What a difference a dash makes
In recent years, my reading preference has been mysteries. One can never know about such things, of course, but I think being a lifelong lover of history may have inclined me toward them.
After all, isn’t the study of history just a who (or what) dunnit? Aren’t all historians creatures of curiosity, digging deeper and deeper, peeling away layer after layer, till they find out what X factors caused what Y results? Certainly, that was my MO, starting in early childhood. As a result, I asked questions nonstop, which is how I found out so much about the stories and characters of My Home Town. However, finding out how much of it was either true became a lifetime endeavor.
Unfortunately, just asking people questions and using the sources at hand doesn’t guarantee any results.
For one thing, even though someone swears on their Gutenberg they know something happened, it may not have. Maybe someone they trusted told them, then they in turn told it repeatedly, and after a bunch of years that experience is so real to them, they think themselves witnessed it.
Another roadblock on the Highway of History is reading something in a source you think is authoritative — and it may even be authoritative — but, still, some of the things are wrong. A perfect example: The official pamphlet for Pine Ridge Cemetery. For years, they’d written that the oldest grave there was 1852. But it wasn’t. Instead, it was 1843.
So how did the mistake happen? I don’t know, but I think it’s because the cemetery was officially incorporated in 1852. Plus Sally Moody, first wife of Jacob Smith Moody, the town’s first permanent settler, died in 1852. Or maybe there’s another reason. But the fact is 1852 was given as the cemetery’s oldest grave in all the pamphlets, till some morb-o-phile pointed out the earliest grave was actually 1843.
To establish the cause of historical events depends on two things. One is having the correct facts. The other is being able to draw logical conclusions from those facts. If both are trustworthy, you’ve got a trustworthy conclusion. If either of them isn’t, you’ve got doodle-squat for validity.
Our local history is a mish-mosh of facts, half-facts, rumors, downright lies and invalid conclusions. A salient example of the last is my hunt to find out who Ward Plumadore Park was named after.
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For whom the bells toll
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The park is the one between Bitters and Bones and The Rusty Nail, and you didn’t know that was its name, don’t feel bad, because neither did I till a few weeks ago, when I read about a music fest held there. But as soon as I saw the name Ward Plumadore, my alarm bells went off.
Ward Plumadore? Who was Ward Plumadore?
To have had a park named after him, I assumed he was a local luminary. But if so, he was way before my time, since I never heard of him. I did know a local Plumadore luminary who could have had a local park named after him, but his first name was Hayward. Interestingly, I never heard him called by anything but his nickname, Red, even by his family. So referring to him as Hayward would’ve been a stretch. Referring to him as Ward would’ve been a REAL stretch. But just because I never heard him called Ward, didn’t mean he hadn’t been.
And thus, donning my deerstalker hat and calabash pipe, the game was afoot!
Before I started, I formed a hypothesis. It was that someone in our local park-naming business had decided to expand into the nickname business as well. And so — Voila! as if by magic — Hayward got shortened to Ward.
The first place I looked was The Fourth Estate, better known as Aaron Marbone, Ace Enterprise reporter. Since he’d written the article I read about the park, and is a professional yenta, I figured he’d HAVE to know who Ward Plumadore was. Sadly, he was as clueless as me.
Then I turned to my living archives — all the SL natives and long-term locals I know. Among them were Jerry and Paula Cheney, Chuck Jessie, Jack and Phyllis Drury, Diane Griffin, my bro and sis-in-law, and a bunch of others. The result? Nada, Rien. Bubkes.
Next I availed myself of the official powers that be — Village government — where I got an audience with the Village Supervisor and my ersatz nephew, Bachana Tsiklauri. I told him my dilemma, and he promised to look into it. A few days later he emailed me the material he had, as well as some stuff from Historic Saranac Lake. Both sources affirmed that, yes, Ward Plumadore Park was that lush greenery between Bitters and The Nail, but neither of them had Hint Number One of who it was named after.
This led me to my last chance, the horses’ mouths, as it were — Red Plumadore’s son and daughter, Jan and Karen. And as Fate would have it, they had the short answer, namely, There was NO Ward Plumadore.
The long answer, which they also had, was the park had been jointly owned by Red Plumadore and — here ya go — Danny Ward. They gave it to the village, who named it after them. And thus … Ward Plumadore Park.
So while my logic about the Ward in Ward Plumadore being a nickname for Hayward was perfect, I had no facts to support it. So my conclusion was false. Oh well, ya win some, ya lose some, but ya gotta suit up for ’em all …
But I wouldn’t have been confused about the name if it’d been properly punctuated. Correctly done, the park would’ve been Ward-Plumadore Park. Ward-Plumadore is a compound noun, showing it’s a name combined of two different ones, much like Fortune-Keough Funeral Home, Harley-Davidson, Smoot-Hawley Tariff, and so on. One little hyphen would’ve made all the difference.
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Class and sass
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Now an illustrative tale that may seem irrelevant, but isn’t. So bear with me, if you would.
I was lucky to have had a lot of excellent teachers, but the one who had the most profound influence on me was my seventh and eighth English teacher, Mrs. Louise Wilson.
People think of the old time schoolmarms like the ones in Norman Rockwell paintings. Rail-thin and sweet, with rimless glasses a gentle smile, they guided their charges by soft spoken kindness and mild manner. But if you thought Mrs. Wilson bore even as tiny resemblance to that, you thought wrong.
Mrs. Wilson was one Fierce Old Babe. She had blue hair, blue cats’ eye glasses, a death ray stare, and was surrounded by an aura of lethality that kept her charges glued to their seats and focused on her, and only on her. I don’t know if she’d ever had a role model, but if I found out it was Genghis Khan, I wouldn’t be the least surprised.
Don’t get the wrong idea. Mrs. Wilson, while being one of the most sardonic peeps I’ve ever known, wasn’t cruel or mean-spirited. Instead, she had a mission to fulfill, which was to take a bunch of young knuckleheads and make sure they acquired the reading and writing skills they’d need to succeed — and not just in school, but in life. As a result, she brooked no opposition or distraction, she shed no tears, and she took no prisoners.
She was all business, from the start of class till the end, and each class led into the next one, clearly and seamlessly. She was one of the most dynamic and organized teachers I ever had, and after my two years with her, I had verbal skills way beyond my years. I knew grammar, syntax, diction, outlining, punctuation and mechanics, and every essay format known to man — and probably a few unknown ones as well. In my personal life I’m an organizational mess, but I’ve always been able to organize ideas into coherent essays on the first draft — thanks to her.
Something else about her: Her guard was never down. If in chatting to her after class, for example, and you said something unforgivably stupid like “between he and I,” or “Me and Ralph went …,” or “I felt badly about that,” you got corrected swiftly and sharply and in no uncertain terms.
The Warriner’s Handbook of English became my bible, I read it cover to cover and repeatedly, till — unlike my experience with the real Bible — I could quote from it chapter and verse.
And now you might ask what Ward Plumadore Park has to do with Mrs. Wilson?
Just this: While I don’t know who gave the park its name, I know one thing about them: Either they never took her class … or they took it and flunked.