Older son turned me on to this story about a New York restaurant mogul's eight year war with a volunteer outfit in Fishkill New York. The fight is over a plot of land that may, or may not, be a revolution era graveyard for soldiers. It doesn't sound like anyone cared about the land until the mogul announced plan's to build an IHOP restaurant there. Of course, in a backwoods like Fishkill they might have thought they had all the time in world to work on their plans and it wasn't until Mr. Mogul came up with his plan that they got motivated to do something about it. Or maybe they were just nursing a grudge against the world because their dream of a historic national monument had not come to fruition and Mr. Mogul just provided a target for their pent up rage. The whole thing sounds stupid, a whole like the war of words being fought by the Democrats and Republicans. The issues don't matter so much as they want someone to argue with. People suck.
Reading this story I came across a couple bits of information.
- President Trump was born in Queens.
- Catskills looks a lot like Fishkill, I mean they both contain the name of an animal and the word 'kill'. Are the Catskills where they killed cats? Kill is Dutch for creek so it's more likely it was derived from Kat's creek, Kat being some Dutch dude.
The Fishkill saga reminded me, in Blue Ball, PA, at the intersection of routes 23 and 322 stood the Blue Ball Hotel. Originally the Blue Ball tavern it was marked by a large blue copper ball hanging out front. In 1832 they changed the name of the town to Blue Ball.
ReplyDeleteThe owner wanted to tear it down but a lot of locals protested because it was supposedly the first recruiting station of the Continental Army, far enough away(60 miles) from Philadelphia to be safe from the British troops. I don’t know if that’s true or not but it’s local lore the natives grew up with.
Going by the theory it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission it was knocked down on a weekend.