I love Halloween. Always have. My earliest remembrance is dressing up in a cowboy outfit complete with flannel shirt, neckerchief, vest, chaps and the piece de resistance, a pearl-handled, silver Lone Ranger cap pistol.
“Around the back and up the stairs…” That’s how our mornings began. The first time I heard that instruction, from my Uncle Morgan Carrig, June 1964.
Anyone who knows me would acknowledge that there’s no way I could answer any question in a word. Well, surprise, surprise naysayers-I can.
After the American Revolution, many New Englanders moved to New York State – specifically to the Royal Grant that had belonged to Sir William Johnson.
Living in the Mohawk Valley we are surrounded by historic locations that have both local and national significance.
Two years into the Revolutionary War, the British three-prong campaign of 1777 sought to seize New York’s waterways and thus divide New England from the rest of the colonies.
I was asked recently my a friend- “Who are your heroes?”
I answered based on my understanding that a hero is a person(s) whose effort or achievement goes way beyond the expected to the point of deserving to be memorialized for decades or even longer. “Marine SSgt. Joseph “Stash” Zawtocki, Jr.”
For the past 8 years I have had the privilege of conducting a history and storytelling tour, “Growing Up on The Southside 1957 – 1970.”
Growing up on the South Side of Little Falls in the decade of the 70s was a wonderfully unique, cultural, and educational experience. Residents looked out for each other, fed each other, helped raise each other’s kids, and basically loved and respected each other.
We had a great time visiting the Herkimer Home Historic Site during the “Taverns and Tories: It’s 1777 Somewhere” event. This historic location is one of our favorite local sites.
General Herkimer’s home where he would later die from wounds at the Battle of Oriskany.