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."