tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226619540036514458.post4933000931933722890..comments2024-02-27T07:06:44.820-05:00Comments on Hastings Historical Society: Our Village in 1909The Hastings Historical Societyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16009201276849333251noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-226619540036514458.post-35704383926811743612009-06-23T14:20:20.712-04:002009-06-23T14:20:20.712-04:00I remember Mrs. House and her home overlooking the...I remember Mrs. House and her home overlooking the river. It is still located on the northeast corner or Riverview place, abutting the River Glen Apartments complex. I was in the house once on a Saturday, some time during the 1950's. Mrs. House's daughter Marilyn married Bob Courtney another Hastings resident, and they had three daughters, Carolyn, Julia and Wendy. Carrie was the oldest. They lived four doors away from our home at 33 Whitman. <br /><br />That afternoon, Carrie and I explored the porch and as I recall there was a winding staircase with a round window all paneled in wainscot bead board. The House house gave the feeling of being on a riverboat.<br /><br />The beach referred to by Mrs. House was diminished by the time that I was a teenager in the Sixties. We all referred to it as "Bare A__" Beach as we would go skinny-dipping, being screened by many bushes separating the view from the train tracks. It was a nice sandy beach, and you could wade out into the river quite a way before it began to gradually get deep.<br /><br />The winters were much colder then. On at least one occasion my father skated across the Hudson, and my grandfather was in the Home Guard during WW1 which practiced formations on the ice. Even as a kid in the Fifties I remember hearing the ice breakers going travelling up the river to West Point, and hearing sound of the cracking of the ice even through our storm windows. My mother recalled the when she was a young girl, the streets of the village were plowed with iron-clad wooden plows. Her parents would sled down the whole length of Washington Avenue together, across Warburton, and down the lower part of Washington, over the snow covered tracks and out onto the river. That must have been some ride.<br /><br />"Cap" Cook(e) was my grand uncle, and from my mother and father's accounts did run a "tight ship" at the old Tower Ridge Yacht Club, in addition to Commodore Ross for whom he had fond respect. The Society has a newspaper article on file about him and the lives that he saved on the Hudson during those treacherous storms referred to in Mrs. House's article. I can't wait to read the next installment. Bob RussellAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com