Curtain up on My Stage: Revisiting a Finger Lakes Childhood

By Mary Duddleston Zimmer

What was it like to grow up on a farm during the Great Depression? As a child who did so, Ms. Zimmer answers that it was a better place than most.
Following an introduction to her family and the setting, an historic home in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of New York State, the chapters reveal the skills and resourcefulness that carried the family successfully through those difficult years. The story, told through tales, some humourous, some sad, follows the season as the year rolls around.
Lovers of the Finger Lakes Region should find this book of interest, as will senior citizens anywhere.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781463433505

Mary Duddleston Zimmer

A first time book author, in CURTAIN UP ON MY STAGE, Ms Zimmer relates her childhood experiences growing up on a farm in New York State. She has honed her writing skills over the years through regular contributions of human interest articles to the "Sackets Harbor Gazette", Sackets Harbor, N.Y. Ms. Zimmer is a graduate of Syracuse University, a registered professional nurse and mother of three. Now retired, she and her husband, Robert, both Finger Lakes natives, divide their time between Sackets Harbor, and Syracuse, NY.

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© 2011 by Mary D. Zimmer. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/24/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4634-3352-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-3351-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4634-3350-5 (ebk)

Library of Congress Number: 2011912143

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Prologue

The Players

The Setting

Interlude

The Action—Around the Seasons

Summer

The Action—Around the Seasons

Fall

The Action—Around the Seasons

Winter

The Action—Around the Seasons

Spring

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Taughannock Falls

Taughannock Falls State Park

Prologue

I

In October I paid my respects to Taughannock Falls, perhaps the several hundredth time I have done so. That magnificent view never gets stale for me. As usual, I was not the only visitor. Several other folks were there reading the material on the kiosk, descending the steps to the lower lookout or getting their group in just the right position for a photo. The flow of water that day was low, as it often is in fall. Leaves of red and gold fluttered on the trees clinging to the steep banks. As I visited, I recalled the story told to me of the day my parents first stopped at that spot.

It was 1927 when my parents, Benjamin and Gladys Duddleston drove out from Ithaca in a Model T Ford with their three young children. They had been told this was an outing worth taking, a place to view an interesting geological remnant of the last glacier. To escape from a small upstairs Collegetown apartment for a few hours probably made any excursion worth taking. Now, there before them was an unexpected sight. Dropping in a single fall of 215 feet, water from a small creek fell into a deep green plunge pool. They were surprised and impressed. Growing up in rural Wisconsin and later living in Indiana, they had seen no waterfalls like this one. The last glacier had covered Wisconsin too but hadn’t left any such memorial. They gazed at this waterfall across a large rock-walled amphitheater carved out over centuries by water, wind, rain and ice.

After spending some time admiring that view and keeping seven year old Jean, John, five and Julia, three, from falling into the gorge, they got back into the Model T. This time, instead of returning to Ithaca along the Cayuga Lake shoreline, they followed the course of Taughannock Creek upstream a few miles until they came to an intersection. To their left on the side of the stream, was a grist mill. A covered bridge spanned the stream and on their right stood a large farmhouse and farm buildings. A For Sale sign was tacked on a tree. Reminded every hour of the day of their cramped apartment life, my mother remarked,

That’s the kind of a house I’ve always wanted to live in.

Taking that not too subtle hint, my father turned the Model T into the driveway. Mrs. Halsey, a distant family member of the builder, Nichol Halsey, happened to be there that day and gave them a tour. When the tour was over, they got back in the car, drove through the covered bridge over Taughannock Creek and left the house behind. They didn’t realize it then, but they had come to a subliminal fork in their road of life. They returned to the tight apartment but didn’t forget about the waterfall, or the house.

I returned to my car and headed home following the same track that Gladys and Benjamin took over 80 years ago. I paused at the intersection; the mill is gone and the covered bridge has been replaced by an unremarkable one of cement. To my right stood Halsey House, now a handsome thriving bed and breakfast inn. Back in Syracuse, as I write these words, the desktop background on my laptop has a scene of Taughannock Falls in its full springtime glory. For me, that waterfall is a place of enduring beauty and perennial nostalgia.

II

My parents’ stay in Ithaca had been during my father’s sabbatical leave from Purdue University. The next year they left Ithaca and returned to Indiana where my father pursued agricultural research at Purdue. During the year in Ithaca, he had engaged in research on hybrid seed corn at the College of Agriculture, Cornell University.

Throughout the next few months, they received phone calls and letters from friends they had met at Cornell.

Are you interested in the Halsey House property? The family wants to sell, read the messages.

After considerable time discussing the matter, checking finances, and thinking through the implications of a change of career and location, they decided to open negotiations. Dialogue flowed with my parents hesitating over the price. But the Halsey family did want to sell and finally asked my father what he could afford to pay.

Ten thousand dollars, was his answer.

Sold! they responded.

My parents had acquired one hundred ten acres of land, a farmhouse, farm buildings, farm equipment and two horses. The year was 1928.

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Halsey House, built 1829, Halseyville, New York

Halseyville Mill in background. Early 1930s

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Halseyville covered bridge, circa 1928

Halseyville Mill in background

III

Later that year, my parents loaded their furniture into a railroad boxcar and made the trip, in the Model T Ford, from Indiana to New York State. Their new home was Halsey House in the small collection of houses which comprised Halseyville. Their address was Trumansburg, the nearest village, one mile away.

The house they moved into and occupied for the next seventy plus years, was a big change for them; from their small country home in Indiana, they now settled into a sixteen room Colonial-style farmhouse built in 1829. The house had no central heating; it was heated by four marble fireplaces on the first floor and a cook stove in the kitchen. While there was a bathroom, there was no electricity; one of the first improvements my parents made was to put in electricity.

So they began their new life; Dad managed the farming operations, Mother managed the home and taught school part-time, Jean and John attended the one-room school at the top of the hill.

Two years later, I joined the family. Now my parents had four children and a lot of debt. Reality had hit them hard when the Great Depression hit in 1929 and they wondered how they would ever make it through that tough time. Then Mother  . . . answered an advertisement in an Eastern Agricultural paper* for a place where a family could stay on a farm during part of the summer. She wrote to the party and it proved to be Mr. Duryea with wife and three young boys who arranged to come part of the summer. That was the beginning of our summer boarding business. Thereafter, our house was full to overflowing with guests from the New York City area. They had cash which we didn’t in exchange for three good meals a day, good beds and (a) good recreation area… Glad(ys) was the principle force in keeping things together and the farm from being liquidated.**

My mother used the best resource she had—the house. With eight bedrooms, there was plenty of space. From the first boarders, word spread and eventually nine families from the metropolitan New York City area would spend summer after summer with us. Some became our life-long friends.

That is the background and setting of my childhood. What follows are descriptions of the main characters and stories that I remember from that childhood, spent in Halsey House on the banks of Taughannock Creek. I enjoyed living and re-living these stories. I hope you will too.

* The paper was The Rural New Yorker.

** From MEMORIES AND REFLECTIONS,

Benjamin H. Duddleston, 1982.

The Players

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Gladys and Benjamin Duddleston, around 1935

My Parents

My mother was the most important person in my life; the rest of the family all had valuable roles during my childhood but hers was the most significant. She was a warm, even tempered, intelligent, hard working woman.

She ran our household in an orderly dependable way and, in addition, oversaw our homework and music practice. In the busiest seasons of the year she helped with farm work.

Mother had brown wavy hair and blue eyes. She was an excellent cook and, with dairy products constantly available, easily put on weight; while never fat, she was often plump. Until I was a teenager I never remember seeing my mother wear pants; summer and winter she wore dresses and stockings. To contain her figure and to hold up those stockings she wore, what most women wore in those days, a corset. This garment covered her entire torso, had laces up the back and garter snaps front and back for the stockings. It must have been quite uncomfortable to work outside in the hot sun encased in that suit of armor.

Even though busy, Mother didn’t restrict her activities solely to our home. Since her profession had been teaching, she was called upon, from time to time, to substitute teach. She taught in a one room school. I went along with her when she taught in such a school in Willow Creek. While Mother taught elementary subjects to the dozen or so kids, I shared a seat with one of them. I loved that, felt quite grown-up.

Mother was involved in the community also. She taught in the Sunday School of the