Nassau Barbers

In my earliest memories of getting a professional haircut, probably sometime in the mid-1940s, there were two barbers in Nassau. Lou’s barbershop was on Chatham Street, just a little south of Albany Avenue. I remember that he was a quiet man, and my father took me there only a couple of times. The shop closed abruptly in the late 1940s because Lou cut some customer’s hair completely off, and shortly after that, he was committed to a mental institution where he later died.

The other barbershop was run by Joe Sauca, a very outgoing Italian man who had a shop on the south side of Albany Avenue, just east of Alice and Artie’s bar. That shop had two chairs, although for many years only Joe worked there. When my father took me for a haircut, he also got his own haircut and a shave. It was very common then to have the barber shave men, although I never really understood why since the men shaved themselves the rest of the time. Shaving involved a ritual: After the haircut, Joe would take a hot damp towel and completely cover his customer’s face with the barber’s chair in a semi-reclined position. While initially, Joe used shaving soap in a cup lathered up with a shaving brush, I believe that the practice eventually ended for sanitary reasons, since the brush went from customer to customer. The shaving brush was replaced with a black electric machine that spewed a rich hot lather. After Joe shaved his customer with a straight razor, which he frequently stropped on long belts of leather attached to the chair, the remaining lather was washed away with the towel, and bay rum liberally applied by hand over the customer’s face.

In June 1953, Joe died at the age of 41. He was on vacation in Maryland and was fishing on a bridge with his wife. When a gust of wind blew a package of fish hooks into the roadway, he attempted to retrieve it but was struck by a passing truck and sustained fatal injuries. Joe’s son, Chuck Sauca, dropped out of high school and enrolled in a barber training course. After a few months, Chuck got his barber’s license and ran the shop for several years. As a teenage barber, he didn’t always use great judgment and infuriated one mother when he gave her son a “Mohawk” haircut.

Chuck died in his late 40s of natural causes, and the shop was sold.

I

New York's Preparation for Nuclear War

During my 1961 summer break from law school, I took a position with the New York State Department of Health Office of Medical Defense in Albany.  The official in charge was James H. Lade, M.D., a longtime employee of the department whose previous position included syphilis control.  When I first came on the job, Dr. Lade explained that his office’s primary mission was to take charge of medical catastrophes in the event of a nuclear war.   The office had been created on July 29, 1950, during the cold war “to draw up plans for the mobilization of medical resources in the case of enemy attack.”  It was initially funded, in part, by the Defense Production Act of 1950.

 

One of my first jobs was to accompany another employee to a warehouse in Cohoes to inventory hospital equipment and medicine.  I was told that there were similar stockpiles throughout the state, some in state prisons.

 

Following the inventory, I questioned Dr. Lade why the stockpile of medicines had expiration dates of 1952 and 1953.  Dr. Lade replied that the Office of Medical Defense was created from the fear of a nuclear attack.  Hospital equipment and various Medicines and hospital equipment were quickly acquired and stored, but as tensions eased, the legislature did not appropriate funds to restock medicines or maintain or purchase updated hospital equipment.  I asked Dr. Lade when, after a nuclear attack, he would know when to come out of his bomb shelter to take charge of distributing the medicines and equipment.  He just laughed and told me that he had no bomb shelter, as he believed that no one would survive such an attack.  He said he didn’t even know if the hospital equipment would still work since it had been stored in various places and never routinely checked.

 

Now I wonder whether, later in this decade, there will be warehouses filled with obsolete ventilators, masks, gloves, and other Covid-19 paraphernalia that we are now acquiring but may be deemed unnecessary after a vaccine is invented and put into universal use.

May 13, 2022 Update:  We now have vaccines, but are warned that it is unlikely that covid variances will never go away, and there will likely be more pandemics in the future.

 

 

 

Junior's Business

On Thanksgiving Day in 1979, Peter Gibson and I formed a partnership to build a garage and office in the town of Hoosick, Rensselaer County, and lease it to Niagara Mohawk Power Corp, the local electric utility.  That was followed by similar deals in Saratoga and Essex County.  The partnership eventually became a corporation and later a limited liability company.  While we started out constructing the garage/office facilities, we soon ventured into land development, and over the years developed more than 200 residential lots in developments that we created from rural farms.  We also purchased other properties that we could divide and sell.

One such property that we purchased in the mid-1980s was a house and adjoining vacant lot located at the northeast corner of the intersection of Rte. 2 and Rte. 278 in the hamlet of Clums Corners in the Town of Brunswick, Rensselaer County.  We sold the house and set about to sell the vacant lot, which had desirable frontage on both Rte. 278, and also on a county highway.  The lot was zoned for commercial use but was subject to the town’s planning board approval process for any construction or development.

We soon found the ideal purchaser: Dake Bros, Inc. was a Saratoga County-based corporation that was developing an expanding base of stores similar to 7 -11 stores, called "Stewart's Shops" but featured its own brand of milk and ice cream, as well as some fast food items, cigarettes, candy, etc.  It had one other store in the town, which also sold its brand of gasoline.  We signed a purchase contract at a favorable sales price, but it contained a contingency that provided that the purchaser could cancel the sales contract if the Planning Board did not approve the installation of gasoline pumps.

Unfortunately, a garage that was located a short distance away that fronted on Rte. 2, and was owned by a local man, Mr. Hudson, sold gasoline in addition to its car service and repair business.  Mr. Hudson was against the impending competition, especially since the Stewart’s Shops sold gasoline at a discounted price.  As a local resident with family members who were voters in the town, he sought protection, and as a result the Planning Board, while approving the construction of the Stewart’s Shop, denied permission for it to sell gasoline.  As a result of this denial, the purchaser terminated the contract and we lost the sale.

Peter and I decided to fight back.  Since the lot was zoned for commercial use, planning board site approval was only required when the use included the construction of a building greater than 100 square feet.  We decided to open a tongue in cheek business on the site, which Peter named “Junior’s” after Junior Staples, a character in a country music/comedy show called “Hee-Haw”, that ran for about 7 years starting in the 1960s but had about 21 years in syndication.  “ In that show, the Junior Staples character was a used car salesman of questionable ethics. 

Peter had a small shack put together on the lot, together with a large sign that had removable letters.  A friend of his, who disliked the political establishment, was in the tent rental business and donated an old, torn tent that he erected on the lot.  Peter had an old rusty bulldozer and some wrecked cars brought to the sales lot, and every couple of days we would meet and change the sign.  The telephone number on the sign was one shown on the Hee-Haw show to call to purchase copies of the show.   This shows our “sales office” which was under the 100 square foot requirement for a building permit.  A tent was erected and a bulldozer brought to the lot.   The tent was not in the best condition, but it certainly was visible.

 Like a used car salesman on the Hee-Haw show, Junior needed some merchandise, which a local junkyard donated.

 




By this time the weeds were growing up and the site was becoming a real eyesore.  The building in the background is the high school, and there was a lot of traffic associated with it.  Clums Corners is on the main highway between Troy, New York, and Williamstown, Massachusetts.


The Brunswick town supervisor, Romeo Naples, controlled the planning Board and the town government.  We started calling the town government “Romeo’s Circus.”  

The neighbors were up in arms over what we had done, but many in the town (especially those who didn’t like Mr. Naples or the town government) were highly amused and supportive. People from other parts of the town drove by to see what changes were being made to the sign and what was being added to Junior’s inventory.  Even the local newspapers started carrying the story.  The rumor was out that we were going to bring some goats or sheep and stake them out on the site. 

Finally, either Supervisor Romeo or the chairman of the town Planning Board called Dake Bros, Inc., and asked them to buy the lot from us, with the promise that the Planning Board would promptly permit the sale of gasoline at the site.  The contract was reinstated, and upon closing of title, Junior’s went out of business. The Stewart’s Shops there does a thriving business.

                                        Flyers that were passed out

Pittstown in Wikipedia

 I always enjoyed injecting a bit of humor about the Town of Pittstown, Rensselaer County, where Nedda and I lived for several years in two different homes that we built.  Pittstown is very rural and very small town in its thinking.  Our company, Tomhannock, LLC, owned by Nedda, Peter Gibson, and me added hundreds of home sites here and substantially increased the town’s tax base, frequently over the objection of natives who dislike our changing unused land into productive housing opportunities for families.

 Once I happened upon the Wikipedia entry for the town and decided to have a bit of fun by adding to its demographic description that the average IQ was 68. I used the name of a local junk dealer who the town government was battling over his violations of town law.   That modification prompted the following entry, later deleted, but still available:

Talk: Pittstown, New York

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“The current page lists the average IQ of this town as 68. Assuming this IQ is the "Intelligence quotient" discussed in a Wikipedia article of the same name, this puts the average IQ of this town in the "mildly retarded" range, which is difficult to believe. No reference is cited for this data. I recommend its deletion.

D. Clippinger (a proud resident of Pittstown)”

“D. Clippinger obviously has not carefully researched the unusual 20th-century history of Pittstown. Sparsely populated by many Hessian mercenaries who defected after the Battle of Bennington (actually fought in the adjacent town of Hoosick, in northern Rensselaer County, New York), the town’s industry and sparse population greatly declined with the end of stove manufacturing toward the end of the 19th century, making Pittstown one of the more economically distressed areas in upstate New York.

In an attempt to bolster employment, the New York State Office of Tuberculosis and Pox (later the New York State Department of Health) chose to locate two large tuberculosis sanatoriums there, one in the hamlet of Raymertown in 1873, and later, one in Valley Falls. Although these sanatoriums initially had large patient populations, tuberculosis was substantially controlled by the forerunners of modern antibiotics. Many sanitariums closed, including those in Pittstown. The Valley Falls sanitarium remained vacant until destroyed by fire during the blizzard of 1931, but the larger, Raymertown Sanatorium, located on the Troy - Bennington Turnpike (on the site of what is now the Sterup Square strip mall) was converted into a facility for the mentally ill and hopelessly retarded, named the Morgenstern Hospital.

During October 1936, a series of investigative articles appeared in the Albany Knickerbocker News that revealed that widespread use of an experimental drug made of lithium, mushroom extract, and anisette at the facility had aphrodisiac qualities, and as a result, the patients engaged in promiscuous, unprotected sex. Many female patients became pregnant and gave birth to children at the hospital. Many of the babies born to them looked normal but suffered mental retardation, and in some cases, Brewer's droop. Most were adopted out to people in the community, mainly to farmers who needed large families to help with chores. The infamy resulting from the newspaper disclosure caused the government to order the hospital to be closed and ultimately torn down when the highway was widened in 1952. These adopted children grew to adulthood, married, and for the most part stayed within the Pittstown community, as did their baby boomer offspring and their grandchildren. Also, many of the mentally ill and retarded patients were simply released to the community when the facility closed, and many of them stayed in Pittstown or neighboring Brunswick.

During the mid-1990s the admissions office of Hudson Valley Community College, a county-sponsored college in Troy, noted that an unusually high percentage of applicants from the Hoosick Valley Central School, the Brunswick Central School District, and to a lesser extent, the Hoosick Falls Central School, did not meet the community college’s modest requirements for admission, and notified the New York State Education Department. That agency applied for and received a grant from the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare for a study, which was conducted in the towns of Pittstown, Hoosick, and Brunswick in conjunction with the 2000 U.S. Census. Although the residents of Hoosick and Brunswick tested in the low to the mid normal range of intelligence, the average IQ in Pittstown was found to be 68, using the Stanford-Binet IQ test. Educators concluded that the unusually low average IQ was due both to two centuries of intermarriage, and the many descendants of the persons previously born to

or confined at the Morgenstern Hospital.”

“My understanding is that the Valley Falls sanitarium was destroyed by fire in the Knickerbocker Storm of 1922. I can understand your confusion, as the facilities were the subject of arson in 1931 (alleged to have been set by vandal farmers from the town of Nassau, but never proven).”

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pittstown%2C_New_York"

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Death, Taxes, and 9/11

I have been a co-trustee of some trusts that were created by two very successful real estate businessmen.  They were both attorneys, admitted to the New York State bar before I was born.  They made their fortunes as partners in real estate, originally buying slum properties in Troy, New York, but later, years before I became their general counsel, they shed that part of their business and invested in multifamily apartment projects, originally in the capital district of New York, but eventually acquiring properties in several states.  When they started their business, there were certain tax and liability advantages to put the title to the properties in small “C” corporations, which eventually numbered more than fifty.  As a result of tax law changes, and because it became difficult to manage the number of corporations, I consolidated the corporations into two holding companies.

As property values increased, the partners were able to refinance the properties multiple times.  Each time they refinanced, they were able to pay off the existing mortgages and retain very substantial funds.  Refinance proceeds are not taxable, so these corporations grew in value as the refinance proceeds enabled them to expand their holdings, and continually increase the value of the holding companies.  But there was a downside to the plan:  Upon the death of the partners, there were no family members who could continue the operations of the holding companies, which were owned by the partners’ trusts.  Selling the properties, either individually or in bulk created a huge financial problem.  The proceeds of such a sale would first be used to pay off existing mortgages, but there was a huge capital gains tax bill that would come into effect when the properties were sold, since the refinance proceeds that were retained at the time of refinancing tax-free lowered the “cost basis” of the properties, and the gain, and thus the tax, was more than could be realized by the sale. 

Fortunately, our New York City counsel came up with a solution.  They knew of a wealthy businessman, a CPA, who had figured out a method of avoiding the capital gains tax on a sale and purchased the holding companies from the trusts for a sum which netted the trusts' cash in the mid-eight-figures.  Suddenly, the trusts were flush with cash to invest for the benefit of the partners’ families, the ultimate beneficiaries. 

Trustees must be prudent in making the investment of trust funds.  This normally involves dividing funds between fixed-income investments (bonds or bond funds) and equities (stocks or managed stock funds).  It is also prudent to spread the investments among various brokers to get the benefit of a variety of investment options and advisory opinions.

One of the brokers with whom the partners and the trusts had previously used in Albany suggested that we go to the New York City office to speak with the company’s team of investment specialists.  That office was located in the World Trade Center.  We arranged for a morning meeting on September 11, 2001, a date that the man who had purchased the holding companies was going to host a celebratory dinner for us. 

September 11 was a Tuesday.  My original plan was to take the 7:00 a.m. Amtrak from Rensselaer to Manhattan, meet up with the other trustees and the broker’s Albany representative and go together to the Trade Center for the mid-morning meeting.  However, after the arrangements had been made, I remembered that September 11 was Primary Day in New York State, and I wanted to vote in the primary election because of its potential effect on the forthcoming local election.  According, I contacted the other parties and pushed the meeting back to early afternoon so that I could take a later train to New York City.

After returning from voting in the primary election, I returned home to gather my materials for the meeting.  As I was preparing to leave our home, my wife called me to look at the television, which was reporting the first airplane that hit the north tower of the World Trade Center.  At that time, it was thought to have been an accident that would have an effect on a few floors of one of the tower buildings.  I did not immediately believe that it would necessarily cause my meeting, in Building 7 of the World Trade Center, to be affected, and I still planned to go to New York City, if only for the planned dinner party. 

Then the second airplane hit the south tower, and I realized that the meeting or the dinner would never be held, and like millions of others around the world, I spent the next hours and days watching the horrible destruction the terrorists had brought as they struck the Pentagon in Washington, and the airplane brought down by passengers in Pennsylvania to prevent it's hitting an intended target in Washington, D.C.

         

Our Beef Cattle Experience

In 1972 my wife and I built a home on 90 acres in the Town of Pittstown. The property bordered the Town of Hoosick and was on Warren Cemetery Road, a gravel road that many locals didn’t even know existed. I bought the property, sight unseen, in 1970 for $990.00, including title insurance. A neighboring farmer rented part of the land for corn farming, but quite a bit was an open field.

In the spring of 1976, a client, Lou Curtis (Gail Akins’ father), suggested it would be a great place to raise some beef cattle, which he said would be better quality than supermarket meat. It sounded like a good idea, and I engaged two teenage boys, William Doyle III and his brother, James*, to build a barbed-wire fence to enclose an area an acre or so in size. The fenced-in area had no pond, but it was downhill from a hand pump on a dug well that had previously served a house on the property destroyed by fire decades before. I bought a water trough from Agway and a couple of hundred feet of hose and created a siphon from a 5-gallon pail by the pump to the water trough.

My wife and I went to the Chatham Auction with Lou and bought two young steers that he selected, a white Charolais and a Hereford. Lou arranged to have them delivered to our “cattle ranch.” We gave our two older sons the chore of pumping water into the siphon system to ensure a good supply of water to the steers, and every afternoon they would bring them buckets of grain. Our boys enjoyed giving the steers the grain but weren’t thrilled with having to pump water to them every day.

One day my wife and I returned home from work to find our youngest son alone on the porch. We asked where his after-school babysitter was, and he pointed to the fenced area and said the cows got out.

We saw our sons and the babysitter (a female high school senior) and our sons walking across the property towards a neighbor’s field. We followed and found them walking by the two steers trying to herd them back to the fenced-in lot. We also tried, and we weren’t the least bit effective. Finally, I walked back to the house and got a rope and a bucket of grain. I drove my pickup truck down to where the steers were and offered the dominant steer, the Hereford, the grain, which it eagerly took. I tied a rope around its neck and tried to lead it back, but it resisted. Finally, I tied the rope to the back bumper of the pickup truck and slowly drove it back to the fence, with the Charolais trotting behind.** It was an adventure since, occasionally, the Hereford would get wrapped around a tree between it and the truck, and Nedda would have to lead the Hereford away from the tree. After a lot of frustration, we got the steers back into the fenced area and admonished our sons not to leave the gate open again.

When late fall came, we decided that we would not try to winter the animals over. We bought a large freezer for the basement. Lou arranged to have steers picked up and taken to a butcher he knew. Both steers were butchered and cut into the usual beef cuts. Lou and his wife, Martha, and Nedda and I packaged and labeled the meat. We brought a freezer full of beef home, and Lou and Martha took the rest.

It turned out that homegrown beef was no more flavorful and perhaps a bit tougher than the meat we usually bought at Central Market.

*Our fence builder, William J. Doyle III, became an attorney and practices in Brunswick. After 31 years as a New York State Police Officer, James Doyle retired as Station Commander of the Brunswick barracks.

** Nedda remembers this differently. She recalls that at one point we were able to get the Charolais inside the fence. We then led it down to where the Hereford was on the outside of the fence and tried to lead the Charolais back up the field with the Hereford following it on the outside of the fence. This didn’t work and thus we ended up tying the Hereford to the back of the truck. Nedda couldn’t drive the truck so her job was to poke and prod the Hereford along as I drove the truck back to the fenced in area.

It was a long time ago, and memories differ!

Automobiles

The first automobile I remember was my father’s early 1940s Dodge sedan. It was dark blue or black, but I don’t recall much else about it. Dad had bought it used from someone who was going into the Army during World War II. Before the Dodge, the family car had reportedly been a Hudson Terraplane which my father had won in a raffle. Dad said that he and his brother Sam learned to drive together, literally. They had been working in New York City and pooled their money to buy an automobile. I don’t remember the brand of the automobile or the year. Neither of them had ever driven before, and the salesman gave them a quick lesson. They immediately started to drive to the family farm in Nassau, with Sam in charge of steering and stopping, and my father in charge of shifting and adjusting the throttle and spark. He said that the car stalled and neither of them knew how to restart it. Finally, another automobile owner happened upon them and taught them how to crank it to start the engine. He said the trip from New York City to Nassau took about 13 hours. He also spoke 

My Father's Jordan

fondly of an automobile that he once owned, a Jordan Straight Eight. My mother never learned to drive. She was very nearsighted, and that always hindered her attempts to learn. She told me that soon after she was married, she started learning to drive, but gave it up after she hit a horse.

After the war ended, Dad bought a new gray 1946 Buick Super sedan. Cars were in short supply, and he had to pay more than the list price. The Super was Buick’s middle trim level. He had decided to take close Jack's Place for the summer and take the family on a trip across the United States. Shortly before we left for our trip, Love Murphy, an elderly spinster from Pittsfield and a regular Sunday customer at Jack’s Place, my father’s tavern, asked if he had a St. Christopher’s medal for the new car. My father, of course, told her no. She immediately had her driver, Don, drive her back to Pittsfield, about 23 miles, where she got a silver dollar-sized St. Christopher’s medal, had it blessed by her priest, and brought it back to my father, who dutifully pinned it behind the visor. Our Buick was rear-ended three days into the trip in Gary, Indiana.

The Buick Super had many problems. One thing that annoyed my father was the constant rattling noise. Although the dealer couldn’t determine the cause, Dad eventually tracked the problem to a loose round piece of plastic set into the front bumper that identified the vehicle as a “Super”. He wedged toothpicks around the plastic, and that cured the rattle. The following year he traded the car for a 1947 green Buick Roadmaster, the top of the Buick line. He was amused one day soon after buying the new Buick when a customer stopped into Jack’s Place and bragged about a new gray Buick he had purchased. My father told him about all of the problems he had had with his Buick Super. When Dad went out to gas up the customer’s Buick, he found the toothpicks around the back of the Super logo.

My sisters and I all learned to drive on the Buick. Dad first started giving us lessons during a winter stay in Bay Harbor Island, a residential area newly formed by dredging fill from the bottom of Biscayne Bay, just north of Miami Beach. I was almost 10 years old at the time and wasn’t tall enough to look over the top of the steering wheel. Later, at home in Nassau, Sylvia took Driver’s Training in high school and had some lessons in the Buick. She took her driving test in Hudson, New York, in the Buick, and failed, slightly denting the chrome ring around the passenger side headlight in the process. Dad also gave Lelia some lessons, but she never took a driving test until after she was married.

Dad continued to give me driving lessons in Florida. Shortly before my 14th birthday, he signed my application for a learner’s permit, stating that I was already 14, then the minimum driving age in Florida. I took the driving test in Miami Beach soon thereafter and received my Florida license. Of course, it was of no value in New York, where the minimum driving age was 16, but I enjoyed showing it off to my friends. On my 16th birthday, I took the morning off from school and my father took me to Albany to get my learner’s permit. I took the test the following month in Chatham and passed it the first time. In our rural school, taking time off to get a learner’s permit or taking a driving test was an acceptable excuse for missing school.

Although the Buicks were equipped with turn signals, many automobiles did not have them in the 1940s, and they were not recognized in New York as a legal substitute for hand signals: arm out the window with the hand pointed down for slow; straight out for a left turn, and up for a right turn. Windshield wipers were not electric; they operated with a vacuum pump which required that the engine had to be running for the wipes to work. The efficiency of the wipers was dependent upon the strength of the vacuum. When accelerating the vacuum would diminish, and the wipers would slow down. Frequently when accelerating to pass, I would have to momentarily let up on the accelerator to give the wipers a chance to speed up. The transistor had not been invented, and the automobile radio tubes used a significant amount of electricity and had to be replaced occasionally.

I remember that one summer day Dad decided to polish the Buick. We washed it down, and Dad took an old can of DuPont 7 Car Polish to use on the finish. Although the recommended method of polishing a car is to do one section at a time, Dad and I applied the polish to the entire car. Then we tried to wipe it off with rags, but the old polish turned hard and orange in color, and became almost impossible to get off. The car looked hideous, and we finally had to wash it off with the Amoco premium gasoline.

Dagmar

We had the Buick until the fall of 1953 when my father bought his first Cadillac. it was a 1954 white with gray top Model 62 sedan. He bought it at O’Connell Cadillac in Pittsfield when it first came out. He was hesitant about buying a Cadillac since there was a rumor that the purchase of a Cadillac triggered an IRS audit. The Cadillac was our first car with an automatic transmission, GM’s Hydra-Matic. The first time Dad drove it into the garage, he tried rolling slowly in by pushing on the clutch; of course, the Cadillac had no clutch and the car didn’t slow down. The Cadillac continued on and pushed the back wall of the garage out several inches with its “Dagmar bumpers. He hammered the wall back together with a sledgehammer. [The 1954 - 1956  Cadillacs had 2 large conical-shaped extensions to the front bumpers, which were dubbed “Dagmars” in reference to a popular Danish entertainer named Dagmar, who had a very large bosom]

When the Cadillac was about 3 days old I asked my father if I could take it to Nassau to pick up the afternoon mail. He agreed and I drove to the village, about 3 miles away. I was in a hurry to get home since it was almost dusk and I had a junior operator’s license which provided that I could not drive unaccompanied by a licensed operator at least 18 years of age during the evening and nighttime hours. Route 20 was then the main highway between Albany and New England, and the 3-lane highway was heavily traveled by trucks and buses as well as automobiles. As I was traveling home in an easterly direction on the westerly side of Lord’s Hill, there was a long line of slow-moving trucks ahead of me. I decided to pass them and pulled into the center lane of the 3-lane highway. I pressed the accelerator down to the floor to engage the passing gear, and when I did, the hood flew up against the windshield. Fortunately, the driver of the truck that I was passing saw it happen and he stopped so that I could pull over to the side (by looking out the side window of the Cadillac). The driver helped me pull the hood down and had some rope that he used to tie it down. The metal was ripped in part, and the back corners of the hood had gouged into the front fenders. I drove home in tears. Dad was really upset with the condition of his new car and drove it to the dealer the following morning. The hood was replaced with the hood taken off an inventory car. Later, the service manager told my father that the first 2,500 1954 Cadillacs had defective hood latches and that seven deaths were attributed to accidents that occurred when the hoods flew up.  That sedan was replaced with a pink and black 1956 Cadillac Coupe de Ville,  which my father kept until 1959.

Although I had limited use of the Cadillac, I very much wanted the freedom of having my own car. I disliked the long ride on the school bus, and frequently hitch-hiked to and from school. In the late winter of 1954 -1955, I became consumed with the desire to get my own car. I really wanted a “hot” car, such as a 40s Ford coupe with a V8 engine that would roar and go fast. Dad had other ideas about a suitable car for me. Each morning I would read the classified ads and circle those that seemed to be promising. Dad would follow up on them, but there was always a problem. Finally, he found a green 1949 DeSoto 2-door vehicle in good condition. It was a car that had been used in the west and had no rust. He bought it for me for $325.00, and my mother bought me plaid seat covers at the Rayco seat cover store in Menands for my 17th birthday. In selecting this car, my father obviously knew that I wouldn’t win any races in it.

My 1949 DeSoto

The DeSoto had a 6-cylinder engine with a “Gyro-Matic” transmission, the DeSoto version of the Chrysler “Fluid Drive” transmission that had a regular clutch for putting the vehicle into gear, but also a fluid coupling that would permit one to stop at a traffic signal without disengaging the clutch. Also, a gear change was accomplished by accelerating and then taking your foot off the accelerator for perhaps a second or so, until the transmission shifted with an audible “clunk”. The first time I tried racing, John Weaver soundly beat me in his 1938 Plymouth coupe which had a standard transmission. The next time I tried racing, the DeSoto blew a head gasket, and its racing days were over. [Remembering my father's philosophy, when my sons were ready for automobiles of their own, I bought them each a low-powered, automatic transmission Ford Escort.]

1956 Cadillac Coupe de Ville

Dad and I used to go trout fishing in the spring. One Saturday morning we took the DeSoto to go fishing. Rain canceled our fishing, and Dad decided that he would like to look for a new car. We drove to Albany and went to the Wendell Cadillac dealership on Central Avenue. My father asked to look at the new Cadillacs, but the salesman, having seen us drive up in an old DeSoto wearing old clothes, refused to show us the new cars and insisted that we look at used cars. We went home without looking at the used cars. A few days later my parents went to Pittsfield and traded the 1954 Cadillac for a beautiful 1956 Cadillac Coupe de Ville. It was pink with a black top. The upholstery was pink and black nylon with pink leather trim.

It was not too uncommon for automobiles of circa 1950s vintage to have a “valve job” every 35,000 - 40,000 miles. Oil was changed every 1,000 miles, tires were only good for about 12,000 miles, and spark plugs were routinely changed at 10,000 miles. Rust was a major problem in the snow belt country where winter road salt ate away at the automobile body. Replacement rocker panels (the sheet metal below the doors) were stocked for sale at auto parts stores.

As part of the arrangement for my getting the DeSoto, I agreed to teach Sylvia to drive, as she had never received her license. It was a difficult time for both of us. She drove very erratically. The most difficult was teaching her to turn the car around in the required 3 moves. We would drive to Chatham and I would have her practice the maneuver on a side street. However, if she spotted another car coming, she would stop the DeSoto and get out, requiring me to get behind the wheel and complete the turnaround. Under my tutelage, she finally got her license.

That fall I went to college. Freshmen were not allowed to have cars. Sylvia was living at home in Nassau, and she used the DeSoto. By Thanksgiving, she had put 4 or 5 small dents in the car. Sylvia and I shared the use of the DeSoto that summer, but when it came time to return to college, I wanted to have a car. Dad and I went shopping, and again my father rejected my request for a V8 with a standard transmission. Instead, he bought me a blue 52 Packard 2 door sedan. It had a straight eight-cylinder engine with a Borg-Warner automatic transmission. The car was expensive to drive, as it got poor gas mileage and seemed to always be in need of new tires. Like the DeSoto, it did not accelerate quickly, but it was comfortable and had a good radio. Once the brakes failed while I had the car in Syracuse. I couldn’t afford to get it fixed right away, so for a couple of weeks or so I just used the emergency brake to stop. When I needed to slow down quickly, I would put the automatic transmission into reverse gear, which would slow the car down very quickly without grinding anything - sort of like the way a jet engine is reversed on landing.

I drove the Packard during my sophomore and junior years in college. By the end of my junior year, the Packard had reached the end of its usefulness to me, and I started looking for a new car in earnest when I returned to Nassau since I was scheduled to drive to Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, the following month for my 6 week ROTC camp. This time I went shopping by myself and bought a 1954 Mercury coupe from a private owner for $600.00. I don’t recall how I got rid of the Packard. Although it was not the fanciest model, it had a standard transmission, a V8 engine with dual glass pack mufflers, and was lowered in the back to give it a racy profile. I added “moon” hubcaps that I bought at Western Auto, and screwed on replacement rocker panels to cover the rust, although the paint didn’t match very well. It was a great car for stoplight-to-stoplight drag racing on Madison Avenue in Albany. On a Friday or Saturday night, some other teenagers or college students always wanted to drag race from a stoplight. The challenge was simply a revving of the engine, and when the light turned green the race was on. The race would only be to the next stoplight since the lights were timed for 25 mph, and we would always hit the next red light. I enjoyed the Mercury and it never let me down. I used it for a year until I graduated and went into the Army in July 1959. By then I was hesitant to drive the Mercury to Indiana, so I flew to Indianapolis and left the Mercury in Nassau.

When I returned to Nassau in late January or early February 1960, I started a job search and decided to buy a newer automobile. Dad arranged for me to get a loan at the National Commercial Bank and Trust Company, and I bought a used gray 1957 Oldsmobile V8 Super 88 hardtop, with a large V8 engine, Hydra-Matic transmission, and factory-installed dual exhausts. It was very nice looking, with the rear window divided into 3 parts. I think that I paid about $1,400.00 for it, plus the Mercury. Shortly after I bought the car I drove it to Oswego, New York, which is north of Syracuse, on the shore of Lake Erie. Nedda was a freshman at Oswego State College, and I went there to see her for a weekend. Oswego was in the snow belt of New York, receiving lots of “lake effect” snow. On Saturday night we went for a drive on some back road. I pulled onto the shoulder and stopped to neck with her, but afterward, when I tried to drive away, I found that the right tires of the Oldsmobile were stuck in the soft snow, and the wheels just spun. I remember that we had passed a farmhouse about a quarter mile back, so I left Nedda in the car with the engine running to keep her warm and I walked back to the farmhouse. After knocking at the door for a while, the door was finally opened by the farmer, a man who appeared to be in his mid-30s. I told him of my predicament, but he seemed totally disinterested and offered no suggestions as to where or how I could get a tow truck to extricate the Oldsmobile. I was at a loss as to what to do next when I spotted an army reserve or national guard uniform jacket hanging up on a hook by the door. There were sergeant stripes on the jacket, and I asked him if he was in the reserves. He said that he was, and I told him that I was a lieutenant in the Army reserves and had recently come off active duty. His entire attitude changed, and he promptly put on a coat and boots, and brought out a tractor and chains, and towed the Oldsmobile back on the highway.

The Oldsmobile was a sporty automobile, and I used it for very frequent trips to New York City to see Nedda that summer and the following year since she didn’t return to Oswego the following fall, but instead enrolled at a college in New York City. We were married on August 19, 1961, and soon decided that the Oldsmobile was too expensive to maintain while I was in law school. That fall, with some help from Nedda’s parents, we bought a brand new bright blue 1961 Volkswagen. The car had a standard transmission, but the horsepower of the air-cooled 4-cylinder engine had just been increased to 45 horsepower and it was fun to drive. The list price was about $1,800, and I remember that we opted for the optional bumper brace for $5.00. I think that the 1961 VW “Bug” was the first with a standard fuel gauge. Since the engine was air-cooled, it was very uncomfortable in the cold winter, as the heater was never really adequate.

We kept the VW until some time in 1965.  We traded it in shortly before Michael was born because it was too small for both children. In those days we didn’t have special seats for babies or even seat belts, and when Nedda held David on her lap his head would be quite close to the windshield. Next, we bought a new 1965 white Chevrolet Impala coupe. It had a light blue leather interior and a V8 with automatic transmission. It was a nice car, but in 1967 the transmission gave out, and we decided to get a station wagon. We bought a blue Ford Town & Country Station Wagon at the dealer in North Troy. It was a model that had the tailgate open in 2 directions: it would open either as a door swinging open or as a tailgate dropping down. When I brought it home, I went to show Nedda how it worked, and when I opened it as a door it crunched into the fender. I brought it back to the dealer to be repaired, and when they gave it back to me I asked the service manager to demonstrate how it worked. When he did, the “repaired” tailgate also crunched into the fender. After a couple of days, they got it fixed, but the Ford always had problems. The following year it developed a nasty habit of having the headlights turn off for a second or two and then turning back on. I brought it back to the dealer several times, but they couldn’t figure out the problem and advised that I drive carefully at night. This was before the enactment of “lemon” laws. Unhappy with that solution, and tired of driving a station wagon, we went to Pittsfield and bought a very sporty car: a 1968 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme hardtop. It was grey metallic with a black vinyl top, leather seats, a V8 engine with Hydra-Matic transmission. As I became more prosperous, I traded the Oldsmobile for a 1972 Ford Thunderbird. It was a large 2 door sedan, actually built on the same assembly line and sharing most mechanical parts with the Lincoln Mark IV, but with slightly different sheet metal and interior. The Thunderbird was teal with a black vinyl top and red nylon upholstery. It was our first luxury automobile.  I eventually had an accident with the Thunderbird. No one was injured, but there was damage to the passenger side of the vehicle, it took a couple of weeks to get the damage repaired. The accident was largely my fault, but the State Trooper, Gordon Gundrum, pretended he didn’t know me and convinced the other driver that the accident was largely the other driver’s fault.

The Thunderbird was never quite right after the accident, and I eventually traded for a new 1975 or 1976 Chrysler Cordoba 2 door hardtop. It was gold with a white vinyl top and gold “Corinthian” leather seats. Sylvia liked it and bought an exact duplicate. The Chrysler was a sporty car that I enjoyed driving, but it had a mechanical flaw: a computer chip would suddenly fail and the car wouldn’t run. Computer chips were a fairly new item in cars, and the dealer didn’t stock replacement chips. When the problem arose, the dealer would have to report the problem and order a new chip under the warranty. It happened twice to me, and at least once to Sylvia.

My next car was a red 1978 Corvette with a 4-speed standard transmission. I ordered it in mid-1977. I paid $9,700.00. The quality was terrible at delivery. The passenger window didn’t close properly and there was a small tear in the dashboard where it met the windshield. The dealer couldn’t fix the tear, and the regional Chevrolet representative told me that it will get worse each time they try to fix it. I brought a lawsuit against General Motors under the new Magnason Moss Federal Automobile Warranty Act, which provided that the automaker had to replace the car or refund the purchase price if they failed to repair it satisfactorily. By then the 1978 Corvette, its 25th-anniversary edition, became a hot item, and the street price inflated by thousands of dollars. General Motors wouldn’t replace the car and offered to pay me the purchase price. I loved the style of the car and knew that I couldn’t get another without paying much more than I would receive. Finally, I settled with GM for about $2,000.00 and kept the car.

By this time Nedda’s Ford was traded for a Chevrolet Impala station wagon since we needed something large enough for our family of five. The Corvette eventually was traded for a Red 1981 Mercedes diesel sedan, which I drove until 1988 when a college student broadsided it in a rainstorm. Although it was repaired, I was tired of the diesel engine, and I bought a new beige 1988 Mercedes 420 SEL sedan, which I drove until 2000. I leased a white 2000 Cadillac De Ville DTS for 3 years and after that a red 2002 Cadillac Seville STS. When the lease expired, we purchased a Mercedes SUV, followed by a black diesel-powered BMW X5 SUV.

Oldsmobile (after David's accident)

Nedda had a succession of cars. After she got her drivers' license, we bought a used Rambler, but later sold it to a friend and bought a new Ford gray sedan, which she never liked. After the Ford, we bought a blue Chevrolet station wagon for her daily use. This was followed by a red Datsun (later Nissan) sedan and then a red and white Oldsmobile coupe, which David pretty well wrecked at the end of his senior year in high school This was followed by a green Saab 900 sedan.

Saab

The Saab was followed by a leased tan Cadillac Seville. After the Cadillac, Nedda wanted a convertible. We tried several and finally settled on a green 1999 Chrysler Sebring. It was a hassle shipping it to and from Florida, so we kept that Sebring at our New York home and bought a teal 2002 Chrysler which we kept in Florida. Both cars had a “Nedda” vanity license plate. After we sold our New York home in 2004, we moved the New York Sebring to my son Caribou’s garage in Virginia, but it got in the way there and we brought it to Florida. We only had garage space for two cars, and eventually sold one and traded the other towards a 2005 LexusBeach retractable convertible.  We kept that car until the fall of 2020, when we gifted it to our daughter-in-law, Laura.

Tesla Model S

We bought a Tesla Model S in October 2016 and then traded the BMW for a 2017 Lexus RX-350 F Sport SUV on a 3-year lease. 

In September 2020, the Lexus RX-350 lease expired and we took delivery of a red Tesla Model Y.   We now have gone petroleum-free (except for a natural gas home generator).