LETTER from TERRY BERKSON ‘Bootlegging Hermits’ Life Rich As Renaissance Man’s One cold and leafless November morning about 40 years ago, I was deer hunting on Panther Mountain outside of Richfield Springs with my friend Paul O’Connor. After a long climb, we came into an area that was covered with hardwood trees that stood in gentle depressions and on top of small hummocks. The rolling terrain repeated itself over and over in a nondescript fashion so that it was easy…
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LETTER from TERRY BERKSON Chickie’s Greatest Gift When I was 8 years old, the hero in my life was my cousin Chickie, who drove an oil truck and often took me with him on deliveries. The job led him all over Brooklyn and, being somewhat of a scavenger, he often came home with a bike or a wagon or some other discarded contraption he thought would be useful. We lived in Bensonhurst, in a 12-room Victorian that had been divided…
LIFE SKETCHES With A Slice Of The Shovel Recently, a friend brought some spruce saplings up to the farm for planting. Luckily, my son was up for the weekend to lend a hand with the digging. We placed some near the house and then headed for the woods, which are thin on evergreens. No sooner did I open a hole for the first seedling than I was back to the spring of 1966, in the forest near Rothenberg, Germany, where…
FIELD STORIES After 50 Bombing Missions, Airman Enjoyed Tranquillity By TERRY BERKSON • Special to www.AllOTSEGO.com SOUTH COLUMBIA – World War II veteran Jim Andrecheck, who lives just north of Richfield Springs, recently fell and broke his hip. He’s almost 99 years old and I thought the injury would end his and his wife Mary’s independent life style. • Up until a year and a half ago, Jim was driving a pickup and tending his own vegetable garden. Miraculously, his…
GUEST COLUMN Man Socks Rooster Last late fall, I was getting ready to box up my chickens and take them to Knight’s auction in West Winfield so that we would be free to spend some time in sunny Florida. My neighbor, Jim, who lives across the road, surprised me when he offered to keep my birds in his coop for the winter. “Why would you want to do that?” I asked. “Body heat,” was Jim’s answer. “The more chickens in…
GUEST COLUMN from TERRY BERKSON Whistling Woodchucks! Back Again Not that they ever left. They just take a long winter nap while their heartbeat slows from 80 to an incredible five beats per minute and their body temperature drops from 99 to 37 degrees. Punxsutawney Phil projects a good productive image with his weather predictions but Digger Dan, the name I give to the critter whose been tunneling into my barn every year, is another story. One morning last spring,…