Salter's Oyster Saloon

It appears this is on Main Street in Greenport and pre-prohibition...probably 1910ish as Mr. Salter's restaurant is in the 1910 phone book.  100 years ago or so will do.

It appears to be something of what we would now call a hard drinking establishment.  Oysters and strong drink. Trouble in River City.  100 years later a martini and a dozen oysters is pretty swanky and expensive - not that they served appletini's much back then.

We think of this coming hard up on New Year's Eve, glad that people are aware that it was a of walking home after a night out and not now where by chance or plan one gets in car and drives. We hope there is more common sense afoot tomorrow night.

We have also been considering that rather nice thought of walking to an evening out rather than just driving and parking. People would see you and you would see them. Say hello, move aside and smile perhaps, faces and glances remembered.  More important it reaffirms a presence and instead of people saying they haven't seen so and so in an age, they could say I saw him just last week coming out of Salter's Saloon.

So New Years at Salters might have been a raucous place but we aren't sure. The big clock would certainly tell you when midnight came but frankly the potential was more likely that Salters was full of solitary men sitting stiff legged and downcast with no real place to go.  We presume the women in their lives or those unattached were far from such a den of iniquity and the New Years of a 100 years ago continues to be a far cry from tomorrow night.

Gas lights, winter cold off the bay blowing up Main St. like a typhoon, brown lights through dirty windows and men bundled against the cold making their way to rooms barren and with no real human warmth.

Such was Salter's 100 years ago tomorrow night.

Things that go blink in the night

In the early evening our paths cross in a number of ways and everyone, signs included seeming to be crossing, from the light figures bound up by the "library this way" sign to our cars shooting on by down the street.  Even the little ped x'ing sign seems to be waiting for someone to show up.

Our attention is drawn to the Village Holiday tree, all decked in blue lighting and on the other side of the street, a rather wobbly set of street lights who have never heard of a straight line.  We have yellows, and reds, bright white and blue. Even the big rock seems to bask in it.

What fun it is to walk the village at early evening.  People have gone home only to come back out later. Traffic is nearly gone and the streets are pretty much wide open.  Our guess is that it is this time that the lights most enjoy as those of us moving around can see them in uninterrupted glory.  We aren't dodging cars  or cars dodging other cars...just we and thee.  It is as if we have this show to ourselves.

Gradus ad Parnassum

We have a friend who came here as a youngster and has now moved literally halfway across the world from our Village. He has come back on occasion and graced us with a picture of his wife climbing these 67 steps.

Now that winter is approaching and the north wind off the Sound will be howling, it may be a good thing to venture out to these steps before they get too icy and just take a look.

Finding them is half the trick but if you go north out of the Village on Main Street and follow some of those roads that run north off the highway, we venture you will find the top. It is up to you to climb down and then totally up to you to make your way back.

Ulmer Beer Mystery Solved - sorta

A short while back, we published this picture and talked about Ulmer Beer - noting that Ulmer seemed to be the only beer in town and in research found that The Sterling Bottling Co., bottled the beer that came out here in barrels on the Long Island Rail Road.  We felt like Sherlock Holmes incarnate.

Now we find that there is more to the story and we really missed the obvious....that is if we can ever make the deduction that the Ulmer's of brewery fame had something to do with our village other than shipping it beer.

We looked at the 1910 phone book to see if there was truly an Ulmer living in our midst and couldn't find one.  Mr. Petty, who owned the above pictured wagon to deliver his bottled brews was there but no Ulmer. So when this picture from about the same time popped up, our brain wheels actually started to move a bit.

It seems that we not only had an Ulmer Building but an Ulmer Block; beverage store on the corner, the fashion store in the middle and the A&P Grocery on the end.   The photo is clearly labeled the Ulmer Block, Greenport, NY.

We searched Ancestry.com for leads and found none.  The Ulmers of Brooklyn fame are in the middle of countless Ulmers in that neck of the woods so we are at a loss. But that is something we enjoy. Everyone loves a mystery.

Our journey this morning takes us to the Ulmer Block on other business and we are going to nose around some...see what is up...magnifying glass to the ready, cap on, cloak, no pipe....here here my dear Watson.

We'll report to you later.

Notes from our far flung correspondents

We received a very nice note from Rick Boutcher who lives in Asingan in the Philippines.  He reports that it is about a 7 hour drive north of Manila and one of the few places left on earth where one can see the Milky Way. 
Rick is a retired physics professor and during his early years used to spend summers in Greenport.  He comes back on occasion and always visits. This is his wife, Priny, on a visit to the 67 steps on the sound.  He remembers when Main and the North Road's intersection was a round-about and I'm banking that he has a lot of other memories of the village from 60 years back and I've asked him to write to us on occasion and share them.

We were discussing memories just the other day. Events, days, gatherings etc., that took a long time to unfold are just snippets now, at best a glimpse but full of smells and sounds, the air on the skin so to speak but distilled or rendered down to an essence; a sauce in a pan reduced by 1/2.

We are of course pleased that he found us at http://www.greenportvillage.com/ and that he is writing us now and then.  We wish others would as well because it is a pleasant thought that when we scatter to the winds and find ourselves at nearly the other side of the world, the village will have a mystical draw on our senses.

Rick reports that his grandparents are buried in Stirling Cemetery having passed in the middle 60s. They lived on Carpenter Street, and we presume it was from there that he launched his summer adventures.  I'm certain we will hear more about all of this as he has promised to write and send pictures.

We will eagerly await them.

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.

Eagle Hose

We have tried to figure out where in our village this shot was taken .... well...where it was shot....and when.  So many mysteries.

We went to a clothing expert of sorts who places the dresses at about 1900.  Perhaps they were shopping at the one local millinery store we know of from then, Ms. M.K.Baileys over on Main Street or perhaps from a catalogue long gone and forgotten.  We do note a few things in the photograph to give us a clue, one being the prominent sign "carriages" dead center and, on close look, the fire crew is leading horse drawn fire wagons in the back but all that is pretty dim.

Looking closely, we noted a wire in the top left of the photo. AHA.  Well at the time in question, we found a Greenport Telephone directory and found three "livery" listings (no carriages) but figured we were on the right track.  One belonged to Mr. H.E. Young on Front Street, another "Young", this time Leander J. on Railroad Avenue and the last being G. Thomas Black's establishment on Central Avenue.  All of these establishments were on the wire - all connected - no cell phones even imagined, no text, just a lone operator at a switchboard plugging in connectors that lead to the lines, what few there were.

We don't think that this is Front Street because it had buildings lining it for a long way.  We also don't thing that this is Central Avenue although that is our second choice but would have to wonder that zig-zag parade route would take Eagle Hose into that part of town.  We think this is on railroad avenue up a bit from front and that would make some sense if not for the fact there is no railroad avenue in Greenport but the old railroad yard was at the end of the present 3rd street so we think this might be along that way. The telephone to the station would make sense as it would to the livery - always a great business at that time - "can you bring our carriage out and have it ready at 5pm sharp".

The pride on the faces is without mistake.  Membership in an organization like this carries that with it as a given.  The drums rat-a-tat-tat, the cornets fan faring and the bass brass ompahing must have been a smash on parade.  Ladies in their finery and fashion, parasols to the sun, leaves aglow with sunlight and something coming over the telephone wire, the parade is underway, out quickly and watch it.

Operator:  Number please

Us:  the Leander Livery on Railroad please.

Operator:  Please hold the line.

Grand daughters and tall tales

After dinner the other night a grand daughter in our company took us outside - I think to be away from the grownups and their talk. It was a girl's night reunion with, counting her, 4 generations of the female part of the family and 3 were dearest and closest friends visiting. These three have visited middle summer every year for almost a score of years and.....well we are lucky to have them come and be so nice. But back to one of the grand kids..

We went outside and of course the fireflies are in full bloom and carefully explained to her that when we were kids we used to capture them in a jar and make firefly lanterns out of them. She looked perplexed and we couldn't blame her because the entire idea of capturing one of these wonders seems to be just a bad idea from the get go. We did decide that when fireflies light up they are just talking to one another in some sort of star trek code - something that is possibly true but we don't know for sure and its not important other than its a nice thing to think about. We humans do pretty much the same thing when we talk to someone we like ... our little lights go off then too.

The stars were just coming out and it was opined that they were really fireflies who flew very high so they wouldn't end up in some little girl's jar and they kept their light on so their friends could find them. "No. They are stars". "No, they are fireflies way up high". And on it went.

We had a full moon that rose out of the ocean to the east and she asked if that could be a firefly too. The moon hung so perfectly that she could see the "face" and we agreed that it was just someone who loved fireflies and was up there watching them.

Some nights it pays to grow old, grand daughters in tow, tall tales of fireflies, stars and the man in the moon; laughter from the dinner table from old friends and family just enjoying things and the full attention of a child, brain all full of imagination, living in a world that we want to be so perfect for her that fireflies in a jar when they could be stars in the night sky, looked upon by the man in the moon, seems like a bad idea.

Life's a Carousel

A few year's back Greenport launched an ambitious waterfront restoration project centering around Mitchell Park - a great stretch of land right in the center of the village and, in honesty, something of an abandoned space.  Long ago it hosted the Mitchell Marina and Restaurant that fell upon fire and hard times.  The then Mayor, David Kapell had a splendid vision for the area - to make it a park and to extend and repair the wharfs on the waterfront into a village marina. Well the transformation  took a bit but now - well its maturing and pretty darn neat.

In the center of it rests a carousel and not just any carousel.  Grumman - the aircraft/aerospace company (now Northrup) - owned it. It dates back, we have heard, to the 30s and Grumman acquired it in the 50s for use at events.  When they (Grumman) pretty much packed up and moved west, the Carousel was left to sit in a shed and Mr. Kapell noticed it. Long story short, it found its way to Mitchell Park through Mr. Kapell's efforts and now,  here in the center of our little village, commands the spot of a jewel in the crown. A lookout; horses in place to ride off in all directions and riders at the ready.

It sounds like a carousel should sound and the horses clip along at a good pace. There is even a brass ring to catch and seats for the grownups who aren't into mixing it up on horseback.  We can walk by, on this walkway in the picture and hear the music and the whoops of kids at full gallop. On a bright evening, it nearly drowns out the moonlight.

We  wonder about the horses in all this. They have seen a lot things over the years - mostly carnivals and picnics during their early years followed by some neglect and we imagine loneliness without a 3 year old in the saddle hanging on for dear life. In their resurrection, they fly around in their circles and look out of windows at a great view of a very old harbor made new and shinning, are cared for and adored by a great many kids and an equal number of adults, and pretty much are having the times of their lives.

We think so anyway.  It is a very pleasant thought.

Haett(s)

The royal wedding was certainly a nice event to watch,  and the young couple seem like just plain ordinary folks. They would fit in well in our village. The future king and his brother are, well;  hail fellows well met types or so they seem. Kate is a real dazzler. 
The only commotion came from some rather (to our eyes) amazing hats and to be historical about it -  haetts - or hottrs - (or that Red Hat of the Cardinals). It appears that hats came about as a "toss-up" between protection from the inclements, a sign of office or perhaps rank, and a hood of sorts - probably the oldest meaning.  We assume that someone looked "really spiffy" in a hat at one point and they became fashion statements. 

Never stopping at understatement when excess can be reached, a few of the females who went to Kate's wingding pulled out all the stops.  We all got a good chuckle but that was and is the tradition there and,well, good for them...although we note that some wore them better than others.

Rummaging around in some archives in our village, we came across a picture of a few of the local aristocracy from some years back and we point out that the English have nothing on any of them.  We don't know the names or the reason for the portrait but it had to be our version of a royal wedding at the very least but I won't make up a story when a picture will do.

If anyone has any information whatsoever about this, please let us know as frankly we are dying of curiosity.  It had to be some pumpkins of an event - furs, feathers and haetts.  In some odd way these women look smashing.  We do hope that the picture was taken on the coldest night of the year.

We do note in amazement that the two women in the front seem to be in variations of the same dress......

Of Trains

The links between New York City and the far east end of Long Island are about 175 years old.  Serious history.  The North Fork had a huge train yard at the far end of it in Greenport and trains would be loaded on ships or barges for the trip across Long Island Sound to Connecticut.  In turn, everything from whale oil to oysters, potatoes to cabbages were shipped to New York.  The Long Island Railroad's "main line" ends here but it is a shell of its former glory with just a few passenger trains a day making the two hour trip to Penn Station.

Most of us have family influenced by the railroads.  One might have to go back a few generations to find it, but someone traveled to somewhere on it to start a new life or escape an old one.  Some celebrate railroads with nostalgia - railroad enthusiasts abound and perhaps there is no more ubiquitous symbol of Christmas morning than setting up a new train set around the tree, conductor cap firmly in place, tiny fingers on the rheostat - engine at the ready.   All Aboard.

Just a little village history - what's in a picture

We take lots of pictures now that we aren't developing film and, being a generation of instant gratification - well its snap it now and it is on Facebook in a minute or less. Old black and whites, the staple of the Brownie Camera from youth produce really magical "snaps" and these treasures are everywhere for the looking.

While rummaging around in the Stirling Historical Societies collection at the Floyd Memorial Library we found this photo of our local movie theater.  In an attempt to label it right, it needed a date or some way to place it in time.  Well the Metro was the Metro for decades so the name was of no help. However, on the far right of the picture there are three "billboard" panels and the one on the far right of the three announces the movie "The Forgotten Law". Aha. The picture dates from November or so of 1922. Bingo.

The Forgotten Law (plot unknown) starred a fellow name Milton Sills.  Sills was from Chicago and wealthy AND smart. Before he caught the limelight he taught at the University of Chicago but was lured away by a touring stage company and eventually Broadway and on to silent movies.  This 1922 production was one of his early movie appearances and in his brief but highly regarded career he was some pumpkins although how someone gets critical acclaim as an actor in a silent film melodrama - well its like watching the soap operas without the sound  - at least to me.

There was a era when lives like this could happen although so remote given the nature and demands of our times.  It seems we all had a college acquittance who literally packed up his bag and his Royal typewriter and moved to New York City to become a writer; silly because you could write from your basement for that matter and no sense living in a La Boehme melodrama if you didn't have to but he went and probably did ok.

So here is this Milton Sills who walks away from a wealthy "swells" life and the prestige of being a professor at what was then and is now a superb University to get in front of a crowd and then a camera and actually do it.

You can see his star on the Hollywood walk of fame and you might wonder who the heck he was. Now you know. He was the guy starring in the film playing at the Metro that had a printed billboard up in front of the theater in November, 1922 - 90 years ago give or take. Oh - the GPS for the Star is 34.101747, -118.326453. He's buried in Chicago.

He died playing tennis with his wife in Santa Barbara.