Robert Kemp

After graduating from law school and taking the bar exam in 1963, I went to work in Troy for Seymour Fox, an attorney whose office was on River Street. The attorney felt sorry for a 68-year-old man, Robert Kemp, who walked the streets of Troy carrying shopping bags full of papers. He was mostly bald and usually wore a rumpled suit and a long tweed topcoat, even in warm weather. Mr. Fox let Mr. Kemp use his Xerox copier.

Bob Kemp came from an old, illustrious Troy family. An ancestor had founded the Burden Iron Works in the 1800s when Troy was in its industrial heyday. It was the major supplier of horseshoes to the Union Army during the war between the states and a supplier of rails when the west was opened. 

See:http://www.angelfire.com/journal/millbuilder/album3.html

Bob's grandfather had been Troy's mayor and president of a bank in the 1870s. Bob told me that his brother was then the president of Sun Oil Company, and he provided Bob with a stipend. As a young man, Kemp was brilliant. Although he was not a lawyer, he was admitted to practice before the Patent Office. One day, he showed me a current copy of the Aviation News, which stated in an article that some material or process that he had patented in 1923 was just then (in 1963) being implemented into aircraft usage. (See U.S. Patent #1469220 granted to Robert Kemp)

Robert’s troubles reportedly started during the early 1930s. Although he was unpopular as an atheist in a very Catholic city, he became hated as an avowed communist, going so far as to publish small books (one of which he showed me) in which he listed himself as “Robert Kemp, Chief Engineer to Josef Stalin, Troy, CCCP.” (Copies are available at the Troy Public Library and the Library of Congress*) He was openly jeered, and his home at 552 Fourth Avenue in the old Lansingburg section of Troy was frequently damaged by young vandals. He was known in Lansingburgh as “Commie Kemp.” He said that sometime after WWII, he became an anti-communist. In a legal pleading, he described himself as “an inventor, scientist, pioneering engineer, venture capitalist, an anti-communistic businessman, an Atheist, and a Heretic.”

At some time before 1963, vandals set fire to his home, causing considerable damage, which he could not repair. Eventually, the City of Troy commenced an action against him and obtained an order directing the demolition of his house as unsafe and a danger to the community. A default judgment was taken, and a judge signed the order permitting the building’s demolition. Shortly before the demolition was to occur, Kemp went to Judge Donald Taylor and pleaded for help. The judge issued a stay to permit Kemp to appeal the order to the five-judge Appellate Division. Kemp threw himself into the appeal (which was the stage of the matter when I met him).

Kemp based his appeal on the theory that the City’s action was a Catholic conspiracy to punish him for having been a communist and pointed out in his 112± page affidavit of service that Mr. Kelleher, the mayor, Mr. LeForestier, the corporation counsel, Mr. Ryan, the building inspector, Mr. Bizzarro, a deputy corporation counsel, and the Pope were all Catholics. The "affidavit of service" of his notice of appeal was much more extensive than his actual appellate brief, which restated many of the same “facts” and arguments. Most interesting to me were exhibits included in the affidavit of service, such as an actual early 1900s letter that he wrote to his female friend while traveling to Germany to study zeppelins and a 1929 article that stated that he was the principal speaker at a physics convocation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Although Kemp came to the law office to photocopy certain documents, he produced his legal papers with a typewriter, using a mimeograph to reproduce copies. His typing was not very good, and the documents were rampant with xxxx outs and careted corrections, making the reading quite difficult. (His typing improved somewhat over time as he produced hundreds of pages of pleadings.) Kemp was frugal, and to save money, he mimeographed his early pleadings on used paper. One document I saw, an Appellate Division brief, was printed “Central Markets” in green ink on the reverse side.

Although his legal brief did not address the issue on which Judge Taylor based the stay, the Appellate Division reviewed the record on appeal. It reversed the lower court order, remanding it to the lower court for a fact-finding hearing, which had never been held (it had acted solely on affidavits). Corporation Counsel LeForestier was so upset that Kemp had beaten him that he simply abandoned the case. Kemp, however, understood the decision to be the appellate court’s acceptance that he was the victim of a Catholic conspiracy. Kemp then launched a series of pro se lawsuits against the City of Troy and LeForestier, both in the New York Supreme Court (the lower general jurisdiction court) and in the US District Court, all of which were dismissed. I believe that he died soon after the last dismissal.

I copied this from a Chicago church website regarding Kemp’s grandfather:

 “William was a well-known Troy business leader, described in contemporary histories of the city as "among the most intelligent and sagacious of the businessmen of Troy" and "an inspiring example to the youth of our land." A self-made man who had left school at the age of nine, he became president of a brass foundry and a bank, served as mayor of the city from 1873 to 1875, was active in the Republican Party, and served as a trustee of several institutions in the city and senior warden of Christ Episcopal Church. Robert Kemp himself was unmarried and, at this time, probably in his mid-forties; he was a graduate of Williams College (there is no information on the seminary which he attended) and had served for seventeen years as curate of St. Paul's Church New York City, until December 1906.”

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Tommy Conducts a Preliminary Hearing

Justice Tommy Restino, Jr.

When an arrest is made in New York, the criminal defendant is first brought before a magistrate for arraignment. In rural towns, the magistrate is usually one of the town justices in the town where the crime was committed.

The Town of Hoosick is a rural town in the northeast corner of Rensselaer County, at its border with Vermont. Its economy is mostly agricultural; mainly family farms. Its one village, Hoosick Falls, is an old mill town.  Hoosick is a scenic area with some antique shops and is notable as the home of the late artist Grandma Moses. The Moses family still operates a farm with a roadside stand that sells excellent melons, corn, tomatoes, and other produce grown there.

For many years, one of the town justices has been Thomas Restino, Jr. He is an affable fellow who was usually reelected without opposition and endorsed by all political parties. In the late1960s, and for some time in that era, his main occupation was operating an Olixir brand gasoline station just south of Hoosick Falls on Route 22. Many criminal defendants and traffic violators arrested in the area were initially brought before Judge Restino, who was usually available during the daytime at his Olixir station. The court was frequently held right at the Olixir station, sometimes interrupted when Tommy would temporarily halt the proceedings to pump gasoline for a customer.

In the late 1960s, or perhaps in 1970, a rash of barn fires occurred in the Town of Hoosick. Ultimately, the New York State Police arrested several high school-aged young men from the community and charged them with arson. They were arraigned by Judge Restino on multiple felony charges. The law required that each young man have separate counsel, and I was one of several attorneys employed by parents or assigned by the court to represent the boys. All of the defense counsel demanded a preliminary hearing.

A preliminary hearing is a fact-finding hearing. It is held after a person is charged with a felony but not yet indicted by a grand jury. The purpose is to determine whether there are, in fact, grounds to have the matter presented to the grand jury for indictment. Defense counsel usually wants a preliminary hearing because it gives them the opportunity to cross-examine the prosecutor’s witnesses and find out the strength of the evidence against their client.

Judge Restino scheduled the preliminary hearing for an early weekday evening. Because there was so much public interest in the case, both by the victims of the arson and other farmers, as well as the families of the boys, the preliminary hearing was held in the high school gymnasium to accommodate the crowd. In addition to Gus Cholakis, the Rensselaer County District Attorney, some of his staff members, and New York State Police investigators, all of the defense attorneys attended. It was an unusually large and somewhat boisterous crowd that Tommy had to preside over. A record of formal court proceedings is required. Usually, a court employs a professional court reporter who (in that era) typed a verbatim record of everything said into a stenotype machine, and later translated the paper record into a typewritten transcript. There were no professional court reporters in the Town of Hoosick, and rather than bring one in from Troy, Tommy employed two young local women who knew secretarial shorthand. He instructed one of them to record the attorneys’ questions and the other to record the witnesses’ answers. Although the ladies tried their best, the system's inadequacies were apparent when an attorney asked for some testimony to be read back. Listening to them try to coordinate the questions and answers was quite amusing, and I think that sometimes attorneys requested that testimony be read back simply for their amusement.

Each defense attorney had a separate right to cross-examine each prosecution witness and the proceedings dragged on. Tommy struggled with objections to testimony made by the several defense attorneys, as he was a layman with no legal training. At one point when he sustained a defense objection to some evidence, the victims in the room started loudly voicing their displeasure at his ruling. Tommy explained to them that he personally didn’t always agree with the rulings that were made by him as the judge, and he spoke of himself as the judge in the third person: "I don't agree with him, myself, but he is the judge and that's how he had to rule."

The preliminary hearing could not be completed in just one evening and dragged into a second night. After each session was adjourned, the prosecutor, his staff, some of the police investigators, and some of the defense counsel stopped at Brother John’s seedy tavern on Route 7 in Pittstown for a few drinks and a discussion of the proceedings, which were an amusing change from usual court appearances.

Ultimately, Judge Restino determined that the district attorney had produced sufficient evidence, and the Rensselaer County Grand Jury subsequently indicted the boys. Because of their ages and previously unblemished histories, plea bargains were reached and the boys pleaded guilty to lesser charges. They were placed on probation by the County Court.

Harry and the Trooper

Sometime in the early 1950s, my uncle, Harry Honig, bought a gas station about a quarter-mile east of Jack’s Place.  It had been a garage and gas station operated on and off since the 1930s.  As a child during World War II, I remember that it had a small red siren attached to it that was powered by the garage’s air compressor, and I can still recall how the siren’s shrill sound announced that it was time for my father to don his white hat and stop traffic during the air raid drills.

Harry bought the garage to give him something to do during winter when he was not farming.  For a year or two, during the summer months, his daughter, Leona, operated the gas station since Harry would be busy on his farm.  The structure was a wooden structure with a tin roof.  Harry was not a mechanic and didn’t do any automobile repairs there; he operated the facility as a gas station and a place to store his farming equipment off-season.  There were two gas pumps: one for regular gasoline and one for “Ethyl,” or high-test gasoline.  Like the driveway at Jack’s Place, Harry’s driveway consisted of small multicolored pebbles bought by the dump truck load from some supplier in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.  The pebbles were about one to two inches deep and had to be refreshed every couple of years as the weight of automobiles would eventually press them into the dirt base.

One Sunday morning, Harry arrived at his gas station and found that a large “18-wheeler” tractor-trailer had parked in his driveway, perpendicular to the highway, obscuring the view of the gasoline pumps for westbound drivers on Route 20.  The truck driver was nowhere in sight, and there was no message on the vehicle explaining why it was parked there or where the driver was.  Harry was angered and frustrated as he felt that he was losing business.  Finally, he parked a tractor that he had stored in the garage closely in front of the truck so that it couldn’t be moved.  Later that day the driver returned, and Harry demanded some small monetary compensation before he would move the tractor and free the truck.  The truck driver refused and left.  The truck drive contacted the New York State Police, who dispatched a young Trooper to the garage to resolve the problem.

The Trooper ordered Harry to move the tractor, but Harry refused, telling the Trooper he would move his tractor when he was paid.  They argued, and the Trooper realized he was powerless to make Harry comply with his directive since the truck and the tractor were on Harry’s private property, where he had no jurisdiction.  Angered, the Trooper got into his gray Ford patrol car and ripped out of the driveway, spinning the wheels of his vehicle as he traversed the driveway, sending the pebbles flying and leaving two parallel ruts in the driveway down to the dirt base.

The Trooper didn’t know Harry and certainly didn’t know that Harry had been the Nassau town’s Justice of the Peace for many years and was currently its elected Town Supervisor.  Harry, of course, knew all of the senior members of the State Police stationed at the barracks in East Greenbush, and he telephoned the barracks and explained the situation to the Sargent in charge, detailing how this brash young Trooper had torn up his driveway.

About an hour later, the young Trooper returned with a very different attitude.  After some discussion, the truck driver gave Harry an agreed-upon sum of money as compensation for his lost business, and Harry moved the tractor and the truck left.  Then Harry gave the Trooper a rake and, with satisfaction, supervised him as he raked the pebbles to fill in the ruts he had created, as he had been ordered to do so by his Sargent.

Harry Prepares for Nuclear War

My uncle Harry Honig was a Nassau Justice of the Peace and then Town Supervisor during the onset of the Cold War. He was genuinely civic-minded, although he undoubtedly enjoyed the social aspects and perks of his offices. As part of the Civil Defense effort during the Truman years, he spent many hours as a volunteer of the Ground Observer Corps sitting in the stands of the old Nassau Fairgrounds racetrack watching for Russian airplanes, dutifully calling in any aircraft he sighted to the Civil Defense filter center in Albany. [That program had one very embarrassing local incident: A teenage aircraft volunteer spotter at the Alfred E. Smith State Office Building in Albany reported a multi-engine aircraft flying north over the Hudson River. There was no flight plan for such an aircraft, and the Civil Defense alerted the Air Force. Two fighter jet aircraft were scrambled from Westover Air Force Base near Worcester, Massachusetts to intercept it, and they almost fired upon President Truman’s personal aircraft, The Independence, which was ferrying Secretary of State Dean Atchison to Canada.]

As Town Supervisor, Harry received a stream of civil defense information and he became well versed in the dangers of the nuclear age. Harry studied civil defense maps of fallout patterns and concluded that Nassau would receive radioactive fallout carried by the prevailing westerly winds even if the bomb fell as far away as Chicago. In fact, most of the east coast of the United States was vulnerable.

One area that appeared safe from nuclear war was the Isle of Pines, part of Cuba. Like much of the Caribbean area, it was south of the United States, and the winds would not deposit radioactive fallout on it even if the United States were to be attacked. Harry was a farmer, and he read that the Isle of Pines had rich farmland that he could acquire very inexpensively by American standards. After the farming season was over in the fall of 1958, Harry and Frieda headed to Cuba to search out farmland so that they could create a home that was safe from nuclear war. Unfortunately, they arrived there at about the same time as did Fidel Castro’s rebel army, and they spent a couple of days holed up in their hotel as the Cuban revolution went through. Harry immediately grasped that although they might be safe from radioactive fallout in Cuba, they would face perhaps greater danger from the revolution. Harry and Frieda next scouted out Arizona but found the hot climate disagreeable and the land unsuitable for his type of farming. Reluctantly, they returned to Nassau.

Harry was not one to give up easily. He promptly had a large underground concrete fallout shelter constructed behind his home using a plan obtained from a civil defense organization. The shelter had a hand-powered air pump that brought in outside air through a filter, and he stocked the shelter with canned water, food, fallout shelter crackers, and a battery-operated radio.

After a while, the nuclear threat diminished, and the shelter became dank and probably the home to creatures that like living in such an environment. In his later years, it was forgotten, fortunately without ever having been used.

Nassau Murders

I don’t recall there being much violence in Nassau.  I am sure that it had its share of domestic violence and drunken brawls, but I know of three solved homicides that took place there or involving its residents and one that was never solved.

Archie Mull – Melville L. Lord

The earliest solved murder that I know of is the 1899 murder of Melville L. Lord by Archie Mull (sometimes spelled “Mulle”).  My father told me that when he was a young farmer in the 1920s, an older man approached him where he was working on his farm and told my father his name during the conversation.  My father said that he told the man, who had identified himself as Archie Mull, that he knew that he had murdered Mr. Lord, who had been the owner of a nearby farm (which later became known to us as the "Canaday Farm," so-called for the family that later owned it). 

According to newspaper reports, during September 1899, Archie Mull, originally from Nassau but then living in North Adams, Massachusetts, came upon Mr. Lord, age 60, and Arthur Snyder, an orphan boy who lived with Mr. Lord, as they were building fences in the woods.  According to Snyder's statement, Mull came behind Lord and struck him in the head with an ax, knocking his eye out and smashing his skull.  Mull then struck Snyder with the ax, but he eventually recovered and gave his account of the murder.  Lord had been known to be a wealthy individual who usually carried large sums of money, but there was no money on his body, and robbery was the prosecutor’s theory of Mull’s act.

Mull was arrested the next day in North Adams and returned to jail in Troy.  According to newspaper reports, he denied the charge and was “…an inveterate smoker of cigarettes, being supplied by friends who call on him…” After the trial, Mull was convicted and sentenced to prison. Interestingly, his sentence was commuted on December 18, 1919, while he was confined to Great Meadow prison, and within an hour of his release, he married Stella Howe of Marlboro, Massachusetts, who had waited for him for years.  The bride and groom planned to honeymoon in Nassau with his relatives.  [Note: During the 1960s, when I handled the estate of William Canaday, his widow gave me a copy of the trial transcript, which I later donated to the library in the Village of Nassau.]

Daniel Slivko – Dr. Boris Klasons

Boris Klasons, a physician, immigrated to the United States from Latvia in about 1950 and later opened an office with his wife, Velta Klasons, who was also a medical doctor, at their home on Church Street in the Village of Nassau.  They were the only physicians with an office in the village then, and they had a respected practice.

On June 2, 1956, Dr. Boris Klasons, age 43, received a telephone call from the mother of Daniel Slivko, age 36, asking him to come to their home in neighboring Schodack because Daniel had been upset for several days, and she felt that Dr. Klasons had previously helped him and would do so again.  Dr. Klasons arrived at the Slivko home at about 10:00 a.m., but Daniel ordered him out of the house.  Slivko reportedly believed that Dr. Klasons was a Communist, although he had fled communism with his wife in 1947.  Dr. Klasons left the house and got into his car, but Daniel followed him out, and from his porch, he fired an 8 mm. Mauser rifle at the car.  The bullet entered the window and struck Dr. Klasons in the face, killing him instantly.  Slivko’s mother and sister called the police and the Nassau ambulance.  Dr. Klason’s wife, Velta, was told that someone had been shot, and she went to the Slivko home, where she discovered that it was her husband who had been killed. Daniel Slivko was arrested and charged with 1^st-degree murder but was found to be mentally incompetent.  He was sent to the Matteawan State Hospital, where mentally ill persons who were charged with crimes but not convicted were housed.  In 1955, the Superintendent of Matteawan State Hospital released Slivko back to Rensselaer County for trial.  On May 12, 1966, he entered a plea of guilty to Manslaughter in the first degree and received a sentence of 8-1/2 to 20 years in prison.  Under the terms of the plea, he was sent to Clinton Prison, where he would be eligible for parole after one year of psychiatric observation and evaluation.  Slivko was paroled and returned to the Nassau area.  Dr. Klason’s wife eventually remarried but died of cancer in 1963, survived by two children of her marriage to Boris Klason and her second husband.  

During my summer internship at the Rensselaer County District Attorney's Office in 1962, I read the Slivko file and saw the gruesome autopsy photos.

Patricia Hanson – Gary J. Whitney

During the evening of October 1, 1960, Patricia Ann Hanson of Old Chatham, who was 18 years old, was on her second date with Gary Whitney of Nassau, who was also 18.  They parked on Irish Hill Road in the neighboring town of Schodack and had consensual sex.  Following their lovemaking, Patricia stabbed Gary to death.  Although she reported the sex as rape, she was charged with murder. She had previous arrests for throwing stones at State Police Cars on the Thruway and for disorderly conduct and third-degree assault.  She was also then on probation from Albany County, where she had been charged with carrying a loaded revolver.

Patricia was initially sent to the New York State mental hospital at Matteawan following her plea of not guilty by reason of insanity but was returned to Rensselaer County for trial following her release.  As students at Albany Law School, we were required to observe some trials, and a few of us watched part of her trial. There were dramatic moments, with District Attorney John T. Casey walking around stabbing the air with the hunting knife and passing a used condom in a jar to the jury, most of who just passed it to the next juror without looking down at the evidence.  We also took note, with amusement, that the then County Judge, DeForest Pitt, frequently appeared to be staring from his high bench down to look at the well-endowed court stenographer who sat next to his bench.

The jury was given the choice of not guilty by reason of insanity, murder in the second degree, and manslaughter.  She was convicted on the murder charge and sentenced to a 7-1/2 year to a 20-year term in prison.  The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court affirmed the conviction on appeal. 

The Unsolved Murder of Austin Phelps

Before the construction of a Mobil service station on the northwest corner of Elm Street and Albany Avenue in the Village of Nassau, there was a large white building I knew as “Kelly’s Hotel.” It had been built as a tavern and hotel by Jacob Whitbeck in the mid-1800s, and in the 1870s it was known as “The Kingsman House”. Later, it was known as “The Nassau House.”  In 1880, the proprietor, Austin Phelps, was found murdered in his bedroom.  His son, Truman Phelps, was indicted and tried on a murder charge but was acquitted.  The murder was never solved. 

Halloween

The Village of Nassau always had a police department. When I was in elementary school, the police department was actually just one part-time constable, Will Harrington. Will drove a black 2 door, Hudson, probably about a 1946 or 1947. It was Constable Harrington’s personal automobile. The car had a huge chrome siren with a red light in front perched on the driver’s side front fender, and a long whip antenna on the rear fender, as well as a spotlight installed through the driver’s door. I don’t believe it had a police radio since there were no other police cars, and the Village had no police station. Will’s police car looked more powerful and intimidating than the grey Ford sedans then driven by the New York State Troopers.

Halloween was a major holiday in Nassau. Local youths loved to go to Fauth’s cider mill on Lake Avenue to swipe apples from the open bins. “Trick or Treat” in those days meant something. Little kids didn’t go door to door with their mother. Halloween was the night that the older boys went house to house, raising a little hell, soaping car windows when the owners didn’t keep a watchful eye. The mean boys used candles instead of soap. Candle wax was much harder to clean off. Years before, Halloween was a night to tip over out-houses, but those had all pretty much gone from the Village by the time I was a child.

A big part of Constable Harrington’s job was to keep the level of mischief down. He would drive slowly through the Village on Halloween night, shining the chrome spotlight along the houses to check for mischief-makers. He would yell at the groups of boys to move along, an action that was frequently met with a barrage of the pilfered Fauth apples before the boys scattered into the shadows, only to reappear a few minutes later after he passed by.

Early one Halloween night, I think the last one when Will was Village Constable, he stopped by Frank Pitts’s General Store. Frank’s store was next to the Post Office at the corner of Church Street and Elm Street, where the antique store is now. Will went in to get a pack of cigarettes and shoot the breeze for a few minutes with Frank. He parked the Hudson in the pull-off by the closed Post Office but left the car’s engine running. When he came out a few minutes later, his Hudson was gone.

It was the grandest Halloween ever! Will was both enraged and embarrassed, as he walked around the Village looking for his car, and threatening every one of the older teenage boys and young men that he spotted. Word of the theft got out quickly, and it was an open season that night for apple stealing, apple throwing, and soaping and waxing windows. Some of the boys took advantage of the situation and even busted up Halloween pumpkins put out as decorations on some porches.

Halloween night eventually faded into November first, but there was no sign of Will’s Hudson the next morning. Poor Will had to hitch a ride to his regular day job that morning, and by the time he came home that evening everybody in the Village knew of Will’s plight and was ready to offer a theory as to who had done it, and where his car was. They say that Constable Harrington walked all around the Village that night, looking for his Hudson in barns, behind hedgerows, and wherever he thought it could be hidden, but there wasn’t a trace of it.

The next night, a little after seven, Frank Pitts called Will to tell him that the Hudson was parked in front of the Post Office with the engine running.

Wyatt shoots a dog

In the early 1950s, the Village of Nassau hired its first full-time police officer. C. Lowell Avery was as finely attired as any village policeman in the state. His grey uniform was impeccably tailored to his trim, 6 foot 2 physique. As the sole police officer, he naturally was the chief, and his uniform reflected his top departmental status, replete with gold braid and “scrambled eggs” on the visor of his hat. He referred to himself as “Chief Avery.” He was frequently addressed as “Doc Avery” by some but was soon known to all as “Wyatt Earp.” The moniker, Wyatt Earp, was probably a compliment since, during those years, Hugh O'Brien played the legendary western sheriff on a popular television show. My father once reported hearing a young boy respectfully addressing Chief Avery as “Mr. Earp” at the Post Office.

Wyatt upheld the law. Nassau’s perceived problem was speeding. U.S. Highway 20 formed the main street in the Village, Albany Avenue west of the single traffic light, and Church Street to the east. Cars and trucks entering the Village from the east descended Lord’s Hill for about a mile and a half and usually entered the Village at a pretty good clip. The speed limit went from 50 miles per hour to 35 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour in a short distance, but it was not unusual to still be driving about 40 miles per hour when crossing into the 25 mph zone.

Wyatt would be waiting. He usually parked his new cruiser in the St. Mary’s Church parking lot and ticketed every speeder he believed exceeded the posted limit. There were many of them. The Village judge, James Lamb, was a retired New York City fireman with a lot of time on his hands, and he welcomed the Court activity that all of the tickets produced. The Village Trustees welcomed the added revenue it gained from its share of the fines. At the time, the Village judge held court one evening each week, but the court would always be in session at his home, and Wyatt would lead out-of-town speeders right to Judge Lamb’s living room, where they would be promptly fined and sent on their way. Nassau soon earned a measure of notoriety as a speed trap and was appropriately marked on AAA maps. Almost everyone who drove through Nassau had been ticketed by Wyatt or had a friend or family member who had been caught. The locals quickly learned to obey the speed limit because they knew that Wyatt played no favorites, and he had no compunction about writing a speeding ticket for “26 mph in a 25 mph zone.”

I never got a ticket, but I was careful. I used to drive my father’s new 1956 pink and black Cadillac into the Village to pick up the mail, and I would put on the brakes to ensure I was doing 25 mph or less. I sometimes played a little game with Wyatt. If he pulled out to follow me down Church Street, I would pace myself to have to stop at the traffic light. When the light turned green, I would floor the Cadillac so that it would chirp the tires, but then immediately back off on the accelerator so that I wouldn’t exceed the speed limit. Then I would go to the Post Office. Wyatt would usually follow me out of the Village at 24 mph unless he was in the process of writing a ticket for someone else.

By the time Wyatt was the chief for a couple of years, his notoriety grew. He seemed to walk taller, always wore mirrored Ray-Ban sunglasses, and carried a long-barreled .44 Magnum sidearm. He was an imposing figure, and Nassau knew it had a real lawman.

One Saturday afternoon, a pickup truck drove down Church Street. It had the green light and was moving right along. A dog ran out, unleashed, right into the path of the truck, and the animal was struck, severely hurt, but not killed. Wyatt was quickly on the scene, and a crowd of residents assembled, most of them coming out of the Post Office or Frank Pitts’s General Store, when they heard the screech of brakes. The dog was whimpering, and after a brief examination, the consensus was reached that the dog should be put out of its misery. The dog’s owner, not wanting to make the dog suffer any longer than necessary, looked to Wyatt to do the job. With the crowd growing larger and traffic backed up, Wyatt drew his .44 and fired. The bullet missed the dog and tore a chunk of macadam out of the payment. Wyatt shot again and again he missed the dog. He seemed to be grimacing and looking away as he fired his revolver. A bystander, one of the local merchants, took the gun out of Wyatt’s hands and dispatched the dog with one shot, much to the relief of everyone witnessing the event.

After that, things changed in Nassau. Young men who hung around the Gulf gasoline station on the corner started calling Chief Avery “Wyatt” to his face. Teenage boys barked at him and laughed. Wyatt seemed to lose interest in writing tickets, and the court revenue dropped off sharply.  Then, one day, Chief Avery moved on to take a job directing traffic as a foot patrolman in Lake George, and it was ok to drive a bit faster through Nassau.

Chief Avery

Chasing Speeders

Shortly before I became the Village Attorney of Nassau, the Board of Trustees appointed Martin Harrington as its police chief. “Marty” had been a policeman in the City of Albany once, but I don’t think he had risen in rank above patrolman in that employment. Marty was fairly good-natured but a bit dumpy in appearance. His uniform was typical city policeman regulation blue, perhaps a carryover from his earlier job. It was a trifle too small and accentuated his growing belly. Marty did not wear fancy braids on his uniform or scrambled eggs on his cap, but he did wear 3 or 4 military general’s stars on his epaulets to reflect his status.

The Village fathers wanted their policeman to slow speeders, help the elementary school children cross Route 20, and be available to handle the occasional domestic dispute. Instead, they usually hired someone who wanted to tackle criminal investigations that would stump Interpol. That was not the case with Marty. He was low-key. He wrote a few tickets, helped the kids cross the street, directed Sunday morning traffic when the churches let out, and generally did whatever the Village Trustees thought he should do. He was a pretty good fit for the Village. While nobody had a bad word for him, he didn’t command much respect, probably because of his somewhat disheveled appearance. Once, Marty came to a meeting of the Village Trustees to complain that an out-of-town driver he had ticketed had ripped it up and mailed it to him, addressed only to “Marty, the Fat Fuzz, Nassau, New York.” He seemed most upset that the Post Office had delivered it to him matter-of-factly. The Village Trustees nodded their sympathy, but none shared his indignation.

Marty became friendly with Wilbur, a recent retiree from New York City who had worked as a lineman for Consolidated Edison. Wilbur had been a volunteer auxiliary policeman in New York, meaning he rode around in a police car at night with a patrolman but had no police officer status. The auxiliary policeman served a useful purpose, keeping the police officer company, providing “an extra pair of eyes,” and being ready to radio for help in an emergency. Although the village had no formal auxiliary police program, Wilbur started riding with Marty to pass the time. The Village Trustees were aware of this but saw no harm, particularly since there was no expense. Wilbur even created a makeshift uniform, but he looked more like an aging security guard than a policeman.

During the 1960s, the Capital District cities of Albany, Troy, and Schenectady experienced some racial strife. A group of young Black men in Albany, leaders of that city’s protest movement, smashed some store windows during a demonstration one night, and several of them were arrested, but there was no real personal violence. That event was replicated in Troy and Schenectady and was a major news source for a while. During the height of this tension, Marty and Wilbur came to the Village Trustees, and Marty told them that he had to prepare the Nassau Police Department for this new law enforcement crisis. He had a wish list of new gear, including a pump shotgun, 2 riot helmets, 2 bulletproof vests, and some tear gas canisters. As their counsel, I unsuccessfully argued against Marty’s request, pointing out that I had only known of two young Black men in the Village. One, “Sunshine” Fairbanks, had gone to elementary school with me but had long since moved away, and Harold Hallenback, a young man two grades behind me, whose family had lived just outside of the Village for a couple of generations. While the Trustees nodded in agreement that Harold was unlikely to pose a threat, they felt that they owed an obligation to Marty to equip him with the equipment he said he needed for his safety. They also apparently felt the same obligation to Wilbur since they authorized two helmets and two vests. Marty and Wilbur rode around wearing their helmets and vests for a few weeks, with a pump Mossberg 12 gauge handy on a special rack. After a while, though, the newspaper headlines returned to normal, and the helmets and vests went into the patrol car's trunk. But if Harold ever walked into the Village and got rowdy, Marty and Wilbur would be ready.

Marty attended the Village Trustees' one September board meeting at Wilbur's prompting. He reported that the Village had become a “laughingstock” because he wasn’t permitted to chase speeders outside the Village corporate limits. Speeders would taunt him by racing through the Village, knowing he would not follow. While the law permits a police officer in “close pursuit” to travel beyond the territorial limits of his community to make an arrest, many communities had a policy restricting their officers from doing so because so many high-speed chases resulted in tragedy, frequently to innocent bystanders. Marty asked for permission to chase speeders outside of the Village. The Trustees were not enthusiastic, but neither did they like being the elected officials of a community that was becoming known for its lack of traffic law enforcement, especially considering its reputation as a speed trap just a decade before. The trustees finally agreed that Marty could, in appropriate cases, chase traffic violators outside of the Village.

When I drove into the Village for the October board meeting, I was surprised to see a shiny new police car parked in front of the Village Hall. I knew there was no appropriation for purchasing a new police car during the fiscal year, and I asked Mayor Strevell how they got it. Remembering that I had cautioned the Village Trustees against permitting close pursuit chases at the previous meeting, he was a little sheepish in explaining to me that the very Saturday after the previous meeting, Marty and Wilbur went in pursuit of a speeder heading west through the Village on Route 20. With the siren screaming and the red lights flashing, Mary drove the cruiser out of the Village and into the Town of Schodack. The speeder went faster and faster, and so did Marty and Wilbur. They raced past the veterinary clinic on the left and the fruit stands on the right, up Bunker Hill, and past Thoma Tires. As they neared Schoolhouse Road, Marty got closer and closer to the speeder, less than 100 feet from his rear bumper. Marty didn’t immediately realize that the reason he was closing the gap between the cars was that the speeder was slowing down to make a right turn into Schoolhouse Road. Instinctively, Marty turned right also. That had been a mistake because Marty lost control of the cruiser when the tires slid on the gravel of Schoolhouse Road, and the police car slid into a stand of lilac bushes and rolled over onto its side. Fortunately, Marty and Wilbur were shaken up but were otherwise unhurt except for a bruised ego.

Getting back to the new police cruiser, Mayor Strevell explained that the wrecked car would have taken at least a month to have fixed, and the Village couldn’t be without a police car for that long a time, especially with Halloween coming. Marty and the Mayor called the Dodge dealer in Albany, who promptly arranged a trade-in with the Village’s insurance company and delivered a new replacement for the wrecked car. Although nothing was said at the Village Board meeting, Marty didn’t chase speeders out of the Village again, and Wilbur’s wife decided that Wilbur should spend his spare time helping out around the house instead of riding with Marty.

Marty continued as Nassau’s police officer for several uneventful years until he had enough time in the New York State Municipal Retirement System to be eligible for a pension. He spent his remaining years as a security guard in a home for the aging in Albany.

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 he was a quiet man, and my father took me there only a few 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, an 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 Joe worked there alone for many years. 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, 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 department employee 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 was 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 accompanying another employee to a warehouse in Cohoes to inventory hospital equipment and medicine.  I was told 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 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 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 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-19 variances will ever 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 located a short distance away that fronted on Rte. 2, 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. 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 constructing 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 constructed 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 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.   A tent was erected, and a bulldozer was brought to the lot.   The tent was not in the best condition, but it certainly was visible.( This photograph shows our “sales office” under the 100 square foot requirement for a building permit.)

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

Junior's Tent and automobiles for sale.

The weeds were growing by this time, 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 that we would 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 the 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 homes we built.  Pittstown is a very rural and 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 mostly stayed within the Pittstown community, as did their baby boomer offspring and 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 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 mid-normal range of intelligence, the average IQ in Pittstown was 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).”

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