The day is done and we’re tired!!!!

One of the concession stands


This isn't just a little thing!! Just look at all the cars!

We are tired and ready for bed after walking around the Apple Festival in Altamont this afternoon. We arrived and paid our $18.00 entry fee and then walked the walkways to see all the vendors merchandise and then the food stands. We found some very nice artwork on flagstone, done by some people in Potter County, Pennsylvania. The food was like any other festival’s food and the music was mediocre for a fall festival with 7 people actually sitting there with us listening. After seeing everything, we picked up our goodies and headed for the car with a peck of my favorite Honey Crisp apples and Vicki’s favorite, Ginger Gold’s. The blooming onion we had was definitely worth the seven dollars it cost. I’ve never eaten so much for a mere $7.00 in my life. I bought it at 3:00PM and here it is, 10:22 and I’m still eating it!!! Repeat… Repeat… Repeat… I better go find some Gaviscon tablets.
Next blog will be in the morning. Promise!

What a beautiful, chilly fall morning here on the Cluckin' "A"

This brisk fall morning is what it’s all about! That chill in the air seems to make you shiver a little as you try to wiggle and scrunch your neck down into the warmth of a long sleeved flannel shirt. You do that little shake from head to toe and hug yourself just before making the Brrrrrrrrr noise. Fall is here. A rejuvenator of the body, much like a jumper battery puts life back into that drained old car battery and readies it for running. A fall morning gets everyone cranked up and moving.

We are really looking forward to going to the Altamont Apple Festival today since we have virtually missed every other event except family stuff all summer long with building the barn. We now both want to do the fall events as they come along, because fall is Vick's and my favorite season. We love to see the Mums and other fall flowers, the pumpkins, gourds, Indian corn hanging on doors and shocks of corn tied to porch pillars and railings. The evening breeze rustling through the dry leaves in the trees makes me think of many past fall seasons because the chill, sound, smells and sights of fall are like opening a filing cabinet of your life.
Falling leaves now reveal the harvest moon behind them on the horizon, still giving you that funny feeling, taking you back to earlier years and previous memories that are embedded in your mind as you remember jumping into a pile of raked leaves or hiding to scare someone on a bright moon lit night. I can never actually remember each individual instance in those memories or which of my early years they occurred in, but they come to me like a whirlwind of falling leaves in a huge gust of wind. If I sit momentarily to take in the fall beauty and draw in a huge whiff of the smells drifting with the wind, I ultimately find myself floating away to earlier times and childhood adventures every time.
We can’t wait to get there………bundled in fall clothing, ready to walk, hand in hand, enjoying the day together……… stopping to see the vendors offerings and partake of the fall foods and goodies. I don’t care who you are…..if you are able to get around without a walker or wheelchair, you will feel years younger when you are at a fall festival with your loving spouse. If you are in a walker or wheelchair, I hope you have a loved one that will see to it that you get out to enjoy a beautiful fall day so you can see the sights, smell the smells and take that trip back to childhood memories to experience those wonderful seasonal feelings. If you have no one to get you out and you are in a wheelchair, email Vicki or me and we’ll see what we can do for you if it is at all possible.

More about the Altamont Apple Festival later. Our Internet service was down all day, so this is the morning blog which I wrote in msworks this morning. As soon as we finish with the animals we'll blog again.

A new day is dawning on a new chapter for the Cluckin "A"........

How excited we are to get away from AOL hometown journals. The new journal site is fresh, up to date looking and refreshing to look at compared to the old “Ho HUM” of the same thing everyday. I really never enjoyed blogging on the AOL hometown journal site. This site however is a pleasure to use. We look forward to many new readers and followers. Welcome!!!!!
This afternoon, Vick and I went to the Glenmont Lowe’s store where we bought all the needed things for finishing the Barn. While there, we filled the gas tank for $3.45 rather than the posted price of $3.61 in Greenville, at the Cumberland Farm or the same price at the little place in the Bryant’s mall lot. I don’t understand why you pay a 0.16 difference between Albany or Hudson and Greene County. In fact I don’t understand why we pay such high school and property taxes in Green County, Higher homeowners insurance polices in Greene County than Albany and then when you stop at the gas pumps, they want to stick it up our butts again! What’s up with these Greene County idiots? Who do they think they are? The area is such a beautiful place to live and we just wish the people and government here would wake up before everyone moves away. All we see as we drive throughout Greene County are properties for sale. Many have just gone up for sale this year. Don’t these Greene County idiots understand the economy is in bad shape right now? Do they think that seasonal people will continue to pay their excessively high taxes? I think not. I think those seasonal people don’t plan on keeping summer property that costs more in taxes than their primary residence elsewhere and somewhere along the line, no one will, the way money is right now.
Anyway, Vick and I went to Lowe’s and bought everything to finish up the barn, including all the nylon rolled ¾” pipe to run to the barn and old duck house. We can now do the work without running out of the needed parts to finish up. We’ll start tomorrow after going to the Altamont Apple Festival. Maybe we’ll see you there!

The site is resurrected and updateable.....

This morning after sending all the critters to the freezing outside elements, (where they seem happy) I zipped back into the house to work out the problems of our websites and recovering the ISP data needed to do uploading to the internet. AND sip nice hot coffee in the process. It is not exactly cold outside…just the coolness of the fall chill we love. It defines the autumn season when we see pumpkins, goblins and ghosts, and ripe apples, apple cider, hayrides, colored leaves and the smell of wood smoke.
I think it is my favorite time of the year because it reminds me and transforms me back to a young teenager walking the street with an old girlfriend as we watched kids torment “Big Bob” Treaster, the local elementary school principal on Halloween Eve. Oh how they waxed and soaped his windows and oh how he scared the bejesus out us all when he came out and ripped of a shot from his shotgun…… and how we were further scared when we heard the bb’s falling all around us as they bounced off of our heads! (I later recollected that he probably shot straight up in the air for bb’s to bounce off of the tops of our heads, but who thinks that clearly right after a gun blast and you‘re 15 or so?) I remember him getting into trouble for shooting at kids (either that night or a later incident) I remember the little kids passing us as they hurried from house to house trying to get as many stops in as they could before the allotted time elapsed in that one evening of Halloweening back then. Everyone halloweened on the same night in those years…… Halloween Eve only…… never more than that and you usually only had time to terrorize your own neighborhood before it was over for the year.
I remember one year when I was 12 years old and a bunch of us kids were harassing old man Crownover by sneaking under his garden fence to get tomatoes to throw at passing cars. He would hear us giggling and rummaging through the rotted tomatoes and come out with a long stick and chase us out almost catching us as we slid under the fence. We would wait a little while and try again only to be met with another capture attempt. Well, we knew of a neighbor that had a dummy in his garden, so we “Borrowed” it and stuck it in the opening under the fence and then made a ruckus beside the fence, then ran a short distance to hunker down and watch the fun. Old man Crownover came sneaking around the corner of the house as usual, and we started yelling “come on Tim hurry he’s coming……COME ON!”. Old man Crownover saw the “boy” under the fence and he started hollering and running. He grabbed the dummy and yanked it out from under the fence, shook it and laid it over his need and proceeded to whip the tar out of the dummy with a stick. This of course was immediately met with our uncontrollable laughter and the “everlasting chant” that was probably verbally cast out by all the kids as they rode past old Man Crownover’s house….
"WHO cuffed the dummy, who cuffed the dummy, nah nah na nah nah?" I suppose this was an embarrassment he bore until the time of his passing, but undoubtedly very funny and an affectionate memory of the gruff old man who probably was only doing what was expected of an elementary principle. I was told some time later that he was a very nice old fellow, but acted this way because everyone expected that from him. Even more affectionate was the memory after that.
Oh to be young again! You know what? We can all be young again if we just close our eyes and allow our memories to revert back to a time in our youth that we enjoyed……… and then open our eyes when we’ve had enough and remember that we don’t have to go through all of the undesirable crap we had to endure back then by doing it this way. This is exactly why I love fall so much…… because it brings back all these memories that transport me back to enjoyable times in my life.

A touch of Autumn coming on strong

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