julietlofarophoto

[julietlofarophoto]

Jean White

Deming Street, Woodstock NY, Tuesday January 17, 2019

Juliet: What first brought you to Woodstock?

Jean:  I was born here. My grandmother, Sarah MacDaniel Cashdollar was born and grew up on Overlook Mountain. She married a young man, Wilbur Cashdollar and they came down to the village to start married life. They rented the cottage from Mr. Lasher which is now The Woodstock Library. After a year or so, they were expecting their first child and returned to the mountain to be near the family.

Juliet: “The mountain”, as in, MacDaniel Road…

Jean: (laughs) Yes, my mother was one of seven children She worked with my grandmother at the boarding house (now Cumberland Farms). Earlier, because Sarah had five daughters she thought they would be able to manage the telephone switchboard which was in the building on the corner of Neher and Tinker Streets. And then, through the efforts of a family friend who spent much time in New York City, my mother Ethel took an intensive course with Harper Method, a new system developed for hair and beauty care. She had what we think was the first beauty shop of it’s type in Woodstock in a corner section of the house immediately behind Joshua’s on Tannery Brook Road.

Juliet: Do you know how your parents met?

Jean: It must have been about 1930. My father worked for a construction company. He was from North Carolina. You had to go wherever the jobs were. So he came and was living at the Woodstock Hotel. It was on the site of the present Longyear Building at the corner of Rock City Road and Mill Hill. There was a fire there, and the hotel burned. He came down and stayed at the Homestead Boarding House and that’s how they met! They bought the house across the street before I was born. I do remember it having a garage and an outside toilet attached to the garage. We did have a bathroom inside, but I’m not sure if it was added after they bought it or if it was already installed .

Juliet: Did you live in any other residence while you were growing up?

Jean: No, but we did go to Ohio with my father. He was working on Wright-Patterson Field in Dayton. My mother, sister Susan who was about 2, and I went with him for about a year or so. We were there during Pearl Harbor Day. When my brother came along, my father just went by himself when he had to go to jobs and we remained in Woodstock and attended school. He had a very early death.  He was killed in an accident when he was 40. My mother raised the three of us by herself with the love of family. There were very difficult times but the love we shared held us all together.

Juliet: What is your first memory of Woodstock?

Jean: You know in some psychology classes they ask “What is your first memory?” I remember the sand box by the old apple tree in our back yard.! But of Woodstock itself? It was always a part of me. My grandmother lived across the street. There was a constant back and forth, with very little road traffic. I used to go up to  little grocery store where the Joyous Lake was, owned by brothers Leslie and Clyde Elwyn. Their houses were right down on Pine Grove just before the Women’s Health Clinic.  The houses are next to each other and the same design. You can still see them! I was thinking this morning, the store had a little meat department in it. My mother would send me with a note and  list. There was a ramp that was fascinating to me. I think it’s gone, but maybe underneath it’s still there. You would enter the store by going up a ramp running along Mill Hill Road and then enter the store on your left. It was made of cement. So my earliest memory was that I was always living here and I can’t really put my finger on it.

We went to school near  the corner of Deming street. Deanie’s Restaurant was on the corner. It was a brown rustic looking building then.  Right next to it is a red building, I think it’s Castaways. We went to Kindergarten on one end of it, then first and second grade on the other end.

Juliet:  And then you went to the one that was right by your house.

(Her home was between what is now CVS and Ulster Savings Bank. The former school building still stands right behind CVS)

Jean: That’s right.

Juliet: Did you graduate high school here?

Jean:  No, Woodstock only went to eighth grade. Then at that time, we went to Kingston.

Juliet: WOW.

Jean:  I’m not sure how that worked because there were no school buses. I guess the Township paid the bus company Pine Hill or whatever it was then. They were black and white buses. They would take us down with the commuters and everybody. After 3 o’clock the buses would all come behind the high school to pick us up. It was the same building as Kingston High school today, although they’ve added on a lot!

Juliet: When did you leave?

Jean:  I graduated  high school in ’52 and went to Pratt Institute Brooklyn for four years. There were some circumstances during that time … I became very interested in Native Americans. I decided I’d like to go and teach on a reservation. It was a big megillah to get certified to do that. They didn’t certainly need an art teacher, which was my training. Through a long haul, one of my professors said “Why don’t you just go to Washington, and the Department of Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs and just see? You’re not making any headway writing letters.” So I made an appointment and I went to Washington. They told me “You have enough credits to be a Guidance Advisor” (laughs) “Would you go wherever you’re needed?”. So by that point I said “YES”,  and I went to Arizona. I was a guidance advisor but I ended up teaching first grade for half a year because the teacher they hired didn’t get there until January.

Juliet: Where were you exactly?

Jean: Keams Canyon, Arizona. It was 88 miles from Holbrook, Arizona. 100 miles from Gallup, New Mexico. They were the two closest…metropolises. It was the Hopi reservation surrounded by the Navajo. The children at the school were Hopi and Navajo primarily.  There were also some Anglo kids from a few teachers.

Juliet: What was your path back to Woodstock?

Jean: I really wanted to have more adventures so from there I drove the car back to Woodstock and was here for the summer the next year. I had gone to an Art Education  conference in Los Angeles while I was on the reservation. I took the bus there.  I met a rep from Special Services Department of the Army. They had wonderful job opportunities in Korea, Germany, and France. I thought “Oh, Korea is only a year, I’ll go there”. So I signed to work with enlisted men’s dependents. It wasn’t for officers. The idea was to keep them from getting mixed up in drinking in the towns, and causing trouble. That all got changed after I went to New York to have all the shots for Korea. The program in Korea was ‘frozen’ and I went to Germany for a year and a half. I met a man who became my husband. We got married here in the Dutch Reformed Church and moved to New Jersey because that was where he was working. I had some art teaching experience there with some good administrators. We were married about 23 years and then divorced. I continued to come to Woodstock all during this time.  My mother lived here in a little house just off Elwyn Lane and my dear daughter and I would come for summers and weekends. She and her husband built a lovely house on Plochmann Lane. Eventually, I met a really nice man. He loved the theater and he didn’t want to be too far from New York. I said “You might like Woodstock”.  We kept coming up and looking for a place to live. Someone told us about a house on Broadview which was out of our price range. As we drove down Deming Street we saw a little sign on this lawn that said “For Sale”. That would have been the late 80’s, we bought this house in ’89.

Juliet: So I could ask you what you think has changed since 1989, but you’ve seen everything in the last seven decades.

Jean: You know I’m very grateful Juliet, for one thing. It’s terrible that  buildings were torn down, my house and the Homestead because they were very nice buildings with lots of character. What’s in place of them you know, parking lots and Cumberland Farms…  but I think those incidents maybe kind of spurred the zoning  process into action. I’m not sure. I don’t think they were so willing to allow people to tear down buildings after that.

Juliet: I think it really must have changed the flavor.

Jean: Where Bradley Meadows is was just a lovely open field. My mother and father, just before he died, had signed papers to buy a little house that was right next door to them which had been the Christian Science church. It was very small, built in 1920, on this side of our house right there where CVS is. The congregation had purchased the former summer school of The Art Student’s League of New York where they are now, across from the hardware store. That was built in 1912 and they vacated it in ’22.  My parents bought that little church next door and they rented it. Eventually they sold it to my aunt and uncle. I remember one night, when I was about 13 … I was ironing in that house, looking out. I saw in Bradley Meadows, a flame. I ran over to my grandmother’s across the street. There was a man who lived in the back in a little studio next to the garage. He ran out and we saw it was a hammer and sickle burning. That was startling to me to see that. This would have been the late 40’s. At that time, the Ku Klux Klan was burning crosses on the other side of town, periodically. I never saw it but I heard about it.

What I was going to say that what I”m really grateful for is the businesses that have gone into the houses along Mill Hill Road and Tinker Street who have tried to  to keep them as much as it works. I like that. I so appreciate  the people who came into town in the sixties and created their businesses and contribute to the community. And they are a part of the community. Whereas today I see more people coming in speculating and grabbing up real estate and  wanting to make money from the Woodstock name. It’s too bad I think, because I don’t see a whole lot of becoming part of the community. There is a sense of “What can I get out of Woodstock?” rather than “How can I become a part of this wonderful vital diverse community?” The special aura that has brought folks here for many years is the appreciation of the quiet beauty and spiritual nature of this creative place… this Woodstock.

There are about 6000 residents and I’m not sure if this is correct but I think it’s 60% of homeowners are part time people. So that leaves a small amount to do the Fire Department, the Rescue Squad, all of those volunteer things. It’s unfortunate. Woodstock more or less has a population that leans on the older end of the age scale. We need more young people, more families.

It’s still lovely to walk around Woodstock. I must say I know fewer and fewer people. I think it’s unfortunate that folks who have lived here for many years can’t afford to stay here and their children are looking at the same picture. Real estate prices have risen from the demand of part time folks or B and B landlords that it  prevents a lot of people from being able to stay in Woodstock. These are the folks who maintain our volunteer Fire Department and all the other organizations that support the residents..

Juliet: What is your favorite thing about living in Woodstock?

Jean: I have always loved the interaction with people from all walks of life. When I was working at Deanie’s in the summers, the theater would be open, the Playhouse. The actors would come up after the performance, the bakers would come out from the kitchen and there would be a song fest, right there among the tables! It was just a marvelous interaction of people. I have always loved that. I have lived in New Jersey in suburbia, where so much is the same, people seemed to be so much the same.

It’s just like a little world here in Woodstock. I know it’s not that complete of a melting pot, but it’s getting there. We are more and more diverse. I guess that’s what I like. There’s so much activity. You can find anything if you want to go out and do something. Everything from poetry reading to gymnastics classes and meditation groups and whatever.  Woodstock as you know has such a big volunteer community. We were active in Meals on Wheels for several years. You had teachers and realtors and homemakers working. I like diversity and…the strong personalities!

Juliet: YEAAAAH! (we both crack up laughing)

Jean: I just hope Woodstock is able to maintain itself as a real community where it’s welcoming to those who really want to settle here and be part of the vitality.…

Here’s an illustration, I love this. I would hardly think this would happen: I kept my mother’s little house and rented it for a lot of years. Just before Christmas, the 22nd, a friend who lives on Neher Street was having an open house. So I said I’d go there, and then come back here because I had another event to go to for my stepdaughter. I went to the warm and lovely open house and had a grand time. It was filled with folks I knew and some new friends. When I came back here my phone rang as I was getting ready to go and my tenant who's been there many years called. She says "Jean, the guys  from the water department were here and turned off the water. There was a big leak. They are going to call you.”  So I said “Okay I’ll stay here”.  Larry Allen from the water department called and was so nice and said  he was so sorry but it was my responsibility to get that repaired. SO the water is off. Larry gave me names of people I could call and with his involvement, it all worked out within a few days. It was all repaired. But that same day at the open house, the Town Supervisor  Bill McKenna walked in to the open house and asked "Is Jean White here?" They said “She was, but she just left” He said “Well, the water pipe at her house burst!” Obviously there's communication between the departments. I just thought that was very nice. I felt a real part of this community. I called Bill. It was Christmas Eve and he was at his office. I don’t know if I would have experienced that if I were a newer person, but I've been around a while. I think getting involved with the community gives you a real home. I LOVE living in Woodstock. There are such interesting and caring people who make Woodstock where I want to be.

[julietlofarophoto]

Kate McGloughlin

Juliet: What brought you to Woodstock?

Kate: “Well Julie, I bloomed where I was planted! I grew up about 12 miles from Woodstock in Olivebridge, New York. My family has been in Ulster County for twelve generations. Yeah, my ancestor Kit Davis was the first white settler in Ulster County . So that family line has been here. My dad was donkey Irish—he only got here in the 20th century. I grew up in Olivebridge and Woodstock is where I came to parties with people like Chris Lofaro and Greg Baldinger! I had good friends from Woodstock and once I got to Onteora, that whole world opened up to me.

Juliet: What is your first memory of Woodstock?

Kate:  I think one of the Memorial Day Parades. We used to come over here as kids. We’d do our parade, and sometimes we came to Woodstock.

My mom worked at Carey’s Deli in the 40’s during the war so she had friends over here … and we were always at Lasher’s. Sorry, I know that’s a crazy thing to talk about but that’s where all our people have been waked, and cared for...

So my earliest memories would have to be a Memorial Day Parade or Mr. Boyd at a funeral at Lasher’s

Juliet: Yes, one of my first realizations was when I was around thirty coming up to a funeral there. To look around and see all the people that he knew that I knew from all these different parts of life here in Woodstock and to notice that wow, it’s a real community.

Kate: It is a great community and people don’t talk about it enough, but it’s a huge center of our culture here. I mean, I’ve been to every kind of funeral there is, but, like, some of the old country funerals – and Kenny Peterson is great at it, he knows who’s related to whom— the people and their communities come together for a service for somebody. My brother’s funeral for instance: there were about five hundred people there that night. I must have hugged about four hundred people. They just kept coming in and coming in.  There were townspeople, there were school people, all kinds of different community members.

Juliet: What has changed since you’ve been here?

Kate:  Oh, everything. Woodstock used to be a great place to drink. You could start at Deanie’s and end up at the “Depresso” (Juliet cracks up) or the Watering Troff. I mean, really you could just park your car and (with hand gestures and sound effects of a pinball) Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Bing! Deanie’s and then Christy’s and up to the Lake, over to the Pub, then probably to the Café Espresso, and I would always end up at the Pinecrest Lodge. That was the ’70’s. There was great music all the time. Although that’s happening here again now, I don’t think music really went away, but music in the streets was really happening then.

I knew more people from Woodstock and from here in the old days. I don’t know hardly anybody unless they’ve been here for generations or they’re here at the art school or like yourself, someone who I went to school with. I just don’t know where to meet these people. They know my name because of the school or my work. I miss the small town aspect of it. It doesn’t feel like that so much to me anymore. I also miss being able to take a half hour lunch break and being able to get a sandwich and get out in the half hour. You can rarely do that anymore. Taking a left in Woodstock on a Saturday, it’s like, nuts. It’s like that! I’m used to knowing everybody in town and I just don’t any more. Do you see that? Juliet: For me, moving back, there are faces that I’ve always seen and I’m just now getting to know. And families that I met when I was here briefly ten years ago were new arrivals who I am just getting to know through our kids. Last summer I did a project with over twenty locals that I’d never come across before.

Kate: Oh there are great new people who’ve assimilated.  Especially when artists or musicians come to town we get to know them right away, and it’s great. In my town, the Town of Olive, there’s Krumville people, West Shokan people, and Olivebridge people. Oh he’s a Bearsville guy, he’s a Zena guy, he’s a Wittenberg guy. She’s a Glasco Girl. That kind of stuff. People identify me with Woodstock probably because of the school, but I’ve never lived here.

Juliet: When was the first time you took a class here?

Kate:  1991. January 18th. I came in for a four-week class and I never left.

Juliet: Really?

Kate: I was working at the Woodstock Youth Center. I was Assistant Director and loved it. I was having a great time. I was working for the town, but I was really missing making art. The mother of one of my charges became a friend. Joyce Washor. She said “you should really take a class over at the school.” The next day the Woodstock Times came out and their little ad appeared. I’d never gotten to take an etching class in college. Robert Angeloch was teaching it and it was just the two of us for a couple of weeks. Other people joined but it wasn’t a popular class.  We did things the old-fashioned way here. It wasn’t any kind of contemporary printmaking medium. It was really old school. That’s what I wanted. I love to draw. That was the beginning of everything shifting for me. Within two years, I was here full time.

Juliet: What’s your title here?

Kate: I’m the President now. (Kate has since become President Emeritus)

Juliet: (Giggling at the fact that I should have known this coming in) You’re the President.

Kate: Yeah. BUT, I mean, I was a student, and then I ran out of money and I got on scholarship and then they ran out of money. I became a work exchange student, where you could take a class for three hours and then work for three hours. They saw they couldn’t get rid of me so they gave me a job and I worked as a registrar for $5 an hour. This was 1993 or four. Before that, I started teaching here because one of the teachers didn’t show up one time. It was actually this class, The Monotype Workshop. I had taken it a couple of times and so they said, “Could please you fill in?”. And I said “Sure!” That was 1993 so I must have started working in the office in ’94 because I taught before I worked in the office. I’ve done everything here. I was the maintenance girl. They let me do everything, let’s put it that way. I patched this roof, I mowed the lawn, cleaned the studio like crazy. They gave me every opportunity there was here.

Juliet: That’s amazing.

Kate: Oh yeah. The only position I haven’t held is bookkeeper and treasurer. Mara always took care of the books and now we have a professional because we need one. But I was the Registrar and sort of Assistant Director, Instructor and Student. I’ve done most everything you can think of to do here.

Juliet: I think it’s also particularly great if you’re the president to know…what it’s like…

Kate: Every aspect, what everybody is up against. That’s exactly right. I have total empathy when they are trying to park cars, or trying to deal with frozen pipes or sidewalks or gutters and leaves.

Juliet: What’s your favorite thing about Woodstock?

Kate: I love that it feels like a cosmopolitan town in a beautiful rural setting. I mean these mountains, the trees, the streams that hold us. The landscape is the thing for me, all the cultural events— and yet, we had to stop getting the paper because it gives us anxiety. There’s so many phenomenal things to do.

Juliet: (laughing) I saw Sarah in town on Saturday and she said that!

Kate: Was she freaking out!?

Juliet: I had friends with me visiting for their first time and she was handing out cards for the show with Dion. She told them she can’t get the paper because even without looking at it, your calendar is full.

Kate: She told you that? Yeah, that’s our story! We have tickets to so many things. Any particular weekend you can do theater, live music, performance, visual arts..you can also do the drumming circle (the only thing in a woodstock that starts on time!) But after a work week, all I want to do is stay the hell home and sit in my hammock and play ukulele. That everything is at our fingertips is amazing to me. There’s still expansive fields where you can get space. The reservoir itself is a great muse for me. I love the culinary thing that’s happening since we were kids. Remember there used to be three restaurants? Now you can get practically anything you want whenever you want.  I guess, to contradict myself, you can get that old town feeling—especially at funerals—or if I go up to the town offices or if I’m in a store and run into somebody from one of the old families. That feels great to me.

And again, the ongoing music that’s been happening since we were kids. I love what Amy Helm is doing, and Simi, Mike and Ruthy, Connor Kennedy, I mean, come on! It’s just really happening here.

Juliet: It’s why I came back. All those elements.

Kate:  Is that right?! The Artist Association, and the school. I would never live in a place that wasn’t an artist colony in some respect, or a place with pockets of artists left and right. I need to be with my people for sure. Woodstock is a place where you literally can run around like this (points to paint spattered clothing) and they understand. You just came from the print shop and you look like this! It’s important to me because I’m always working and I don’t always have time to change into some other get up to get somewhere. I feel like that’s another thing. I’ve always loved how the – what is the word? Open mindedness? Accepting? There is a liberalism, in the old sense of the word. Where people are open to different ideas. I appreciate that about Woodstock.

Check out Kate’s website for a glance into her dynamic work and beautiful writing: https://www.katemcgloughlin.com

[julietlofarophoto]

Jay Petersen

  I visited Jay Petersen and his daughter Robin on a frosty December afternoon at his home in Bearsville. I became friends with Robin in third grade and clearly remember her mother Donna; tall and thin with short blonde hair and a warm smile. They lived in brick house with avocado kitchen appliances. Jay was a technician for Sears until retiring in 1999. As he recalls it, I love how distant his childhood in Bearsville seems from the town of Woodstock. Bearsville is a hamlet of The Town of Woodstock, just a couple of miles from town’s center.

Juliet:  What brought you to Woodstock?

Jay: My parents. I was 6 months old. They moved to Piney Woods Road. It was a summer house. They started coming up from the Bronx and renting a room at the Shultis Farm. “Brigadoon" they call it now. I’ve been up here since 1937.

During war time, my father was working for the Office of Price Administration. He was on Wall Street but during the war his firm went under, like most of them did. While he worked for the O.P.A., he’d come up on weekends. There were three of us. I had two brothers.

Juliet:  What is your first memory of Woodstock? 

Jay:  Well, I didn’t get to Woodstock very much. I went to the Bearsville School. Miss Stone was my teacher until 1948 when my father’s boss came back from the war and started up a new firm. We moved to Forest Hills, Queens.

My first memory in Woodstock … The Seahorse probably. (We all laugh)

Robin:  It was a bar where the Elephant Emporium used to be. (Now it’s Rock City Vintage.)

Jay:  My father used to bring me to the Seahorse when I was nine or ten. They had a ping pong table in the wintertime. They also had a pinball machine. Donna’s father used to give her money to play the pinball machine and my father never gave me any money so I used to watch Donna play pinball. (more laughing)

I met her again in 1957 at the Irvington (now the Landau). It was owned by Bill Dixon and it was more bar than restaurant. There were so many bars. Nobody had time for food.

 Juliet:  Was Donna a local?

 Jay:  Oh yes, she was a Riseley, some of the founders of Woodstock. The Riseleys owned several farms throughout Woodstock and up Ohayo Mountain Road on both sides.

Donna came to the city with me for a period of about 2 years. We had gotten married at the Dutch Reformed Church October 12, 1958.

Robin: Didn’t you tell her you were going to marry her after your first date?

Jay: No, I told her I was going to marry her when we were at the Irvington, before the first date.

Juliet:  When did you make the choice to move here and get settled?

Jay:  I came out of the Navy and went to school in Manhattan. Donna worked at CBS.  We moved back in 1960, after we had Anthea, to this house. I drove a school bus for a while and worked at a meat packing house up here before working for Sears.

 Juliet:  What’s changed about Woodstock over the years?

 Jay:  Oh, Woodstock was the greatest right after the second world war. A lot of people went to the Art Students League on the GI bill and came up here in the summer time. This was a real wild town. Like I said, there were eight bars from 375 all the way up through Woodstock. People used to go from one bar to the other to see who was around. There was a place next to the Seahorse, two houses away. Four artists rented it and called it “Hopeless Towers.” It was next to Heckeroths, set back, a two-story cottage.

Juliet:  So what was going on there?

Jay: (Laughing) What wasn’t going on there? Well, the Seahorse had a long bar with a right angle turn that the bartender couldn't see if he was at the center. These guys would lean over and grab a bottle of gin before they went home. Dick Stillwell, who was a real character, owned the bar and got wise that inventory was not right. He made an unexpected trip to the Hopeless Towers on a not too early Sunday morning. He rapped on the door and he walks in. There are about 20 empty bottles that they had taken and lined up all along a shelf. So he walks in and sees the Gilbey’s gin bottles and he takes one off and he knew by the serial number that they were his. “Hmm”, he says, “I see. I expect all the other ones are mine too. You gentlemen owe me…” (laughs) He had it all figured out. No arrests were made, everything was fine because the tabs that these guys had at the seahorse were astronomical. You know, three or four hundred dollars back then was like two thousand today! So, they got together and paid him.

The American Legion seems to be the only place I can find somebody who remembers the Seahorse around here. I mean, this bar was known from coast to coast, by everybody who was a writer or an artist. Back then, you really knew everybody in town.

Robin: Were there a lot of people who migrated from the city, even then?

Jay: They were from all over. The Art Students league in New York brought a lot of people up here. (The complex now houses The Woodstock School of Art)

Juliet:  Any other highlights?

Jay:  I was an apprentice at the Maverick Theater. That was when Jose Quintero was the director and Lee Marvin got his start. I was in the play.  They knew what they wanted, it was before Marvin’s first play which was called “Roadside”, and Teddy Ballantine who was David Ballantine’s father was an old silent picture actor. They needed a big gruff guy with a voice to play the part of the sheriff. They didn’t have anyone, they had all these small guys. So, Teddy says “Well, my son has this friend who is a plumber assistant and if we can just teach him to learn a few lines, the part isn’t that big. He could play the part.” Lee came down and then brought the script home. The next day he came to rehearsal and he was a natural right off the bat. This guy, he was something. That was his debut to acting. From there Lee went to Broadway.

Robin: The Library Fair, didn’t your dad win a car?

Jay: Oh yeah, the Library Fair. My mother won the car. She paid a dollar for the raffle. In 1953, she won an English Ford. A little American Made but British car.  A wonderful thing about the library fair is we had John Pike who whipped up a band with Bill Moor, a guy who played a wash tub. 



I remember once I was at Kenny Reynolds’s gas station, which is now the pizza place. I used to stop there on my way home and talk to Kenny and the guys who worked there. One day it’s raining like crazy and here comes Joan Baez riding a Triumph motorcycle with Bob Dylan hanging on the back! Dylan used to have Kenny fix his car, so he was there a lot.

Robin:   What about the bakery? Wasn’t there a bakery in Bearsville?

Jay:  There was a bakery in Woodstock – Kirschbaum’s. He bought The Bearsville School and moved it there at the foot of the hill. Across from Oddfellows Hall.

I guess my first memory in Woodstock would be my mother bringing me to the Woodstock Guild and she enrolled me in a leather working course, making belts and learning the tools. The teacher was Stephenson. That was probably 1951.

Juliet:  Robin, what’s your first memory of Woodstock?

Robin:  Probably going to Folk Art and getting the penny candy. And the parrot, Charlie. Or going to Laray’s while my mother got her hair done.

Jay: Did you ever see the five and dime store? Where the General Store was, and Houst, naturally. I bought my first pair of Levi’s there at Houst, which were outrageously priced at $3.50 for a pair of Levi’s! But I had to have them, so…

 We had a scanner radio that Donna used to listen to religiously. There was a murder up here, right up the road. Sam Shirah was a guy in town who wore a triangular hat with a raccoon tail. He was visiting this lady who was married, but the husband was in New York working or something. The woman had a daughter at home while she went to Holly Cantine’s place which was a log cabin just up the road here. There was some kind of affair. The husband comes home and asks the daughter where her mother is. She tells him she was with Sam Shirah. He went down to Big Scot and bought a gun and went up there and shot Sam Shirah. They put Sam on the hood of the car because he realizes he screwed up and they’d already called the cops. He was still alive. But when they got to Cooper Lake Road, he hit the brakes and Sam went flying off so by this time, he was dead. Everyone is calling my wife to find out what was going on.

Juliet: What’s your favorite thing about living here?

Jay: Well this time of year is rough. I was the only house down here when these kids went to school. My oldest daughter Anthea used to listen for the school closings. She was like 12 years old. When she knew the schools were closed, she would start my big tractor and plow the whole road so I could get to work. I missed Anthea when she left. Robin, forget about it.

Robin:  Yeah, I wouldn’t, but Sylvia (Gersbach, their neighbor back then) learned.

Jay:  Yes, I did teach Sylvia how to drive the tractor and plow the road. But it is beautiful here. It’s just gorgeous. I love mountains. This is my kind of place to live.

 ............

For further reading, get your hands on “Legendary Locals of Woodstock” to learn more about the characters Jay Mentions, and for more great Woodstock stories.

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Jeremy Bernstein

Always ready with a warm smile, he is a locally grown musician (aka Burnell Pines) and owner of recently opened The Pines in Mt Tremper. We talked late one night at the bar there after a party for his sister.

Juliet: What brought you to Woodstock? Jeremy:  My parents. Conceived here but Alice didn't trust the doctors, so I was born in New Jersey. Brought right back up a day later. I would say the Woodstock Music Festival brought me here because that’s what my dad came  for. He was young, college age, running a school in Newark. My parents met there and then they moved here in ’72. I was born in ’73.

Juliet:  What’s your first memory of Woodstock? Jeremy:  One of the deepest first memories was almost drowning in a pool. I was probably three and a half years old on Hutchin Hill Road. I let go of the swimmies and sank to the bottom of the pool. Dad ran across the yard, jumped the fence and saved me. I could see three shadows through the water - Alice, Julie, and Rebecca. (mother and sisters) Another big one I remember was my first sleep over, which was with Peter and Ellen. Peter was a teacher at my dad’s school*. They were college buddies of my dad’s. I spent the night at their house at the four corners of 212 and Glasco Turnpike, by the Red Onion. I stayed in their house. They had this grate in the floor that let the heat from the wood stove up. I remember they were down in the living room communing with friends. I spied on them. First sleepover. He drove a motorcycle to school and I thought it was cool. It was a Honda.

Juliet:  I know for those of you who were born here or arrived as babies the first Woodstock memory is your first memory. Rebecca Turmo had a doozy of a first memory as well. Jeremy:  Rebecca! Rebecca saved me. When I was a teenager, I had mountain biked for maybe 15 miles. I got back into town and I was feeling light headed, like I was going to fall down. Bryce said “Go see Rebecca at Jean Turmo right now”. I walked in there and told her I wasn’t feeling well. I was having a major moment of falling apart. She was an EMT. She said “You’re dehydrated. Go drink some water and we’ll talk later.” (laughs)

Juliet:  When did you start making music? Jeremy:  Maybe at 9 years old. They tried to give me piano lessons at 7 and it didn’t work. Guitar lessons kind of worked but I got turned off by learning classics. I wish I learned more songs.

Juliet: When you were a teenager, what music were you into?      

Jeremy:  I was making music with crazy weird rednecks and listening to Poison and Cinderella and music like that of the ’90’s.

Juliet:  What has changed about Woodstock? Jeremy:  I think a lot has stayed the same. I don’t spend as much time in town being out this way, but it’s very similar. It’s got a beautiful local stronghold of community but it’s also got a very transient …what do they call them? Tourists. A tourist vibe.

Juliet:  What’s your favorite thing about being here? Jeremy:  I think my favorite thing is familiarity. It’s a place that I’ve grown up and I love and that i can connect to in so many different ways. There is the landscape and the people and what goes on. That’s what keeps me here. The connection to the land and loving the land and the connection to people and community. So that’s my favorite thing.

*Jeremy’s father Ian Bernstein opened The Woodstock Children’s Center in 1973. It is now The Woodstock Day School. 

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The Golden Notebook’s Jackie

I sat down with Jacqueline Kellachan in the upstairs room of her store, The Golden Notebook. It’s one of my family’s favorite shops in town to frequent, and it was fun to dig in and learn how she landed here. 

Juliet:  What brought you to Woodstock?

Jackie:  A good friend of mine was dating Martha Frankel’s cousin. She used to spend all her weekends up here. Back in ’96, my husband at the time and I, we couldn’t afford a place in the city so I said “why don’t we get a house in Woodstock because Julie likes it there.” We drove up in January and it was crazy raining and there was flooding everywhere. We saw a house and we bought it. We’d never spent a night in Woodstock. So that’s how we got our place and we were weekenders for years.  We moved up here full time in 2005, after I had my 3rd kid and we were both a little bit in career transition and came up.

Juliet:  What is your very first memory?

Jackie:  Being up here in a flood.

Juliet: So that was it, the first time you came up, because somebody you knew liked it.

Jackie: I always say I live here because of Martha Frankel, and she always says “I don’t know what that means” and I retell the story, but she’s just kidding. So that’s why actually, I mean weirdly, it’s because of someone who is a writer, and books, that I ended up being here. (laughs)

Juliet: When was The Golden Notebook established?

Jackie: In 1978. Next year will be 40 years that this community has supported an independent bookstore, which is huge because the town is only a little bit over 5,000 people. The Bronx doesn’t have it’s own bookstore, and there’s 1.4 million people in The Bronx. So, that’s amazing. Since 1978 when Barry and Ellen started the store

Juliet:  When did you come in?

Jackie:  2010. James, my co-owner, came in in 20015.

Juliet:  What has changed since you got here?

Jackie:  In a way, to me, not that much. I’ve gone from being someone who wasn’t a business owner to becoming a business owner and so my experience of the town changed during that time. I can tell you how during the past five years there are a lot more people here because of AirBnB. I see that as a retailer. One of the things that really attracted me to Woodstock when we were getting ready to move up here full time is that you could perceive an intensity of the community, right? Even though I’d lived in New York City for years and had an amazing work community, I wasn’t feeling it in that way in the neighborhood where I lived. Having kids and coming up here, I was really able to slide into that community. That was really nice. Now that I’m a retailer and I have a different experience. I don’t know if that other sense of community is still there, or if you can feel it in the same way coming in from the outside. I think that you can, but I don’t know. I talk to people all the time who are moving up here, or in the area, or are in the process of thinking about it, or who have gotten their first house. It is definitely something that they talk about, and it’s something that they do sense. So, maybe it hasn’t changed.

Juliet: I’ve lived other places where it was very hard to feel like a part of it, so when I meet someone who has just moved here I usually reach out, offer to exchange numbers and maybe help get their lives going…

Jackie: Exactly. Being here in the bookstore, both James and I really feel like we are representing the community. Physically the reason why we own and believe in book stores is that we believe it is a place that brings people together around books, around ideas, and around articulation of those ideas. Especially during the summer time, people are always coming in here wanting to connect with what Woodstock is in some way. Maybe they are here because they thought the festival was here, or a zillion different reasons. So we are always giving them a version of Woodstock and trying to explain it to them. One of the things I always say to people who are moving up here is that people are very accessible. That may just be the difference between a small town and New York City or New York City and a lot of other places. But, people are very accessible.

Juliet: What is your favorite thing about being here?

Jackie: That people are very accessible. (both of us laugh) It remains a very real place. I hear people who grew up here say “AH, it’s different! There’s more wealthy people, or, something - different.”  I think there is A LOT of income diversity. I think it’s a very difficult place, still, to make a living. I think that that keeps it very real. I do really love that there is a lot of income diversity. That’s very - I guess philosophically something that is attractive to me. The fact that it is a real community of the arts, it really is. There’s so many people living here who are artists and trying to do their thing on the spectrum of success. In the most DIY way and in an extremely “You’re the most successful person - at this, anywhere.”  It’s true. That spectrum exists in our community and I love that. I love that people are a pain in the ass. (I laugh) They are! People are very difficult because they are individuals and they have their opinions. Some people are a little bit maybe on the more - crazy, you know. But I love that they can live here and be in the community too because that is sanitized out, to use a word,  in a lot of places.

I should say that my favorite thing is also owning the bookstore and being in the center of town. It’s so much fun. We get to talk to people all day long who live here and who are coming here and people love it here for all the different reasons I’ve said. And the town bothers them for probably many of the reasons I’ve said too.

People really feel passionate about Woodstock, they really do,  and that’s cool to be in a place where we can hear that, talk about it,  and contribute to that conversation every day. It’s so much fun.

The Golden Notebook 29 Tinker Street Woodstock, NY 12498 (845)679-8000

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Carol Viglielmo

I met with “Mrs. Viglielmo”, who was my fifth grade teacher at Woodstock Elementary School, in her house just outside of town. We were joined by her daughter Melissa in this visit to Woodstock in the fifties, sixties and seventies.

Melissa:  I’m going to go inside

Juliet:  Maybe you’ll hear some interesting tidbits!

Melissa:  Oh trust me, I’ve heard it all.

Carol: YOU HAVE NOT! (Laughs)

Juliet: What brought you to Woodstock?

Carol: My parents brought me here in 1932 as a newborn. They had a summer house. I eloped in college with my math teacher and he wanted to live here and we settled in Woodstock in 1957.

I began working in a nursery school and I loved it. I thought “Why don’t I get into teaching?” New Paltz was just 30 miles away and so I went down there and completed my undergraduate, had my first baby, and my second baby. I started working on my Masters. After my third baby (points to Melissa in the other room) was in fourth grade, I went back to teaching full time.

Juliet:  When did you start at Woodstock School?

Carol: Jeffrey was born in 1959 and Pamela in 1960…I started teaching, subbing in Boiceville, at the elementary  school.

My classroom was on Route 28 and I had a friend who would go up skiing and every time she went by she would toot her horn and the kids knew why I was in a grouchy mood for the rest of the day. She was going skiing and I was working (Laughs) Let’s see - I worked up there until I became pregnant with Jeffrey… That’s the way it went…Jeffrey was born in ’59…(Calling to the other room) Melissa I need you.

Melissa:  (Joining us) Full time you didn’t start teaching until ’72 because I would have been in fifth grade and you didn’t want to teach the same grade I was in. I got to fifth grade and you started teaching fourth grade full time…but you had been substituting the whole time and you also went back to school and got your Masters Degree.

Carol:  That’s right.

Juliet: Were you at the Junior High School or were you at Bennett?

Carol: I was at what is now the high school but that wing facing (route) 28 was where I taught fourth grade up there.

Melissa: When was Onteora started? My father worked in the one room school house before they opened Onteora, and then he started the Math and Science department up there. That was in the 50’s

Carol: Beginning 50’s.

Melissa:  And you didn’t start teaching until later on, after Jeffrey was born.

Carol: Because I had to get through college. And that was piece meal because we only had one car. He was teaching at Onteora so I had to ride with someone to take classes.

Juliet: What’s your first memory of Woodstock?

Carol:  Oh, probably reading Nancy Drew on the terrace during the summer. It was very quiet, I was a city girl. I did a lot of reading.

Juliet: Where was home base?

Carol: We were coming up from the city. West 78th Street.

Juliet:  West 78th Street.  I lived on West 78th street.

Carol: Did you really?

Melissa: I lived on West 78th Street.

Carol: Where?!

Juliet: 113

Melissa: I was at 120. (points to her mom) She was at 119.

Carol: I was at 119. (With a big smile) Oh, isn’t that weird…

Melissa: And I didn’t know. I bought my place and then she told me afterwards. Literally you looked out my bedroom into it. So, 113…

Carol: I’ve got goose pimples

(Long tangent about when and where and just missing each other in NYC)

Juliet: Where was the Woodstock house?

Carol: Lower Byrdcliffe Road.

Melissa: Remember where Miss Ingalls was? They built that house.

Carol: There was a big picket fence, white picket fence facing the road, that’s where they brought me when I was a baby. A few years later, my grandfather died and they took his house which was way at the end of that lane.

Melissa: Then they built White Gates…who lived there? Irma…Wennig?

Carol:  Irma Wennig, right.

Melissa: And then, they were at the end of the road. There were three different houses on the road where they lived at different stages.

Carol: One summer after I graduated high school I was going to college and I wanted a job or something to kill time. I took a course at Kingston High school and I figured my parents would give me a car. I didn’t figure right. I had to pick classes based on the bus schedule. I think I took geometry and chemistry. I’d never taken chemistry in high school because I was a Social Studies major. I walked into the Chemistry class the first day and there was this adonis in front of the room and I thought “Ooh, this is cute”.  Of course I proceeded to give him a very hard time all summer long. I was doing very well in Chemistry. The day before the Regents test I said  “Thank you very much Mr. Viglielmo, I won’t be seeing you again.” He said “What do you mean?” I said “Well, I”m not coming in for the Regents if I don’t have to.”  He said “Oh yes you are.”  He marched me to the principal’s office. The principal told me off but I said “I’m not coming here on a hot August day. I have a pool in Woodstock and I want to be in my pool and I’m not coming down here.”

Skip ahead maybe three or four months. I came up here one weekend with my folks and my husband-to-be was in Deanie’s. I went up to the bar and said “Hello, how are you?” and introduced him to my parents. They invited him back for a drink at the house. I went off to college. In the spring when I came back for the summer, my dad said “Some guy with a long Italian name called.” We went out a couple of times and he was going off to Cornell. He had a G.I. bill he was using up. Fast forward to that December. By then I was coming up weekends and falling in love. We eloped at Christmas time.

Melissa: You can imagine she was a nice Jewish girl from New York, and he was not.

Carol: (Laughing) He was not a nice Jewish boy.

Melissa:  He was Protestant, so he was the antithesis of anything…and his parents were right off the boat from Italy. He came from a community that only spoke French and Italian at home.

Juliet: Where was he living?

Carol: He was living in Ulster Park and teaching in Hyde Park. And what, 62, 63 years later he died. He would have been 91.

Melissa: And now she’s 19 again.

Carol: Yes, now I’m 19 again! It was a very nice marriage.

Juliet:  You both wanted to live in Woodstock?

Carol:  We got involved with the Playhouse in the summer. He was kind of a frustrated actor I think at heart.

Juliet: What about Woodstock has changed?

Carol: The restaurants have gotten better. It hasn’t really changed.

Melissa: The nightlife?

Carol: Oh, the nightlife!

Melissa:  You talk about all those people. It was different when you got here, you think about Sioux Goffredi and you guys out at Deanie’s and out doing stuff together.

Carol:  It was quieter. The complexion has changed.

Melissa:  You were friends with all the artists. Those were the rock stars of the day. They used to have big parties, setting up a bar in the front lawn. That’s when cocktail parties in Woodstock would easily be 60, 70 people showing up. They’d park all up and down the road - my brother would be leaning out driving the cars and parking them for everybody…you never knew who was going to be here. It was always an eclectic group of people from the New Yorkers who would come up on the weekend and my mother might know from that world and people they knew because they played tennis or were at the Playhouse together. The Sweeneys, the Burgs, the Wests, the Mullers and Molyneauxs…

Carol: I remember for one of our parties it was threatening rain and somehow somebody mentioned it to the undertaker in town. He came over and set up a tent. Of course it worked out beautifully and he never charged us.

There was a place called the White Horse Inn which was right at the end of Maverick Road. On Friday and Saturday you had a lot of artists who were also musicians. They got a band together. That was the highlight of the town really. Besides the Playhouse.  My husband and I acted in plays.

Melissa: When they first got married, their kerosene heater blew up and they moved in to the guest house over at John Pike's. His property backed up to her parent’s place. They lived there and became close with John and Zellah Pike just because they were the waifs they took in.

Carol: I was heartbroken. Our first little house. (Sighs) Town was very interesting, a real art community. Lots of parties. Then IBM came in and changed the whole complexion. My husband wasn’t making much teaching, I think $2,700.00 a year. So, he took a position with IBM.

Juliet:  What is your favorite thing about being here?

Carol: Oh probably the different groups of people, that’s the most fun. Everyone is so different, coming from different places and life experiences. The interesting thing is that so many people move away but they come back to Woodstock. There is something about Woodstock. There is a quality about it. It’s a great town. It really is.

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Eve Baer

Eve: The reason that I got a smile on my face this morning when I was thinking about being a Woodstock Townsperson … it made me proud to be one because Woodstock is a community that I love and admire. It almost has a sense of self that is diverse and rich and supportive and nurturing. Heartfelt. We have a small enough community that it emanates into all of the outer hamlets. It’s just wonderful because we like supporting each other and creating this wonderful community. I often wish that this was available to everybody. It is available to everybody if they could live like we do here.

Juliet: Even I’m surprised by the support outside my family and lifelong friends since I moved back last year.

Eve: I have two women’s groups with my best friends. One of the groups is Laurie Schwartz who I’ve known for thirty years and and a woman who started Hospice in this area in 1979. She and her husband Nathan - it was their idea to start the Woodstock Jewish Congregation. Look what it is now. It was astonishing to witness the whole thing from idea to manifestation to this amazing growth. Talk about something having legs of the idea carry it along and move it forward. Evelyne Puget who is just as beautiful to look at as it is to say her name “Evelyne Puget” (laughs) she’s an artist and entrepreneur, but an artist mostly. She does huge benefit events for orphanages and Haitians and she was the primary catalyst for the Woodstock Peace Festival. She does good, good work. Maria deFranco, she and her husband Paul own Catskill Art and she’s an architect. And Jan Bernhardt, a most wonderful massage therapist and wife and mother. You probably know Jan.

Juliet: Yes.

Eve: So the five of us have been meeting for I think 15 years, once a month.We've created such intimacy and confidentiality in our conversations. Usually we’ll have someone take the lead. We’ll exchange and we’ll talk and ask the person if they want any coaching in the matter. We also prepare lovely food for each other. Each one of us brings a dish. So that’s that group. The other group that I’m in with Judy Jamison, Marcia Fleisher, Karen McKenna…there are 10 of us all together. We followthe guidelines of the Millionth Circle. When you are sharing, you are sharing to give your wisdoms to the group about what you’ve learned. It’s a little bit more focused then just telling the story of what happened over the last month, although that’s always included. For me almost every time I share, it has to do with my children, still. That group is very structured. But of course we bring food, and we eat together and we have our table chit chat and then we do our more formal circle and then we have dessert. (Laughs.)

Juliet: They sound so great

Eve: It is so great. It is so great. And what is so great is that each and every woman involved in those groups thinks its so great that we have what we have. “Isn’t this great? Don’t you wish everybody had this?” 


Juliet: What brought you to Woodstock?

Eve: I think serendipity brought me to Woodstock. Previous to living in Woodstock, I was living in New London, New Hampshire, which is a small college town. Colby Junior College for Women is there. It’s a sister college to Dartmouth. New London is at a high elevation and it was literally in the clouds every day. Common usage was “it will burn off by noon”. I was married and had one child when I moved to New London and had two children while I was living there.  My husband John was an English teacher at Colby Junior College for Women, which had a wonderful theater program and English department. After being there for three years my husband and I were going through a marital crisis. We started to blame anything we could and we wanted to save our marriage for the children's sake and we thought we should move somewhere closer to a big city. Whatever! (Laughs.) After Colby he got a job at Ulster County Community College, where he was among the first staff there. The initial faculty. We had one friend in New London who was a photographer and had been to Woodstock once. He said he thought it was a cool little town. That was the only idea that we had about Woodstock. When John was interviewing in Kingston he looked around Kingston itself and then he remembered Woodstock and when he came here, he liked it. Back in New Hampshire, he told me about it. I said it sounded good because New London was a very small town, which I liked. John came down and rented the Pearlman’s house at 6 Deming Street. At the time it was “The Pink House Behind Deanie’s”. Deanie’s back in the day was right on that corner there (Mill Hill Road and Deming Street) The Pearlman’s had a nursery school. They decided they didn’t want to do the nursery school anymore. The house had a sandbox and swings, a playhouse, perfect for the kids, so we moved in.

Juliet: What year was that?

Eve: 1964. Since we moved here in June and John wasn’t starting school again until September, I needed to get a job. I had been working summers as a hostess at a country club in New Hampshire. I felt lucky when I got a job right away at the Espresso Cafe as a waitress. One of the great highlights of my life in Woodstock is that at night when I was putting the food away and shutting down machines and cleaning the restaurant, Bob Dylan, who was living upstairs with the Paturels, would come downstairs and play honky-tonk piano and write songs. He and Lloyd the dishwasher, one of his roadies, and I would go to Kingston and go to the old bus terminal and get bagels at three in the morning. We’d go dancing at an after hours place down on old lower Broadway or shoot pool. Bob was my idol. I was thrilled to hang out with him. Anyway that was my arrival in Woodstock. How lucky did I feel. And then of course I became close friends with Mary Lou and Bernard. (Paturel, the owners of the Cafe Espresso). Mary Lou’s been my best friend for over 50 years.

Juliet: What’s your first memory of Woodstock?

Eve: That’s it. Bob Dylan. Without a doubt.

Juliet: What has changed about Woodstock?

Eve: I think the biggest change is that there are more second home people from the city. I think that’s probably the biggest change. There still aren’t any traffic lights. Even though the real estate agency that used to be a bakery that used to be a drug store that used to be a something ... and Zane’s deli isn’t there and Pam isn’t on the corner, now Shindig is there. Essentially the signs on the buildings change ... but oh God I love Houst! One of the few fan letters I ever wrote I wrote to Ned Houst. It was about what a contribution that store is to the community. (H. Houst and Son). 


Juliet: When did you do that?

Eve: Oh I don’t know. Ten or twenty years ago. Ive been here fifty years now! It’s crazy.

Juliet: What is your favorite thing about being here?

Eve: The first thing that comes to mind is the nature of Woodstock. The pure physical beauty of Woodstock. Every day in every season it is beautiful. You don’t even have to fake that. You just have to look around and it’s absolutely gorgeous. So that’s the first thing. Then along with it is the people that live here. The people that find themselves drawn here, people that were born here and are real locals. There’s just a wonderful sense of community.  In 1977 I had a Woodstock benefit concert when my house burned down, so I’ve also been beneficiary of the generosity of the musicians in town. The fact that there is such a breadth of appreciation for creativity. Whatever your art. You know. It allows me to say when people ask me if I am an artist, I tell them that my life is my art and that’s that. I really feel that that’s true. And Woodstock has been a wonderful place to raise my four children Christine, Gregory, Geoffrey and Ian. They are all wonderful adults. When my youngest son Ian had his accident in 1986, I was lifted by this town. It was something that I do not think for sure that I could have gone through alone. First of all, lots of people came to see him in the hospital. When we came home we had patterning teams. There were four or five people on each patterning team. We had four patterning teams a day. Patterning is to keep a body mobile and limber and in touch with itself as a body. Four people - feet and hands and head. (she demonstrates moving all the body parts) All of his joints, fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders. We’d brush the hands so that the hands don’t get super sensitive was the theory. We’d go ‘brush two three four’ and then we would also pound the table. (She pounds table and laughs) The patterning teams were about an hour long. There were tons of Woodstock volunteers coming for that. You can imagine all of those people from my town coming in to help me with my son who was seriously damaged. They gave kindness and compassion with nothing coming back. Ian could not say “Thank you”. I know for a fact that he made a difference in their life. I saw that his life for him was an opportunity for exactly that. To be the space where people could be kind and compassionate. I’ve been able to hold his beingness in a whole different way than feeling sorry for him. That is what the town is about too. That’s what it is. You know, when he was in the hospital Maria from Maria’s Bazaar sent many picnic baskets up. To this day, now we’re talking thirty years ago - I will go to town and somebody will ask “How’s Ian��? I can keep him fresh in the conversation. He maintains his personhood in our community. People tell stories about him, about how he touched their hand and touched their hearts. It’s a wonderful thing to live in a town small enough so that you actually can embrace the continuity that you are in the weave of things. That we know each other so deeply, so well. The natural beauty of this Catskill area hooked me right away. I’m not kidding when i say it. When we were driving down following the moving truck from New Hampshire, I was thinking that there could be no place as beautiful as New Hampshire which is stunningly gorgeous. Coming down the thruway, not so great, but when we turned off - we came the Kingston way and were on 375. There was something just something about that drive in that I knew I was coming home. I was going to be where I belonged.

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I Do Movies: Jeffrey & Heidi

Juliet:  What brought you to Woodstock?

Heidi Sjursen:  I’m 3rd generation Woodstocker. Grandma came from Denmark and Grandpa came from Norway. Bjarne and Marie Sjursen. He was a butler and she was a chef for some super fancy family and I think that is how they met in New York City. They fell in love, got married, and then they moved up here. They lived very modestly and had my dad here.

Juliet: That was Ole, right?


Heidi:  Yes, Ole.

Juliet:  My mom had a Volvo in the ’70's so, they had a car relationship (all laugh)

Heidi:  Yes most people I know either bought a car or had one fixed by him at some point, which is pretty cool. My dad stayed here. He loved the mountains. He found this piece of land, built this house, and met my mom. He actually started “Ole’s Auto Body and Sales” right here in the garage in the first year of my life.

Jeffrey Abell: (to Heidi) Your mom had a salon downstairs too.

Heidi:  Yep, my mom Annette had a hair salon where our office is now, downstairs, where we do all of our editing. It was pretty cool. Downstairs is broken into two pieces, the basement part which is now our office was the salon, and the garage part which was the first phase of “the shop”.

Juliet:  Ole’s was out on 212?

Heidi:  Yes, 212 where “Especially Swedish” is now.

(Ole Sjursen had his shop on 212 from 1973-2003. He had to sell due to illness (ALS) and he passed away in 2005)

Juliet:  (to Jeffrey) What brought you here?

Jeffrey:  (smiles) Heidi brought me here. (she giggles) I always heard of Woodstock, of course, everybody has.

Juliet:  What’s your first memory of it?

Jeffrey:  I think it was the Fourth of July.

Heidi:  Is that the first time I brought you up here?

Jeffrey: Yeah, and I came up on the bus. It was actually pretty funny when we got to the traffic circle and I think the bus driver was new. We kept going around and he said “I don’t know where to go” so people were telling him how to get here. I got off the bus on the green. It was dark, so I didn’t get the full effect, though I thought town was cute. Heidi picked me up in her pink flames convertible and we went to Legends (now Cucina).

Juliet:  Was that the fist time you saw that car?

Jeffrey:  No, we had it in the city.

Heidi:  Oh no, we were driving around in the city like maniacs in that car.

Jeffrey:  I loved it, I thought it was really beautiful up here. My dad grew up in Ossining so I’d been around upstate when I was younger, visiting my grandparents.

Juliet:  (to Heidi) What’s your first memory of Woodstock?

Heidi:  I would say Woodstock Elementary, being obsessed with Grease, we had a grade school gang called the Pink Ladies.  We were inseparable, best friends, and real tough - still are! (laughs) What also comes to mind is riding around on my bike on this awesome simple dirt road that is still an awesome simple dirt road. Thank God it’s never been paved. It’s a private road and it’s the way it always was. There’s a funny picture of me on my Huffy Bike, when I was about 7, in a satin jacket with one of my dad’s motorcycle helmets on which kinda sums it up.

Juliet:  What has changed about Woodstock?

Heidi:  I would say … the big influx of city folk. Not just having weekend houses but they’re moving up here..  

Jeffrey:  Especially in the summer, you notice it on weekends because it’s like crazy in town.

Heidi:  Which is great.  Now that I think about it, my Grandparents did that very thing 85 years ago, so I guess it isn't all that new.

Jeffrey:  It’s always been busy in town . . . but it’s filled with people.

Heidi:  It’s definitely different in that way.  And I must say, there is A LOT that feels exactly the same and super nostalgic to me about our magical little town.

I was in the city for 14 years and I was in Manhattan for the first seven. People kind of got pushed out to Brooklyn and Queens. I moved to Brooklyn and that’s where I met Jeffrey. YAY! (we laugh) But it’s nuts, it seems like people are getting pushed…

Jeffrey:  Upstate

Heidi:  Yes it seems like the artists are getting pushed even this far.

Juliet:  How did you two get from Brooklyn back to Woodstock?

Heidi:  Jeffrey and I met in Brooklyn one night at a mutual friend’s birthday party and danced the night away. And it was on. (giggles)

Jeffrey:  It clicked.

Heidi:  Oh did it click. It was so cool because we were both filmmakers, so not only did we fall in love but we immediately started making films together. I was just finishing one film and he helped me with the post production. Then we started making movies and things together. We were both freelancing and doing stuff in film and TV for other productions in New York. 

We started our own production company, “I Do Movies”, in Brooklyn and realized we could do it anywhere. We do promos, online commercials for businesses, music videos … we shoot live performances, document events, and we specialize in weddings. They are really cool documentaries, cut with a sense of humor and heart, not AT ALL what you think of when you think "wedding video". We have made our own niche in that field, and we love doing it.

Jeffrey:  We were getting more and more into shooting weddings. Everyone in Brooklyn wants to get married upstate (they both laugh) It seemed pretty perfect.  We were loving coming up to Woodstock more and more often. We were kind of getting over the city at the same time.

Heidi:   We loved the city and then we were done. The timing worked perfectly because my mom was getting ready to move out of the house … and to downsize … and …

Jeffrey:  We just went for it.

Heidi:  Yeah, we took the house over that my dad built with his own two hands. So we moved from Brooklyn to Woodstock to shoot everyone from Brooklyn’s wedding in the Hudson Valley!!

Juliet:  What’s your favorite thing about being here?

Heidi:  Being close to my mom, and being able to see her a lot.  Nature … our backyard* …The feeling of this place.

Jeffrey:  Yes.

Heidi:  I just love this town. We really deck out our backyard in the spring, making it as magical as we possibly can, and spend every spare moment there. It’s our “Heaven Haven.”

Jeffrey:  The area is so gorgeous. The beauty up here is amazing.

Heidi:  (to Jeffrey) “Oh thank you so much!” (laughter ensues)

Heidi: My very best friends from childhood all moved back and we get to hang out.

Jeffrey:  That’s another thing that’s changed for me is not knowing anyone up here and now I have lots of friends. Everyone is so nice, it’s great community of people.

…

I DO MOVIES http://www.ido-movies.com

vimeo.com/idomovies

*I was inspired to photograph Jeffrey and Heidi in their backyard after seeing it for the first time during their third time in the Woodstock Film Festival this October. They hosted an outdoor screening of their music video for Burnell Pines of his song “Days Gone By"  along with Simi Stone’s “Good Friend “ directed by Samuel Centore and Gene Fischer. Both of these hometown musicians were there to sing and play guitar around the bonfire afterwards. We were surrounded by trees bedecked with white twinkle lights - a dreamy autumn night in the country.

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Dave Leonard

Juliet: What brought you to Woodstock?

Dave Leonard:  I was in Jackson Hole bartending during the day and dj’ing on the radio in the evenings. I fell in love, moved back east, lived in Pine Plains, and got married. I found DST (WDST Radio Woodstock 100.1) and I applied for a job and that next week I was hired.

Juliet:  What year was that?

Dave:  1989. I was in Jackson for a few years, I thought I was a lifer in Jackson Hole. I met Leslie who became my wife, now my ex, who I have remained friends with and I just had dinner with her on Thursday. I got here in the spring and I spent the summer getting acclimated, heard Jeanne Atwood on the radio, and then at the end of summer I called Richie Fusco, went in, and was hired to work seven days a week. I had my first air shift on Labor Day Monday, I drove 39 miles each way from Pine Plains and dj’d every weeknight following Betty MacDonald. I also dj’d on Saturday mornings with Nic Harcourt and I was the dj who replaced Classical music on Sundays. I had to handle a lot of angry calls. At the same time I was hired as an account executive for the Taconic Press (the local weekly newspaper in Dutchess County). That was my day job. So I quickly became immersed in the community working two jobs, starting my sales and on air radio career  at the same time.

Juliet:  What’s your first memory of Woodstock?

Dave:  Getting lost on my way here (laughs). Also Woodstock Leathers, The Tinker Street Cafe, Gypsy Wolf, The Bear Cafe . . . and of course the radio station (then at 118 Tinker Street). It was kind of surreal driving into town and not knowing then that it wasn’t the actual “site”.  It seemed charming, artistic and folksy. I loved Woodstock but I wasn’t drawn to it because of the festival or anything like that. That was before my time. I just liked that it had a cool radio station in town and that I didn’t have to go to New York City to make a living.

Juliet:  Since you’ve been here, what has changed about Woodstock?

Dave:  Ah, well it’s funny. I’ve seen this town from many perspectives; being married, being single, as a guy who stayed out late nights and went to shows, as a local dj, and now as business owner (JTD) and a single father. When I lived across the river I saw town from behind the scenes. Almost all of the local businesses would play the station in their stores and they’d hear me on the air, call in, and request songs. We’d talk and become friends but when I would walk through town and shop, no one would know who I was.

It feels very vibrant right now. It’s always had character and culture. I used to go to the Tinker Street Cafe and there was live music almost every night. I’ve seen it kind of dip down for a bit economically but now it feels alive again, there is so much going on. I am now seeing town as an entrepreneur and a parent. From all these different perspectives and as I grow older I ask myself, is it me or is Woodstock changing? Is no one going out late into the morning, or is it just me? I love having Woodstock as a place to raise my kids and getting to know so much of the community that I didn’t realize existed before. Initially I felt like a young outsider who came into town for work, and now at our weekly softball game I’m considered a local and an old timer. For the past 25 years I have immersed myself in a lot of the goings on in town. It’s always been a community which I’ve loved, one with artistic integrity filled with people just living and enjoying their lives.

Juliet:  What is your favorite thing about being in Woodstock?

Dave:  There is no judgement. Everyone gets to live the life they want to live, I get to experience total freedom, make a living, and I get to raise my kids in this magical place. There is such a diverse population and so much to learn from everyone that I come into contact with. I love being in a rural community that has an artistic sensibility and so much culture partly because of our proximity to the city. Whether dj’ing at a wedding or on the air, my work is all about music - and Woodstock being the music capital of the world lets me live the best of all worlds. I also love to travel, but no matter where I go I always think how much I love having Woodstock as my base and how much it is like living a vacation and how grateful I am that I get to be here.

www.jtdproductions.com www.radiounleashed.com

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Alix Dobkin

Juliet: How should I introduce you?

Alix Dobkin: I wore this (t-shirt) specially. (It says “This is what an old Lesbian looks like”) I don't usually wear it around town. I wear it on bookings, and when I travel, it’s what I sing in. I wanted to wear it here. It depends on where I am. Around here I’m “Grandma Alix”.  I identify as Lesbian feminist, of course mother, grandmother, writer, performer, community builder. I’m co-director of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change. (www.oloc.org)  Also, a good citizen I hope.

Juliet:  What brought you to Woodstock?

Alix:  My first time in Woodstock was around 1963 when Billy Faier brought me up here to go skiing. That was my first and only time skiing. I liked it fine but … Then I came up here when I was married and I was pregnant with Adrian. Sam was part owner of the Elephant Cafe on Rock City Road. That went under and we moved back to New York City. We did live here right off of Orchard Lane. We lived here for two wonderful months and I loved it.

I moved up to Schoharie County in 1975 or 1973 and then I moved down in 1978. I loved it, felt at home here. I love living here. I never want to move away. This is where I feel like I belong. The only improvement I would make is more people of color. It’s too white here. Other than that it’s just a great place to live.

Juliet:  What is your first memory of the town of Woodstock?

Alix:  It would be when I first came up with Billy Faier. And then I was hired to sing at the Espresso Cafe. I played there and stayed upstairs. I remember laying there and really enjoying Woodstock and liking playing here.

Juliet:  What about Woodstock has changed?

Alix: Well the world has changed. Really the essence of Woodstock hasn’t changed in my mind. The stores change, and things do change a lot and people complain “It’s not like it used to be” but actually I feel pretty much the same way about it. I can’t tell you what’s changed besides the obvious. What I tell people is “Woodstock is a town with three bookstores and no traffic light” and that to me describes it.

Juliet: What’s your favorite thing about being here?

Alix:  I love the mountains, I love the Hudson Valley, I love the Hudson River. I grew up on the Hudson River in New York City. I love the culture, I love that there is so much going on. Not that I ever go to much, but there are all kinds of music and art and original creativity here. That of course has made it a mecca.  Between The Golden Notebook, the Tinker Street Cinema, the many live music and theater venues, art and music schools, the benefit performances and more, there's wonderful culture in the town where I live.  I love my women’s and Lesbian community in the general area. It’s not just Woodstock. I actually never really felt a strong Lesbian or gay presence in Woodstock as I do in other places. But it’s a pretty come-as-you-are-kind of atmosphere which seems accepting which is good enough (we both laugh). Even if it isn’t, which is fine with me, just don’t give me a hard time. I love it here because Adrian is here and my family is here.

Learn more about Alix Dobkin: http://www.alixdobkin.com Old Lesbians Organizing for Change:  oloc.org

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Jean Turmo: Jean & Rebecca

                                               Mother and daughter Jean Turmo Swarthout and Rebecca Turmo

Juliet:  What brought you to Woodstock?

Jean Turmo: My mother when I was 9.

Juliet: How did she come to Woodstock?

Jean:  Her grandmother built a weekend house in Shokan. You know, like “The Weekenders” in probably about 1924 or 1925.

She went to girls boarding school as a child. When she became divorced she didn’t want me staying in girls boarding school. I went for second and third grade in East Islip at Hewelett School for Girls . . . We moved up here from Long Island so I could be brought up in the country.

Juliet: So, 9 years old, and then you graduated from Onteora?

Jean: (hesitates) Well . . . . . .that’s a little confusing. I was 9 years old when I moved here, I stayed here until eighth grade. I went to Peekskill Jr High school - where I might add - I was the only white girl ever asked to join the girls’ black gang. I didn’t know the difference between black or white because I was brought up in Woodstock.

Then we moved to California. We came back in my sophomore year. I went to Onteora until my senior year and then half way through we moved to California again.

Rebecca:  My grandmother was a bit of a free spirit.

Jean: Yes. My diploma says “Onteora”. I went to beauty school in California right after that, and then my mother decided to move back to NY before I finished - hence - I had to work.

Juliet:  Was there always a home base here?

Jean:  Yes.


Juliet:  Shokan?

Jean:  No because my Grandmother was dead by then. She was out of the picture by the time I came along.  The house is still there - right across from Winchell’s Corners.

Juliet to Rebecca:  Did you graduate Onteora?

Rebecca: No, I left Onteora.


Jean:  No - (laughing) She went to California, separately from me! To Piney Plains. Piney Plains? What was the name of that town?

Rebecca:  Del Mar for a while in Southern California, then Torrey Pines.

Jean: Torrey Pines!

Rebecca:  I left home multiple times. I could not wait to get out of this small, kind of strange, artistic hippy town that I lived in. The last point that I was in California, I was 20. Picture this. I left Woodstock, drove across the country with two little dogs in my car and I was living in a small artist bohemian colony 90 miles north of San Francisco. Guerneville. I actually saw people on the street that I knew from here! So I ended up coming back. I thought I was going back to California to make it my home base and I realized at the end of the day that this was a good place to grow up. A safe place to grow up. And so it was a good and safe place for my kids to grow up.

Jean:  Just like my mother.

Rebecca:  I bought the small house I live in now, I scrimped and saved,  when I was about 30. I’m pretty sure they gave me the keys to the front door on the day we closed. But I don’t know where the F- they are.

Jean:  She’s never used them. She has no idea.

Juliet:  What is your first memory of Woodstock?


Jean:  I had been going to boarding school and we were brought up with very good manners. My first memory is from 1955 walking into the lunch room at Woodstock School and seeing the kids and how they had such atrocious table manners! (Laughing).

Also, there was a bakery on the corner that used to sell candy apples. It was where the real estate lady is over in the corner spot.

Juliet:  Rebecca, what is your first memory of Woodstock?

Jean:  It would be her first memory because she was born here. In Kingston. Benedictine Hospital.

Rebecca:  I have one or two fleeting memories from our original house that we lived in and I was about two. My next memory I was probably about three. My mother and I were moving into the apartment upstairs . . .

Jean:  Because I had gotten Divorced!

Rebecca:  We are four generations of divorce…

Jean:   Five generations of working women.

Rebecca:  . . . and . . . she was moving stuff and I don’t remember the actual incident but I remember being in the hospital. I picked up a bottle of her perfume. I was 2/12, 3 years old…

Jean:  Perfume from the Island of Jamaica.

Rebecca:  And I drank it . . . and she rushed me to the hospital.  I remember having. . .

Jean:  Oh God that was the worst night of my life!

Rebecca:  . . . having my stomach pumped. Very clearly and I can remember A. Asking for bananas  and B. Asking for a friend of hers who was a sculptor. David.

Juliet:  What about Woodstock has changed over the years?

Jean:  Really nothing has changed except for what has changed in modern society. There were only a few places open all year long. There was Mower’s Food Market, which is Oriole9, there was the Post Office, and H. Houst and Son. Most of the other stores closed up for the winter. 

Rebecca:  My answer to this we agree, Woodstock has changed but not really changed at all. And that’s what I think people don't really understand.

Jean: it was a very artsy fartsy community when I moved here.

Rebecca:  With a long healthy history of . . .

Jean: . . .very famous artists living here. I used to sell magazines to John Pike when I was a Girl Scout. As a matter of fact, every time I needed a sucker to buy something I’d go knock on his door (laughs). You’d get the twirly thing on your bike if you sold so many magazines. I’d just go to these artists I knew because they were pushovers.

Juliet:  Smart kid. How did you get into this business?

Jean:  I went to beautician school. My mother sold Avon. Now that’s one side of things. Then I worked when I was 17,  starting at a Best & Company in New York. I always worked in stores and . . .

Juliet: What’s a “Best & Company”?


Jean:  (Laughing) Oh you’re so cute.

Juliet:  Oh no! (laughing) I should know this!

Jean: Best & Company was a very la di da department store. Old money, not new money like Saks Fifth Avenue. It was where the Vanderbilts bought their children's clothing. Old money. It was across the street from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. One of my customers was not old money but was Za Za Gabor’s, oh, you probably don’t know who that is . . .

Juliet: Yes I do! I watched TV in the ‘70s!

Jean: Well, Zsa Zsa Gabor’s mother would buy scarves from me. It was very ritzy.  So anyway, I moved up here and I worked in stores. I was like 29 and I knew that pretty soon you got too old. Everybody hired groupie looking girls in skin tight jeans with great bodies to work in the stores. I thought to myself “What if I get old and fat?” So I figured I better open a business. It was like this Gloria Steinem thing.

Juliet: I just remember all the oils lining the shelves. That’s why everyone I knew came in.  Was it that, or was it make up from the beginning?

Jean:  This is a better story! I started with four shelves of make up, and I only carried cosmetics. There was a woman up the street named Miriam who had a store called Body Scents. She became friends with Albert Grossman. She moved around the corner across the street . . .

Rebecca: Into Just Alan’s building.


Jean: Into Just Alan’s building. And when she did, she moved with her scents . . . and Albert gave her enough money and she put in all these cosmetics. So I got really upset. Here was this school teacher, who had gone to college, and could make money any way she wanted. And here she was with this new Albert Grossman store and it was beautiful inside with a fragrance bar and she put in all these cosmetics. I was pretty scrappy, and I went out to her supplier. I got all the scents and ran them at cost. She was very high priced. So lets say she was selling a bottle of perfume oil for ten dollars, I sold it for three and I did it for about two years until she went out of business.

Rebecca:  Yeah. We don’t take prisoners.

Juliet:  What year did you open the store?

Jean:  1976 When I was 29 going on 30.

Rebecca:  We’re going to be 40 next year. That was in the original place around the corner.

Jean: In with Candlestock, half of what Candlestock is today. The interesting part is when I started and opened up, the only store owner who would speak to me was Wahid. He had the store across the street and he sold hippy dippy clothes. Then he opened up the Video Store. Nobody would talk to me.  He was the first store owner to speak to me because I had been ballsy enough to be a girl worker and get my own business.

Juliet:  And be competitive.

Jean: It’s true.

Rebecca:  One of the things that doesn’t change is Every 10- 15 yrs loads of people come up here because they like the idea of Woodstock.

Jean:  And they try to make it Brooklyn

Rebecca:  . . . or Manhattan, or East Hampton. They try to change it. They think the things that aren't done in a more efficient manner and that what they see as a lack of efficiency they think they can improve. The reality is we are what we are and so those that realize it stay, and they love it. Those that can’t take the “non watch attitude”,  is what I jokingly refer to it, leave.

Jean:  It’s like my husband says “Once they get mud on their Gucci loafers, they go back home.”  It’s a very different life. It’s kind of a hard life. I’ve seen it from all aspects. It’s really squirrely here in February and you have to be used to that. Just like if you take someone who’s been brought up here their whole life and you dropped them in the middle of Manhattan. They wouldn’t know what the hell to do!

I came from there but I was young enough when I moved here that I’m really a country person. Even though I moved away and came back and forth.

(the phone rings and Jean takes the call)

Juliet:  What is your favorite thing about being here?


Rebecca:  Woodstock has it’s pros and cons like everyplace else on the planet.   The freedom that I have personally to be who I am is something you cannot find in most other places.

Oh, Woodstock has it’s snarky moments. In general I have found enough peace in my life to lIve someplace where I can be free to believe what I believe and there may be a certain amount of people who aren’t the raving quasi libertarian socialist that I am. But I can be free to be who I want to be. Woodstock allows you a certain element of freedom and it allowed my children to be raised with a certain amount of creative freedom. It allowed them to become who they are. That’s what I like about Woodstock.

Juliet: How did you get involved with working at the store?

Rebecca:  I helped her set up the first shop when I was a kid. Later, it was great when my kids were really small and they could be in the store with me. That worked for us. I’ve gone off to do other things I’m passionate about. But this works for us because … and I can’t believe I’m going to quote Hillary Clinton but she once said “It takes a village to raise a child”. Our store depends very much on the fact that we can all work a certain amount of hours. We all have different ideas about stuff but we kind of work as a collective as opposed to a hierarchy business. I like the freedom that the store gives me.

(Jean returns)

Juliet:  Jean, what is your favorite thing about being in Woodstock?

Jean:  My favorite thing - and I don’t know how to explain it to you - is that like Rocky could be a very high established citizen.

Rebecca - May he rest in in peace.

Jean - You can be really weird and be okay. As long as you’re okay in town.

Rebecca: We are a lot alike.

Jean: Why, is that what you said?

Rebecca: Pretty much. (both laugh)

Jean Turmo Beauty Products                                                                           11 Tinker Street Woodstock, NY 12498                               www.jeanturmo.com

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Lou of Changes

Juliet:  What brought you to Woodstock?

Lou Deering:  Originally I was buying a business that I had been working at down in Fishkill and at the last minute the deal fell through so I went on a mad scramble to find somewhere to open a store. I was looking in Rhinebeck, I was looking in New Paltz, I was looking in Cold Spring . . . parts of Poughkeepsie. A friend of a friend had heard I was looking, called me, and told me there was a space available in town. I came and looked at it. It was at the corner of Deming Street in the old Deanie’s building.  They were finishing the renovation and the spaces were beautiful.  I think I was open in less than a month. I was commuting from Poughkeepsie when I opened the store for the first few years. It turned out to be a lucky choice.

JL:  And then . . . ?

LD:  Then I realized it was home. So I moved here.

JL:  What is your first memory of Woodstock?

LD:  The first time I came to town I came to see a Chekov play at River Arts that Joanne Woodward was doing.  It was 1985, I think.  I drove from Poughkeepsie up here and then got to town and then took these little roads up into the mountains . . . and came to this barn in the middle of what I thought was nowhere and got to see Joanne Woodward do a Chekov play in this beautiful space. It was summertime so you know . . . the fireflies, all of it.  It was great. That was my first memory.

JL:  Since you've been here, what about Woodstock has changed?

LD:  Woodstock I think sort of constantly changes but the real heart of it doesn’t.  I think the noticeable thing for me was right after September 11th when a lot of New Yorkers moved up here full time who had been here part time. At the same time all wheel drive vehicles were becoming popular so it became much more of a year-round community for a lot of people.

JL:  What’s your favorite thing about being here?

LD:  (pauses)  Should I name all of it?  (Both laugh)  There’s so much great stuff here in town. There’s theater . . . there’s music, the retail community is terrific. Nature . . . I get to go hiking every day, biking . . . but it’s the people.  It’s really the people who make the difference here.

Changes, Clothing for Men 19 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY Also in Rhinebeck www.changesformen.com on twitter @changesformen

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Lynne of The Rare Bear

Juliet: What brought you to Woodstock?

Lynne Van Name: I first came up to New Paltz from Brooklyln. I had a boyfriend at the time that I used to see there. As soon as I moved upstate, we split up. (laughs) So then I ended up in Rosendale, High Falls, and then into Woodstock. I always loved Woodstock. It was always like bright yellow. Just happy. It always felt happy.

JL: What’s your first memory of Woodstock?

LVN: I used to work at The Bear Cafe, and I worked there for quite a few years. it was a happy fun place. I loved it.

I had gotten a job with a public relations firm out of Tillson and I used to have to commute to the city. After I did that for about 2 years, I had enough. (laughing) I said “I need to open my own business!”  I couldn’t stand it anymore. That’s how I opened the store.

JL:  How did you pick this business?

LVN:  I had a friend and we became partners for maybe 3 or 4 yrs. She was from England and she was into teddy bears. We started out with all collectible bears. We opened up over by Maria’s Bazaar…the old Pepper’s Garage. I think we were the first tenants there in November of 1988.

Then Juliet decided she was raising a family and didn’t have enough time to be in the store. So we split up amicably, it was fine. She took over the mail order part of the business and I kept the shop. I was there long enough to realize that people change and trends change and I had to change my products. I still have some collectible bears but I brought in the children's toys and books. It’s not a collectibles market anymore but I still have some.

JL:  On a side note, how is it having two toy stores in town?

LVN:  Suki and I work hard not to be competitive with each other.  We are friends. We have very very little overlap between us and that’s done consciously. It’s a good thing.

JL:  When did you move to this location?

LVN:  This is a funny story. I had these two little girls who used to come in to the shop all the time and they collected bunnies. They would come in and get little outfits for them, and little sweaters and hats. One day they came in and said “We’re having a bunny wedding. Two of our bunnies are marrying each other and we want you to come.” I said “Okay. Do your parents know that I’m coming?”  I wasn’t sure if I was going to show up at someone’s door unexpected. They said  “Oh yes, yes,” and they gave me an invitation. I got to their house and there were pews set up.  There were flowers and a band. They video taped the ceremony with two stuffed bunnies at the alter. There was food and a wedding cake. I also brought a gift for the wedding couple, a tea set. It ended up being the people who ran the Guild. (The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild) About a year or two later, someone came in from the Guild and said “We remember that you were very nice at the bunny wedding. We have a space available. Would you like to move in?” That’s how I got here. Who would have known that that would happen? I was at the other end of the building.  This part was the Guild Craft shop.  When they wanted to be down there next to the gallery, we just swapped spaces.

JL: Oh my gosh that is wonderful.

LVN: Isn’t that? I just feel like it was synchronicity, a funny little story. I was happy where I was at Peppers, the Nardi’s were my landlords. They were very nice to me. Ten years at Peppers, ten years at the end of the building, and now about five years here.

JL: What has changed since you’ve been in town?

LVN: I think it’s changed a lot. I think we have a whole new different type of person moving in.  A lot of artists have moved to different areas that are more affordable. I think the community…it’s hard to say…its a different community… More people who are up for the weekends. You don’t see too much of them.

When I was first in business, IBM was here.  IBMers would actually move into the area while they had projects going on. They became part of the community. There were more kids walking around in town after school. That doesn’t happen anymore.

JL:  What’s your favorite thing about being here?

LVN:  I love my store. It’s always been a happy place and a safe place for me to be. My mom worked here for many many years after she retired I think it was a safe space for her to be in as well.  I love the area, it’s small enough that I don’t get lost in the rush.

The Rare Bear Specialty Gifts                                                                           34 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY 12498

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Nancy of Vidakafka

Juliet:  What brought you to Woodstock?

Nancy Kafka:  It was ’72 or ’73. My boyfriend had a place in Accord. We used to come up weekends. I met him through my sister and brother in law who were his best friends. They came up with us one weekend, we got bored and said “What should we do?” “Let’s go to Woodstock”.  We got to Woodstock and someone said “Oh lets make believe that we are buying a house and we’ll go look at houses and it will be fun”.  And it was very fun. We bought the first house we looked at. (laughs) So we all moved up together and lived in this big house.

JL:  What is your first memory of Woodstock?

NK:  I was here before that visit. The first time I came to Woodstock I was with my ex husband. We weren’t married yet and one day decided to hitchhike up to Woodstock. I remember we stayed at the Millstream Motel. I also remember seeing the A-Frame church. We had never seen an A-Frame structure before . . . and I guess we went swimming at Big Deep.

JL:  How long were you in town before starting Vidakafka?

NK:  I would say about six years.

JL:  Tell me about the name.

NK:  My name is Kafka and I started with a partner whose first name is Vida. I was in human services for my whole career. I was executive director of the YWCA and that was my last full time job in human services. It wasn’t a good fit for me. It’s a small community so I couldn’t look for a job without my board of directors hearing of it.        

My daughter is best friends with the daughter of Mike and Robin who, at the time, just owned the Trading Post. I asked them if they could use me just until I got a job. I was a single mother. You can’t . . . just not work. They hired me and after the first week Mike asked “How much do we have to pay you to stop looking for a job?”  They evidently had the best week ever. I didn’t know I could sell things, but it was nice that I was good at it. I thought it over and I gave him a list of my requirements. In those days nobody in Woodstock offered health insurance. Everybody was off the books, it was different . . . so I told him what I needed and he agreed to everything, but wanted me to commit to a year. One of my requirements was that I wanted to learn the business. I thought I would be bored just selling things and I figured “I’m here, let me find out what business is all about.” Everything worked out fine.

After about ten months, I started getting calls about this one job which was really just what I was looking for. I was surprised to feel a big hesitation about taking it. I made a pro and con list. Lingerie was always my love and I thought maybe I would just go for it. There wasn’t anything like it in town and I certainly didn’t want to compete with Mike and Robin.                                                

Before I left the YWCA I had hired a woman named Vida as Adult Program Director and we became friends.  When I left that job she said “If you ever want to do anything I will do it with you and I can get money.”

JL: (laughing) Oh, NICE!

NK: Money was the thing I didn’t have. So that’s how it happened.

JL:  Amazing.

NK:  Yes. She actually didn’t like working in the store and after 6 months she wanted out. By that time I realized I couldn’t support myself and my daughter with half.  It was perfect. It worked out.

JL:  What has changed about town since then?

NK:  There’s a lot less music now and . . . I know some of it has to do with my age so I don’t go out as much . . . But there were a lot of places to go at night . . . and . . . act like a fool . . . go disco dancing. 

I think Woodstock changes less than most places. There are people who like to say “the good old days” but I’m not one of those people. I think mostly it hasn’t changed that much. I think it’s a different generation doing a lot of the same things. There are so many people now who are young parents or are about to be and are moving to Woodstock. They are more able to because of the internet and all the technology. They are really excited about living here.

JL:  Like me.

NK:  But you grew up here, its different. You came back. That is another real Woodstock phenomenon.  Not that it doesn’t happen in other places, but I think it really happens more here.

JL:  What is your favorite thing about being here?

NK:  I do really like being in the country and being outside but I think it’s a tie between that and the way various lifestyles are accepted here. For the most part I feel like you can be yourself and express yourself, whoever you are and whatever you believe.

Vidakafka Boutique, a lingerie store. 43 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY 12498

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Suki of Tinker Toys

Juliet: What brought  you to Woodstock?

Suki Beeh:  My mother.  She was in Woodstock by herself and I did not want her to be alone. I was living in Florida. I graduated from Ringling School of Art and Design, and I was making a living with my art.  I moved back here and brought one of my pieces to the Woodstock Artist Association, and got rejected. So I said “What am I going to do now? How can make a living here?”  There was an ad in the paper to work at Tinker Toys. I worked here for several years. Bruce left and I became partners with Christina. Eventually Christina wanted to raise a family so I became sole owner in 1990, leading the store closer to my aesthetics and European background.

Juliet:  What is your first memory of Woodstock?

Suki:  I grew up here. I was born in Manhattan, as my mother wanted to get dual citizenship. We went back to Europe and then in 1961 I turned five on the boat to America. We came straight here to Woodstock where my mom bought a house. Driving up to see the new house, there was a bear with three cubs on the road. I went to Woodstock school  - they put me in a special speech therapy class because I only  spoke French.  Woodstock was a great small town artist community at that point. Everyone knew each other. I rode our donkeys and horses all over the mountains here - I know all the trails - and swimming areas … the wildlife … the village.  Kirschbaum’s bakery and Deanie’s were my favorites. It was a great village to grow up in. When we moved here it was mostly artists, and then musicians were more prevalent, and now tourism. It’s an evolving town.  

Juliet: Why did your mom pick Woodstock?

Suki: My mother is Swiss and was the first in the family to move to America. While living in Manhattan was great for the culture and things to do, she wanted to raise us in the country. She searched many towns and drove through Woodstock. Here she heard a variety of languages being spoken, and there was an opera company with singers from the Metropolitan company coming here to perform at Byrdcliffe Theater. This town seemed educated, open, accepting, and interesting. She knew it wasn’t just another small town.

Juliet: Is she an artist?

Suki: She was the only one who wasn’t an artist, she wishes she were an artist! (laughs) We go back many generations of artists.

Juliet: What is your favorite thing about being here?

Suki: I am able to do what I love. The fun of operating a toy shop of course, being able to meet many different people, hear all the languages, watching kids grow up… Enjoying our shops and shop keepers, fabulous restaurants. The town is honest and respectful, and does so much for the aging. My mom is 87 now and the rescue squad has been up to the house - they are so kind and patient. I love our community here. I love this small town.

Tinker Toys 5 Mill Hill Road Woodstock, NY 12498                                                                                                                                                                                     

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Jeff and Audrey of Mirabai

                                                                                  Jeff Cuiule & Audrey Cusson

Juliet:  What brought you here?

Jeff:  I guess it was rather impromptu. I’ll give you a bit of a backstory. Audrey and I lived in the city for about 15 years before we moved up here. (in 2000)  We both had corporate careers.  I was in advertising and Audrey was in children’s book publishing. At some point we had both reached a limit as to how much further we wanted to go in those careers. We were feeling restless and a little unfulfilled.

Audrey:  We were kind of growing apart from the soul of our relationship.   He was doing his thing, I was doing my thing, happily going along but we always … work was so important to both of us that we needed to work together.

Jeff:  Interestingly, at this period of time we were going through couple’s counseling because of this issue. At the end of our time we determined that that was what we wanted to do. We wanted to work together in some enterprise. We had one idea which was city-centric which we had developed over the course of close to a year. It was encountering some stumbling blocks. We were feeling very frustrated and we were in a session and we were expressing that the idea we had was not really our original idea. Our counselor asked us what it was and neither of us could remember. He asked us to close our eyes, it wasn’t uncommon (smiles).

Audrey:  “Here we go again, another visualization exercise ...” (both laugh)

Jeff:  He said “Lets go through this exercise”. We began calling out one at a time what we were looking for. What we were envisioning was a bookstore. We were envisioning it being in the mountains and it being in a small town and that it would not be too far from the city so that if we wanted to go in every once in a while we still could.  It would be an important part of the community.  It would serve a real social purpose. It would be a place where we would actually live above the store.  At the end of that exercise it was as if a little light bulb went off in our counselor’s head. He said “You know something? I know exactly the actual place that you’re describing. It exists and I know where it is.”  So he pointed us here and we came up and we looked at the store and we made up our minds within a couple of weeks that we were going to buy the store. And the rest is history, we just moved up a few months later.

Juliet:  Had you been to Woodstock before?

Audrey & Jeff:  No!

Juliet:  Did you have friends up here?

Audrey:  No!

Jeff:  Just our counselor.

Audrey:  Just the counselor, nothing drawing us here. We thought “Okay why not, lets take a day trip together. We need to do something together anyway.”

Juliet:  It was Mirabai already though, right? When did Mirabai open?

Jeff:  The store started in April 1987.

Audrey:  Coming from book publishing I would never have started from scratch with a book store. This to me was not so scary because it’s more than a bookstore. And it existed.

Juliet:  Was there anything interesting with the former owners and you?

Audrey:  Yes! Oh, absolutely. When we came, the store Mirabai had been for sale for two years. The owner had such integrity. And really wanted to keep … a lot of people came interested but they wanted to change the whole thing. They wanted to change it into something else.

Jeff:  Or they just wanted to buy the property. Or they just wanted to buy the business and not buy the property.

Audrey: Nobody wanted to buy it as a book store.

Jeff: No one wanted the whole thing - the property, the business, and to keep the business focus the same.

Audrey:  When we walked in the door and wanted to buy Mirabai, it was just like everybody knew this was it.

Juliet:  Who was the owner?

Jeff:  Anne Roberts.  She moved to Vermont. That’s what her vision was. She wasn’t going to do that until she sold the store.

Juliet:  What is your first memory of Woodstock?

Audrey:  My first memory (to Jeff) You and I sitting down to lunch at a little coffee shop and I remember looking out the window and feeling the excitement. That’s where I made the decision. I was really enchanted. I was enchanted by the town and I was enchanted by this store. I just knew that everything was going to fall into place.  I had been at my job where I didn’t make intuitive decisions, I didn’t make rash decisions. It was something that just fell on my head.

Jeff:  To me it felt like I was going to begin this long term vacation. That’s immediately what I felt. It felt very liberating.

Juliet:  What’s changed about Woodstock since you’ve been here?

Jeff: Virtually nothing has changed about the town. I don’t think anything is allowed to change (laughs) ... which is part of what keeps it so pristine and interesting and funky.

Audrey: Maybe that’s the magical feeling … people keep coming back … because it doesn't change. And everything else does. Everything  else in our lives is changing very rapidly.  Woodstock is always Woodstock.

Planning a visit to Woodstock? Consider “Above the Books”, Mirabai’s luxury vacation rental retreat.

Mirabai Books of Woodstock                                                                           23 Mill Hill Road Woodstock NY

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Robin of Woodstock Design

Juliet: What brought you to Woodstock?

Robin Kramer: In 1970 we wanted to take the kids to live in the country and we drove all around and the cutest town was Woodstock.

Juliet: What is your first memory of Woodstock?

Robin: We came here the summer before we moved and somebody told us about Big Deep. We went there and there were all these naked hippies in the trees (laughs). We sat outside and had lunch at the Espresso and we said “This is it. This is like living on the Upper West Side but in the country.” We started out of our house in 1970 selling used fur coats. Did you have one when you were a kid? Practically every kid in town…

Juliet: I had a really good cropped striped jacket with leather trim at the cuffs, and the waist, and  zipper. Probably! I’m sure my mom didn’t buy it new somewhere.

Robin: Right! In1972 we got a store behind where the Espresso was in Tinker Village and then we moved to this location in 1974. (points next door to The Trading Post) I came here (Woodstock Design) in 1981.

Juliet: What has changed the least about Woodstock since you’ve been here?

Robin: It’s pretty much the same as it’s always been. Archictecturewise nothing new has been built. . . What happens is people retire and the kids take over the businesses like Candlestock and Joshua’s. . .  The village green, they put cement on instead of grass but other than that it’s exactly the same.

Juliet: What has changed the most?

Robin:  With the Joyous Lake and the Espresso being gone, there’s no in town night life. Also we came up here in our 20s and now we’re in our 70’s . . . So . . . that changed. (laughing)

Juliet: What is your favorite thing about being here?

Robin: It’s such a cozy town it’s so safe and friendly and everybody knows everybody . . . its just so comfortable.

Do yourself a favor and check out Robin’s personal blog  “Lazy Woman’s Guide 99″

Woodstock Design - Women’s Clothing Store                                                  9 TInker Street Woodstock, New York