Upstate 2012

Have you ever gone some place and thought you'd been there before? Well it happened to me over the weekend.

   In 1966, my parents bought a farm in West Fulton, NY for about $9,000.00. A tighty sum back then. I remember my parents raiding Karl and my piggy banks of all the cash to help come up with the down payment. real story,mom I didn't make it up.
   Zoom a few years into the future and we are all in  our twenties and Karl and Eric are having a feud that will last several years.
   A few years later, my Dad has died and my mom decides she can't afford the property and divides it up among the children. Karl and Eric are still having problems, so He gets several acres to the east and Eric, Ruth and I get the house and the remaining property. Ruth is tired of fighting and wants little or nothing to do with it. It causes problems among the three of us, so my mother decides to sell the property and Eric is given first choice, because he has the money.

   Around this time I sell Muller Dairies and I try to give my mother the money she invested in the dairy and half of the sale price. I came up short, but in all of this I ended up giving my mother back the 10 grand for the farm.
   Move a few more years in the future and Eric tries to fix the foundation once and for all. One thing leads to another and after somewhere north of $50,000.00, a complete remake of the house setting it up for the next century, but it is no longer the house I have known for over 40 years. I'm not saying He did anything wrong in the restoration, it is just not the house I knew and I guess since I don't own it it don't matter. He put in  new windows, nice and big, insulated the wall, added heating and stoves, siding, new walls. The end of the house fell off the main section and he rebuilt it, all different. He moved the door, added windows and got rid of the wood shed. There is added space, but it seems smaller some how. There was no space to get away from people like there used to be.

   Now the girls had a fun time and they can't wait to go back again. Teri and I slept  in the new family room/kitchen/dining room. Nastia and Elena started out in the side bedroom off the dinning room. Elena kept tossing and turning some I moved Nastia to where we were sleeping. The next night Elena joined us and slept with her mother.
  It was raining and cold the whole weekend. The girls tried to go fishing and had no luck. They ran around with Dennis and his friend and had a good time. They played monopoly and I had to end it to send them to bed.
   We went to the Stone Fort in Middleburg and I had a good time. I think the girls were bored. They had different guns that they showed how they changed over the years. They had a Teddy Roosevelt impersonator. I only saw a few minutes but he was good.

   Someone challenged Nastia to walk down the driveway at night, she got maybe twenty feet before they came back. The next day both kids wanted to walk the driveway. They took a walkie-talkie with them. When they got to the end of the driveway, I went to pick them up and gave them both a driving lesson just like my mom did when we were young. I might have started Elena at twelve a little young, but I think she will remember it as will Nastia as I remember the first time my Dad let me move the car in the driveway.