Letter to the Authors of "A Trip on the Clove Branch Rail Road"

To the authors of "A Trip On The Clove Branch Rail Road" (Year Book, 1976-77) Mrs. Smith and Mr. Strang:

Your article was very interesting and as I read it, noting names familiar of today and of many years ago, one leaves Bangall, going through Bear/"Bare" Market to Stissing where Art Wooster had a store. It is a nice location with several homes today. The school was converted into a dwelling. The farm of the Creswell's comes into view where a hotel and a change of horses that pulled the stage made a good place to stop. It was Wilbur's in the old days and Attlebury Hill Road that led to Hunn's Lake, once Thompson Pond, has its starting. As the train rolls thru a swampy stretch to pass thru Frank Dillinger's Farm and just north of the farm buildings was the tiny Rail Road flag stop. There was no station master here. When feed and supplies for the Carpenter Hill Farm was to arrive by rail, word was sent to Mr. Willson Carpenter at the Homestead on Carpenter Hill, and the teams would come with the rigs or lumber box wagons to pick up the bags. The "summer boarder" business brought vacationers from New York City and New Jersey who either took the "cars" to Bangall or to Attlebury Station with arrangements previously made to be met with "horse and carriage with the fringe on top," or with a buggy called "top buggy" which even had "side curtains" to keep the rain away, and an oil skin lap robe, and off the prancing steed would go to deliver passengers under the capable driver's guidance, to whichever Boarding House, and there were several around "The Lake." The drive was a short one and sometimes only "a walk" if the destination was to Frank Dillinger's Boarding House close by Attlebury Station. It was my privilege to be visiting my aunt, uncle and two cousins one summer to be a party to this "boarder business." "We kids" would scamper to the tiny station about the time the "train time" hour came further announced by the whistle which was heard, if the wind was right, at Stissing. There was one "boarder" from New York, an employee of the United States Rubber Company, who came every Friday afternoon about 6:00. He had lost his right hand in the Company Machinery when a young man. By the time I knew "Mr. Morse" he had a clerical position and stepped from the train with only a small "reticule" and dressed in a nice business suit with a starched color shirt and tie. I always marveled that this kind man could dress himself without any help at all, tie, cuffs, buttoned shirt and shoe strings, for he had no wife and no one assisted him with his attire. "We kids" would eagerly await that Friday evening train for another reason. As we greeted "Mr. Morse" he shook hands with each young one and into his pocket he reached and brought forth a dime for each one! ! With a chorus of "thank you Mr. Morse" we did skip along with this giver of wonderful money which meant on a certain occasion a young lady "boarder" wanted to walk the "track" to Stissing for goodies. My cousin, younger than I

by five years and I was about nine, volunteered to "go too" on a day that proved quite warm, and a couple of weary kids tried not to think of the heel hurts which soon took over and caused several rest times on the return to the Dillinger home, this time via the highway, in case a train should appear on the track and we couldn't get off because there were a couple of trestles up the line, and the boy cousin had a narrow escape one time, which was imprinted upon our childhood memories. Between the Dillinger Farm and Johnny Knoedler's Blacksmith Shop, at the foot of Attlebury Hill, the Irving Mosher's Farm east of the highway, may nave been the sidehill farm, long in the Mosher family and still is. Irving Mosher Jr. and his brother Eugene and their children live on the land of their ancestors, still operating as a dairy farm. Just thought you might like to knowIf one should drive on the Rte #82 from Washington Hollow to Pine Plains, the Dillinger Farm is gone, went up in smoke, leaving 4 chimneys to stand for years, as a stark reminder of a good life with hard work, when the "Pleasant and Easy" locomotive chugged from Bangall, Stissing and Attlebury, dropping a mail bag swinging on a hook, along the way. When the Rail Roads were in operation, our grandparents and grand aunts and uncles, cousins too, traveled about the country better than I can get around to neighboring villages today, and far more reasonably, of course. That "wicked wind" that blew over Stissing Mt. is also referred to in Isaac Huntting's "Little Nine Partners."

Historically, The "Olde Amenia Historian" (Catherine F. Leigh, Town Historian)