we took the ski lift to the top of a mountain, then, we took an elevator another 27 floors up to the place where the jumpers are at the top of the hill.  That's the large ski jump.  Ski jumpers are just adrenaline junkies.  No one who wasn't would ever do this. 

The cars below really give you some perspective!

You can walk up, and up, and up. 
The top of these stairs are where the jumpers start

Ski jumper at Lake Placid in 1980 Olympics

The museum was filled with interesting exhibitions.  My favorites were the torches, the medals, and the clothes.  Here's the 'wall of USA Olympic uniforms'.  As you can see, some were more successful than others.

1932 to 2014

I asked someone if Lake Placid would ever host another Olympic game, and the answer was an emphatic "NO".  In 1932 there were 14 events in four categories:  sledding, skating, skiing, and ice hockey.  Almost all the events were men only.  This was the last Winter Olympics without alpine skiing.  There was cross-country, ski jumping and the Nordic combined - all for men only.  There was no downhill or slalom.  There were three demonstration sports:  curling, sled dog race, and speed skating for women.

By 1980 there were 38 medal events.  This Olympic games is best remembered for two things:  The American, Eric Heiden, collected five gold medals in speed skating, and the American men's hockey team composed of college kids (no American professional hockey players were allowed to compete in 1980) beating the world champion Soviet Union team.  It's still called the 'Miracle on Ice', and it was the first time I can remember hearing the "USA" chant.  I remember watching that game; it was thrilling.

Today, the Winter Olympics has 102 events.  There's no possible way the tiny town of Lake Placid would be able to host a modern event.  The population of the area is so sparse, as well as hard to get to, all the event venues would be wasted once the games were concluded.  The expense to create the venues would be astronomical.  There's also no infrastructure to support a modern Olympics.  Everyone seems more than happy to be a touristy ski town with a few world class athletes walking around.  

Of much more interest was the rest of our mini-trip.  First, we stopped in Elizabethtown at the History of the Adirondacks Museum.  What fun!  There were two exhibits which were really fascinating:  First, there was an exhibit of New York suffragettes.  Here's Alice Paul, a woman almost lost to history.  She was directly responsible for the national campaign to get the vote for women.  She worked for Civil Rights her entire life.  

The other exhibit I loved was the gallery of World War I propaganda posters.  This is the 100th anniversary year of the end of that war (November 11, 1918).  There have been several exhibits commemorating a war nobody really remembers or even understands.  My grandfather fought in the trenches with the American Expeditionary Force, the fancy name for the American army sent to Europe in 1917.  It was the first mechanized war.  There was long distance artillery, tanks, machine guns, and airplanes dropping bombs.  

When the United States entered the war it was deadlocked in trench warfare which consisted of men being routinely slaughtered by automatic fire as they 'went over the top'.  (The real war criminals in WWI were the Generals on both sides - using 19th century tactics in the first industrialized war - causing huge numbers of men to be killed and wounded.)  This is also the war that introduced 'chemical weapons'.  The mobilization of men and material by the United States turned the tide of the war in favor of England and France and their allies.  The Armistice of WWI also sowed the seeds that resulted in WWII.    

The propaganda posters were designed to overcome the pacifist popular opinion as well as 'sell' the idea of getting involved in a foreign war.

And, some posters shilled popular songs related to the war

And this was the first war in which women were asked to 'step up' into the manufacturing work place and replace the men in the armed services.  Women never left the workplace after 1917.  Right to vote for women was closely tied to their mobilization during WWI, and the result was women's suffrage passed as a Constitutional Amendment in 1920.

If you want to see the landscapes of the Adirondacks, the Olympic sites, the Olympic Museum, and the History Museum, well, just click away on the pix.  If you look at the pictures as a 'slideshow', you can see the picture captions:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/euw4UAXfsdryQbMx7

https://photos.app.goo.gl/VvQNWhrnMDHZUTsJ8

     

       

   

National Bottle Museum, Ballston Spa, New York

Everyone knows how much I adore visiting unusual places, and it's a fact I've never met a museum in which I couldn't find something to like.  I've been agitating to visit the National Bottle Museum ever since I found it, and I finally wore Drake down.

This place is all about the world of bottles prior to the advent of Michael Owens' bottle making machine which started mechanized production of glass bottles around 1905.  Prior to the invention of this machine, bottles were mouth blown by master craftsmen.

The 'production line' consisted of a master glass blower, his apprentice(s), and the carry boys.

The most efficient way to ' mouth blow glass bottles' - especially ones of size was to 'gather' the glass out of the furnace, (see the blob on the end of the stick in the above picture),  and blow the hot glass into a mold.  The master would blow the hot glass, and it would expand to fit the mold.  Then, it would have to be slowly cooled.  The 'initial puff' took a lot of lung power, and often this was one of the jobs of the apprentice.

  

Now, look at the picture below,  A 'carry boy' - sometimes a child, but always the low man on the glass blowing totem pole -  literally carried the blown glass bottles to the cooling area. See, the black guy holding the bottle?  He's the 'carry boy'.  The blown glass demi-john (type of bottle) is being carried in a 'snap case' which is how he's pulled the glass from the mold.  The blow pipe is being cut off.  Then, he'll carry the bottle to the cooling area.  That's the manual glass blowing by mouth craft in a nutshell.

These two pictures (above) show the process of blowing a glass bottle.   In the glass blowing factory, there would be teams blowing glass into molds for ten to twelve hours a day.   It was a system which was completely turned upside down by the bottle making machine invented in 1905.  An entire group of craftsmen (glassblowers) and their apprentices and helpers were suddenly out of work because of mechanization of their jobs. Glassblowing went from being a blue collar trade to being obsolete in the manufacturing world.  

We had a wonderfully knowledgeable guide (Gary) who is an actual historian, and he has worked at the bottle museum for about twenty years.  He knows EVERYTHING about bottles.  For instance, bottles are categorized by their shapes.  There's a 'whiskey' bottle shape, a 'milk' bottle shape, a 'medicine' bottle' shape.  There are shapes called 'figures', as well as things created by the glassblowers playing around with end of the day glass leftovers.  These are known as 'whimseys'.  I loved the whimsey's.)  Here are some:

The figure in the front is a bank!  

Here's a figure bottle which is actually the original Poland Spring water bottle

One of my favorite displays were the different bottles associated with the fifty states.  The Poland Spring bottle (above) was the "Maine" bottle. 

You can guess which state this bottle is associated with:

I thought the variety and colors of medicine bottles were the most interesting.  Here's Drake in front of an actual pharmacy counter circa 1900. 

 

Pharmacists compounded their own medications from their stock of powders and tinctures.  They kept records usually under the clients' names.  Here's a pharmacist's record book:

The museum had a collection of 'poison bottles'.  In a time of low literacy, poison bottles couldn't just be labeled with words.  The solution to preventing accidental poisonings was to create bottles with raised bumps and/or pictures to indicate poison contents.  The second purpose of such 'bumps' was to show by feel in low light, or no light which of your medicine bottles contained poison.

In addition to bottles, the museum had two exhibitions:  The first was a collection of stoneware from potteries created from clay deposits along the Hudson River.  When the clay was exhausted, the pottery factory either moved or went out of business.  Here's a chamber pot manufactured in the 19th century in "West Troy" which is about 25 miles from Saratoga Springs.  

The patriotic theme was handpainted - circa the Civil War

The other exhibition was a paperweight collection donated by an early supporter of the museum.  Here's my favorite paperweight:

Another novelty collection were the glass pieces which contain a small amount of uranium!  Under black light, these pieces glow fluorescent green.

Finally, the museum is continually sorting through donated glass bottles.  A few are noteworthy and added to the collection, but most are duplicates upon duplicates of items the museum already owns.  The museum has devised a clever way to both raise money for the museum as well as send along bottles which they don't wish to add to their collection.  

If you donate $5, you get to pick a prize.  The staff has wrapped give away bottles in tissue paper, and you select (sight unseen) a bottle from the tissue wrapped pile to take home with you.  We donated $10, so I got to pick two bottles from the pile.  I scored two glass medicine bottles blown into molds circa 1875!  How cool is that! 

This museum is well worth a visit.  It unfolded to us thanks to the expert and interesting commentary by Gary.  My pictures start with scenes from Ballston Spa, New York - the location of the museum, as well as the birthplace of Abner Doubleday.  Then, there are more pictures of the contents of the National Bottle Museum.  Click on the link if you are interested.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/13TUhpfzdJkMkhjc8  

The Northwestern Berkshires

We made a little trip to the Berkshires - which is western Massachusetts.  The 'Berkshires' are actually just the Appalachian mountains which are located in Massachusetts.  If you are in Vermont, they are called 'The Green Mountains'.  In New Hampshire, they are 'The White Mountains', but they are all one mountain range, the Appalachians.  The Berkshires are famous as a summer vacation spot in the East for culture.  There are numerous theatrical, dance and music festivals. The Berkshires are filled with quaint little towns, each trying to out-quaint the next one five miles down the road.
One of those quaint little towns is 'Williamstown' which is the home of a gem of a traditional museum, "The Clark Art Institute".  It has been completely remodeled and expanded.  I suspect the renovation was done by the same architect who designed the Kimball in Fort Worth.  Check out the first two pictures in the album and see if you don't agree.  If the Clark museum sounds familiar, it's because when it was remodeled, they sent their pictures on an extended tour, and the tour came to DFW.  As we toured this museum a few weeks ago, we kept saying, "We've seen that one."  However, if you like Impressionist art, well, this place has oodles of the best.  You can check out the pix by following the link.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/EncfxtcRN3j3SPg8A

Western Massachusetts was a hotbed of small manufacturing towns in the 19th and early 20th century.  This is the home of the 'widgets' (small stuff that can be put together in the factory where everyone in town works).  International competition, as well as mismanagement of resources, and/or obsolescence put all of these places out of business.  Most of the towns are little dots on the map.  Sometimes they are the sites of fairly famous colleges.  ("Williams" - founded in the 1790's is one of those schools).

An interesting factoid about "The Clark" is Sterling and Francine Clark didn't ever live in Williamstown, the site of the museum.  He wasn't the local industrialist like the Hyde family in Glens Falls who founded a museum to hold their personal art collection.  Oh, this museum was built to hold the Clark art collection, but Williamstown was chosen as the site because Sterling and Francine became alarmed during the Cold War a nuclear bomb attack on NYC (their residence) would destroy their art.  They picked Williamstown, Massachusetts, as the safe place they would build a museum based on a nebulous connection by the grandfather to Williams College!  Sterling Clark is one of those rich guys (heir to the Singer Sewing Machine fortune) who inherited rather than earned his $$.  I'm just glad he left his art collection to the public.

A much more interesting museum is called "The MoCA" -  nope, not about chocolate.  It stands for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.  The town of North Adams repurposed a group of eight large derelict factory buildings and transformed them into a contemporary art museum.  This setting for the art is fascinating, and the art is very interesting.  This museum has made this town a tourist destination.  Instead of being a fading 19th century factory town, it is now vibrant and alive with new shops, B & B's and restaurants.  This museum was fun, and they have some wonderful Sol Lewitt pieces.  I just like his use of precision and color.

Ok, so sometimes I get a little crazy

One of the exhibitions that impressed me was called "The Lure of the Dark", and all the paintings exhibited were night scenes.  The gallery was darkened, and there were pools of light around each painting.  Here's an example of what I mean.  The display was novel, and the technique enhanced the paintings.

If you want to see the pix of the contemporary art, click on the link:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LGxvedioCDJGYsXc9

Once again, the Berkshires have impressed.  We enjoyed a jam packed day, and I'm hoping we can get back to finish up the Clark and take in the Williams College Museum.  

Sixteen Miles on the Erie Canal

Everywhere we go, there's always a fascinating history.  I knew Saratoga Springs was a battleground of the Revolutionary War, but I didn't know Washington's victory convinced the French to 'invest' in the Colonial's war against Great Britain.   I knew there was a famous horse race track here, but I didn't know gambling was really the oil that fueled the prosperity of this town.

I knew the Dutch were the original settlers of New York, and as we've toured around, it has become obvious settlement just sort of drifted north and west from New York City and the Atlantic coast.  Gradually, the English settlers outnumbered the Dutch, but some towns retained their Dutch heritage, language, and culture.  I didn't think there would be many surprises beyond what I already knew about the history of the area.

And, then, I learned about the Erie Canal.  Well, that's a NAME we all know from our first American History class, but the significance of it has been lost in history.  First, the logistics:  It's basically a 40 foot deep ditch dug between Buffalo and Albany.  The Erie Canal was a waterway between the Lake Erie and the Hudson River which flowed into the Atlantic Ocean at New York City.  In 1825 roads were few, and what ones there were became easily impassable with the slightest adverse weather.  Rivers were navigable for small distances by shallow draft boats, and there were many portages around water obstacles.     

The Erie Canal construction began in 1817 and was completed by 1825.  The then current and former Presidents of the United States, including Thomas Jefferson, thought the canal was a preposterous idea, and the federal government refused any funds toward its construction.  So, DeWitt Clinton, the Governor of New York, employed massive eminent domain powers as well as seizing Native American lands, and then begged and bullied New York financiers to back $7 million dollars in bonds to construct the canal.  The success of the Erie Canal was almost instantaneous, and its success launched a flurry of other canal projects. 

Construction of the canal was no picnic.  First, it was over 300 miles though dense forest.  The work was halted by the severe winters.  There was the tiny problem of the Niagara Escarpment to overcome.  The lock system finally devised though the escarpment had never been done before.

The construction of the canal required 'on the job training' as there were no civil engineers, nor any engineering school in the United States of the early 19th century.  Many of the techniques to build the canal were devised by Benjamin Wright,

today known as the father of American Civil Engineering, and the founder of the first engineering school in the United States at Renssalear, New York.  The initial canal was 363 miles in length, most of it cut through the dense forests of upstate New York.  It was built, then rebuilt to compete with the railroads, and then rebuilt again before it finally became completely obsolete due to the competition by the railroads and the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway.  Today, most of the first canal is gone, and the 'towpath' manned by oxen and mules pulling the 'packet boats' is also mostly gone. In the 21st century the Erie Canal is a tourist boat ride of a few miles.

The significance of the Erie Canal can not be underestimated.  It opened up the Midwest for settlement.  Farmers with farms full of worn out soil in New England, particularly Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont, were able to pull up stakes, and ride the 'packet boats' of the Erie Canal to new, virgin farm lands.

Farmers in the Midwest suddenly had a market for their goods and produce.  The cost to move goods to the markets in the East decreased 90% when the Erie Canal went into operation.  New York City went from the 4th largest port in the United States to the largest port.   The increased commerce and people passing through fueled the sleepy little towns of Buffalo, and Albany into major cities in the 19th century.  The Erie Canal cemented New York City as the premiere city of country as it became the financial hub of the country. 

Today, the Erie Canal is part of a waterway system which will allow a boat to traverse from Chicago to the Florida Keys and back again.  There are actually 'snow boaters' who follow the good weather in both directions.  This inland system of canals is so extensive that a boater is only on the ocean for 35 miles between Chicago and Keys.  This past week, we took a tourist boat ride on the Canal, and we were following a pleasure yacht well know to the tourist boat Captain as one of those snow boaters.

We are following the yacht - on it's way back to Florida -
through a lock on the Erie Canal

Today, the Erie Canal is a pretty tame and even quaint waterway. 

It feels sleepy and irrelevant in this time of jet airplanes, the world wide web, and space travel.  However, in the 19th century the Erie Canal transformed our economy, and was a spigot that poured native and immigrant settlers into a frontier which has become the food basket of the United States. The commerce the canal generated was the turning point for New York City.  It fired the public imagination and became a symbol of what could be accomplished by a combination of political will, innovation and hard work.

If you want to see more pictures of the actual canal as well as an exhibition of how it was built, as always, just click on the picture links.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/9uZncCXd1aFJU9T77

https://photos.app.goo.gl/wGegiLm36ryCd39NA   


  

Another County Fair

I'm up to my old tricks.  Last week we attended the Saratoga County Fair.  Drake claims I've dragged him to at least twenty of these, but I think the number is closer to ten.  My fascination with county fairs runs deep back into my childhood.  At its root it's all about greed.  My mother believed sugar was the devil incarnate, and she ruthlessly controlled her childrens access to soft drinks, candy, ice cream, and even desserts.  I could count on one hand the times in the calendar year I could satisfy my sweet tooth, and the Tulsa County Fair was one of those times.

Most kids would have looked forward to the midway, but I was a fast learner and realized early on the carnival games just emptied my pocket rather than rewarding me with the big purple bear.  My sweet tooth was also helped along by my irrational fear of all but the mildest of the midway rides.  My speed was always the carousel rather than the rocket cages.  I was even afraid of the swings which rose you progressively into the air as centrifugal force spun you faster and faster.

If I wasn't consuming funnel cakes, cotton candy, or a Dr. Pepper, I was collecting as much free stuff as I could put into my plastic advertising bag.  I loved getting rulers, pens, pencils, band aids, combs, erasers, magnets, clips, and free reading material.  I've never been picky - I'll read anything.

In between sugar fixes, I also inspected every animal pen and cage.  As a city girl, the exotic smells (animal manure, I'm sure) and the lovely animals seen close up seemed to be from a different planet than the one I inhabited.  Hard as it is to believe, as a child I was very shy and timid.  Life for me was mostly solitary observation seeing and noting things I had only read about.  There was nothing about a county fair I didn't love as long as I didn't have to ride anything.

Perhaps that's why it's so easy for me to be eager to 'see another one'.  This time I met some people who made this fair wonderfully unique.  There was Carter, the eight year old who was entered into the sheep showmanship contest for the first time.  We love watching 4H kids working with their animals.  We've watched kids show pigs - that's mostly a free for all.  We've watched kids work young oxen teams.  We've watched five year olds show young cows bigger than they are.  We've watched llama packing - really hilarious - and totally one of a kind in terms of showmanship.  We've watched kids show horses, and we've watched kids show sheep.  We've even watched kids show house cats.

Carter, alternating between being excited and being scared, pointed out his idol to me - a 17 year old boy who, according to Carter, knew absolutely everything about showmanship.  As we worked our way from the 16 - 18 year old class down to Carter's 8 - 10 year old class, he carefully explained to me all the different breeds of sheep we were seeing, why some looked 'rough wooled' while others looked like they'd just seen the sheep barber.  When I asked him why he chose a lamb to raise and show at the Fair, he replied his family farm needed the lawn mowed! 

Carter getting ready for the show ring

I wish I had a happy ending to this story, but, alas, there were two people in Carter's age class - him and a cute little girl with French braids.  He came in second.  Oh, well, there's always next year. 

Moving on, we next encountered a female fly fisherwoman.  I talked to her for about about fly fishing.  When you talk to people who have a passion, it's easy to get a lot of information.  She started fishing about age four, and quickly found out she loved fly fishing.  She's been practicing her craft for more than fifty years. 

For a long time, she fished for trout in fast running streams, but as she aged, she changed her focus to fly fishing on small glacial lakes for small and large mouthed bass.  Her preferred mode of transportation while fishing is not the flat bottomed bass boat with trolling motor of Texas and Louisiana, but rather a one person kayak.  Now, for her it is all about tying interesting flies to catch a fish's interest, then enjoying the utter peace and quiet of the lake as she casts, catches and releases.

I bypass most Fair food these days - unless a really, really good looking corn dog crosses my path.  I also blame New England for putting me off my very favorite Fair treat:  cotton candy.  Well, that's not exactly accurate.  I still eat cotton candy, but only the gourmet variety.  And, you ask, "What is the gourmet variety of cotton candy?"  It's the kind spun from maple sugar.  Once you go maple, you never voluntarily go back to the yucky pink stuff.  The Saratoga Fair didn't let me down. There was a sugar shack, and they were serving up maple cotton candy.  I did rein myself in, though, and only ordered the small size.

Just as I was cleaning the sticky off my hands, I was just in time for a demonstration event.  Now, usually these involve sets of knives slicing and dicing, or waterless cookware, or some cleaning gizmo.  The demonstration at his Fair was so much better.  A woman from the Cornell Extension Service gave a demonstration on how to arrange flowers. 

She had a lot to talk about, and I learned much more than I thought I would when I sat down.  Since there were only me and three other women taking in her talk, it was pretty interactive.  Ok, so I made it interactive. When she started talking about using  greenery from your yard to augment rearranging your grocery story bouquet, I quipped we had to resort to theft in the dessert to find yard greenery.  Everyone started laughing, and when the presenter started asking questions, everyone started answering.  These things are always more fun when the presenter doesn't have to pull teeth to get the interaction going.

Another demonstration which is unique to places with TREES was the timber demo.  This involves sawing, ax throwing, and unique to the Saratoga Fair - log rolling.  In the 19th and 20th century, these skills became logging contests at local gatherings and fairs.  In log rolling, two competitors try to unseat the other from a large log rolling in water.   When it wasn't a competition,

Competition between a father/daughter team

this was the most dangerous part of timber cutting - using a river or large stream to float large cut logs down the mountain to the wagons, and later to the railroad spur to haul the timber to the sawmill.  Men would climb onto the logs to spin them out of log jams and snags as the cut timber floated down the river.  One wrong step and a fall off the floating, spinning log would leave you either crushed, drowned, or mangled.  

A final highlight of the Saratoga County Fair was the eight horse draft/wagon competition.  That's all about driving eight harnessed draft horses pulling a wagon. 

The 'winner' of the driving competition

The predicted rain dampened the entries in this competition, but even though the rain didn't materialize, seeing the two teams drive these horses took one right back to the 19th century when harnessing and controlling teams of these huge horses was a skill in high demand. 

We finished the day at a delicatessen in the town of Ballston Spa,

Main drag of Ballston Spa, New York

the county seat of Saratoga County.  This tiny burg was serviced by four railroads in its heyday.  This is the place where the manufacture of the paper bag with the square bottom was invented.  Who knew?  I tell you in this life there's always something new to see and new to learn.  You just have to be curious.

As always, there are more pictures.  Click the link if you want to see them.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/gW62R2Nt6giPvoG49