Column by Terry Berkson A Miller’s Knot A Miller's Knot Bumped into Buster Whipple several summers ago at Joe’s Pizzeria downtown. He was up from Florida to attend his grandchild’s graduation. We hashed over old times, among them, days I used to work with him on his family’s farm. We were doing hay the year I was eighteen and headed for Brooklyn College in the fall. “You’re a good worker now,” Buster had said as I threw a bale onto…
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life sketches - Page 4
Add a chicken in a cherry tree! Life Sketches by Terry Berkson Late one afternoon several Christmases ago at the height of a driving snowstorm, I left my typewriter and looked out the kitchen window. There was a large bird roosting in our cherry tree. It wasn’t a crow or a pigeon or a morning dove. I knew those Brooklyn birds well. This was something much bigger. The tree stood at the back of the yard against the fence, which…
Life sketches by Terry Berkson: Too stuck up for Thanksgiving Several years ago, two friends from Richfield, Tiger Goodale and Rootie Marriot, came up the drive with what they thought was a good story for me to write. They had been in the Genesee, one of the local watering holes, when this guy came in and told how he or some other one-legged man — they didn’t make it clear — was up in a tree, building a stand for…
Cousin Ben, age 15 Life Sketches by Terry Berskon Father of the man Several years ago I received a wedding announcement from my cousin Francine who lived in the town of Savigny Sur Orge, which is a 20-minute train ride from Paris, France. She said that her son Ben had finally married his girlfriend whom he had been living with for ten years. The girl, Isabelle, is a doctor and comes from a small French village where there hadn’t been…
Alice Berkson Life Sketches by Terry Berskon Peckulating Chickens The hens I finally found in late spring last year were now laying prolifically. I was feeding them mash but they were scattering it around the coop and yard so I switched to pellets that for the most part stay in the feed pail. Good egg production continued but I noticed that feathers were missing from the necks, breasts and rear ends of some of the birds. It wasn’t Romeo the…
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Life Sketches by Terry Berskon Watching old western reminds me of shootout on Angel Hill I watched the movie “Shane” the other night and the shootout at the end brought back memories of a local shootout that used to take place every year in the middle of August: “Hold it,” Teddy Dziadik Jr. said quietly as he shouldered his shotgun. Chuckie Crist let his hand drop to his side. Dziadik swept his gun across the horizon several times. Then he…
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Life Sketches by Terry Berkson An egg layer with a taste for egg eating I have a problem with at least one of my chickens. She’s been eating eggs out of the laying boxes. It’s hard to determine which one is the culprit, but if left unchecked, the habit will be contagious. Egg eaters are aggravating. I’ve already consulted local experts, Vaughn and McNulty, who told me the problem is likely because of a calcium deficiency. “If you don’t have…
You have reached your limit of 3 free articles To Continue Reading SubscribeLogin Our hard-copy and online publications cover the news of Otsego County by putting the community back into the newspaper. We are funded entirely by advertising and subscriptions. With your support, we continue to offer local, independent reporting that is not influenced by commercial or political ties.…
