Aerodrome Schenectady

Of all my 60's memories , The Areodrome in Schenectady NY has a certain power. It was located at 1588 State Street and had some fantastic groups for the time. The Doors...3 Dog Night...Yardbirds ect. I have been told Hendrix played the venue. A man by the name of Jack Rubin was the major bankroller of the site but I remember a man named Terry Hooper was also involved. Hooper was an acquaintance of The Beatles and had a small....very small part in the movie A Hard Days Night which was for those that don't know the era was a Beatles movie. Hooper went on the two rock & roll staions WPTR & WTRY to advertise the opening in 1067 I believe. I soppose the venue could hold over 2000 people which was big by those days night club standards. I bought my first Rolling Stone magazine at one of the shops there. Those days it was much more a newspaper than a glossy. Yes they had little boutiques there. What I really remember was the SOUND SYSTEM. Trust me they advertised it at the time of opening as one of the top systems on the East Coast and it was. Truly SOTA for it's era. Most of it solid state but still some tube amplification and reproduction was originally installed. Made a difference. The stage had a high acoustic value when built but lost some value when later rebuilt & modified. I believe I traveled there around 10x in my highschool & early college yrs. It fell into some disrepair in the late 60's & early 70's and closed I believe in 72 or 73. Now torn down but I believe a popular music icon from that era bring some great music to the upstate area & my youth.

Christmas 1969: Schodack NY

Thinking deep into the past recently at my daughters Christmas party I went back about 40 yrs to 1969. Vietnam war still raged though my brother was back from that conflict as of September of that year. He still carries burdens from that war. Midterm exams done.....the end of my high school yrs were within sight....trust me ....I was thrilled with that prospect. My sports era well over bad knee and back in place for my future. Played soccer in a senior league many yrs later but for only a short time. But generally speaking....I was happy to be done with sports and being on a bench. I was not a great athlete and frankly sick and tired of hearing crap about how it prepared you for that unknown future. So here I was at my final High School Christmas vacation. One more winter slog to go...one more spring and group of final exams. I guess I am saying I was in a place of peace within. I was generally happy or perhaps just worn down from the era of the 60's. My perception was that people were in a hurry to get over that decade....the sooner the better. From counter culture to the moon landing , mass protest,civil rights , a rising tide of consevative politics made for a blur that Christmas. People were kind of looking over the horizon......I was not. I was out with friends for we were now mobil going to places like the Areodrome on Central Avenue to Albany and movies ect. By the way , thank you Elizabeth . Did I mention beer....the legal drinking age was 18 and I was 18 so Schlitz and I there as well. My buds Ron & John were close by. We all knew there were dark clouds on the horizon , war , college aging parents but there was that taste of new freedom and a promise of something more. Oh and by the way , I had my first glass of serious wine not the Ripple or Boones farm variety. A glass of Pinot Noir , at my aunts house for Christmas Dinner. I felt so adult for a moment. I took a long walk in the woods with Liz. The 60's may be close to over but I finally felt I was beginning. For Christmas day a watch......socks and underwear....always got that from my Mother....an aftershave popular at the time called Hai Karate and various other clothes ect,. New Years was fun and something we had heard about from our science teacher Unix Time started. My friends and I were probably way to serious at times that yr with Vietnam and the like hanging over our lives but that may have been my favorite Christmas not so much for what was but might be ahead. Not so much about me but what a young heart might be beyond the then me.

Opening of Castleton Thruway Bridge Schodack NY

It was, according to records May 26,1959 that was the official opening of the Castleton Thruway Bridge. This bridge was at the time considered one of the crown jewels of the NYS Thruway System. Deemed a big enough event to have an opening ceremony with the then Governor Nelson Rockefeller in attendance. I have to admit that though a small kid I was in attendance. So this blog is from personal memory. The thruway was blocked off for this section of highway. A grandstand had been built on the side of the highway heading west. The weather a sunny warm day. A beautiful day for a bridge opening. The crowd was appx 250+ in attendance. This was a huge day for the small town of Schodack N.Y. The local high school Maple Hill High School , sent their band. Many politians were in attendance including the then Town Supervisor Lewis Hudson who gave the introductory speech for the Governor. After three or four speeches the ribbon cutting occurred. It was a blue ribbon stretched accross the entire 4 lanes of the highway. The news cameras snapped pictures , the ribbon was cut. Later people took pieces of the ribbon for a personal memory. Rockefeller dove into the crowd and shook hands with the invited guests etc. He still had Presidential ambitions at that point in his career so he was really pressing the flesh. Often saying "hi how are ya." After a period of about 20 minutes the NYS Troopers began to line up cars for exit. Everyone got to drive over the bridge that day in a loop ending on the eastern lane . The last toll free ride for the bridge. Later on that day the span was open to regular thruway users. Many years later I asked Lewis Hudson why the bridge was named for the village Castleton which is a few miles from the bridge. He said he was told that it was felt people would not be able to pronounce Schodack so hence the current name.

Schodack NY Fitzgerald Bros Ale

I returned for a brief time to a previous dig. A former private farmers landfill near Graw Rd area of the Town of Schodack NY 12165 appx zip code area. The only item of interest from my 3 hr dig was an old bottle / can opener. Heavily rusted and unreadable in found state. After the use of Coke and a rust remover I was able to get enough rust and grunge off the bottle opener to get a reading of the engraved label. It read Fitzgerald Beer and Ale Troy NY. Fitzgerald's was one of the many local beer breweries common in America in the 19th and 20th Century that often disappeared after the 40's. From what I have been told they made 2 or 3 different brews. One of which was a Half & Half. This was a half beer , half ale combination. Before the advent of the pop top can and the easy off bottle cap these were a common kitchen tool. They opened your bottles or cut holes in the top of a can with the triangle shaped end.

Hooverville : Schodack / Castleton NY 12033

Parts of 2008 and time this yr 2009 have been spent looking for a remnant of the dark days of the Great Depression , a Hooverville. This was essentially an encampment of unemployed people and families in the especially early yrs of The Depression named for President Hoover. They were essentially homeless living off the land or occasional found work. I have been told in interviews done in college that the Town of Schodack near Castleton had a small one as well. The location was somewhere north of Castleton near the Hudson River south of the city of Rennsslear NY. near the railway tracks. I searched primarily the Papscanee Island Preserve. With metal detector and digging equipment in hand I went over a large area off the paths used by hikers. After much searching , finding bottle caps , old broken beer bottles , an old car or boat steering wheel , old railroad ties , railroad spikes all bent up , one metal dog collar and part of an old row boat oar assembly , I can honestly say I did not find any definitive evidence of the Hooverville. I did find outside of the Schodack Town Limits a couple of very rusted nails and old insulators used for electrical fences about 1 foot down. The Hoovervilles of this era were temporary and made to be able to be vacated on a moments notice. These were not popular places. They were frowned upon as few municipalities welcomed these people. Often raided by police from what I have been told. I believe some churches in the area attempted to help , The St. Paul's Methodist Church then located on Main Street in Castleton sent some food on a couple of occasions I gleaned from interviews. There were perhaps as many as 75 people there at perhaps it's height of population. The jobless and homeless often went through the town looking for work in that era. Route 9J was a fairly heavily used road from the greater NY area in those days. Rt 9&20 on the eastern side of the town often saw people walking or hitchiking through looking for work The then Superintendant of Highways Lewis Hudson would often allow people to sleep in the Town Highway Garage in the early 30's so they would not have to sleep outside in the open weather. Not a popular decision among some of the voters but there were few social services available then in that era. So after many muddy visits especially this year I can only use the couple of old interviews as evidence of it's existance. Long gone , temporary shelter from economic distress , a port in a 20th Century storm.

Ocean to Ice Age In My Hometown Schodack NY

Sometimes in my rambling attempts at archaeology & history I sometimes forget my lessons in geology. My lessons in the truly ancient. My hometown south of Albany has been covered by oceans & by glaciers as have been many places. The rounded pebbles I find 3 ft down on a dig glacier made , ravines cut not simply by water erosion but by ancient forces through millions of uncounted yrs. Once an ocean bottom now random hills and dells. Spring floods flowed over the Hudson River Valley for thousands of yrs unabated by man. Places such as Newcomb NY fed our area parts of themselves. Leftovers from slow moving events over millions of yrs. Molding discarding , shaping , leveling.............and it continues......................

Hilltop Tavern: Town of Schodack NY 12033

Periodically I have stopped by Rt. 9 close to the Albany entrance ramp to I90 in the Town of Schodack NY. About one half mile from the Columbia County border. It was in this vicinity that once stood an old Road House type bar. The Hilltop Tavern located at the crest of an incline on Rt9. Minor digging and search with a metal detector has only turned up a couple of old rusty nails. The Hilltop was bought by the State of New York on EminentDomain when the final leg of the I90 interchange was being constructed for the entrance ramp. No basement remnants were found and I presume the entire structure was raised during ramp construction. This occurred circa early 1970's. This was an old style local bar on a once fairly busy highway. The original owner I remember was named Katie. A women from the bootleg era it was often said she kept her money in jewels for safety as did not trust banks. Later on in the 60's the Finn family took it over. The business was expanded to sell Pizza. A very good pizza for the time and place. Today , there is a very different beer market than that era. Many local beers such as Fitzgeralds of Troy , NY or Doblers beer brewed in Albany were bought out or went out of business. The national chains such as Schlitz or Budweiser had taken over. The most local beer was Genny brewed in Central NY. As we can observe with local brew pubs and small breweries such as the Brooklyn brewery in NYC times have seemed to have gone back to earlier years. Hilltop served only Genny beer and Genny Cream Ale. I believe no hard alcohol was there. Their claim to fame was their beer cooloing system. Refrigeration in the basement and then the beer was pumped up stairs by a hand suction pump at the bar. The beer would go through a series of coils that were packed in ice. This created a truly ice cold beer which gave the rather cheap Gennesse truly a richer taste. The best I ever drank. The bar also had a bowling machine people used and I have been told an occasional poker game was held on the premises. Generally speaking this was a locals bar. Local rules. Women were not encouraged to sit at the bar there was a table where the ladies would sit. Local people with names like Golden , Kunicki , Van Deusan etc frequented the place. It felt in a sense like home for the locals. You talked, discussed issues from the Vietnam War to how the lack of rain was affecting crops. Everyone knew your name. This rather ramshackle looking bar in need of a paint job was a major connecting point for South Schodack area people. Part of the fabric of small town life , that has slipped away as we sped up the pace of life in this country.