August 24, 2025

By Arthur H. Gunther III

the columnrule.com

With the uber-hot summer hitting my part of the Northeast this summer, especially with southern-style high humidity, memory returns to a then rural part of the universe in New York State.

The family lived for a short time in a cottage just in a bit from Cherry Lane, Tallman. It was part of the compensation for my father’s second job at Mrs. Smith’s rest home. The house, surrounded by chickens, ducks, rabbits and cats plus vegetable gardens, offered a view of a polo field and a small horse-racing track. There also was a peach orchard that included a beautiful barn, later repurposed as a home. All in all, just a wonderful opportunity for young people to roam and climb trees and wander in imagination.

Just south along Cherry Lane, which never had such fruit when I lived in Tallman, was a small, three-room school, replaced in a successive decade by a modern building. The original was quaint, and it added to the area’s rural character.

On a hot summer day, not as hot as in 2025, my brother Craig and I would walk to the school and play with local kids, one of whom lived next door. His family had a hand water pump above a still working well. It no longer served the house, but it was fun for young people to pump it and then lean over to have the coolest water you could find pour over your head and face. Then you drank it – better than soda.

A simple memory that cools me off in a very hot summer so long after we pumped that handle.

The writer is a retired newspaperman.

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