CHAPTER ONE—NYC EXIT

 

Art Palmer's home at No. 253 Sprout Brook Road, Continental Village, with new white picket fence. 1936 Ford coupe in driveway. Year, 1950.

     In late summer of 1947 Harry Truman was President of the United States. Post WW2 Britain had downsized its empire and established two independent states, India and Pakistan. Thor Heyerdahl had crossed the Pacific on his raft Kon-Tiki. Jackie Robinson was playing baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers. During one of these events my brother and I watched a baseball game in the Polo Grounds from Coogan's Bluff, a rocky promontory on the east side of Washington Heights. The same year my brother John and I shoveled elephant dung for four hours at the Polo Grounds for "free" circus tickets. I also remember in the summer of 1947 my brother and I walked across the George Washington Bridge to Fort Lee to visit my mother's sister Eileen and her family. I was then eight years old.

     Before the start of the new school year, in late August of 1947, my family was moving by car and rented truck from a tenement flat at 544 West 157^th Street in Manhattan to Continental Village, a few miles north of Peekskill, N. Y. My family's move didn't make national headlines or a scene in "West Side Story" but I remember the day as clearly as the sights and sounds of WW2 victory parades on Broadway.

     My step-father, Art Palmer, Sr., owned an old black 1936 Ford coupe with a fold-up rumble seat. All five children and two parents squeezed into that car as we drove from Broadway in Manhattan to old Route 9 north, which used to be called the Albany Post Road.

     My brother John and I sat in the rumble seat. He was five years older than I. I can still see the excitement on his face and his thick black hair blowing in the wind. We could see, hear and smell everything outside—the views of the Hudson River, tugs and barges, the many trucks and cars and sounds of road traffic, trains on the New York Central railroad tracks, and the penetrating scent of night blooming jasmine near the cemetery at Sleepy Hollow. The strong scent of flowers was unforgettable.

     Adventure was in the air, curiosity too. This was a different car trip than the several scouting trips my family had made earlier when searching for a new home in New Jersey, on Long Island or at Yorktown Heights. This was the ultimate move. We were saying goodbye to the our known world of friends, junior street gangs, homeless derelicts, subway sounds, steel, glass, road tar and brick, cement sidewalks, sewer-polluted Hudson River, and the constant pitch of background noise in New York City.

     The rented truck behind us had all our furniture, clothes, beds, bedding, dishes, silverware, etc. The truck driver was my step-father's Fort Schuyler Navy buddy and co-worker. I don't remember his name, but he visited our new house in Continental Village every summer for several years afterward. He had an open invitation every summer to swim in the lake and enjoy our summer barbecue with fresh corn, string beans, and lettuce and tomatoes which were raised in our small garden behind the house.

     After driving past Ossining, Croton-on-the-Hudson, Peekskill, Highland Ave., and past a narrow rock cut on old Route 9 at Annsville, we turned at Jack Kornfeld's Tavern and entered Sprout Brook Road. Almost a mile north we passed the beautiful stone house of Mr. Singer, the wholesale furrier. (More about this kind and generous man later.) Further north, there was a small cluster of houses where the families of  Al Zeliph, Sr., Al Zeliph, Jr., Holmes and Croft lived. They were all related. The next house north was the old "Saltbox House" at #249.  Our house at #253 was located two vacant lots further north of the "Saltbox House." The other two new homes on Sprout Brook Road at #255 and 257, both empty and for sale when we got there, were each separated by one lot and located just north of our house. 

     The houses I mentioned were the only houses standing between the Singer House on Sprout Brook Road and the old historic houses and Smith house, No. 394, in the area near the junction of Steuben Road and Sprout Brook Road. Pine trees almost completely circled the lake from the county line south to the dam. Open fields of grass, shrub and old apple trees could be found in many places. Strawberries and huckleberries were plentiful in season, as were hickory and hazel nuts. Hawks and crows in the sky, mice and woodchucks on the ground. There were many black snakes, rattlesnakes and copperheads in the area too.

   As I recall, there were two dirt roads which connected Putnam Road to Sprout Brook Road, in addition to the connecting roads of Schuyler Lane and Strang Lane. One of these dirt roads, a farm tractor road, was located next to the old Saltbox House at #249 Sprout Brook Road. There was also a small barn next to and north of the Saltbox House and a larger barn on the same tractor road at the junction with Putnam Road. The larger barn had been stripped of its roofing and siding but the basement remained, and the floor became a roof. The smaller barn, which was close to Spout Brook Road, was the scene of an epic event a few years later when our family dog gave birth to ten pups under the floor in a dugout hole. My mother found a home for all of the pups. The other dirt road was used as a long driveway between the Holmes' house at #229 Sprout Brook Road (easily distinguishable by its Mansard roof) and the Zeliph's house at #61 Putnam Road. (I have used Google maps for numbers and streets.)

   We arrived at the new house after driving over a mile on that scenic winding road which followed Sprout Brook as far as the quartz quarry just past the Singer house.

     The new house was a two bedroom colonial ranch with a finished cellar and an unfinished attic. It was painted white. It was one of three model homes in the Winston development, the first one sold. The selling price was $10,500. My step-father, Art Palmer, Sr., obtained a low interest VA home mortgage with little or no money down as payment for this house. The new house was nestled in a valley between two rocky and forested hills, roughly east and west. The front of the house faced Gallows Hill, famous in revolutionary war history as the place where Tory spy Edmund Palmer and Continental army deserter John Murray were hanged. It gave the hill and neighborhood an historic notoriety.

     We had some neighbors, all local people, who lived nearby. As mentioned, the Zeliph, Holmes and Croft families lived in a cluster of four older homes about 1/8 mile south of our new house. The Saltbox House, which dated back to the 1800's, probably included the two barns and apple orchard in its heyday. In 1947 the owners of this old house were movie actors, three middle-aged midgets, two of which were unemployed at the time we arrived. We became their new neighbors. My brother John and I got a tour of the house after we introduced ourselves. Two of the actors told us that they played in the famous Wizard of Oz movie. Another actor, John Louis Roventini, was "Johnny the Bellboy" in Philip Morris TV ads, according to Jane Baltich of Cold Spring, N. Y. Mr. Roventini also appeared in the movie Superman and the Mole-Men. Less than a year later, the actors sold the house to the Boyd family and moved back to New York City. It would be interesting to do a title search on this property to discover the history and ownership details.

     After one year of residence at No. 249 the Boyd family moved back to NYC also, a move made necessary by economic and practical considerations. A reclusive family by the name of Gordon then rented the old house from Mr. Boyd. The Gordon's had two school-age children, who were just as reclusive as their parents.

     There were two very large maple trees fronting Sprout Brook Road near the Boyd house. They were over 150 years old. One of them lost a limb the size of an ordinary tree during Hurricane Hazel in 1954. The larger barn at Putnam Road near the tractor road became a temporary firehouse in 1951 when a newly formed volunteer fire company, organized by my step-father Art Palmer, Sr., and others, needed a shelter for their first fire truck.

     In the center of Continental Village was Cortlandt Lake, an artificial lake fed by Canopus Brook. At the outlet was a dam and the beginning of Sprout Brook. The lake was surrounded by young pine trees which were planted sometime after 1929, the year the dam was built. The lake and dam projects were commissioned by Stuyvesant Fish II, who owned all the land in the area. In the 1930's he sold all his property in Continental Village to Vern Walters and a partner, and they established the Cinnabar Dude Ranch. Years later the ranch became a Clubhouse for local property owners in the Winston Development. Early in 1947 the ranch operation moved north to Putnam Valley and was reestablished as the Cimarron Dude Ranch in Putnam Valley.

     The former dude ranch property in Continental Village was laid out by the developer as small lots, and new houses were built at various locations at various times. All of the open fields and horse trails were eventually covered with houses in the ensuing years, and the wild strawberries, huckleberries, goldenrod and timothy grass almost totally disappeared. Several small fields where I played football or baseball also vanished, as more houses were built on empty lots.

     Continental Village would be my home for the next ten years.