LETTER from TERRY BERKSON For Want Of A Rack… I had it all planned. We’d fly to Florida on a Saturday, settle into the motel and then head for the flea market where, if lucky, I’d find a used bike to ride for the rest of our vacation. “What are you going to do when it’s time to go home?” my wife, Alice, asked. “I don’t care,” I said, “as long as I have use of a bike while we’re…
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LETTER from TERRY BERKSON ‘It’s The Knuckle On Your Middle Finger That Does It’ About 15 years ago, after having read several of his books, I heard that Jim Harrison, the writer and poet, was giving a reading and a talk at Barnes & Noble on Union Square in Manhattan. Several months before at a barbeque on Canadarago Lake outside of Richfield Springs, I had talked at length about Harrison’s “Legends of the Fall,” and several of his other works,…
LETTER from TERRY BERKSON Lady With Horse I heard about Lady Ostapeck about 20 years ago at my friend Buddy Crist’s house on Angel Hill outside of Schuyler Lake. There was a picture hanging on his living room wall. It was of a man dressed in a Tolstoy-like shirt standing in the doorway of a weathered cabin. When I took a closer look I realized it was Buddy, appearing very authentic in clothes I never saw him wear before. “Who…
LETTER from TERRY BERKSON The Jumping Chicken Of Otsego County Got a call the other day from my friend Charlie in Brooklyn. He said that he was thinking of getting a couple of chickens to keep in his apartment so that he could get really fresh eggs. I got on my high horse and asked, “What do you know about raising chickens?” “I’m good with birds,” Charlie countered. “Remember how I taught my parrot to stand on his head for…
LETTER from TERRY BERKSON Wine Bottle Lowers The Wall Before the advent of COVID-19, to celebrate our 44th wedding anniversary, Alice and I drove down to Key West, and were lucky enough to get a room at The Grand Guest House in Old Town. It’s a great place if you like to share a breakfast table with fellow tourists. This time during our brief stay we met a couple from Brussels, three people from Germany and an ex prize fighter…
LETTER from TERRY BERKSON Talk About Coop d’Etats! Early this spring, my reigning rooster, Geezbrook, who fathered almost all of this year’s egg-laying rookies, was challenged and defeated by one of his sons. When I arrived on the scene, the old man was cowering in a corner with his back facing his attacker. I scooted them out into the yard and they went at it again, Geezbrook seeming to have new heart against his son, who got down like an…
LETTER from TERRY BERKSON New Home For The Holidays A Christmas Story One Brooklyn morning many Decembers past, I heard a scratching behind the wall of my work place in the attic. I glanced out the window and spotted a squirrel emerging from a hole between the rain gutter and the shingles on the roof. He looked at me with a smug expression as if to say, “I moved in and I’m stayin’.” The intruder jumped to the leafless maple…
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…
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…
