A Life on the Mountain Top with Dede Terns-Thorpe and Ed Thorpe

Transcribed by Jerome Kazlauskas

Dede Terns-Thorpe  0:03  
We've had a phenomenal history, just—and to think—and I know when you're young, 100 years is huge ... as you get older, you realize, it's not so huge.

Brett Barry  0:12  
Dede Terns-Thorpe is the historian for the Town of Hunter, referred to locally as "the mountain top," and comprising the villages of Hunter and Tannersville, and the hamlets of Edgewood, Elka Park, Lanesville, and Platte Clove, plus the historic private communities: Onteora Park, Twilight Park, and Elka Park. Dede's passionate about the history of this place, and she's got her own history here, too, which is mostly what we talked about when we met at Tannersville's Mountain Top Library just about a month ago. Dede lived her first ten years in New York City. Her dad was a firefighter there, but her family goes back generations, and she considers herself a Catskills native.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  0:56  
Both my parents were from here. My parents, uh, my mom's family, owned the forest Inn in Elka Park, which was ... used to be the Poggenburg Casino, which was part of the park, so we were ten when we moved up here. My dad was a New York City fireman, so when he retired in 1956–57, we moved up here. We came up in the summers, every summer, so I always ... my heart was always here. I always felt like a true local. Yeah, yeah, so I would say, "We were settled in 1957." I know I went into the sixth grade because all the kids at school used to say, "You were so lucky you missed Frances Curran, a teacher in the fifth grade who was my aunt, which I was lucky," so ...

Brett Barry  1:39  
Tough teacher?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  1:40  
Tough teacher, yeah.

Ed Thorpe  1:43  
[Ed Thorpe chimes in]

Brett Barry  1:43  
That's when Dede's husband, Ed Thorpe, jumped in, recounting just how tough Ms. Curran was—joking, maybe, that he still has a mark from where she banged his head against the blackboard. Ed didn't want to be interviewed at first, but he kept jumping in with stories, so we mic'd him up and convinced him, without too much arm twisting, to join the conversation.

Ed Thorpe  2:05  
So you want me to sing now?

Brett Barry  2:06  
Yeah, how about a duet?

Everyone  2:10  
[LAUGHTER]

Dede Terns-Thorpe  2:10  
Okay, you don't wanna do that.

Ed Thorpe  2:11  
No, I don't think so.

Brett Barry  2:13  
Let's just backtrack a little bit, Ed. When ... when were you born and in what town?

Ed Thorpe  2:17  
Well, the capital of New York State—Haines Falls. This was back in 1937—September 5th, if you want to get me something for my birthday!

Brett Barry  2:29  
And a capital "Y" in your world?

Ed Thorpe  2:33  
In my world, yeah, born and raised up here, always been the local "woodchuck," and ... kind of proud of it, I guess. I moved almost, oh, about a hundred yards from my home on the Cabbage Patch to my other home on the Cabbage Patch. 

Dede Terns-Thorpe  2:51  
Cabbage Patch is the name of our street.

Ed Thorpe  2:53  
That's—yeah, it's across from Stewart's in Haines Falls there. That's ... that's the county treasure.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  2:59  
Just past Cabbage Patch, going east, is a little building used to be called "Travelers Rest," and it was a little coffee shop, and his mom ran that for ... for years.

Ed Thorpe  3:09  
Yeah.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  3:10  
Yeah.

Ed Thorpe  3:10  
It was a social center of Haines Falls for a long, long time.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  3:15  
Pre-Stewart's.

Ed Thorpe  3:15  
Yup, and it used to be ... Friday night was wrestling and Saturday night was boxing, or the other way around, and Travelers Rest had the first TV! It was about that big with a big magnifying glass in front of it, and the only place you could see real good was directly in front of it. If you were off to the side, it was just a blur, but that's the ... and the place would fill up. They'd line up chairs like a movie theater, and everybody in town would come to boxing and wrestling!

Dede Terns-Thorpe  3:50  
You told me that all the kids used to have to stand in the back.

Ed Thorpe  3:52  
Oh yeah, the kids weren't allowed up front! They had to go to the back, and the smoke ... the smoke would be so thick. All you can see over here is a glow in the dark! You couldn't see the actual television. There were good times back then. There really was, and my mother worked for the Earle Schoonmaker and Eddy Hoyt, who owned it, and she ended up buying it from them.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  4:19  
Ed always used the expression that he grew up in Haines Falls and he was really poor, but he didn't know he was poor because everybody in Haines Falls was poor.

Ed Thorpe  4:27  
Yes, nobody told us. Well, it really wasn't that bad, and my father was a game warden, so we had deer meat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You did! That's what you eat. Times could get a little tough back then.

Brett Barry  4:43  
It seems these days that there's a lot of restaurants and gift shops and things like that, but it's still hard to get groceries, and pharmacies are few and far between that kind of thing. Was it more accessible back then?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  4:58  
It was. It was a lot more stable. We had a Simon's department store, which doesn't, you know, it was only where Oscar's Mexican Restaurant is ... good Mexican restaurant, but it carried everything—carried socks and underwear and, you know, [and] work pants and work shirts, and we had meat markets. We had lots of little grocery stores. We had the A&P; we had the Rexall Pharmacy for years; we never thought we'd lose the Rexall. You lived your life here. You really didn't have to go off the mountain as much.

Brett Barry  5:30  
How many people are in your class? Do you know, or do you have a ... an idea?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  5:33  
You know, I should know because it's 40 ... 60 years. [LAUGHTER] 60 years this year. Oh my god, can you believe that?

Brett Barry  5:41  
Well, you know, at least in my school district, Onteora, there's a real retraction of students, so there's consolidation and concerns about keeping everything going. Has the population grown or shrunk for school ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  5:55  
No, it shrunk, and it's funny, though some ... some classrooms are, you know, there's 30 kids, and we probably had close to 30. I'm guessing around that, but ... and then there's other times when their classes are very small, so it just ... it depends, but our enrollment is down quite a bit.

Brett Barry  6:12  
And that's because of second homeowners?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  6:14  
Second homeowners ... has a lot to do with it. The fact that we've really had no industry up here has always played a bit of a big impact on kids, and now the housing situation is gone, so that it's, you know, long-term rentals are almost impossible to afford. I don't know how people are doing what. You know, I know I have friends that are paying $70, $80, $200 a month plus utilities if we make it a pretty good salary to cover that.

Brett Barry  6:42  
What kind of industry, if any, was available when you were younger, or was it still tourism-based, or were there more ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  6:50  
It was definitely tourism-based. Hunter Mountain; it just opened. Hunter Mountain opened like '59-'60 when they really got established, and they opened truly to ... to ... they wanted to bring winter to our winter work to the mountain top.

Brett Barry  7:06  
And this was a family that was already involved in excavating, and ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  7:09  
Slutzky Family.

Brett Barry  7:10  
Yeah, so they ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  7:11  
Good family.

Brett Barry  7:12  
They took those skills and created a ski area.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  7:15  
They did, and Orville Slutzky was ... he was the one that was in the lodge most ... most often, and he was just hard-working. You know, he'd empty the garbage pail if it was full or do whatever he had to do, yeah.

Brett Barry  7:29  
So one of your first jobs here was obviously after sixth grade waitressing?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  7:36  
Yes.

Brett Barry  7:37  
I understand that the restaurant, or maybe more, so the bar scene [here] was really hopping back then. What was ... can you tell me about that?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  7:44  
Sixties, seventies, probably the eighties ... also maybe into the nineties, but we had ... we had a lot of bars on the mountain top—a tremendous amount. I couldn't even tell you all of them, but ... and they were all busy. We had ... we had a ski crowd, but we also had a ... just a party crowd, you know, and some. They would come up in vehicles. The ski rentals were huge. Everyone was renting out their houses; restaurants were hopping; everything was hopping. It was a busy ... busy, and my husband was the town judge, so I can tell you that from that end, it was pretty busy, so lots of just kids, young people having fun, you know.

Brett Barry  8:24  
As a barkeep and town judge, Ed experienced the Hunter bar scene from a couple of unique perspectives.

Ed Thorpe  8:32  
Every other building was a bar, and it was that kind of a weekend. Every weekend, you were called out for midnight arraignments for the drunks and we had a lot of bartenders, and that was, you know, they called you out every weekend, and it was busy.

Brett Barry  8:53  
So you were serving drinks, and then you'd head over to the courthouse for the arraignments?

Ed Thorpe  8:58  
Later, you would have been the guys hitting the booze in that arena. Later on, you look familiar, and why should I ... who's your bartender? Who's ... it was quite a job because of how busy you were, and some of the stuff that you get to see ... sitting behind that bench. You know, of course, I was probably guilty, or that both of them was ... for me, but it was something. It was good, yeah, and most of the skiers that they didn't even know where Hunter Mountain was. They ... the bar rules would stop them before they ever got to Hunter Mountain. They never even made it there. Some ... most of them, and I was lucky enough to be the ... the weekend bartender at Pete's Place. It was a thriving bar, and it was ... it was always busy, and ... and the judge was busy back in those days because they called you out for behaviorists. Yeah, most of them did not. They usually say that students didn't know what you were talking about anyway.

Brett Barry  10:04  
You had to catch them before they left town, right?

Ed Thorpe  10:06  
Yeah, that was a butler or a bartender, but it was seamless. I don't know. Back in the day, there was a lot of fun, and then, like I said that—I tend the bar at the Hunter Village Inn, which was another—that was O'Shea's at the Hunter Village Inn competed for the ... the most drinkers in the Town of Hunter, and it was a lot of them back then, but it was ... it was interesting back then in the how busy it was up here, like you couldn't even pull out in the street on ... on like a Saturday night because of the traffic—and plus, on foot. In the ... in the village of Hunter, there's like four or five bars, and it was ... it was like Midtown Manhattan on a Saturday night that groups of skiers were roaming the streets in.

Brett Barry  10:59  
What happened to those crowds?

Ed Thorpe  11:01  
I don't know.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  11:02  
The bars closed.

Ed Thorpe  11:03  
Things changed, I guess.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  11:06  
... a lot of daytrippers today, but I don't know where the money got in the way, or you know that the bar scene did quiet down.

Brett Barry  11:14  
What came first: the closure of some of those bars or the crowds dissipating?

Ed Thorpe  11:18  
The closure of the bars made the crowds disappear.

Brett Barry  11:22  
It was that—were there too many bars? Was there too much going on?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  11:26  
Well, there's starting to be some trouble about it. You know, people writing letters to the editors and the local people. You know, they were unhappy with the way things were going up here. They were just ... it was too many bars, and then eventually, the DWI laws got stricter, and, you know, [and] people just shied away from ... even today, I mean, you're really careful when you go out and you have a few drinks, you know, you just can't afford to today, so ...

Ed Thorpe  11:50  
I was like the ... the worst bartender, so I ... they put me with us—far back at the bars as you could get, and that was where all the locals and the other bartenders and stuff like that, and always that's where they came was to my station, way at the back end of the bar, and I would bring out more on a Saturday night than with the skiers up on the front big bars. I would bring out more than those guys did, and I can go from behind the bar to Hunter Village Inn to the courthouse and arrange the drugs that I've just been serving whiskey to, so ...

Brett Barry  12:28  
Little conflict of interest there?

Everyone  12:29  
[LAUGHTER]

Brett Barry  12:38  
In Ed's younger years [that'd be] prior to serving and arraigning Hunter's heaviest drinkers, Ed made money caretaking some of the historic homes in the Mountain Top's historic parks.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  12:50  
You always said, "The parks gave a lot of business to you when you were younger," and you're shoveling the roofs off because nobody had to stay during the winter.

Ed Thorpe  12:58  
Yeah, those—actually, they didn't plow the roads like Twilight Park—not Onteora so much, but Twilight—all these old houses, the snow was two or three feet deep on the roofs, and what you did, you wouldn't shovel the roofs off so they didn't cave in. Well, luckily, sometimes you got their types of bugs in it ... the porch roofs, and you shovel the snow off and collapse the porch roofs ... wet from the higher roof, and then, in the springtime, then you got the work to rebuild the porch, so it was ...

Brett Barry  13:35  
So there's ... there's three big parks up here, kind of cottage communities, so that's Elka Park, Twilight Park, Onteora Park ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  13:43  
Yes.

Brett Barry  13:44  
They started back in the ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  13:46  
1880s.

Brett Barry  13:47  
... 1880s. When you were young and [working] shoveling snow off the roofs, what kind of people were living up there then? How's that changed to now?

Ed Thorpe  13:57  
There was no ... there was nobody here in the wintertime. I mean, it was just ... just a few locals, and that was it, and they [the park people] only came when summer started. Yeah, they did, just strictly for the summer.

Brett Barry  14:11  
A lot of the same family since today?

Ed Thorpe  14:13  
Oh yeah, but they go all the way back. Onteora, finally, both of them go way way back.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  14:19  
There were two other parks, so there was Santa Cruz Park and Sunset Park, and they were all around, too.

Ed Thorpe  14:24  
Yeah, there is. We always call it all "Twilight," but it wasn't. You're ... Dede's right.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  14:31  
Yeah.

Brett Barry  14:31  
Same area's Twilight, those two?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  14:33  
Close by: Santa Cruz was actually just southeast of Twilight, and then Sunset was over ... just a little further.

Brett Barry  14:42  
So you grow up, Dede, near ... in Elka Park, but not in the club.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  14:46  
Right, but right near the club.

Brett Barry  14:48  
What was the relationship between the clubs and the outside community? Where was there interaction or ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  14:53  
Well, there was, but it was very limited, especially back then, and probably in 1900, it was much more limited from what you read, but it's come a long way to what it ... to what it is today. Today, it's a much more relaxed atmosphere. I don't know if the big money is ... is still the same as it was, but I know Elka Park. We grew up very close, so I did a lot of babysitting up there. It was a pretty cool place to work. I did a lot of waitressing in the ... in the restaurant up there. Elka Park was going to originally have 80 homes in it, and they ... they would have folks, and whatever reason, they kept it to the same original 22. I think they have. Twilight has definitely a lot more than Onteora, probably both around 100.

Ed Thorpe  15:39  
Yeah.

Brett Barry  15:40  
Did they all have their own restaurants?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  15:41  
Twilight Park had actually had a couple hotels in it. It had Santa Cruz and Leggett Inn and Twilight Inn. Onteora had a clubhouse; basically, that was that.

Ed Thorpe  15:52  
You could get meals there like at the clubhouse in Onteora ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  15:55  
Yes.

Ed Thorpe  15:55  
... in the same way in Twilight. A lot of the people ... they just ate there, right, had their meals there ... when it first started, yeah.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  16:04  
When Twilight was built, the homes were built without kitchens because they felt that the women should rest, you know, should get to relax, which was quite unique back in the 1800s, but I have to tell you that I did a big study this summer. I did it with another woman that lives in Twilight, Joanne Ainsworth, and it was on "The Twilight Inn Fire," so we had pretty wicked fires back up here back then. Smoking laws were very relaxed. A lot of them had balloon framed construction, so there was no stoppage for the fire when it started.

Ed Thorpe  16:38  
Tell me more about that "Twilight Inn Fire."

Dede Terns-Thorpe  16:41  
"Twilight Inn Fire" happened in 1926, and it was at ... 22 people died in it. It was probably the worst. It's still the worst, I believe on Greene County fire, but it was an awful fire. It started at one o'clock in the morning. Then, a young man, called Stryker. I've always been fascinated with this young man. He was only in his early 20s. He worked at Twilight Inn for just 10 days. When he was the nightwatchman, he discovered the fire, though there had been a party the night before ... for the help, but they were all like sound asleep. They all slept on the third floor. Carl Stryker was again the nightwatchman, and he was responsible for ... he ran in and out and probably saved 10 or 12 people. There were a number of locals that showed up, but 22 people died. They were jumping out windows, and it was ... it was terrible, and the only thing ... the fire company could really do was protect the other homes because the other homes were so close by.

Ed Thorpe  17:39  
If you go to the Haines Falls Cemetery now, there's a big monument, and so there with all the names of the people that died or not ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  17:50  
And again, it was before they did much with fire escapes, and, you know, it was ... it was just dramatic.

Audio  17:56  
[MUSIC]

Brett Barry  18:01  
Five decades later, Dede would take a job as "Hunter Mountain's Fire Tower Observer," just one of many jobs she pursued on the mountain top over the years, including her very favorite job, which, well, you're just gonna have to stay tuned. All that and more right after this.

Campbell Brown  18:22  
"Kaatscast" is sponsored by Hanford Mills Museum. Explore the power of the past and learn about the ingenuity of the historic milling industry. Watch the waterwheel bring a working sawmill to life. Bring a picnic to enjoy by the millpond. For more information about scheduling a tour or about their 2024 exploration days, visit hanfordmills.org. This episode is proudly sponsored by Ulster Savings Bank, stop in and meet the friendly staff at their Phoenicia and Woodstock locations. Call 866-440-0391 or visit them at ulstersavings.com. Member FDIC Equal Housing Lender.

Brett Barry  19:04  
Back at the Mountain Top Library with Hunter Town Historian [Dede Terns-Thorpe] and husband Ed Thorpe, I asked about Dede's job as "Hunter Mountain Fire Tower Observer" in the 1970s.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  19:17  
When I got that job, I had no idea what I was doing. I had no idea. I was going to be traveling for four miles off a dirt road on in a jeep because I had only been to one fire tower in my life, and that was ... I drove my car up to it, so it was ... it was quite an experience, but I'll tell you one thing about the fire tower. It's something that every child that lives on the mountain top should see because you really don't appreciate where you live until you stand at the very top and you look down at it.

Ed Thorpe  19:46  
We'll tell them what your dad said when they offered. She said, "I don't know anything about fire towers or your dad."

Dede Terns-Thorpe  19:54  
Dad always says ... just say, "You can do it and I'll teach you."

Ed Thorpe  19:59  
That's how you got the job, right?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  20:01  
But it was, you know, females weren't in that type of job, so it was ... it was quite an experience. My jeep was broken into by some kids, when it was the Slutzkys used to let me park there ... my jeep down there, so I didn't have to have it on the road, and some kids broke into it one night and ripped all the wires out, and Orville found out about it, and gave me his jeep to use for the rest of the summer, and, you know, that's ... that's how I would describe living on Mountain Top is that, you know, people's like, especially back then, everybody knew everybody, so it was ... they were always coming around to help, but anyway, that was ... that was quite the job. It was quite an experience for me.

Brett Barry  20:41  
Dede, how old were you when you got that job?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  20:43  
I was young. I was 23.

Brett Barry  20:48  
And you were up there all by yourself?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  20:49  
I was up there by myself. Yeah, I really ... it was ... it was a true experience in many ways.

Brett Barry  20:55  
If you're detecting some ambivalence in that phrase, well, remember, these were the rowdy bar days on the mountain top, and that rough atmosphere wasn't contained to the bars themselves. There were some unsavory characters, sharing mountain space with young Dede. Were you ever concerned with the types of people who are just kind of hanging on the mountain?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  21:15  
Yeah, because, you know, there were the real true hikers that were the dedicated people [the outside people], and then there were the partiers, and they would carry up full 12 packs of beer and leave the empties, and they were just up there to party, you know, it was just, yes, I was ... concerned for my safety back then. There were times ... most of the time I wasn't, when I first got the job, I have to tell you this, I could not make it all the way up to the top of the fire tower. It's 60 feet tall, and was really ... I'd never been above 20 feet in my life, I don't think, but eventually, within about a week, I was cleaning the windows.

Ed Thorpe  21:54  
But what she takes me up there, and the fire tower actually blows back and forth in the wind. It moves as a sealed tower, but it still moves, and you can still see my fingerprints and a handrail up there where I'm ... you're, and she's running around going, "Oh, this is ... this over there suddenly got the towers going back and forth, and she's running around. Oh, well, that's Lanesville. Oh, quite a while ago."

Dede Terns-Thorpe  22:20  
It was a good job in a lot of ways though.

Brett Barry  22:22  
What was your responsibility up there and how many hours a day would you be up there?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  22:25  
Well, you went up every day, and you were there for your full eight hours, you know, and it took me about ... I don't know, I'm trying to guess it probably was like 40 minutes, 45 minutes to get up there. You did a lot of brush cutting because you had to keep the telephone lines clear, so I can ... that was pretty much your day. You kept the lean-tos. You checked out in the lean-tos, but pretty much you were responsible for cutting the brush under the telephone lines, which went the entire way, so ...

Brett Barry  22:52  
And then, were you actively looking for fires?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  22:55  
Oh yeah, you would get on the radio whenever, especially on the weekends.

Brett Barry  22:59  
If you spotted smoke, you'd call it in.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  23:03  
You know, and if the plane saw smoke, then you would be their only communication because sometimes they couldn't reach the other towers.

Brett Barry  23:10  
How come we don't need them anymore?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  23:12  
There seems to be more attention to fire safety. I think the rangers are out there constantly now. I just think there's ... there's a lot of precautions taken that today that they weren't necessarily taken back then: automobiles and vehicles are in better shape, and there was, you know, a lot of smokers, you know, if cigarettes get thrown, and before all that, you had the railroads going through, which caused a lot of the fire, so ... but, I think, we'd become much more conscious today.

Ed Thorpe  23:42  
They had guys who walked a railroad break ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  23:45  
Fire watchers.

Ed Thorpe  23:45  
... fire watchers they called because they were sitting so many ...

Brett Barry  23:49  
The railroad would throw sparks ... is that how that work?

Ed Thorpe  23:53  
They would throw sparks.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  23:53  
Yeah, yeah.

Brett Barry  23:56  
After Hunter Fire Tower, you worked at Devil's Tombstone, which was in ... is that Lanesville?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  24:01  
That's Lanesville. It's on Route 214, and it was a wonderful job. It was a great outdoor experience for me.

Brett Barry  24:08  
Caretaker.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  24:09  
Caretaker.

Brett Barry  24:10  
So you were there ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  24:11  
If you slept there, you lived there for seven days a week. You were there the whole time, and back then, it was open from pre-Memorial Day through ... right through ... like Veterans Day. You know, it was opened the entire year. Now, it's pretty limited to when it's opened. That's where my father really told me if they ask you anything, just say "yes" because that's ... first summer I was there was the first year of the German Alps Festival, and the caretaker of North Lake had quit, so they asked me to fill the summer in there, and my dad said, "Because I knew I couldn't do it," and my father said, "Just, you can. Just do it." Do you know how to do a running backhoe? Sure, no problem at all, but anyway, we got through it, and then I went back to Dells ... started I was very happy to be there.

Brett Barry  24:57  
And during the months when the campground was closed, Dede went back to Hunter Mountain, but in a different capacity.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  25:03  
I was ... I got the job as a nurse at Hunter Mountain Ski Bowl, learned a lot about first aid and skiing, got to ski for free, so what I would do is worked winter ... doing this at Hunter Mountain Ski Bowl, and then Devil's Tombstone the rest of the year, so it really worked out beautifully, especially when you had a young child, so it worked out well, and I ... I learned a lot about accidents and skiing, and, you know, most accidents happen because people ski over their ability, you know, or improper equipment fitted, so ...

Brett Barry  25:38  
Hunter Mountain was ... you mentioned the festivals, it was a pretty hoppin' place ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  25:44  
The festivals were huge. Back then, they used to have the German Alps Festival. I can't even remember, but it seems like it was like two weeks long or possibly three weeks. They had the Irish Festival and the Polka Festival and the Country-Western Festival and, yeah, I was the nurse in the first aid room for that ... for their festivals. It was some pretty good drinking going on there, so yeah, it always had some ... some action going on in the first year.

Brett Barry  26:12  
And then, another job opportunity [encouraged again by Dede's dad] ended up being a favorite.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  26:19  
Well, my father had ... actually, my father wanted me to take the test for the postal service, and I really took it just to humor him because that's what you do when you're young, and it was the best job I ever had. It was during, you know, I carried me out for Catskill on foot for 10 years, then I became a postmaster because I kept thinking what's it going to be like when I'm, you know, at a certain age, and so I became a postmaster and I was fortunate to work in Haines Falls, then Port Ewen in Windham, and then I retired from Tannersville.

What was so great about delivering mail?

Well, delivering it on foot was ... was great, you know, we do meals-on-wheels now, and it's the same thing with that. It's ... there's certain people that, you know, that they're ... you're the only people that they see the whole thing. Delivering mail was great because I don't know you're outside. You're ... your own boss. Nobody bothered you. You know, you're a ... miserable days. You just dealt with them because they were going to pass you. The shortest route in Catskill was eight and a half miles and the longest was twelve and a half. I never walked a mile in my life before I got that chance. It was quite an experience.

Brett Barry  27:27  
That phrase ... come rain, come sleet, come hail was ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  27:31  
Only one day when we pull the weight off of the mail route one day and all those years, and it was ... because it was a horrible blizzard. Oh my god! In the worst part was ... you were only delivering circulars because the trucks couldn't make it up here with the mail, so it was ... so they came in and got out about us. It was one o'clock in the afternoon, and I'll never forget it.

Brett Barry  27:54  
Dede, tell me a little bit about your dad. It seemed like he encouraged you to take all these jobs. What was his background?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  28:00  
My dad, um, he was one of like seven kids ... think he grew up in Platte Clove for a number of years, and then moved to Haines Falls. He was a really smart, self-educated person ... became a New York City fireman spent 20 something years there ... came back up here busy ... Union Carpenter, he was the Commissioner of Elections for Greene County, spent many years on our school board. He was just self-educated. That's ... that's what I would say about my dad. Great dad ... great father always pushed ... pushed us to be the best we could be, but he was ... he was the one that had me take the post office exam, and just say, "You can do whatever somebody asked you if he could do it," and he was quite my biggest, biggest admirer, largest admirer, but I've been very fortunate. I've had great jobs, and when Daryl Legg was responsible for asking me to take over from Justine Hummel, she was a good friend of mine [as town historian], and that is scratched off my bucket list.

Brett Barry  28:00  
You said in your notes to me ... Grand Finale: Town of ...

Dede Terns-Thorpe  29:10  
Yes, it is.

Brett Barry  29:11  
I mean, it seems like you've really enjoyed a lot of different work experiences throughout your life?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  29:16  
Yeah, I've been very fortunate. I have really been lucky and most of them have been right up here on the mountain top or in Greene County.

Brett Barry  29:22  
Town historian's the capstone?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  29:25  
County story and it's a capstone. We've had a phenomenal history to—and to think—and I know when you're young, 100 years is huge ... as you get older, you realize, it's not so huge.

Brett Barry  29:35  
Now, as town historian, you're able to bring at least 70 plus years of your own experience into that knowledge. How do you reach back beyond that has immersing yourself in the history have been a lifelong pursuit?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  29:51  
It always has been. I've always been a local history buff. Now, it's intense ... intensified, but I've always been a local history buff, yeah.

Brett Barry  30:03  
How long have you been a Hunter historian?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  30:06  
Actually, Daryl asked me to take over in November of 2012 to find out that the bicentennial was in February of 2013, so it did. It's been a ride. The one thing that I'd like people to help me with this is I'm working on a map of the Town of Hunter to place the many hotels that we had. That's probably the most prevalent question I get today is ... my grandparents just stay at a hotel back in the 1920s. It was in Tannersville or in Hunter or whatever, but ... so I'm putting 911 addresses, street addresses, unmap ... there were many hotels in Platte Clove, Elka Park, Lanesville had numerous ... I think they could accommodate up to 400 people at one point, so that's ... that wouldn't ... would be my gift to the town.

Brett Barry  30:59  
And you need help.

Dede Terns-Thorpe  31:01  
Well, I need ... I need people's input as far as where places were, and, you know, like ... I'm pretty good with Tannersville and Elka Park. Johnny Farrell's the retired town road supervisor helped me out with Platte Clove because he knows it like the back of his hand, but I need some help with Hunter and Beecher Smith is helping me over in Lanesville and Murray Lane, so ...

Brett Barry  31:24  
So what do you recommend if people want to know more about the history of this area?

Dede Terns-Thorpe  31:30  
Well, there's a lot of local, good little books about history in the area, and we have a lot of historians. There's a lot of websites out there, and anyone that has any questions, please feel free to just email: hunterhistorian@gmail.com or call the townhouse, and I'd be more than happy to help you go into the right direction.

Audio  31:51  
[MUSIC]

Brett Barry  31:52  
Read Dede's weekly local history column in the Mountain Eagle, and check out her new book, "Tidbits of the Town of Hunter," wherever books are sold, such as ...

Campbell Brown  32:04  
Briars & Brambles Books. The go to independent book and gift store in the Catskills, located in Windham, New York, right next to the pharmacy, just steps away from the Windham Path. Open daily. For more information, visit briarsandbramblesbooks.com or call 518-750-8599.

Brett Barry  32:22  
"Kaatscast: The Catskills Podcast" is a production of Silver Hollow Audio. If you'd like to help us reach more ears in the Catskills, please take a moment to rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. It only takes a few minutes and we really appreciate the feedback. Follow us on Instagram @kaatscast and sign up for our newsletter at kaatscast.com. I'm Brett Barry. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again in two weeks.

Campbell Brown  32:54  
"Kaatscast" is supported by a generous grant from the Nicholas J. Juried Family Foundation and by listeners like you! If you'd like to make a donation, you can do so at kaatscast.com. Thank you!

Audio  33:07  
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