Not about a B&B or Tivoli - but forgive me, I'm stuck in Christmas past. I heard on the news that shoppers have charged billions of dollars this year for holiday presents. I remembered that growing up we always had a Christmas Club. My mother would go to the bank, usually after Thanksgiving, and open Christmas Clubs for all six of the kids, herself and my father. The idea was every week you deposited fifty cents, and by the end of the year you had $25.00 to spend for gifts. A dollar club resulted in $50.00, two dollars would total to $100.00, but we always had the $25.00 Club. The banks always gave you something when you opened the club, a Santa decoration with the name of the bank imprinted on the back, or sometimes a paper bank that looked like a chimney with Santa going in. (You would be surprised at what these freebies go for on E-Bay today.) Anyway, each of us kids had our own money to spend. But the best story about a Christmas Club occurred when I was married with a baby living on Beacon Street. It was a four family apartment and we lived over Helen, a widow with two children, Judy my age and Danny, a little younger. Helen and I would sit on the porch, rocking in those metal chairs on the warm days. One day while we were chatting on the porch, Helen's friend Mildred came running down the hill, yelling for Helen. Mildred was a heavy woman, not very neat with food stains on the front of her dress and sometimes Helen would complain that she had a smell. This day she was waving a package and climbed the steps to the porch out of breath. She had photos to show Helen, and I soon saw they were pictures of her dead cat Whitey. Whitey was on a satin pillow, stretched stiff and not too good to look at, but next to Whitey was a big floral display, with "Rest in Peace" on it. Helen and I looked at the pictures, commented on how nice everything looked and then Helen asked, "Mildred, how much did those flowers cost you?" Mildred was quite poor and she was always trying to make ends meet. "Oh," Mildred said, "I'm going to take care of that right now. Whitey had a Christmas Club. I'm going to get the money out and pay the florist." "A Christmas Club?" asked Helen. "Yes", replied Mildred.."Whitey liked to buy me something special every Christmas" and off she went to the bank. Helen and I were both curious as to how she made out, and it was a good story. Mildred said she went to the teller and said she wanted to cash in Whitey's Christmas Club. The teller, thinking Whitey was a person, told her she would have to wait until Thanksgiving, but Mildred said that Whitey had died and wouldn't be needing the money to buy presents. The teller said that she needed a death certificate before she could give the money to her and Mildred asked how do I get one. The teller explained the funeral director could give this to her and Mildred answered we didn't use a funeral director, we buried Whitey in the back yard. Then, Mildred continued, the teller got the bank manager who knew Mildred and asked Mildred to explain about Whitey. At this time, Mildred pulled out the pictures of Whitey laid to rest. The bank manager stared at the photo for a long time, then passed it to the teller. The bank manager then told the teller to give whatever money was in the account to Mildred. "And he told me not to ever open an account for a cat again," Mildred said sadly. Helen and I had a good laugh about that for many days. There are no more Christmas Clubs. People are not expected to save before spending and I have to wonder how did the banks ever manage all those 25 cent accounts before we had computers. I wonder what Christmas would be like today if we all had only our Christmas Clubs to spend. And I wonder about the dog who inherited all that money from Helmsley, where does he keep all his money?

Our first Christmas in Tivoli in our new home. A few days before Christmas my friend Jane Olah came over to make cookies. We had taken a break and were enjoying a cup of tea, while our kids - she had two boys - Scott who was Maria's age, and Bret or Bear, who was Laura's age, were playing in the girls' room upstairs with Paul who was only two. They had been unusually quiet for some time, when there was a flutter of activity, and we could hear them running down the stairs to the kitchen. Maria was crying and the others were all looking guilty. At a closer look we saw they all had chocolate on their faces and on their hands. "I told them not to do it," Maria bawled. Then I realized they had gotten into the wrapped presents and somehow found the box of candy for my Aunt and Uncle. I should have known. The Olahs had a reputation for eating anything. We first found this out at a birthday party where we had played "find the peanuts", hiding peanuts throughout the yard. As the other kids were counting them to see who found the most, the Olah's were eating them, shells and all. Then Maria had an Easter egg she had saved for over a year, one of spun sugar, with a little Easter scene in it of bunnies and chicks. Scott ate most of that before she could stop him. Jane was not surprised. She told us he had once eaten the styrofoam picnic cooler and Bear had once opened her purse and ate all her birth control pills. That was when she started to carry a bottle of ipecac with her at all times. Once she was shopping in the Grand Union, both boys in the cart, when an older woman ran up to her. "Dear sweet Jesus," she screamed, "He's sucking on a can of Draino", pointing to Bear, who did have the can in his mouth. "It's ok," Jane reassured her patting her purse, "I have ipecac with me." So we weren't surprised when we went upstairs and saw several packages unwrapped until they had hit gold and found the box of candy. The now empty box of candy was surrounded by brown candy wrappers. I declined an offer from Jane to buy another box of candy but they soon put on their coats and left. The presents were rewrapped, another box of candy purchased and we were ready for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, shortly before midnight, Maria came into my room. "My throat hurts," she whined and we went downstairs for her medicine. The stress of moving, starting a new school, making new friends had weakened her and Jane had directed us to Dr. Zipser, the local Red Hook physician who prescribed the red medicine that was popular then. I settled Maria on the couch under a cover and lit the Christmas tree. After we shared a cup of tea, she began to feel better. The tree looked beautiful with all the presents around it, Santa had already come. The room was drafty and every now and then the tinsel would blow gently making it even more beautiful. We were both sleepy when we heard a sound in the kitchen. I put on the light and then we saw a mouse, struggling with a big piece of cat food, trying to get in the crack in the floor. He didn't seem to mind the light, and kept squeaking as he tried harder to get the morsel to his home. I whispered, "Not a creature was stirring...." and Maria finished, "not even a mouse." We both smiled and I felt such comfort in our new home and our first Christmas there. I still do - Merry Christmas and God Bless.

To the west of Clay Hill Road lies the creek you pass over when entering Tivoli. The creek, known as Stoney creek, also was called the White Clay Kill, so maybe Clay Hill was once Clay Kill Road. Whatever the name, one thing is for sure, the land surrounding it is clay. Such a thick and pure clay, you can make pottery with it. My kids use to make little clay balls, dry them hard in the sun and then have a clay ball fight. When Clay Hill Road was paved, ditches were dug for drainage on the sides of the road. This activity exposed tons of clay that the kids were gathering and in which they found objects that we first thought were Indian relics. Beadlike, with a hollow stem, we imagined they were made by Indians for wampam or to decorate their clothing. When no one locally could correctly identify the objects, I mailed a sample to the Museum of Natural History in New York and received a letter back that they were crinoids, marine invertebrates such as the sea lily that at one time had a stalk (the hollow stem). This, the museum personnel that so kindly responded to our inquiry, indicated that the area where they were found was once underwater. Since we are only a little more than a mile from the Hudson River, it most likely was underwater centuries ago. The creek and the river became spots of exploration for the family, the creek because there were so many "bottle dumps" nearby. In the 60's and 70's bottle collecting was quite the hobby and here along the creek we found bottles with the name Madalin (once part of Tivoli), Tivoli and patent numbers and various names and uses, mostly for medical purposes. The river was a place for the family to go fishing. All you needed were some worms, a couple of poles, a big pail to collect eels in, pliars to remove the hooks, and rags to hold the eels when the hook was being removed. The bigger kids would climb in the back of the truck, a fun ride to the river, that today would land a parent in police custody. I would not participate in the fishing, rather I would bring a lawn chair and a book, a few toys for Sabra who was then a toddler to play with. The kids would thow in their lines, catching catfish or just getting caught on remnants of the ferry dock that once existed there. If someone caught an eel, great excitement followed. First, the swearing from their father, the "get me the rag", the anguish as the operation of removing the hook took place, the eel squirming and wiggling, climbing up their father's arm, and finally success and the eel being thrown into a large white pail. The eels were the only fish we took home, and not for us, but for our neighbor Nick Fragano, who said they were delicious. Nick had survived the depression, telling us once that his family use to make spaghetti sauce with sparrows they caught. So we just took it for granted that he would enjoy the eels and he did. He had no fear of contamination, PCB's, even though the river at that time was still being polluted. Pete Seeger had not yet started the campaign that today has made the river so much cleaner. Anyway, the kids would fish, I would look up from my book to make sure things were all right, and Sabra would find a big stick and stir up the eels. She would scream if they started to climb her stirring stick, and her father would warn her that they could climb right out. After a few hours, we would go home, I would advise everyone to wash their hands good after touching the river and the white pail with the eels would go across the street to Nick. I never watched what happened after that, but some one told me that Nick would skin the eels, a sight that I am glad I missed. In 40 years neither the creek nor the river have changed much. There's been talk for several years of a park at the river, but the railroad tracks are right there and that seems to have been a hold up. The creek is still the same, the dam that once existed near the bridge has fallen, but the creekbed is still full of stones when the water is low and brown with the clay when it is full and running fast. When the B&B people call for our address, they often ask "Is Clay Hill one or two words?" Usually I respond "two", but once in a while I will say "one" just for the heck of it.

Picking a name for our B&B was easy. I had been a bird lover for many years and had quite a collection of bird statues, pictures, all types of bird knick knacks. Also, for many years we had stayed at a cottage in Wellfleet called the Owl's Nest. It was very neat, well equipped and decorated with owls. It had a large deck that overlooked Wellfleet Harbor and I had many good memories of our stays there. So, we became the Bird's Nest B&B each room with a bird motif. Pricing was a bit harder so I turned to Phyllis Gardner who at that time was running the Pink House B&B in Annandale at Bard College. She shared with me her reservation and billing form and advised "You have to charge more than a motel does." "Also," she warned, "No matter what, don't let them make you lower the price." I've had to remember her advice many times over the years. "Do you have a Senior discount?" "No," I answer, "I am a Senior". "Do you have a lower rate on a weekday?""No, it is just as much work for me on a Monday as it is on a Saturday." "Do you have a Bard (Omega, etc) discount?" I just answer no since I already charge less than most of the local B&B's. Also, we don't have the two day minimum that has become so popular within the last few years. I personally do NOT like the two day minimum. Say you are coming for a wedding late on Saturday and only want to spend Saturday night. Why should you have to book for Friday as well? One year my daughter Maria made a cute sign for me "Two Day Maximum" when I had some demanding people that stayed a week. Anyway, the question that Timmy snickers at is "Do you charge for children?" Since he handles the garbage end of it, he knows how much extra garbage children make with diapers and all. And kids today wear diapers until they are about five. We get other questions besides the pricing as well. Some of my favorites are: (1) Do you have windows? They must have stayed in somebody's cellar once. (2) Can my girlfriend sun bathe in the nude on the deck? Well, my neighbors boys would probably like that (3) Can I bring my dog? He is very well behaved and only weighs 50 pounds. (I can do a whole posting on pets - but, no we do not allow dogs.) And my favorite came this summer (4) Do you have bed bugs? I laughed then and I'm laughing now. I should have said, "Why of course, the biggest you will ever see and we don't charge extra for them."

Well, now it is officially 40 years since the move from Beacon, New York (50 miles south of here) to Tivoli. Clay Hill Road was a dirt road then. For that reason, the school bus would not come down it, so Maria, who was in Kindergarten, was escorted to the end of the road at 9G with our neighbors Tony Staffiero and Michael Barrett, who were a few years older. Within the next two years the road was paved, but the school now thought it too windy for the bus to come down so the kids still had to wait at the corner with no protection in bad weather and no supervision. Two things happened that made both Mrs. Barrett and myself avid letter writers to the school, demanding the bus to travel Clay Hill and pick up the children at their homes as was done on all the other streets in Tivoli. At this time I had Maria and Laura and Jan Barrett had Lisa and Michael and along with Tony, they all waited at the 9G intersection. With such a group boringly waiting for the bus, things were bound to happen. First, we heard about lunches being thrown into the road for the passing cars to run over. Apparently, a banana was missed and one of the kids was almost run over running out to retrieve it for another throw. Then, on a cold, frigid day, Lisa was urged to put her tongue on the Clay Hill Road sign (just like in Christmas Story) only she ripped it off when she found her tongue stuck and the bus arrived. The little trouper got on the bus, but the school nurse called her home to report her swollen and sore tongue. Now we had safety issues as our main letter writing concern. Either the letters worked or some morning commuter called the school about kids throwing bananas at cars, anyway the school decided the bus could make the detour onto Clay Hill Road and it still does today. My grandson Solomon lives next door and every morning I go and wait with his mother and brother Henry to put Solomon on the bus. The kids still look the same as they did 40 years ago, staring vacantly out the windows, sometimes raising a hand to wave or just giving us disgusted looks as the bus pulls away. I could tell them it's my fault the bus has to come down Clay Hill Road, but I don't think they'd care.

Well, today is the last day for people at the B&B until 2008. For the last two years, we have been closing after Thanksgiving. It used to be too hard to keep the steps and driveway shoveled when it snowed or when there was ice. We used to close after New Year's and reopen in March but now do it earlier. I'm just glad it's over for awhile....4 people for the Holiday, visiting family in Tivoli. 4 people, 3 beds (they used the pull out couch), sheets, towels, tablecloths and napkins - I'm on my third load of wash right now. I hang out the sheets. It is something I enjoy doing, and it really makes a difference. Some people think its "low class" to have clothes hanging in their yard. It used to be everyone hung out their clothes. When I was first married, I lived in a four-family apartment building. I did wash almost everyday but Monday's was especially a wash day, and it was a race to hear who's line was being pushed out first. You could tell who had a baby, when a line was filled with diapers, or who had the flu, when you saw sheets, blankets, etc hanging out on a cold wintry day. Now, it is only myself and Mrs. Lemon that hang out clothes on Clay Hill Road. Mr. Lemon died a few years ago, and after the funeral when I saw her wash blowing in the wind, I felt relieved, like she was going to be all right. There's an art to hanging out clothes, you don't do it haphazardly. Washcloths all line up together, and socks like to be hung with their match. Sheets and pillow cases stick together, just as shirts and pants do. White clothes one line, dark clothes the next. For years I didn't have a dryer, so in the winter, when it started getting dark, I would bring in the clothes, some still stiff and frozen. The pants and shirts looked like people, legs sticking out, arms in strange positions. I would put them on the heater to dry, and soon the house was filled with (what I still think) is the wonderful smell of clean laundry. In Ireland, everyone hangs out clothes....I even saw clothes hanging on hedges, a sight that made me smile. One time in Ireland, my friend Chrissy and I stopped at a B&B. The daughters in the house asked if they could do our laundry, and we were delighted to say yes. We went out to a pub, laughing thinking about the girls wanting to see what kind of clothes we had from America, and after a few pints went back to our B&B. But, we couldn't find it, we had neglected to take one of their business cards, and every other house in Ireland has a B&B sign in front of it. We drove from street to street, starting to worry that this could be serious, when I said, "Hey Chrissy, aren't they your white pants? And there's my IBM shirt". Sure enough, there in the yard, drying in the Irish breeze were our clothes and our B&B. Our laundry saved us that day. Well, anyway, today I am rejoicing that there won't be B&B laundry for a while, no making sure we have all 3 types of bread and English muffins available, that the milk and yogurt have "good" dates, etc. School is out...let the summer vacation begin.

In the 1970's and 80's two things happened that helped start Tivoli back on the road to recovery. One was the purchase of Callendar House, an old Livingston Estate in Tivoli, by Count Jean de Castella. He started a horse breeding farm and bought several of the Tivoli homes for rentals which he offered to his employees. He employed several of the Villagers to work on his farm, including my daughter Laura who "sat up" at night with the pregnant mares when it was near their time to deliver and my son Paul, who cleaned the stalls and checked the fields for animal holes. The horses, especially the unborn horses, would be worth a fortune so they didn't want any broken legs from the woodchuck holes. He hired an Irishman, John Quaid, who had worked on a horse farm in Ireland to oversee the place and soon horse trailers were coming to Tivoli for the services of Count Castella's famous stud horse on a regular basis. The other occurence was the opening of a Mexican restaurant. David Weiss, a former Bard Student, opened the Santa Fe in half of Dino's old store on Broadway. It was tiny, just eight small tables, but right away became a favorite spot. Within a few years, David bought the building and enlarged the restaurant. Like the Count, David also began to purchase property in Tivoli, including the Laundromat, located across the street from the Santa Fe. Previously, just called Tivoli Corner Laundromat, it was a hangout for the local kids, some who would pay an adventurous person a quarter to get into a dryer and go around a few times. The building was given a coat of paint and renamed "the Lost Sock Lauderette". Santa Fe Restaurant is still going strong these days, popular as ever. The horse farm, however, is gone, replaced by Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, a facility used for students in the summer. Some of our guests at the Bird's Nest have been here to see their children dance. This year Griffin Dunne of the New York Times called Tivoli, "Brooklyn on the Hudson" and wrote "the local crowd has an effortlessly hip and creative edge about it, as if it fled Brooklyn before the rest of us ruined it...the women all look like Dylans' girlfriends from his early album covers.." I guess he didn't see me, gray haired, wearing sweat pants and sneakers, going in to the Post Office to buy stamps.

How do you start a B&B? Good question. Pretty basic I thought, Bed and Breakfast - an idea I had had for some time for the apartment over the garage. In the summer of 1991 I took early retirement from Kingston IBM and also evicted terrible tenants from the apartment, so the timing seemed perfect. Now for a little research. There were several B&B's in Rhinebeck at the time. My friend Chrissy and I thought we'd visit three of them right in the Village, and take a look around. We didn't think we should announce what we were doing, so instead, we would tell the owners that Chrissy's daughter was getting married and we were looking for places for the guests to stay. I've known Chrissy since 1981 when both us attended a Financial Aid Workshop at Well's College. At that time I was working for Bard College and she was working at Marist. Back then I only had one grandson, Jeremy, who was one and he called me Loggy Linds. Originally, his two grandmothers were Grams (not me, the other one) and Groggy (me). That evolved to Loggy Linds, a name that only Chrissy still uses for me. Anyway, we set off on our adventure. The three B&B' s were pretty much the same. The single rooms, some with private baths, were all upstairs, with a sitting room downstairs for the guests to use. The homes were beautiful, one very ornate, with heavy draperies on the window, flowered wallpaper and a four poster bed. The bathrooms showed the age of the houses, claw foot tubs, one tub sitting right in the middle of the bathroom. "Loggy," Chrissy whispered to me. "This is nothing like your place." She was right. I didn't have a traditional B&B. I had an apartment. We went to Foster's for lunch to think about this. "I'd rather stay at your place then one of those fussy rooms," Chrissy said. And I believed her. I would too. I had two bedrooms, large living room, kitchen with full size stove and refrigerator, modern bath with a tub and shower. And it was private. Nobody else would be watching tv with you or sharing the bathroom shelf. "Can I call it a B&B?", I asked Chrissy. "Why not! Once they know they're getting a whole apartment to themselves, they won't care. Do you think they would rather have a place to themselves or those awful drapes on the windows?" She was right. So what if it didn't fit Rhinebeck's version of a B&B. Research successfully completed, we agreed.

Now a little about Tivoli. I moved to Tivoli 40 years ago this month..the Sunday after Thanksgiving 1967. Then there were 3 children, Maria 5, Laura 3 and Paul 2. We chose Tivoli for its beauty, but mostly for the Red Hook School system, which even 40 years ago had a great reputation. The house was a small one, open porch, big kitchen, living room that had completely covered walls and ceiling with knotty pine paneling, bath downstairs and 3 bedrooms upstairs, one so small only a child's bed would fit. Uncle Phil came to the house before we bought it to give us a carpenter's view of its condition. He told us not to buy, even though it was quite a bargain at $10,000. The bank, likewise, refused a mortgage on the unsafe condition of the house. We were not discouraged by this news, in fact the price went down to $8,500 and another bank gave us the ok. So 40 years ago we bought a house for less than you can buy a car or even some lawnmowers today. The yard was a little more than half an acre and we had four apple trees, two on each side of the house.
Tivoli was almost a ghost town at that time. Stores were boarded up, the population had dropped to less than 700 since the train station had closed and the ferry from Saugerties stopped. You had to go Red Hook for a pizza and Kingston for Chinese food. It took a while to get use to the isolation. There was a store in Tivoli, Dino's at the intersection of the entrance to Broadway. Broadway is the main street in Tivoli, running from 9G to a dead end at the Hudson River. Dino's was half grocery and half liquor store. Divided in the middle, if you wanted a bottle of wine, Dino would get the key off the wall, put on his jacket (you had to go back outside) and unlock the door on the other side of the building. Across the street from Dino's was Bailey's, a beautiful old hotel, unused now except for the bar downstairs. Mr. Bailey was a handsome Irishman, tall with white, white hair. He made a Bloody Mary that people still talk about - tall glass topped with stalks of celery, piece of tomato and maybe even a black olive. His fruit drink was also noteworthy. So, I got used to living in our new home, and enjoyed the excitement of exploration and discovery of all the new places and the sense of the community of the Village .
The locals called us "the new people" and it probably took almost all of the last 40 years to lose that title.

This is my first posting. The reason I wanted a blog was to share some of the experiences of running a B&B for the last 14 years and also relating what living in the Village of Tivoli for the last 40 years has meant to me. The B&B is actually an apartment over the garage, with two bedrooms, full bath, kitchen, living room and a large deck that overlooks the gardens. We are located about five minutes from Bard College, so we get a lot of parents and students visiting the school, New York City residents on a weekend away and Tivoli families who have their relatives stay with us. I thought of a slogan "we put your family up when you won't" but you have to be careful of the guests' feelings. I don't call them guests, I call them "people". I will warn my grandchildren if they are getting too noisy. "Be quiet - there's people upstairs" or I will tell Timmy ,"The people will be here about six. " Timmy is my partner in this undertaking. He has been my companion for the last 21 years and he as Chef Tim cooks the omelettes and makes the fuit plates and carries the enormous tray up the stairs to the Bird's Nest. He also likes to clean the kitchen, especially the sink so there is not one water drop to be seen. When we first started the B&B, I was told by a Poughkeepsie B&B owner, "You have to be nuts to be in this business." At the time, I thought he was referring to having complete strangers stay in your house. But after all these years, I know there is more to it than that. My Uncle Joe who is 88 will look at my brother, sisters and myself and knowingly say, "You know, there is insanity in our family." So I guess that's why we've lasted 14 years....most B&B owners call it quits after 5 years.