Population, 2166.
Y'all are crappy guessers. Or non-guessers, as the case may be. Take the turnpike out of Boston, and continue westward for about 4 hours. Then you end up in the scenic town of ...
We're talking about a town about 80 miles west of Albany. It's really little. Seriously. They have a Main Street, and it is the main street, and it takes about all of fifteen minutes to traverse it on foot. But for such a small town, they sure have an awfully large amount of churches.
As I said, Tweedle and I drove up on Saturday to visit her grandmother for a couple days of detoxing and hopefully getting homework done (no wireless internet! Sad to say, even without wireless we were able to procrastinate our little hearts out).
There are cows and deer and horses and silos on the drive into town.
Silos!
And tractors!
I am fascinated by modified tractor racing, which appears to be a speciality of the midwest (not really related, but hey, tractors!). I mean, it is such an interesting subculture. I really want to see a tractor race. I bet they'd have good hot dogs at such an event. (Tweedle and I are devoting our end-of-the-year BBQ to modified tractor racing. So what if nobody gets it but us.)
That tractor is at the mill, which houses lots of little antique booths now. We took lots of pictures of tractors.
But that's the boring stuff. I can't even BEGIN to tell you how funny the 30-some hours we spent up there is. Tweedle's grandmother is a spry 90 years old, and when I say spry, I mean it. Her boyfriend/companion is 91. They don't look a day past 70. She's going blind, he's going deaf and is starting to lose his short-term memory. They make quite a pair. And she is the bossiest lady ever, bossy as only a 90-year-old grandmother can be while being one of the nicest people also. This is a lady who likes her "perfect Manhattan" served in proper glasses; woe be the person who gives it to her in a glass that doesn't meet her standards.
Other things her grandmother said this past weekend:
"Never mind how cute he is, is he a good lover?"There's lots of other funny stuff, but I can't remember it right now.
"I've seen better-looking men."
"I'd try to pawn off Jack [her husband] at dances, but at the end of the night he always came home with me."
There is pretty much one story that encapsulates the entire weekend. Saturday afternoon, Tweedle and I were walking around after a gigantic lunch (all food will come in another post, no worry - you think we'd go to a place, however small, with bad eating? Please), all schlubby-looking. The town isn't exactly a hopping one, so you can imagine our surprise when we got honked at. HONKED AT. Disgusted, we continued on our walk. Then we got honked at AGAIN by a different set of guys, and one yelled out, "Do you want some fries with that shake?" Then a third round of honking!
Really, I'm not exaggerating when I say that we were starting to feel like the town prostitutes.
Here is a picture of the covered bridge just outside of town.
The next morning, we went to brunch at a local diner. At the counter behind us were the guys Tweedle and I swore were the honkers. Grandma's boyfriend thought that one was BJ, one of Grandma's cousins (or related somehow, in that distant relative sort of way), and they argued about that for a little. (For someone who can't see so much, Grandma somehow believes she sees everything.)
Tweedle and I went on a walk after brunch to the Mill to check out the antiques. On the way, we ran into some of Tweedle's second cousins. I cooed to their darling babies while everyone else chatted. When we shared that we'd been at the diner that morning, the cousin said that, oh, BJ was there too with Jeremy.
"What kind of car does BJ drive?" Tweedle asked.
"A black pickup, that one parked down the street," responded the cousin, pointing to a black pickup. A black pickup that was exactly the same one as the guys who yelled the fries comment drove.
Oh, that's right. It was indeed a couple of Tweedle's cousins that had tried to pick us up the previous day.
Here are more picture taken at the covered bridge.
Honestly, if any girls ever need some ego-boosting, drive around upstate New York. We got more honks and neck-spraining looks than anywhere else, and we were in jeans and hoodies the entire weekend. Given the dating opportunities, however, perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised.
« Home