My passion......why?..... Why do I find it more enjoyable to be in an old cemetery reading gravestone inscriptions, than going to a party? (don't answer that) I sit for hours at the computer, lashed by some invisible chain, looking at old maps and old photographs and old buildings and bygone years of North Adams and the Eastern Provinces of Canada? Drawn back to a previous reality, viewing a time long gone, as through an old Eastman Kodak Cellulose Movie.
In 1891 the TREMBLAY clan arrived from Kamouraska, Quebec. ( Ya... so what? Who cares?.....Big Deal! ).......... Ever wonder what it was like in North Adams or your home town when your people arrived?
I have tons and tons of French Canadian stuff, if anyone is interested in their Canadian roots. Would be glad to share what I have, if I have it! The North Adams Library will get my boxes of research after I move on. I'll let their skilled hands sort it all out. I'm not much on organization, more of a collector of information, seems I spend so much time looking, I don't stop and smell the roses.
Anyway.....just wanted to share my passion with you and see if there was anyone else living in the past.
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Jack,
Don't know if this is a site you have been on, but this is a library of congress site that has a lot of old photos from around the US, including things like Mount Greylock and the Hoosac Tunnel. I crawl around here every once in a while. Enjoy
http://rs6.loc.gov/detroit/dethome.html
Dan...Thanks for the info. I find myself browsing the the Library of Congress hours on end and I especially like their old time photos of North Adams and it's environs. The Detroit Library also has a lot of photos as does many of the satellite Libraries.
Having been lucky enough, I think, to have seen and rode many times, almost every week end, through the Hoosack Tunnel. My Grandfather and uncle being workers for the Boston & Main RR, now Gil ford RR, my Grandmother had a pass to use the train. I can remember standing at the Station, A great loss to the City through urbain destruction, and seeing the old smokers and the diesels chugging down the tracks. I remember standing at the back of the train as the Western portal would get smaller and smaller as the train clickety clacked Eastward. Don't get me started!
I grew up on the Eastern portal in the town of Hoosac Tunnel. I remember as a very young kid riding through the tunnel, and then as a high schooler, walking through it. It has left me with a life long fascination with trains and tunnels.
Wen I was about 14, I worked for Don Canedy at the Whitcomb Summit. He knew everything little detail about the area; how the king had granted the mountain top to Nathaniel Whitcomb, how cars came over the Mohawk Trail, all these little details. I loved to listen to him talk about how things were. Maybe that's why I became a history major in college.
Dan.....I would say you were more fortunate than most having a living historian to tell his tales. People don't understand the historic importance and magnitude of the tunnels importance in the development of a lot of things, as well as our Town. I do get frustrated that we don't market more vigorously those historic sites. I have located and visited the sighting towers that were used to build the tunnel. One is right up on the road to the old Sportsman Club near by the Dog Pound. Great family day trips. ( I have a Geocache there - www. geocache.com )and is visited by many people) I am doing my part! :~)
Unfortunately- Dan's little autobiographical musings will henceforth have constituents condemning him for having "tunnel vision"----windmills suck! chbpod
Jack, I'm fascinated by the geocache thing. I heard about this a while back, but just thought it was a few locations and a sport for some of the people really into, well, I am not sure. Scavenger hunts maybe. I really didn't think about it again but after reading your post, I went on to the Geocache site and was amazed at how many caches are in our own back yard. I have to get out more!! I told my wife I need to buy a GPS handheld device and start visiting these sites.
Many years ago, when I was in high school, I lived on the Deerfield River. I got a visit one day from Al Bachand. He said that someone told him about a stone marker, a “king’s grant" that had been given to Nathaniel Whitcomb when the king of England gave him title to the top of the mountain in Florida. Bachand had heard that I did a lot of hiking in the mountains and asked me to take him up to the place that he thought it was. Well, after hearing him describe the site, I knew about where it was and lead him past the Hoosac Tunnel and up past twin waterfalls about 3/4 of a mile up a trail on the mountain. We scaled the waterfall and went on up the mountain. Sure enough, in a field, there was a stone marker that had been there for hundreds of years! That was the last time I have been there, but this could motivate me to try and find that and get that place on the geocache site.
What kind of GPS device do you have and are there places locally to pick one up without paying a lot for it? You have got me excited to try this.
Oh yes, and Clark, windmills blow, they don’t suck. Perhaps that is what is wrong. On a night like last night, we could have used the breeze!
Dan.... You are already a "Geocacher", sorta? You can see the premise for Geocaching is to get out and visit a lot of places that are of some historical or geological significance. Those places that were once common knowledge but have been "Lost to Time" I also had one down at the Cascade Falls.
My set-up is a little excessive, not your everyday unit. I use a Compaq Pocket PC with a Navman GPS Unit sleeve. Today the various units you can buy are all pretty sophisticated. When I bought my unit it was the premo in the industry, can be used in the auto for voice navigation, with the proper expensive software, or as well as a hand held unit out in the field with the various topo maps that you can purchase. Your best bet is to do your home work and decide what you want to do with the unit, how much you want to spend, and what comes with the unit or what software you will have to buy. I use my unit with my home computer so I have the upper range of software but it isn't needed. After you decide on a unit, go to Amazon.com to purchase it. They have the best prices for everything you will need. I don't think you will find it less expensive anywhere else. Today all the units are good but try to get one that has 12 satellite pickup. The more satellites the unit can receive the more accurate the unit will be.
Amazing isn't it, the things that we walk by every day and not knowing there is a hidden treasure right at our toe tips?
You did notice that there were more than just caches to find? You also have various RR Markers as well as the marker you found as a young-in. Let me know how you make out and what you decided upon.
Windmills neither "blow" nor "suck" they are passive but they do... "rock" :~)
Dan I bought a simple set up for my laptop from Delorme.com. $100 for the GPS unit and the software. I use it on every trip I take. Gives turn by turn instructions as well as free downloads of satellite photos of most areas.
I also have spent a lot of time on eBay searching for deals. A decent Garmin that lists for a couple hundred can be picked up for less than $100.
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