The Reindeer Keeper

When my grandparents lived in their farmhouse, many times during the winter my grandfather worked on projects in the kitchen. In the evening he’d shut the door leading to the dining room and get busy. He’d do it all in that kitchen-from sawing to nailing to finishing. The end results became keepsakes to those lucky enough to be given one. I’ve written before about the pine desk my grandfather made me. I fell in love with it the first time I saw it on Christmas morning when I was 8 years old. Smelling of shellac, it came with a stool and a single drawer. Inside that drawer was a pad of paper with a sharpened #2 pencil. My mother was another recipient of one of my grandfather’s wooden heirlooms. Hers was a bookcase made of pine with three shelves. The bookcase was the perfect gift for my mother as she was an avid reader. Her favorite books were mostly novels set in the South during the Civil War; the era of Rhett and Scarlett and big hoop dresses and sprawling plantations. I re...

(The above photo showing a section of The Crescent in downtown Ogdensburg courtesy of Ogdensburg native Ted Como-then a staff reporter at the Ogdensburg Journal-now living in Tennessee.) There used to be a section in the downtown where I grew up known as The Crescent as it followed the bend of the river running along just below. At one end of The Crescent it flowed underneath a bridge merging with another river. Back then the bridge provided access to the downtown. Going one way brought people into the shopping district. The other way brought them to additional shopping options-just not as many. The Crescent led walkers and drivers and the curious to the downtown in a back sort of way. The Crescent wasn't the heart of the downtown. It ran parallel to that thriving downtown full of tall and mighty brick buildings housing shoe stores, department stores, clothing stores, furniture stores, jewelry stores, hardware stores, ...