The
June 5, 2013
Countryy Editor
Volume 1 Number 8
North
Just good reading
Try a little
Take a
kindness
Hike
~ Page 2
~ Page 4
Man found new side of wife in writing memoir ~ Page 3
Traditions and memories by Emily Enger On a bleak December day 70 years ago, my grandfather jumped from a ruined B-17, a cold Minnesota farm boy tumbling from the sky into occupied Greece. That image is hard for me
to picture because I remember him stooped, impossibly old to my little eye, and far too gentle to be a radio gunner in a fighter plane. This year I spent Memorial Day in the garden. It wasn’t the traditional
cemetery visit or parade, but I found it quite fitting. The man who taught me how to garden was the same man wounded that December day, the same man who spent a year and a half writing hopeful lies to his mother from a Nazi prison camp and the same man whose government forgot to decorate him until shortly before his death. The quiet man who never spoke about any of it — the man I think of every Memorial Day. To many people, Memorial Day is an appropriate gardening day. It’s a long weekend and marks the beginning of consistent warmth. My grandpa never had the patience to wait until May to do the planting, though. He mail ordered his seeds mid-winter. Come spring, he started them in cut up milk cartons on his window sill. His dirtstreaked laundry room was as much a part of spring as the melting snow. Of course, when you plant early, you typically harvest early, as well. Grandpa’s garden always seemed like the first in our area to produce, with
yields enough to end world hunger! Some days, I’d get to be his helper, riding along in the passenger seat of his little pickup truck to deliver vegetables to his neighbors... and his neighbor’s neighbors, and their out-of-state friends unlucky enough to be visiting when we arrived. Nobody could refuse my grandpa. The tassled corn in these people’s own gardens was turning the tell-tale shade of brown even as they accepted my grandpa’s corn. But if a quiet old man and his little blonde granddaughter showed up on your doorstep with five gallon pails of homegrown produce... would you really be able to say ‘no thank you?’ This year, my husband and I busted up new soil for our first garden. He worked harder than I did. I stripped off my gloves to kneel in the soil and let a wor m slink across my palm while he used a spade to turn over the sod. In my excitement and lack of sensitivity, I continually pushed for him to do more, to expand the garden’s size.
See Traditions page 2
PRSRT STD ECRWSS U.S. POSTAGE PAID EDDM RETAIL
Search for a stolen Stingray
PRESORTED *****************ECRWSSEDDM**** FIRST CLASS MAIL Local POSTAGE PAID US Postal Customer UTICA, NY PERMIT NO 55
by Terry Berkson
The year, 2013, marks the 50th anniversary of the Corvette Stingray. In August, sixty-three first year Stingrays have been chosen to be assembled under the same tent in Carlisle, PA. Mine will be one of them, not because its condition is so pristine but because of the following story: The police treated the theft of my ‘63 roadster routinely, but I wasn’t insured. For days I checked out Brooklyn’s dumping grounds for stolen cars. I put reward ads in newspapers. A bus driver spotted a matching Corvette and took the plate number. The police computer showed the car was registered to a man I’ll call Higby who lived near the garage where the car had been spotted. I’d park nearby and walk past wearing different shirts and hats. I wanted to crash the door to rescue my car but I doubted if I’d get out alive. Finally, I flagged down a police cruiser and told officer Joe McCormack my story. He found that prior to the recent resurrection, the Higby car hadn’t been registered for seven years. Its vehicle identification number was probably taken from a wreck
and installed on my Corvette. Later, I got a call from a car dealer in New Jersey saying that a man had brought in a Corvette that fit the description in my reward. The guy was supposed to return to complete the sale and the dealer asked me for details to I.D. the car.
I gave him several, including the new V.I.N. He said he’d get back to me. “Wait,” I said. “What’s your name?” “Sam Ashkin,” he said. I checked and there was no listing for
See Stingray page 4