Walking Seasonal Roads: Reflections on a Dwelling Place

3. Bobolinks Galore: Van Amburg Road

28 3 Bobolinks Galore Van Amburg Road Wearing crowns of gold They come singing the old songs Bobolinks are here Where the road bends in a graceful curve, an old clapboard house stands. Its weathered planks, red roof, and yellowtrimmed windows are shaded by a large oak tree. From the old oak hangs a wooden swing. There is a garden with a scarecrow, sometimes clothes on the line, and in fall a hearty woodpile. Everything about the house is solid, and every time I pass the house, I am reminded of my great aunts, Betty, Gertrude, and Anne. They came as immigrants from Wales and lived in a small town in central Wisconsin when I knew them as elderly ladies. Why the house makes me think of those old dears probably has to do with its staid and austere appearance. My great aunts were just that, staid and austere, but generous and kind. What I loved most about them was the way they spoke to me, a child of ten, as if I were a rational and intelligent being, which I was, but almost no one acknowledged that. They also gave me nickels, a great enticement of affection in kids, and never questioned my judgment regarding how I used them. Of course, I used them for ice cream cones, but I sometimes wondered if I should have saved them for something more practical. But alas, the ice cream Bobolinks Galore | 29 always won out. And my aunts never once suggested that I be more practical. One of my recollections of Aunt Anne was a lecture she gave one afternoon over tea on race relations in the South. When I mentioned it to my parents, my father, who was born and raised in Louisiana, got really annoyed and said her take on the situation was “a typical Yankee attitude.” Even my mom, who grew up in Wisconsin, was a bit put out and remarked, “I wonder why she doesn’t expound on the treatment of the migrant workers around here in her own home?” The Mexican migrant workers picked peas in the nearby fields and lived in squalid camps behind the cannery. My mother’s observations made me aware that it is often easier to criticize the injustices that occur elsewhere than to do something about the ones that occur in our own backyard. So one of the lessons I learned visiting those aunts (in this case, more from my mother) was that injustices close to our own life might well be examined before those in distance places. Yet injustices and inequities are probably the same whether they occur in distant places or in our own backyard. And they are maintained by our inability to examine our own culpability and our own inertia. Some years after I started walking Van Amburg Road, I learned that the house was known as the Woodruff House and that it was the home of Martha and William Treichler. The Treichlers purchased the 1830s house and the eighty-seven-acre farm in 1971 and describe it in Stories of Mt. Washington (Treichler and Treichler 2007). Martha writes about living on a dirt road in a collection of poems by that title (Treichler 2011). Proprietors and editors of “a local history magazine for Conhocton, Canisteo, Tioga, Chemung , and the Genesee River Valleys and for the Finger Lakes and Lake Ontario Regions,” the Treichlers publish the Crooked Lake Review, which contains “the accomplishments of the men, women, and friends who settled in these regions, built houses, cleared farms, and started businesses” (Crooked Lake Review 2008). 30 | Walking Seasonal Roads The Treichlers began the Crooked Lake Review in May 1988 and have published 150 issues on the local history of the region. Bill’s obituary appears in the 150th issue. In August 2008, the review switched to a blog format. Describedas“themultigenerationalhomesteadingTreichlers” (Kauffman 2006, 81), the family has been organic farmers and remain deeply involved in the decentrist, rural, self-sufficient lifestyle that came out of the Black Mountain movement (Treichler 2004, Black Mountain College Project/Biographies 2004). Four of their five children live clustered around their home, and in keeping with the family’s tradition of localism, sustainability, and sound environmental living, their daughter, Rachel Treichler was the Green Party’s candidate for New York State Attorney General in 2006 (Treichler 2006, 2008). I first met Rachel at a Sierra Club meeting, and she has become...