A Guide To The Many Chathams

What does it mean to belong to a place? Standing in the famous gazebo at the intersection of multiple boundaries – the village of Chatham, the town of Chatham, and perhaps even the town of Ghent – this question feels especially important.

This rural upstate New York community actually comprises numerous Chathams: Old Chatham, North Chatham, East Chatham, Chatham Center, and the village itself. And, of course, Malden Bridge.

Through conversations with lifelong residents and relative newcomers, we get to know the layers of identity that define this rural community: Melissa Davis, who recently opened a boutique on Main Street with Sherri Marton (Marton & Davis), lovingly compares the village to Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls, complete with quirky characters and a strong sense of community.

Meanwhile, Jeanne Veillette Bowerman, who manages an antique shop in the oldest building in the village (reportedly inhabited by 19th-century spirits), sees the ghosts of a Chatham that no longer exists.

The community stands at a crossroads of preservation and change. The historic Crandell Theater is being restored to its 1920s glory, though not to the version most longtime locals might remember. The Shaker Museum recently broke ground on a new headquarters. The Harlem Valley Rail Trail will soon connect Chatham to Wassaic, 46 miles away, and all the while, the Chatham Dirt Road Coalition fights to protect the town's 50-plus miles of unpaved roads from the pavers, seeing them as essential to maintaining rural character here.

Hidden histories emerge at every turn – from the modest farmhouse where the Three Stooges once lived to avoid the World War I draft to the 153-year-old clock still keeping time above Main Street. Each story reveals how communities navigate the delicate balance between honoring the past and embracing the future.

To hear my previous episode in Chatham, featuring our anonymous food critic The Hungry Eye and the Great Chatham Bake-Off, click here.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Chatham's Famous Gazebo
• 0:52 The Latest In Chatham
• 3:45 Meeting Some Neighbors
• 6:19 On The Border With Gregg
• 18:43 Jeanne & The Ghosts of Groat's
• 35:55 Coffee Talk With Pete
• 41:19 At The Intersection of Pave & Paradise

Transcript

James Cave: 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Jiffy, a podcast about upstate New York that really takes you places, and right now I'm standing in the gazebo. I'm in the town of Chatham in its world-famous gazebo, or maybe it's in the village of Chatham, or maybe it's in the part of the village of Chatham that's in the town of Ghent. The point is, the gazebo is right on the border and, frankly, it's all a bit confusing and it's hard for me to know, especially when you consider that, in addition to the village of Chatham, within the town of Chatham there's also Old Chatham, north Chatham, east Chatham and a Chatham Center and, of course, malden Bridge. There's a few other hamlets too, but Chatham is a special place, whichever Chatham you're standing in, but don't take my word for it. I recently met with Melissa Davis who, with her friend Sherry Martin, opened up a new boutique on Main Street just this summer. Here's how Melissa describes Chatham.

Melissa Davis: 0:52

There's a lot going on in Chatham and there's a lot about to happen in Chatham. That's really exciting. As you probably know, the Crandall is reopening this fall, which Sherry and I are so excited about personally because we both, you know, see movies on the regular at the Crandall. And you know, as you know, the Shaker Museum will begin construction at the end of the summer. The Harlem Valley Rail Trail will be bringing people into the village and then the Blue Plate Restaurant is, you know, undergoing changes, a whole new owner and a new restaurant which we opening, you know, sometime soon. So there is there's a lot of going on in our village and you know it's funny.

Melissa Davis: 1:36

You know, before my husband and I and our son moved to Chatham, we used to always joke about how it was Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls, you know. I mean we were like, oh my gosh, there's a gazebo, there's like it's so Stars Hollow. And I have to say that living here it really kind of is. I mean it really kind of is. There's this really wonderful magic to it. There's a cast of quirky characters, there's a real sense of community. You know we, like I said, I live in the village and there are, I know my neighbors really well and my neighbors all support each other and we love each other and it's it's honestly the most idyllic place to live and now to to have our business. You know, it know, there's something about Chatham, it's just kind of magical.

James Cave: 2:28

It's full of stories and histories and, as you just heard from Melissa Chatham's, going through another wave of change. I mean, when the Crandall Theater reopens, it will be renovated back to something more closely resembling its original state in the 1920s which, as it happens, predates a lot of the Crandall Theater that the people who grew up here would recognize. They grew up with a later version of the theater, so that'll be interesting to see. And down the street, of course, the Shaker Museum the world famous Shaker Museum broke ground this year on its new headquarters and historic brick building.

Speaker 3: 3:00

I would like to pause here for a brief, helpful note about our program today.

James Cave: 3:04

Also happens to be by the train tracks.

Speaker 3: 3:06

As you are all probably well aware, we may be interrupted at some point during our program by a passing train. If this does occur, we have asked our speakers to please pause their remarks and we invite you to spend three to four minutes getting to know your neighbors.

James Cave: 3:24

That's audio from the groundbreaking ceremony earlier this year, where they are digging in with their blue shovels and breaking ground. So, yes, melissa's right to point out that there is quite a bit going on here right now. Well, to understand what it might mean to be on the front end of a new chapter in this historic town, we are going to get to know our neighbors. Let me introduce you. Hey Pete, this is Pete Toego. Pete is a legendary musician. Hey Pete, how long have you lived here?

Pete Toigo: 3:50

in Chatham. So that's 60 years coming up. September 1st will be 60 years because I know that date, because that's the date on my parents' deed, pete actually still lives in the house he grew up in. One day dad called her and said I found the house we're going to buy. This is a house, and that's a house that I still own up on Locust Street. That was in 1965.

Pete Toigo: 4:06

And it's the house where you're living, right now it's the house where I'm living right now, which I you know. I'm really blessed. I guess my mother, who was an attorney, she, when she was still alive, she had helped my brother buy a house my older brother. So at some point she said, well, I mean, this house is going to be your house. So she sold it to me for a dollar and she gave herself a life estate and she lived out the last years of her life there. But when she died it became mine. So on the deed it says for the consideration of one US dollar and I've managed to keep the tax bills paid since then and the utility bills and I'm still here for now. Here we are in 2025.

James Cave: 4:42

And this is Jeannie Villette Bowerman. Over here she manages the antique shop that occupies the oldest building in the village. It was built in 1811. Her store is called Old 1811 Antiques and she grew up here too. So tell me, I would like to hear you just sort of like describe Chatham, like what's happening with Chatham, what is Chatham today?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 5:01

I to me it was always a quaint little country town where everybody knew each other. You know you everybody. It was like cheers, like everybody knew your name and we knew. This is how I described to somebody what the difference is between a local local and a local like a new local. If we didn't play with you on the playground, we don't 100% trust you, because anybody can be anything they want when they grow up. But when you played with them when you were five years old, you remember what they were like and that's typically what they're still like. So when we go on Chatham community page on Facebook the local locals, the generational locals we just laugh our butts off about some of the stuff that people are saying, cause it's like oh yeah, that's so-and-so, oh, that's such a thing for so-and-so to say and we don't take anything personally Like we just let it roll. But if you just moved here and you don't know who we are like that, it would be very easy to be offended.

James Cave: 6:00

Okay, to get more perspective on this, I met up with Greg Berninger. He's the municipal historian for Ghent, which borders Chatham, and whenever I need an answer for anything I always call up my neighbor, a local historian, because they always have the answer. And we met on the baseball field at Chatham High School because I think it illustrates something really important.

Gregg Berninger: 6:18

All right. So we just crossed the border, we didn't have to show any ID or passports. But we are in the village of Chatham, on the pitcher's mound, the Chatham High School baseball field, or on the pitcher's mound, which is in the village of Chatham and the town of Chatham also, and if I were to throw a pitch from here, I would be throwing into Ghent and the batter would probably want to hit it from Ghent to Chatham and then, if they hit it far enough, they'd get to run through two towns to get back to home base. And we might be the only people who know that, james, but I don't know how many people here think about it If I was going to announce these games, I would bring it up on every call every time somebody got a hit. So I guess we're talking today about the Chathams. Yeah, but you're the historian for Ghent is that right, that's right.

Gregg Berninger: 7:17

So I've been the town historian for Ghent since 2018. Every municipality in New York State is required by law to have an historian, so I think there's about 1,500 of us maybe it's better if maybe it's more appropriate if you're in the you know, we should probably walk back over there.

Gregg Berninger: 7:33

Um, I don't really have a license to to history, so, all right, I don't want you to get any trouble. No, trouble, no, I appreciate that. All right, so we're back. We're on home plate, home plate. You know, it's a little symbolic to be home for me anyway, on home plate here.

James Cave: 7:51

Okay, so standing here in Ghent, let's look into the Chathams, because I'm looking out now and I have a question which is a little bit confounding for me, but it seems like there's a few places that have Chatham in the name. I was wondering if you could tell me a little bit about how that came to pass.

Gregg Berninger: 8:08

Yeah, well, if you're looking for a question to ask wherever you are, you have to say why is this place here? Right, why did people settle in this hamlet? First of all, a hamlet is an unincorporated settlement, it's just where people all happen to gather and live. So why is it? And there are a couple different answers. It might be a crossroads place, so where roads used to cross, those like the village of Kinderhook, and that's very old because roads were the first transportation. And then you have a place where the trains came, like in the village of Chatham. So the village of Chatham exists because five rail lines at once converged. About 90 to 100 trains a day passed through at its peak.

Gregg Berninger: 8:58

And then in Chatham in particular, the town of Chatham, it seems you know it's sort of there in the names. And if you look carefully when you go to these places a lot of them you'll see a foundation for a mill. So if you go to Riders Mills and you go down to the creek, you'll see where the mills used to be. If you go to Malden Bridge, which is conveniently, there's a bridge but you'll also see a mill foundation. In mills you could get your wheat or oats ground there into flour and sell it. Take some home to make your own bread. Maybe you had apples made into cider logs, sawn, things like that. So you have to ask why is the place there to begin with? That'll tell you an awful lot. And it's often buried in the name.

Gregg Berninger: 9:47

Now, chatham's interesting because, again, I'm not the town historian of Chatham, but old Chatham. There was, if memory serves, uh, chatham. Old Chatham and what we now know as the village of Chatham were kind of in a rivalry of who was going to be the sort of center of things, and of course all the railroads brought it all down here. So that's why I think that's old chatham, and otherwise it's not that hard to eat. What? What's east of old chatham? James, I'm gonna go with east chat. Yes, very good, we'll give you a half a point. Thank you, uh, for that. And then what's sort of north of there? That would be north chatham. Well done, very well done. I'm on a roll. I've been doing some research and where's the Chatham Town Hall right now, which is conveniently?

James Cave: 10:30

Oh God, Chatham Center.

Gregg Berninger: 10:33

Chatham Center, Chatham Center yes yes, chatham took an old school and made it. You know what you know. See, this is why I'm from Ghent, because that's actually not where the Chatham Hall is. Town hall is. It's where it was. Maybe that's why it was called Chatham Center, I don't know, but it's now the synagogue up there that used to be a school, but now I think it's over on 295, so it's kind of in the middle of nowhere right now.

Gregg Berninger: 10:57

So sometimes as a municipal historian I feel more like a mortician sort of picking over a corpse, because I mean, do these places still have an identity other than a sign on the road? I mean, people say they live there. What does it mean to live there? I don't know if it really means anything. And if you go a little down a layer, maybe six feet under, and you start to discover places that are no longer there, right, a town that's no longer a town, to quote Robert Frost from his poem Directive Rayville. So Rayville's in Chatham. It's north of Old Chatham, but I guess north of Old Chatham was a little cumbersome, but Rayville, and they have a sign that says Rayville. And then the first thing you see, symbolically, is a cemetery with a big monument that says Ray on it. I assume that's where Ray's buried and that's why Rayville's called Rayville. But if you take a right off the county road onto Ford Road you'll see some great old houses and I don't really know why Rayville exists. But I think most people, especially if the signs weren't there, if you said meet me in Rayville, they'd have no idea. But that's a good way to sort of see what people think is the place Like.

Gregg Berninger: 12:14

When I give my talks about Ghent around, you know, I always ask anybody if they've ever been to Ghent, right, and they all say yeah, yeah, we've been to Ghent. And I said if I said meet me in Ghent, where would you meet me? That's all I'm saying. Right, and they all say Bartlett House or the Dairy Queen, so right in there. So that makes sense. But if someone said meet me in Chatham, I guess you'd go to the village. You'd have to be much more specific. But most people something comes to mind, right, but I think in Chatham you have to be much more specific because of all the Chathams.

Gregg Berninger: 12:44

But there are a lot of places that are just gone, that no longer, but they're resurfacing in the strangest of places. I saw, you know, a weather alert. You know they like to break into the news and get everybody scared of what weather is coming. And you know this meteorologist in Albany you know, just probing into the deep internet for for names that the weather program pulled out and there was a weather alert for Brick Tavern, pulver Station, buckleyville yeah, there's a historical marker there. Now Pulver Station, nothing left. Brick Tavern is where 9H and 66 meet, but there they were. There's the meteorologist calling to all the people in brick tavern, where there's no one except the dodge dealership and the stewards, um to watch out for the weather.

Gregg Berninger: 13:31

Yeah well, if you're at the stewards, that'd be helpful. I guess so, but you know they need to call it the brick tavern stewards or something like that. So somehow these things are re-emerging.

James Cave: 13:40

That's interesting internet so I'm looking at, you know, I guess, the many Chathams, but what I'm really looking at is this, this street, where there seems to be a lot of change happening. So I also wanted to ask you about what you see, as a historian, when it seems a town is going going into another wave of change. We, you know, we're mentioning towns that seem to fall off the map or general awareness of the people who live around them or in them. But what about a town that seems to be changing in a different direction? What do you see there?

Gregg Berninger: 14:12

Well, I'm glad to hear you say another wave of change and that's what a historian hopefully can do for a community is to say you know, pardon the cliche, but the only consistent in life is change, right. And so you know, hopefully we all everybody listening here had a halfway decent childhood, and whenever that childhood was is when things were the best and that's how things should go back to and that's how they forever should be right. So for people in Chatham around 60 years old, it's when Delson's was still on Main Street, a store where they said if you can't get it at Delson's, you don't need it, right, but it was a department store. You know the department store. I'm sure someone saw a department store Delson's going in whenever it went in. It's just over the line into the town of Chatham. So I don't know the date. Give me a break, james, come on. So you know, at some point someone said, well, wait a minute, what about Jim and Jane down here who sell shoes? And now Delson's going to sell shoes and they're going to sell tools? What about the? You know. So you know what happened to the mom and pop store. Now we've got this department store right. So I'm sure people thought that was bad.

Gregg Berninger: 15:25

And one of my favorite moments to think about we got to head to Ghent for a second is in the 1830s, when the first, one of the first trains lines in America was coming through from Hudson to the Berkshires to get stuff to the river and people watching coming out of church on Sunday morning on what is now Cemetery Road in the 1830s and they see the train line coming through and what did they feel about that change coming right, is it the serpent coming into our Eden or is it going to bring money? It probably said more about the interpreter than than the interpretation says more about the interpreter than what the actual feeling we should have about it. And people probably had the same feeling when the trains left right, oh, that's terrible. And we only have one train that comes through Chatham now and it doesn't stop, when we used to have 90 trains passing through the village of Chatham. So change and people need to remember that. And my father told me a story about his Uncle, john, who was a blacksmith in the late 1800s and he evolved and became one of Gant's probably Gant's first car dealer, and my father would always tell me that story and then I slowly realized that his point was you have to keep up with the times if you want to remain successful.

Gregg Berninger: 16:51

People who say, oh, the AI is going to ruin everything. I don't know, maybe it will, but you got to get with it right. And I say to people I'm a retired college professor and people, oh, ai is terrible and students are going gonna cheat. I'm like don't be a horse dealer in 1910. And you see the first car go through town and you're like those things they're terrible. Horses are better. I'm just gonna stick with horses. Maybe horses are better, but that guy's gonna be on the street if he doesn't figure out how to survive and change with the times. So that's what people need to do today. Right, get with it. Where's the money? You know we used to have to ship things to New York City to get money shipped back up. We were shipping wheat to New York City in the 18th century and then it was hay, hay, hay, hay for the horses, then it was milk. Now people come up from the city. We don't have to ship anything. They bring their money up here and spend it. How's that for a way to look at it?

James Cave: 17:51

I kind of love how some driver back there revved the car's engine really loudly as if on cue, right at the perfect time when we were talking about horses in that interview. I promise I didn't have them do that for us, it just happened. It was great. Oh, so we heard historians perspective on things. That was Greg.

James Cave: 18:11

Let's go talk with Jeannie over at the antique store to get her take on things. After all, she grew up here and she also has a job preserving literal old things. I'm sure she's got something interesting to say. Oh well, actually, actually, it looks like we've got a train here, so we're going to have to wait for this train to pass first. We'll take a quick break. We'll be right back. Welcome back. Okay, as promised, we've arrived at the oldest building in the village of Chatham. It was once known as Grote's Tavern, also Stanwyck's Hall. It's been called a few other things over the past more than 200 years now. Well, it's the old 1811 antiques today, and it's managed by Jeannie Villette Bowerman, who also might be getting some help from shopkeepers of the spectral realm.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 19:06

Yeah, I mean like I, we have spirits here and I wish Like ghosts. Yes, Like real ghosts which I could tell you about, but I wish that I could talk to them, Like I've never been able to have a conversation with them. But other people have. Some of my customers have.

James Cave: 19:25

Like what kind of conversations are they having?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 19:27

Oh, I can tell you a really fun one. So there's a guy, a spirit. Most of our spirits are from the 1800s. There was a gentleman. His name is Bob. He came in one day and he did a whole reading of the building and he is a local, he's born in Hudson, He'd never been in this building before and he wasn't like one of those, like you know, charging me all this money to this. No, nothing like that. He came in just to help me so I could educate myself as to who is in this building and he's a good, he's like a ghost reader, a medium.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 19:58

He, I've got to say this. He's self-identified as a gypsy Somebody. People have told me that gypsy is not a correct term anymore, but I asked him cause he called himself that and he's like yes, I am a gypsy and that's what I want to be referred to. How?

James Cave: 20:12

did you? How did you find out about this man?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 20:14

Okay. So Betsy Braley over at the bank knows everybody and see, this is when you're a local, you just go, you know who ask, like I've got some spirits, I've got some stuff going on in the store. I want to find out more about them. And so Betsy said you need Bob. And so she gave me his number and I called him up and he came up and as soon as he walked in the door he had this warm, unbelievable presence. So I immediately felt comfortable and he would like, in like seconds, just started talking about the spirits. He goes.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 20:45

Well, there's Matthew who's here. He's a very strong spirit. He's the like the caretaker of the building, and he stands at the top of the stairs and watches everything that goes on when customers are here. He doesn't trust anybody. He wants to make sure nobody's stealing from you and I'm like oh well, thank you, matthew, that's very nice. He's like from and most of them are also from you know, they're all immigrants.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 21:07

This is the 1800s. He was, I believe Matthew was from the UK, is like in his forties, died in the 1800s here, and I had a customer six months before who told me he saw a man standing at the top of the stairs and I didn't tell these other people about these other things. So there was a lot of confirmation of things over the years, of different people saying I see this, I see that, I feel this, I feel that and it's something that somebody else already told me. So that's kind of cool, so I really do believe in it. Like we're sitting in the fireplace room right now, that piece of furniture has a spirit attached to it what is this piece of furniture?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 21:44

it's a desk. This is very ornate, like beautiful desk, and I will. Whoever has any interest in purchasing this piece of furniture.

James Cave: 21:52

I have to tell them that, because the spirit will go with it like and so so you know for sure, the spirit is attached to this, not the room, not the fireplace right, that's the only piece of furniture in here that has something attached to it.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 22:06

How can you tell?

James Cave: 22:07

I don't know, bob.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 22:08

Bob told me.

James Cave: 22:10

So tell me about Chatham, because I'm looking at the many Chathams but I'm hoping you can help me understand the different. Are there differences? Are there? What is Chatham? What are the Chathams like?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 22:21

It is interesting that there are so many, because when I was a kid, like we never really paid attention to all the different Chathams, like if you lived in Canaan like Canaan is outside of Chatham, but it was like you lived in, you might as well lived in Alaska, like you know, like it was, I don't know, it was just Chatham, east Chatham, old Chatham really kind of felt more like the nucleus of Chatham and Chatham Center, like that's where, like most of our friends who were at school would be North Chatham felt like a whole other, different world.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 22:54

Like you were halfway to Albany, like it didn't feel I know it is technically Chatham, but as a kid our perspective, growing up here, I don't think I knew anybody who lived in North Chatham but I don't think we ever really noticed like it. To us it was like no big deal, like of course there's all these Chathams. I grew up here. Well, technically I moved here when I was one, so I'm barely a local, but I'm a local. I loved living here and that's why I came back after going to college to live here.

James Cave: 23:26

So when you tell people you're from Chatham, well, do you tell people you're from Chatham? Is that where you say identify as being from?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 23:32

Yes, I mean, I grew up in East Chatham but I tell people from Chatham you know north of Hudson, and then they're like oh, hudson, and then they'll know what that is. And then when Film Columbia came to Chatham, I think Chatham got more popular with more people.

James Cave: 23:47

So then, in terms of, like identifying as being from Chatham, what? What does that mean for you this?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 23:53

is all I know.

James Cave: 23:54

So this is all you know what? What is it like to be? I mean this idea of being from this place, being a local, being seen as a local. How do you identify with that? Or how do you? What's your boundary of determination for who is and who isn't a local?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 24:12

I get the question of people will come into the store all the time and be like, oh, I've lived here 18 years, when am I going to be a local? Like it's like a whole thing. I think those are like two different questions you're asking. One is like what my experience was like in Chatham as a kid and what connects me to this community is people are very grounded and we are very in touch with rural living. Like I know, when I was a kid you get up in the morning and it would be like you know, summer vacation, whatever Get out, like literally get out of the house, get out. And we were like tossed out or we had to do our chores, like weed the gardens, mow the lawn, like do all this stuff. And we lived on an old farm and so there was always a million chores to do but my parents didn't really want us back inside.

James Cave: 25:02

So what kind of stuff would you do? Where was your favorite place to?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 25:03

go. We go into the streams. We would. You know I was very crafty we'd make pet rocks. We'd like to, you know we would. Just, I don't even know what we did, we just explored. You know, we just run, just run around and do stuff like kids stuff. We would build forts, we would just anything that was outside. You know, if it was a rainy day, that's probably when I would paint my pet rocks.

James Cave: 25:33

Do you have any memories of walking up and down Main Street Like what have you seen? You're here on one end of it, right.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 25:41

Yeah, 1811 is on the circle, and when I was a kid, we would hitchhike to town. We would ride our bikes into town, so we would go a lot of places without our parents. I remember riding my bike everywhere and hitchhiking. Hitchhiking was a thing Like it was not a problem everywhere and hitchhiking, hitchhiking was a thing like it was not a problem. And chatham the main street in chatham, used to be full of locals and bustling, you know, because this is where people went to shop. They didn't have targets and walmarts and stuff like that. We had delson's and delson's had everything, and I'm sure you've talked to people already yeah, what was the Delsons slogan?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 26:24

if we don't have it, you don't need it or something you know. I mean, which was true. I mean they had everything from washing machines to to. Anyone who was a kid who grew up here would go into Delsons, run down the stairs and hang a left, because that's where all those little toys were, and and it was just. I don't even imagine how many children fell down those stairs trying to get there too fast.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 26:47

And then we had like a barbershop and we had Miller's drugstore and we had Patlin's clothing. I mean literally everything you wanted was right on main street. You didn't need to go to Hudson, you didn't need to go to East Greenbush, you didn't need any, and everything was very, you know, reasonably priced and and available. I mean it was. And the theater, the movie theater, I mean it was. I remember I won my first date to the movie theater. You know it's. So I'm looking forward to the, to the redesign of it, but I also am curious. It's not really redesigned. They're they're refurbishing it back to its old glory, but that it's not going to be the memory that the locals had.

James Cave: 27:27

So I'm curious to see the reception why do you think it will be different than what you remember?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 27:34

remember it be well, like like we, everybody always remembers the red velvet curtain and the the concession stand, like right there, like it's you, where the ticket booth was. A lot of that is changing and apparently the original curtain was green, so they're bringing back the green curtain, but we don't know that. So I'm hoping they tell the community oh, brace yourself, so manage expectations. It's going to be green. You're not going to see the red, because it's those little things and I'm going to just step right into the mud. It's those little things that make a lot of locals feel displaced, because those are our memories that are being a lot of people feel being taken away and that's part of the little. You know, butting heads between locals and second homeowners.

James Cave: 28:35

It's you know this idea of preserving something but then preserving what, like what stage of the past is being preserved, and trying to understand what that means to the community and the people who live here. Like, what do you think about because you're here in an antique shop? You're obviously about preserving the past and preserving these artifacts of different eras and learning about them, but, like, how do you think about that when it comes to this place where you've lived?

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 29:01

I think the challenge is that there's a lot of generational locals. I think that's. I think like I was trying to explain to somebody back to your question before like what makes a local there's. There's certainly somebody who's lived here for 18 years as a local, like they, this is their home, their full-time domicile, but there's a difference between that local and a generational local. So somebody who's been here for many generations has a different experience here. They have different memories here. They have different things that they want to preserve that the person who's been here for 18 years isn't aware of. And so I think the struggle the community is having and not just our community lots of rural communities where now that people can work from home and people can, you know, they don't have to be in the city they can branch out.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 29:50

Covid definitely changed the demographics here and a lot of other places across the country. So what's happening is the, with the prices of the homes going up and that makes up and just real estate value makes it less affordable. But also there's something else that's happening that I think a lot of second homeowners don't realize, even though they live in the city instead of voting in the city, they register to vote up here because they want to change the vote and get you know flip Congress or whatever I get it. I understand you know I'm an independent, so whatever I get it. But the other change that's happening because of that that they don't realize is that New York State now looks at the Chatham School District and says you are rich, and so they do not give us as much state aid for our public school. So what happens is school taxes go up because the state's not giving us much aid. But also 40% of our students who go to our public school in Chatham live below the poverty level. So those families are now being harmed because their taxes are going up. Even if they rent, the landlord's going to raise their rent because the taxes are going up. And so this is where the generational local gets frustrated, because then their kids can't afford to live here because the school taxes are too high. And that's how their vote makes a difference in ways that I don't think they intended to make a difference. I think if people understood that they might think twice about doing it. So it's harming our community and then that ends up.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 31:34

What happens? The ripple effect of that is those generational locals. That next generation moves away. So when you talk about preserving history, preserving the culture and the climate of our town, it gets lost the more people who understand and know the history of it leave and feel like they're forced out in some ways. But there's also the other side of it that people coming up here who are of second homes bring a different culture, a different outlook, a different life experience. That can be very enriching to people who grew up here. So there's like pros and cons and pluses and minuses and it's I feel like with when COVID happened.

Jeanne Veillette Bowerman: 32:15

It was a jarring change that left a lot of locals feeling like the town is gentrified and it's a little tough pill to swallow for people to make that adjustment and people want to cling on to those memories. You know their comfort. It's just like comfort food Like you love your mom's pot roast. It always makes you feel comfortable. When a local walks down Main Street and doesn't recognize anything anymore, they feel like where did my town go? But there's some lovely new additions to Main Street and lovely new additions to the village. But it's not. It's change. People don't like change, instinctively, you know.

James Cave: 32:59

I asked Greg what he thought, if he had any thoughts about the point that Jeannie made about taxes, and here's what he said yeah, it seems people have some knowledge that Chatham School District is classified as a wealthy school district so it gets less state money.

Gregg Berninger: 33:14

I don't really. I don't know if anybody understands school financing, but I mean it makes sense, right, school financing. But I mean it makes sense, right. I mean why should we get as much state money as a half dead town in central New York where half the houses are about to be torn down or decaying and that sort of thing, when you have people who come up from New York City many of whom I know and are friends of mine, and they turn a $400,000 house into a million dollar house? A lot of them, their kids, go to private school, so they don't take any, they take very few resources from the community and they pour lots of tax money in. So why should we get the same amount from Albany as a place that doesn't have that? I mean, do we want more and more money? Do we want the same amount as a poor district so we can have more stuff than them? Well, I don't think so. So you know, if you want to call me a liberal, feel free on that one.

Gregg Berninger: 34:09

But I understand Jean's point and I don't want to disagree with her, but I think there's a lot of. I think there's a lot of transference by local people who sort of have this feeling of a bygone era. This sense of loss right, and you know that's the sense of loss is very powerful. Our founding story in Western civilization is getting kicked out of the Garden of Eden, right, and this sort of loss and every kid has their Edenic moment All right, we don't need to go that.

Gregg Berninger: 34:38

I'm not the town historian of the Garden of Eden, but we have this sense of loss, often as an adult, and people have that about the way things used to be around here and you look around and you find some change to pin it on, right, so it's the new people who ruined all of that. But that's not true at all, you know. Drive west to some little town near Utica or Syracuse, and you will see what Chatham would be like if it didn't have people moving up from the city with money, and it's not pretty. It's empty storefronts and not only collapsing barns, like we have too many of around here, but collapsing houses. And it's not good and that's your choice, right that those are the two choices having it exactly like it was in 1960 or whenever somebody was a kid. That's your choice, right? Those are the two choices Having it exactly like it was in 1960 or whenever somebody was a kid? That's not one of the choices.

James Cave: 35:29

You know, there's actually somebody who's seen this firsthand, this deterioration of a rural town. His name's Pete Toigo and we heard from him at the beginning of the episode. I met Pete when I visited Stony Kilco Coffee and Records on Main Street Because, you know, after I call up the local historian, I also like to stop by the local coffee shop to see if there's anyone in there hanging around who's got interesting stories to tell. Yeah, and there always, always is.

Pete Toigo: 35:55

Well, there's nothing permanent except change. I didn't just make that up. Somebody else said that in the past. As I told you, my family's history is my grandfather, who was born in Italy. He and his parents came and settled a town in southern Illinois called Benelde, illinois, which I also have a long— still have cousins there and I go there. Um, and the coal mines closed like 50 years ago, and it it's not at the end of the Chicanic Parkway and so, uh, instead of having the beautiful restored train station we have down here in Chatham, where the train station in Bonneville, illinois, where the town band played my grandfather off when he first went to the University of Chicago the first kid from the town to get to go to college that's a vacant lot. And instead of having the Crandall Theater here in Chatham about to be restored, there was a beautiful movie palace in Bonneville, illinois. That's a vacant lot. And I could go on and on and on. There was a beautiful dance hall on Route the original Route 66. It's a vacant lot. Where my grandfather's saloon was? It just burned down in the last 10 years. It's heartbreaking. Where my grandfather's, the old bank building is now a vacant lot. So I, just, I, just, I too missed the Chatham of my youth. I do. I cry inside for it, but what a great childhood. You know, you don't even realize.

Pete Toigo: 37:25

James Agee said that I was so carefully disguised to myself as a child. But when I was a kid I used to come down here and my parents had accounts at the shoe store Brown Shoes at Banner Clothes at Delson, had accounts at the shoe store brown shoes at banner clothes at delson's at the hardware store. So I would just be ordered, go get some sneakers. And I'd walk in there and old mr brown uh, jules brown, he would lecture me about how I'd ruined another pair of sneakers by taking them off without untying them. And I even at the time I was like well, mr it's selling more shoes for you, why are you lecturing me now? But? And I would just they time I was like, well, mr it's selling more shoes for you, why are you lecturing me now? But? And I would, just they would put the shoes on my feet and I'd walk out the door without paying because my parents just had. It was just.

James Cave: 38:06

I've heard about these chairs, these chairs at brown's. Do you have any memories of these chairs? I keep hearing them yeah, the chairs.

Pete Toigo: 38:14

You'd sit in those chairs and then they had the thing that they put your foot on and then they had the thing that they measured your foot. Yeah, and the older people remember that there was an x-ray machine where they would actually x-ray your shoes, but they finally decided that that was maybe not the best idea. And what the the the delson's department store, if, if we don't have it, you you don't need it you could go in there and if you broke your little old record player needle, you go in there and this the lady would take out this little thing and they'd find the right little needle for your old motorola record player and then you could buy another beatles record and go home and listen to it. It was, it was sweet yeah, that's.

James Cave: 38:54

That's a different chatham than what we have now. Right, so right, how, how do you world? How do you view it? Like, can you describe what what chatham is now like? How do you see it?

Pete Toigo: 39:03

well, I understand some of the. There's some anger and bitterness by some of my peers who grew up here that it's not the same place it is. But the world's not the same place that it is and uh, it is, it is. There's the pressure on people who want to live here to buy the real estate. Is is very, you know, the real estate is more expensive and uh, so it's harder for people who grew up here. But there are people who are trying to address that in different ways. In the town of chatham and the village of chatham there's still a lot of us who live here, but it it it feels very different and there's times when, if you've lived here all your life and there's just all these people, you don't know. I mean, it can just it's a shame that there's sometimes there's conflict and uh, are you familiar with the word city? It?

Pete Toigo: 39:55

indeed, indeed, I am so some of the some of the city it's have taken that word and made it their own too. Isn't there a city at podcast and stuff and there sure?

James Cave: 40:04

is now city. It can you describe the portmanteau for anyone who might not know what that means?

Pete Toigo: 40:10

well, and I guess it's the some of the people from new york. You York don't seem to be that sensitive to certain aspects of life. I don't know, there's conflict and there can be bitterness, but times change. I'd rather have the buildings be vacant lots better to have these different people who have money buying them and restoring them. But it is sometimes it's heartbreaking just to walk and there is no delson's and there is no brown shoe store and there is no banner clothes and there is, you know, I could go on and on and on. It was, it was a sweet growing up in a small town, america, but there every small town in the country has exhibited the same changes, I'm sure because it would have to, because it's just the way the world is. So there you go. So there's a yin and a yang to it all and stuff yeah, no city it would have that sort of perspective.

James Cave: 41:14

Okay, there's one more place that I want to take you. It's up in Old Chatham on one of the many dirt roads. We're actually walking on a dirt road now, I don't know if you can hear. It's very scenic here. Right here is a horse. The horse is also walking on the same dirt road. His name's Glenn hey Glenn, and we're on our way to see Douglas Welch, who, as it happens, lives in a really old house with an interesting historical footnote.

Douglas Welch: 41:40

Oh yeah, this was the farm that kept the Stooges out of World War I. The mother had heard that when they lived down in Bensonhurst and they were at the draft age that if you were a farmer you got a dispensation from the draft. And she said, boys, boys, we're going to be farmers. And she took a satchel of cash with her brothers and came up here and they found this little farm for sale and she made damn sure that they were photographed and documented as being farmers and in fact we have a beautiful picture of mo and shep on a hayrick with the mother picture of Moe and Shep on a hayrick with the mother in our bathroom.

James Cave: 42:19

How long have you lived?

Douglas Welch: 42:20

here 25 years. We bought this in. We started looking really long and hard around 1998 and spent a lot of time looking. But I was a picky and I wanted everything. You know rural, dirt, road, backcountry outbuildings, a barn and a historical house. And while my taste runs more toward Georgian symmetry, we found a modest farmhouse, a modest farmhouse, and it's been. You know, we feel like it. We don't own it, it owns us. I feel more like a steward of this place. I mean, those are the original windows that people looked through. You know, 250 years ago it was built. That part of the house was built in the 1770s and you know, I just sort of feel like I can't just put Pella windows in that. You know it leaks heat like crazy in the winter, but I'm just sorry, it's a historic house.

James Cave: 43:33

I'm trapped. Douglas is part of a group known as the Chatham Dirt Road Coalition. I'm trapped. Douglas is part of a group known as the Chatham Dirt Road Coalition and they're working to save the town's more than 50 miles of dirt roads from the compactors, road rollers and asphalt pavers of the modern age. And I thought, well, what could be a more poetic image of this question of preservation than looking at the foundation, the ground literally beneath our feet? I mean, do we pave paradise in the name of progress? So here we are in a dirt road. The dirt road is out in front of your house. What is it like to live right here on this dirt road? I remember in the New York Times article they mentioned your aged BMW.

Douglas Welch: 44:09

Oh yes, there it is in under the shed at 92. And yeah, it's always covered in dust in the summertime I don't even bother washing it. But it's a great pleasure to take the top down and go with Chesley just exploring the back roads with an ice cream cone that we get up here at 203.

James Cave: 44:33

How do you describe this, the reason that you need to have a coalition?

Douglas Welch: 44:38

Well, okay, let me go to the beginning. I was a member of this Facebook page called Dirt Roads of Chatham and the Surrounding Area. It was maintained by a lady named Heather Ular over on Thomas Road. She's a horsewoman and she's been collecting. People send in photographs of beautiful scenic dirt roads around the Chatham area through a horse's ears or from a baby pram or from a bicycle, and it's through all the seasons of the year, and there are all these. It's just a scrapbook of gorgeous back road photography. And one day about 2020, there was a post by someone saying that, oh my god, they have paved Beale Road Now. Beale Road was a really beautiful, picturesque back road, just about a mile or two from here, and there was a lot of hand-wringing in this little Facebook community about oh my God, what are we going to do? What road is next? Is this some new kind of trend? And I, because I had just done a pro bono campaign for the fire department and got very close to the local outdoor advertising company.

James Cave: 46:01

You come from advertising.

Douglas Welch: 46:02

Yes, I do. I was a creative director at McCann for 25 years, so, anyway, when I retired, I got tapped to help out and do a pro bono recruitment campaign for the fire department, and it was very successful. But I also realized how powerful the outdoor media was medium of, you know, billboards was for this community. And so I stupidly raised my hand in this Facebook chat room and said hey, you know, maybe we need to get out of our bubble and do something to motivate the whole town and make the the you know, everybody aware of how precious these dirt roads are and how vital they are to our rural character, because they are a big part of it.

Douglas Welch: 46:49

And out of that was born the Chatham Dirt Road Coalition. It's a handful of people who cared very much, but they were from different parts of the community. Some of them were just walkers, some were bike riders and some were equestrians. So it was, you know, it truly is a coalition of different people who use the roads in different ways. Anyway, our thinking was if we can sort of promote the dirt roads as a recreational venue for everyone, not just the people who live on the dirt roads, but invite the whole town to come out and use them for healthy recreation, from like, as I described, biking, walking, just getting fresh air and having a contemplative country walk. We thought that would help justify the expense to maintain these roads, because it isn't cheap.

James Cave: 47:47

Yeah, the fear is that you do need to justify it. I mean reading about it. The Howard superintendent's talking about how expensive it is to maintain. Looking at Hillsdale, there's something else going on there about trying to maintain Texas Hill Road. So how do you guys manage that?

Douglas Welch: 48:02

Well, we've done it mainly through PR and getting the word out to people. This is interesting. When we put up a billboard and it was a beautiful photograph of Pitt Hall Road in the late afternoon sun it was just a gorgeous picture of a road winding into the distance and over it we said let's preserve our dirt roads, a rural heritage worth preserving. And it just happened that that came out at the very time when the town was going through a comprehensive survey. Happened that that came out at the very time when the town was going through a comprehensive survey and one of the key questions in that was about our rural character and an explicit question how do you feel about our dirt roads? And I think it was like 65 to 68 percent somewhere in that area responded by all means, maintain and keep them. So we maybe the timing of that billboard had some influence on the reaction we got, but we certainly put the dirt roads front and center in people's minds at a very key moment. You think advertising had something to do with it. I do, yes, I do. I think it was very fortuitous timing.

Douglas Welch: 49:16

Now there were people who called us scaremongers and said, oh, there's no plans to pave. But our feeling was you don't wait until the paver is at the end of the road to let people know that you care about keeping them. You know, if we don't raise our voices and say there are a lot of people who love these dirt roads, you know, the town could, no one could blame them for thinking everybody wants to pave right. I mean, you would assume that's progress and these back roads here are just because we haven't gotten to it yet. But that's. We don't see it that way.

James Cave: 49:56

One of the things that's interesting to me is this idea of progress and what to preserve. And as we were walking down this dirt road, we walked past a pasture of grazing cows, but to see the cows we looked past the tennis court to see them.

Douglas Welch: 50:10

That is a perfect that encapsulates, that is a perfect image. Yes, you're looking at gorgeous grazing cows over a brand new tennis. Well, it's not brand new, it's been there for a long time, but anyway it's yeah, the tennis and the gut house and they get along fine. That's the message. Yes, we are truly blessed in this area in the whole capital region. This is one of the last remaining places. My feeling about these roads and people say you know, can't we just do another one? Can't we do another one? Our feeling is the whole damn country is virtually paved. Can't we just keep just these little 50 miles we have here? Is that too much to ask? You know there's look at that view right there. Describe it.

James Cave: 51:02

What do you see when you see this?

Douglas Welch: 51:03

Well, first of all, I see just nature. I don't, I don't feel the automobile, I feel just like that's a footpath and that road probably was just a cow path between farms years ago, so it's got just this natural bend long before the bulldozer could make a straight line. And to me it's just a bucolic.

James Cave: 51:23

It's like early evening the sun is sort of setting. Yeah.

Douglas Welch: 51:26

My favorite word crepuscular light. It's, uh, it's. To me it's. That's peace when I look at that and you'll notice no traffic, no roads, just humans walking along, and I guarantee some deer and some turkey are going to be running across in front of us in just a minute. So it's as Verlin Klinkenborg pointed out. He says it's interesting that you don't see any roadkill on dirt roads Kind of tells you something. They're really. They're really. You feel like you've entered nature. When you pull off a highway onto a dirt road, it gets intimate. You know even you're making your footsteps are even loud. You know you can't creep up on anything.

James Cave: 52:11

The Chatham Dirt Road Coalition publishes a brochure with a hand-drawn map of the surviving dirt roads around Chatham. You can find it around Columbia County. There's also an essay by the writer Verlin Klinkenborg, an American nonfiction author and academic who's renowned for his writing about rural life and landscapes. I asked Douglas if he'd like to read it out loud for us.

Douglas Welch: 52:32

Yeah, I'll be happy to. Unlike a highway, a freeway, a thruway or a parkway, a dirt road is a living thing. It's always changing season by season, sometimes day by day. In the dry heat of summer it's firm and dusty, in mud season it sags, like all of us. A dirt road is nominally meant for cars, of course, but it doesn't belong to them, unlike highways, freeways, thruways and parkways. It permits them, course, but it doesn't belong to them, unlike highways, freeways through ways and parkways. It permits them, but it doesn't invite them. It invites instead walkers and runners, deer and turkeys, squirrels and chipmunks, even a woodcock if you look closely at the right time of year.

Douglas Welch: 53:09

A dirt road is constantly intersecting with animal life, and yet nearly all the roadkill we ever see is on paved roads. That alone should tell you something. It's hard for road crews and highway superintendents and county budget offices to love a dirt road. They take some work. It takes some work to continue to connect to the past when carts and carriages and horses use these roads Some still do. It takes some work to maintain a road where leaves can gather in the fall instead of being whisked away by a draft of a fast passing car. Slowly but surely, the world is being paved over and someday, one day, out of necessity, the unpaving will begin. Thanks to our dirt roads here in Chatham, we're way ahead.

James Cave: 54:03

You have a career in advertising. Do you have anything to add to that?

Douglas Welch: 54:06

I couldn't say anything better than what Verlin just said with that.

James Cave: 54:11

You know, all this talk about the past has me thinking about the passage of time. And wouldn't you know it? Chatham actually has a really old clock from the olden days. It was built in 1872. And the pendulum clock inside still the original has been measuring the time for the past 153 years, meticulously maintained by a man named Steven Piazza, and he took me up into the clock tower for a rare visit as he went about one of his twice-weekly windings. I've got this segment for paying subscribers, so you're comfortable climbing. You've got one hand now because you've got that thing in your hand the jiffy. This is one of the perks of being a paying supporter of the podcast. You get to go up into old, historic clock towers where nobody else really gets to go.

James Cave: 54:57

So come around there I've got a link to join in my bio and it really does help support this type of storytelling that I do. Well, that is it for this episode of the Jiffy. I'll be back in a few weeks with another trip through the Hudson Valley, maybe another trip through time. Thanks for spending your time with me going all the way to the end of this one. It was a long one. Until then, I guess I'll see you over on the Instagram feed. Let's see what time it is.

Douglas Welch: 55:20

It's 8.30. We can ring the bell at 8.30, right? So this is just a hammer that's going, so I'm gonna do the.

Melissa Davis: 55:29

Ready yeah.

James Cave: 55:32

That's pretty cool. So people will, people will look up and go wait a minute. That was just Steven saying hi.

Pete Toigo: 55:44

Yeah.