Suilleabhain

Tommy I know those places well. The club met in a Polish Vets Hall on Liberty ave for a while, then a bar on Atlantic Ave. When I got married I bought a house in Rich Hill on 111st just above Atlantic. Used to eat Italian next to the Crossbay Theater. You say Charlie Clotze's, my neighbor had a 45' Maine-built flybridge sport fisherman that we used to haul out at Clotze's. My friend had a skiff befind Milo's Clam Bar. The cow farm you speak of...my aunt lived on Silver Road off Pitkin I believe. When we went there we passed a Borden's Building that had cows outside. One of the last working dairys in the city. After that they just processed milk from upstate.

Thanks J. Jammed up with the grand-daughter. I'll be putting more up later this week.

Here's another old Howard Beach picture for you Steve. This is looking out of the old house on 159th Ave and 97th street towards 158th Ave. My family lived in Bushwick and one day my grandmother had her sons take her for a ride to Howard Beach. They saw a huge brick house with broken out windows, the result of the economy after the war. She bought it, they fixed it and made apartments upstairs. It was a four floor house with maid's quarters originally. Everyone in the family took turns in that house for three generations. i was one when we moved out to our own house on 98th Street. The town center was by the raiload tracks. An A&P from the 20's, some bars, Mel's candy store, the Howard Theater, Nick's Pzza, a German bakery, Heller's drug store, OLG church and school. When we fished from Broad Channel either on the Rose& Jim or a Smitty's skiff rental, i had to go to St Virgilious for the fisherman's mass at 6:30. Or we would go the Sheepshead Bay when the boats were Laddie Martin's Rocket, the Effort, Elmar, Brooklyn,Glory, White Eagle. Or, we make the jaunt to Freeport or Point Lookout for the Captain II, Capt Al and Capt Hall (all I later worked on). Later years the new boats. Carl Forsberg moved the Viking Fleet to Montauk in '55 but the Viking Skipper and Viking VII stayed at Pt Lookout with Buddy Dorman until the early 60's. Part of the biz split. This ticket is from Feb '63 I believe. al Lindroth was still running the Viking VII then before buying the Captain II and later the Captain Al.

Seven days to catch a cold, seven days to have a cold, seven days to get over a cold. My nose is running like a faucet The best part of being in a club like this is you were first taught by the original members, then you came of age with the second generation. We all grew up together, saw each other at meetings and work weekends, got or licenses around the same times and are now watching the third and fourth generations take over. The forst of the fourth generation saw his first kill with his grandfather in muzzleloader this year. as kids we would use teh club as our vacation home in summer and when we were old enough the four brothers would go up Easter weekend and get hot cross buns at Hoo's Backery in the Manor. Livingston Manor back then was memorable for Art's Blue Room, the Manor Theater where we saw Bambi one opening weekend and Doctor Zhivago one freezing, snowy opening week. The Cigar Store was a combo ice cream parlor, pharmacy, cigar store that had rifles and ammunition behind the counter. the General Store had everything including saddles that were turn of the century, the hotel was a relic from the 1800's, Hoo's Bakery and a liquor store. That's what was memorable. Oh and the Robin Hood Diner which was a gold mine until new 17 was built and by-passed the town. The four of us hunted small game, deer, fished the lakes and just went up to shoot. Tobbaggoning was done in the neighdor's fields on Lincoln and Washinton's Birthday..when there was a Lincoln and Washington's Birthday.

Sorry for the break, I got side tracked on Ancestry. Found my mother's family back to 1822 in Ireland. My Great Grandfather died in the British army in Flanders in 1914. The interesting thing is that while he was in Flanders, my father's brother lied about his age and enlisted in 1916 and was gassed in the trenches in France. War plays a big part in our lives..and in the life of the gun club. At the end of Korea, the club founders had land but no house. Back in that time, everyone was in a trade and they did things themselves. One of the members being a supply seargant in WWII had connections. In Canarsie, what used to be the site of Canarsie Market, the army still had buildings from the war. They were going to trash them. The club got hold of a 2 room officers quarters building and had it disassembled and trucked upstate. There they put it back together. Before they could set it, they had to fell the trees and set stumps as the supports. The people along the road had been there from the 1800's. Momma and her 6 sons and their families. People were social back then and when they heard the guys were up working they stopped for a visit. They came across a dozen city-folk huffing and puffing on a two-man buck saw left by the loggers. One of the local brothers stepped in and single-handed cut all the trees and set the supports. Hard people they were. But, hunting wasn't much improved. The one room was a kitchen without running water. The junior members job was K.P. and hauling water in a beer keg from the spring about 100 yards to the house. The toilet was an outhouse about 40 yards away. The main room had two sets of bunks and a fold-out double bed. Heat was a pot-belly wood stove. There was no front porch, just steps up to the door. Teh power company set a pole and we got electric and phone service. And it hunted a dozen men and their kids. Later a bunkroom and burner room was added across the back of the house with 18 bunks. A wrap around porch was added. And in about 1963, my father had me & my brother, all of like 9 and 13, pull nails and timbers from a broken down wagon bridge and we salvaged that to frame the base of a bathroom. Other than the framing and siding for the bunkroom, everything was done themselves. They'd commit to weekends of just plain labor for what they wanted. Water was then piped to the house from 2 55 gallon drums sunk in the spring as a cistern with a pump that pushed water thru PVC to the house. In the post war years no one bought their kids new clothes, especially hunting clothes. My brother got my uncle's Woolrich pants, so old they had laces up the calves to tighten them, and an older brother's Woolrich coat. I got my brothers WWII air corp wool flyers pants and someone else's coat. And so it went on. When one kid out-grew something their was always someone in line to take them. I think I was the first person in ages to buy new Woolrich clothes in 1968. We grew up with military surplus. Jap rifles, Mausers, German Helmets, U.S helments, M1 carbines or Garands. Every house had them in Howard Beach. I went to high school in my uncle's Ike Jacket, that was cool back then. And the rifles at the club were all top shelf, Model 70's, Savage 99's, Winchesters and they were all pre-64 because it wasn't even 1964 yet. My brother got his first Savage in a gun shop on 101st Avenue across from what would be John Gottis Social Club. And, he paid the whopping sum of $75.00. And that was bucks for a gun back then.

Hope the picture took

To give you an idea, this is my cousin c:1950 in front of Shellbank Basin near the bridge in town to Hamilton Beach. The houses were built over the water on poles in some spots. The boardwalk runs along the tracks for the subway to Broad Channel and Rockaway.

So, if you know Sullivan County, its not great farm or dairy land. Too, hilly and not flat like the western part of the state. Farms were usually small. What they have an abundance of is trees and foremost back in the 1800's was hemlock trees. Hemlock was prized for making into charcoal which they shipped all over the northeast. Hemlock is what really drove the settlement of that area. If you drive into Roscoe on old 17, there is a cemetery with a large monument off the roadside. That marker is the gravesite of the first white woman settler in the region. Bit of Sullivan County tourism besides Trout Town and the two covered bridges. So the dirty dozen having camped at Beaverkill throught the 40's decided on this area. My father once showed me the piece of land they truned down in the back of Roscoe. It was a 100 or so acres of an old charcoal plant that was prctically verticle on the side of a mountain. Thank God they didn't buy that. What they settled on was 170 acres of a logging camp on a dirt road outside Livingston Manor. It had a stream and water rights, ground that was set on the side of a slopping hill that had three sets of ridges, fairly flat by the road for building a house. It also had a tool shed about 12' square which was their Adirondack style hunting camp for the first winter or two. They had a small pot belly stove and slept on the floor with their gear in their cars. When the wind blew, it blew right through the shed but, they were landowners and had 1000 acres of unposted private land around them.

In way of introduction, since I don’t remember if I did when I did, so I’ll end this year with some and start the New Year with some more Where to begin, I’ll begin in the middle and give the younger folks some color on what it was like downstate back in time. Then I’ll get into how our club was formed and the risks my father’s city-folk generation took to be able to hunt their own land. This is back before the Thruway and the Quick way (New Rt 17) were built, there was no Verrazano Bridge and part of the Belt Parkway were not yet completed. I grew up just off the water in Jamaica Bay. Back then Howard Beach was a lot of weeded lots and sparse houses. Behind what we called Rockwood Park, now New Howard Beach, was nothing but weeds and cattails as far as the eye could see. It became Spring Creek Preserve and then part of Gateway National Park. We crabbed and fluked in summer, selling softshells crabs to the restaurants. It was neo-Huck Finn childhood living. No one knew where we were, we walked to the North Channel Bridge to fish, chased rabbits with bow & arrow, caught sea gulls by hand: we just rambled about all over the place without a care. Got into plenty of trouble, got banged up and bruised more than once but, every woman was your mother and every man was your father so we had plenty of eyes on us even if we didn’t know it. The rain puddles at Aquaduct Race Track held tadpoles so, we would catch them and raise them into frogs and let them go. Garter snakes were easy to catch and my neighbors raised ducks and chickens. Crossbay Blvd was a string of clam bars, Sonny’s the best, Big Bow Wow drive-in, Trampoline World, archery range, go carts and rides. The drive to Rockaway Beach was always ended with a stop at Weiss’ for hot dogs in Broad Channel. My father was a big duck hunter in the Bay back then and had a friend who lived in a house in the back in now Gateway. Now his friend’s father-in-law was a Russian immigrant. How he came to Queens I don’t know but, in any event as the story was told, he built this house out in the weeds and a small farm around it. The husband Frank would hunt right around the property. As told, he knew his hunting days there were over when he shot his last pheasant and it landed on the Belt Parkway. Anyway, one day a guy knocks on the door and tells them they are living on government land. They lived there for years, had regular mail delivery but, no one knew the old man just picked an empty patch of land and built on it without any say-so. So they got tossed off and moved up outside East Chatam. Frank was a gov’t surveyor. So he worked places like Pt Barrow, Alaska in summer and had the winter off. I spent two weeks in summer at their farm helping with chores as he was away. Cutting weeds, fixing wire fences, feeding the stock, catching catfish and so on. In fall we would go up for a few days and help slaughter and butcher the pigs. In the early sixties, Long Island being a network of duck farms and potato fields, we used to go hunt squirrels in what is now Smithtown. After the war, and before I was born, my father and his friends hunted wherever they could without getting thrown off. Having no land, they started on state land but it was too crowded and too dangerous with the population of idiots all over the land. They decided that the only way they could hunt was to get their own land. In 1946 a dozen of them got together with a lawyer and incorporated a rod & gun club. But, they still needed land and this took brass balls. Twelve guys with young families, scraping by after the war are about to mortgage themselves for a hunting club. Imagine telling your wife this.

Paint my step daughters apartment, fix her grandmothers rocking chair, lay out a box blind. Once sea bass closes I may get some codfishing in.

I'm like Sweet Old Bill. Me & my wife get all we want all year long so we buy a thing or two to open and tell the kids to save their money. So I got her her favorite perfume and some As Seen On TV goofs. She got me the some shirts for work. Friends gave me slipperrs, which I really needed. So did my daughter. Double-up. Got O'Rielly's book on Lincoln which I wanted, Sis in Law got me the same, double up redux. Lord of the Rings Pez dispenser collectors set, that's cool odd but cool. Bass Pro gift card, yahoo to that. Its all about the kids. 3 y/o Grand Daughter got Tickle Me Elmo, she ain't too thrilled, scared sh*t of him. I put it on and she yelled Papa Watch Out!!! Snooping around I saw a model ship kit, the Golden Hind. Damn it wasn't fopr me...that I wanted bad after I saw it.

Bkln gave me an idea. How many guys have a stock stand that they would like to tune up. There are metal fabrictors down here that do custom work on boats. You could start your own line of custom add ons. Personally, stock gun and bow holders for treestands aren't that great. Custom box frames for stands in aluminum, drilled to take siding would be nice. A lot lighter than wood. Going custom might be an option.

I'm still waiting to get a decent nights sleep. Road Warrior Christmas. Haven't gotten to bed before 1 in three days.

We had a guy on our road offer us apple trees 20 years ago. He would dig them out with his backhoe and deliver them to us. We just had to plant them. Members passed on it, too much work. So 10 years after that one of teh members planted trees at the club's expense. Present day, the trees we were offered look like an orchard and the ones we planted look like Charlie Brown apple trees. If you can get local stock take it.

So I've learned a lesson, instead of giving someone an idea, I'll keep my comments to myself. .

Honestly, my reaction was the same as Doc's. No one questioned your skill, what about the skills of the guy buying it. How are you going to weight test and rate it for safe sale. A lot has to be considered. Sure make one for yourself but,sales risk versus reward? You could make a few bucks and put your future on the line for it. Doc wasn't dissing you, just making sure you knew the consequences. My job is as risk manager so I think along risk vs. reward lines.

Depends on what you get. Ours, we own 167 acres and have access to another say 100 or so. We have a small house with all utilities and 18 bunks. Two stoves, blah, blah , blah. Members can either rent the house for a family vacation with exclusive property rights outside of deer & turkey season for $10 a night. Or if they want to go up and have no women and don't mind company just let me know and they can use it free. Dues is $480 and initiation is one time $400, half dues and initiation for under 21.

The guy that tends ours starts in March/April depending on the rain

This one has legs. To each his own, I don't think its the safest way to hunt but live and let live. My club has a rule, you have to have something orange even if its just a hat or gloves. I use a BO vest and my backpack is BO. That said, they come off when I sit and then I'm in the old red/black Woolrich. I hang the backpack next to me so someone walking will see it. As for visibility, the deer may not see orange but, the sunlight hitting it does make for a noticable bright spot that is not normal in the mottled background.

Mike G, head back to Lew Beach and see what state is there or see if you can hook up. That's where the Livingston Manor locals hunt

Well today was a bust, not my belt, the food I mean. I'm off until next Wed so its over for me thank God.....and no one died from the sandwiches

Merry Christmas and God bless all here. Slante

Hey Pygmy that's very nice of you. Thanks, I'll start storing nuts Bill

first I'm gonna scrub around the small gun shops looking for a sporterized old Mauser. We found a Mauser 98 in 7mm done in a Mannlicher carbine stock for my father. I'll get off the beaten path for a while before I buy modern.

My G-Daughyter is just passed 3 and the joy of my life. Congrats, she'll make you 10 years younger. They are a blessing