He wasn’t really staggering, he just wandered from one side of the dirt road to the other. However, the progress forward was inexorable, though a straight line would have cut the distance traveled considerably.

“Everybody get inside”. It was my mothers admonishing voice that broke our intense scrutiny of the approaching apparition. I was ten, my brother and cousins younger.

Bob Hanson was a spare, lanky man with wispy, sandy hair, of medium build who chewed small cuds of tobacco. He lived in a tarpaper covered shack, which he had built on someone else’s Shawangunk Mountain acres, quietly and alone. The trail to his abode led from a rutted and barely navigable road, which came to an abrupt dead end about two hundred yards beyond his shack.

Bob survived by constructing, and selling bird houses, flower pot holders and sundry items from fragrant cedar wood about one inch in diameter. He did not remove the bark. He would try to build whatever was asked of him. Most of the time he succeeded. He built a highchair for my brother that was a delight to see and to smell.

Bob’s shack was dirt floored. It was redolent with the odor of wood smoke and cedar. It was utterly enchanting. Its magic was enhanced by several cages hosting chipmunks and rabbits.

About every three weeks, he would walk to town, he had no auto, his back piled high with his cedar creations, to sell to the village residents. He always sold everything that he had made, bought food items, visited a local barroom and then teetered the long path home.

During some of his more sober occasions, he told me that he encountered “Catamounts” on his way home. I had no reason to doubt him. His tales of those events held me riveted and wondering how a spare, elderly, unarmed man was lucky enough to have survived such hazardous situations. However, there he was, living proof that his ability to survive had been tested and that he had prevailed.

I was much taken with his caged chipmunks and when I had the opportunity, I questioned him as to how the little creatures had been captured. I wanted to trap one for myself. He told me about his method and I asked him to fashion a trap for me. It took several importunings before, one day, he stopped at our gate on his way to town, called to me and presented me with a small trap and a huge disappointment.

I had envisioned some kind of mechanical device that would entice the unsuspecting beastie and would then automatically close leaving the little animal captured to await my pleasure. What he had constructed joined two pieces of about eight inches long and five inches wide forming the top and bottom with a piece of wire mesh forming the four sides. At one end was a small door that swung on a pivot. The door had a lead weight to keep it in the shut position when it closed. But it was not self actuated. One would have to attach a string to the door and hide close by waiting for the advent of the chipmunk, then close the door on the unsuspecting quarry.

The prospect of spending long, perhaps fruitless hours chipmunk waiting was not to my taste at all. Bob Hanson had hours to while away. A ten year old boy had many important things to do and could not become himself entrapped in an endless, perhaps, waiting game. I never used the device.

I cannot remember how many years the spare form of Bob Hanson shared my summers. I cannot remember when I stopped seeing him traveling his way to the village. My life moved on and summers stopped revolving around Mountain Road. I do remember with greater wisdom of years, that he gave up some of his chipmunk observation time to talk patiently to a young boy and devoted some portion of his life to fulfilling that boy’s wish for a chipmunk trap.

It did not matter that it was never used. I remember that he built it for me and for the time that remains to me, his kindness is not forgotten.

Editor's Note: Alfred C. Barnett was a summer resident of Mountain Road, Rosendale. He is now retired and resides in Port Ewen, New York. He is the grandson of Dr. Alfred H. Mooney, a long time lover of Rosendale.

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