Sailing sailing....

This lad's father, Mr. H. Cook, ran a fish store here in Greenport and this is his son, H. Cook Jr. or so the photo is labeled. We are guessing  1910 or so but who would know.  Not a water skier in sight.

We are trying to figure out exactly where this picture is set - obviously Shelter Island is in the background and the boathouse and loading docks to the right don't give much of a clue as we found in looking at other pictures of the area; we can't quite place it although one hunch is near where the Ferry lands now. Just not enough clues but we are betting that is Derring Harbor back there.

The model boat is pretty amazing and hardly a toy but a labor of love that took weeks if not months to produce.

Next Memorial Day, Greenport Harbor might be visited by some Tall Ships - the real deals and they will be available for "play" but perhaps not as much boyish fun as Mr. Cook Jr. might be enjoying.  The end, however, will be the same...adults looking at magical wind driven ships and instant flashes of imagination with pictures of wind blowing over rushing waves, foam, snapping sails and the creak and groan of taught lines.

Who's on first?

We are willing to lay some sort of odds that these fellas who made up the Greenport Baseball Club in 1907 didn't make a whole lot of money.  Currently there is a World  Series that is, by the way, producing drama by the inning, with payrolls that more and likely eclipsed the gross product of the North Fork in 1907 many times over, and the Cards and Texas guys are from what are called secondary markets. 

So this ten member club with a 'manager' (top middle - how fitting) showed up probably because it was a fun thing to do and maybe they passed the hat in the stands.  Maybe Sterling Bottling gave them a beer afterwards.  We don't know but club baseball, something of a rarity now, lives and thrives elsewhere and it is really something.

Some of us have lived elsewhere where businesses and factories, groups like the Elks or Masons, and towns like Greenport in 1907, field teams, put them in uniforms and devoted summer nights or weekend days to the pursuit of the ground ball.  One of us played third base for Willman's Furniture in the Cincinnati 10-12 league years ago (many years we might add) and we played 3 games a week and lost in the city championship 8-6.  We very much remember it like any of these fellas, non-living we are pretty sure, would remember their season, their key game, who was on first......
Speaking of which, one of us has to cut the lawn one last time and rake the latest batch of leaves, but be assured that poor fella will have to do so remembering Cincinnati 50+ years ago, the crisp baselines, a dugout with a water 'bubbler', and a real deal, paid umpire yelling "play ball".

Ulmer revisited, Old Bottles and Jaromír Vejvoda

D.C. Petty popped up in a picture driving his Ulmer Cabinet beer wagon and after we noted the Ulmer Beer sign over the old Claudio's building in the prior post, we figured there was something more to the tale so we went looking.  Again, we figure this picture to be about 1910 or a bit earlier and its taken outside Preston's at the foot of Main St. in Greenport.  Most of the buildings are recognizable including the Reeves building (the tall, square-topped on 1 in on the far left).  This would all seem logical in time, particularly if we put on our Sherlock Holmes thinking hats and noticed that Mr. Petty was delivering cases of bottled beer and not big kegs.  Aha!

It seems our Mr. Petty was affiliated with the Sterling Bottling Works here in Greenport. Ulmer shipped in barrels and Mr. Petty bottled the beer. In fact Mr. Petty bottled a lot of stuff and his bottles, which if you rake for chowder clams in the area, you occasionally turn up. Some of them fetch a pretty penny now and his "blob top" bottles are pretty scarce all cleaned up.

There are a couple stories deeper in this.  One is how bottles were made back then and the other is Sterling v. Stirling.  Lord Stirling was the subject of a prior entry so let us look at the other.

If you look at bottles from about 1910 or so, you can actually see that they were made in halves and fused together. The molds were of wood and one of us actually has a Ruppert Beer bottle "clamed' from the bay that shows the wood grain that was often left in the glass surface as something of a fingerprint.  The other method is the modern method that made the bottle 'proper' out of one injection mold - all save the bottom which was often added.  Enough. But Mr. Petty was known for his blob-top bottles and even Mr. Barth - of apothecary fame - used his services.

In the blog entry before this we noted that the Ulmer Brewery was in Brooklyn and the brew was likely transported out here in the traditional kegs and as the Long Island Railroad had its main line terminal here in Greenport and actually a train ferry went from here to Connecticut, perhaps Mr. Petty figured having a bottling company here made great sense.  Bulk in - bottles out.

Jan, one of our local residents with a great deal of common sense along with business skills noted that refrigeration as also an issue - how to serve a cold beer on a hot day.  We have noted that there were ice houses in the area - mainly to pack shellfish for the NY Market (yes we blogged about that a while back) but that doesn't permit cooling a big keg of beer - but bottles meant an ice box came into play just on the size issue alone so Mr. Petty's common sense was likely a gold mine.

Last, we come to Jaromir Vejvoda, who no one remembers although he died just over 20 years ago. He was a Czech musician who penned a catchy tune in 1927 "Škoda lásky".   We will tip the beer bottle on its side for a while and venture on to other things but it was a fine if not tipsy couple days of thinking about our village a hundred years ago....a fine time indeed.

Bushwick to Greenport on the 9am express

Four and twenty Yankees, feeling very dry,
Went across the border to get a drink of rye.
When the rye was opened, the Yanks began to sing,
"God bless America, but God save the King!" (Canadian Drinking Song 1920 at the onset of prohibition)

We are guessing that this picture dates from about 1900 as the road (Main St. Greenport) is dirt and there are no cars - just horse drawn wagons.  There are, in the distance clear signs of utility poles and we note that in 1900 several dozen businesses had phones so let's leave it at that.

We found interesting that on the roof of Claudio's Restaurant there is an "Ulmer's Beer" sign, plain as day. That set us in motion as Ulmer's Beer isn't in our memory and some of us grew up in the Midwest where it seemed every big town had a brewery or ten so Ulmer stumped us. 

With a little digging we found the Ulmer Brewery was founded in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn about 1870 at 31 Belvidere Street and pictures of it are extant. The building is on the historical tour and for good reason as a grand building it was.  Technology being what it is, we can spot that selfsame building from the air although it is clearly a shadow of its former self.  The "main office" under the flag to the left still stands and is on the tour if you care to find where the tour starts.

We checked and found that it is 95.88 miles from Ulmer to Greenport and on roads that probably didn't exist back then.  And then it hit us.  Why would the Ulmer Brewery, a fairly small time operation compared to Colonel Ruppert's Brewery and dozens of others, get a foot hold in Greenport.  By the picture, trucks were scarce and our minds finally focused on the fact that Greenport was the end of the main line of the Long Island Railroad and that the main station out west in metropolitan New York was - and you guessed it - not far from Ulmer. Not far at all. Why beer brewed and kegged in the morning could be on tap by 3pm in the afternoon and fresh as a daisy.

Now that we have settled that mystery, such as it was, we can go about our day.  Perhaps something from YouTube that is in keeping before you wander off.

Fog and Mist

Betcha betcha betcha you didn't know right off the top of your head what the difference is between fog and mist.  I didn't. It is all in the density and therefore the visibility.  Mist reduces visibility to >1 KM or 5/8 or so of a mile.  Fog reduces visibility to under <1 KM or less than 5/8ths of a mile.

Got it now.

I'm all set.

A-O'K.

Occasional Anomalies

We don't want to make too much of this but an anomaly is an anomaly.

Just sayin'.

Christoffa Corombo

 This is your day Chris.  Actually tomorrow is but that really isn't right. There was an "old calendar and a new calendar" and dates are difficult but it was October 12 what ever that means. Consider it a birthday present I guess...it appears that we have several weeks to go in his case (October 31 is reported) but there are old calendars and new calendars and some city-states in Italy recorded births and deaths on the last day of the month for ease of record keeping.  No one cared anyway.  Ships logs are good for this as their should be a daily entry but they, like everything else, can get rewritten. Nevertheless he showed up and led to the traffic jams and taxes we now endure so thanks.

There is every reason to believe that Columbus had no idea what he found or where he found it.  Supposedly he had a map..something of the forerunner of the Piri Reis map of 1513 but it is hard to say and he isn't talking.  One thing fairly certain, South America - the Atlantic Coast anyway - is very well drawn by 1513 and considering the issues in navigation at the time (read a book called Longitudes and Latitudes sometime) it is pretty amazing stuff.

As this was still the era of the flat earth for the most part, sailing west was something of an act of faith as if you would, very unexpectedly sail right off a cliff if the superstitious and perhaps the catholic church were correct.  Columbus on the other hand was interested in gold and power and his great tales of what he found made good reading back in Spain.  However, and much to the bad fortune of the natives who were in absolutely the wrong place at the wrong time, the Spanish  eventually came by the boatload and didn't do anyone much good...but this is your day Chris so we will re-write history a bit, gloss over your governorship which ended with your arrest, and just let you rest in peace.

Lying just under the surface.....

We think about things swimming under the water's surface - when we think about them at all - as mostly a jellyfish or a crab and since we in the north don't have the crystal clear water of the southern seas, we just have to imagine what really goes on down there. Happily there are cameras that make exquisite pictures of these things we never see in person.
We are particularly fond of the work "Carnival of the Animals" by the French composer Saint Saens who wrote the piece and his captivation with the aquarium - all the rage in France in the late 19th century (1886 actually). 

 

Ogden Nash supplied the sublime narrative.

THE AQUARIUM
Some fish are minnows,
Some are whales,
People like dimples,
Fish like scales,
Some fish are slim,
And some are round,
They don’t get cold,
They don’t get drowned,
But every fishwife
Fears for her fish,
What we call mermaids
They call merfish.

The Floyds

A hundred years or more ago - actually since 1840 - Greenport was the "end of the main line" of the Long Island Railroad and this was our railroad yard. By any measure it was a substantial and bustling area and a stalwart of commercial interests. 

The railroad didn't show up here by accident. Greenport has a deep water harbor, safely shielded from Nor'easters and winter storms, at that time a thriving boating and whaling industry, and pretty abundant farmland that produced 7 inbound to NYC trains a day full of passengers and goods. It was a pretty good deal for those in trade as it was another day's sail at best to New York and their taxes and tariffs so to put into Greenport, offload and ship by rail the rest of the way made a lot of sense.

David Geltson Floyd was the grandson of William Floyd, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and with the building of the LIRR out to Greenport, moved here in 1840, opened a Ships Chandlers with a fellow named Skillman, owned and maintained three whaling ships and generally prospered like crazy.  Brecknock Hall was the family home - now a center for all kinds of wondrous things.  He was also father to 4 daughters, one of whom was Grace who, among other things, built the Floyd Memorial Library in David's memory.  Her husband also designed the stained glass in the Episcopal Church.  It can well be imagined that there are any number of "Floyd" touches in the village, long forgotten, but just under a few coats of paint or a new facade.

In a time, now, when civic largess is a something of what we might politely describe as a "lull" it is pretty good to remember the Floyd family and this town.  Great Grandfather William Floyd sat with Franklin, Adams and Jefferson and signed our foundation document.  His son served in the War of 1812 which had more than some action in this very area.  His son came here and put some enterprises together, did well and GAVE BACK..or his family did... that that is probably because that is what people do.  

He also took time to play a game with his grand daughter.