These sunny days on the patio with the sun fading southward somehow reminded me of my Grandparent’s place, Elhedo Lodge on Lake Moraine, near Hamilton, NY. I spent much of a sleepless last night thinking of Granddad C E Taylor. He used to tell visitors the lodge’s name was Onondagan, meaning welcome (but sometimes “in peace” crept into it; it varied from telling to telling.) None of which was true. The lodge was named for their daughters: my mother Eleanor, Aunt Helen, and Aunt Dorothy.
This was just one of CE’s many fibs and pranks and stunts.
Like once a month playing 26 games of chess simultaneously at the St.
Petersburgh Lawn Bowling Club. Or, at the St. Louis Worlds Fair, by stepping into and posing in a Madam Tussaud
wax figure exhibit -- until an alarmed customer spotted the imposture and
called the cops. Or, at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1906, by pretending
to print paper blanks into $5 bills from a hand-cranked, pocket printer. Real $5s
were hidden in the roller, so he was, in fact, legal. This time, it was a
storekeeper who called the cops.
My Grandparents settled in Earlville, in the Mohawk Valley of upstate New York. The village
had a circular, bandstand park in the middle of town. CE, having been apprenticed to a
blacksmith, a professional carriage horse trainer, and then obsoleted by the adoption of the
automobile, opened the town’s first car dealership, around 1906. He would take
one of his Franklins, set the choke or spark or whatever, set the steering wheel,
put the car in gear, and step out, leaving the car all day circling the park on
its own at 2 or so mph. That got villagers talking about Franklins and, shaking their
heads with a wry smirk, about “that there CE.”
CE occasioned much scoffing in 1919 after the local paper reported
that he had gone to Norwich and paid an outlandish $25 for a ride in a
barnstorming WWI aeroplane. The next Friday, a bi-plane circled over the village,
coming lower and lower apparently preparing to land in a meadow just east of
town. Everyone rushed out to see the plane. And here was CE in a ticket booth
selling 20-minute rides for $5. The plane rides continued Friday through Sunday;
Sunday evening, CE and the pilot split their considerable take and the aeroplane flew home.
Granddad wrote and published short stories in magazines such
as Field and Stream and Outdoor Life. Mainly, these were stories about his
beloved hounds and retrievers.
CE always inspired us seven grandchildren, The Super Seven cousins, to pursue our curiosity, to use our imaginations, to find the humor. He always had a full head of hair, an outrageous sweet tooth, and a pocket full of butterscotches. CE created a
rich and full life for his beloved Alice and for the rest of us until a broken hip took him off at age 90.
Foks tell me I favor him, and so I try to do.
