Morris N.Y. by Ken Cooke

A note from the author about the poem.

I have a poem I would like to share with you that I wrote several years back regarding Morris. Some explanation is in order. As a young child growing up in downtown Morris in the house next to the American Legion, 10 South Broad Street, I had bad Asthma which kept me indoors most of the time due to being allergic to ragweed, flowers, burning leaves in the Fall and you name it. However, in my teen years in the later 50’s due to effective treatment I was able to get out and explore the outside. This resulted in my desire to hike all over the hills and flat rock streams all around Morris. In my hiking either by myself or with classmate, Mike Fay, I discovered a lot of neat things. One of my favorite places to hike to was the boulders that stand out away from they hill up back of what then was the Ralph McWilliams place towards what was then the Lloyd Saunders place. On one hike I found an old iron stove in the middle of the woods up behind the old Ed Delong place. This stove most likely was in a loggers cabin or whatever and got left behind. I also discovered some small caves and other sites of interest. Mike and I used to hike the stream that goes back into the hills at the foot of Patrick Hill. That stream splits two ways once you enter the woods at the base of the hill. The branch to the right has many flat rock falls and goes up to the old Quinton place. The other branch winds up through the hill and runs up behind the old Patrick Hill air strip. On one of our hikes up there we discovered the site of the Lynn plane crash. There was evidence of melted aluminum and iron springs from the plane seats. I used to have a small piece of melted aluminum from that site which is long gone now. In any event I will attempt to attach my Morris poem. To bad kids today sit behind lap tops and do not get out to explore their surroundings. I never lost the desire to hike and explore and consequently know all the hills and gullies around where I currently live. The interesting thing to note is that in all my hiking over who knows property I never once got kicked off or even adversely confronted by a property owner. As kids growing up in Morris it never entered our minds that someone might object to our hiking in their back woods or whatever.

The e-mail that Gary Fisher sent me that put me onto your site showed a picture of my aunt Ruth Davis at the Dimock Hollow switchboard. That brought back fond memories of when I used to work for the phone company summers with Carl Eggleston. I also covered for Carl on weekends on occasion when Carl was off lake fishing. If an electric storm would knock out a bunch of fuses on a week end I would go out with the old telephone truck and replace fuses to get outlying phones going again. There was a blackboard in the phone company office where I would leave him notes as to what I had done while he was fishing at Seneca Lake.

Keep up the good work on your Morris site and make sure Lois Jones includes references to your site when she sends out the Alumni news. Lois is another of my classmates. I like to joke that I crammed 12 years of school into 14! Held back twice mostly due to long absences related to asthma. Must note that at age 73 I am no longer bothered with asthma and am more healthy than most of the people I haul on the local ambulance.

Ken Cooke, Class of 59, Morris Central School