If America was a "melting pot," then the pot was at full boil on Mountain Road when I was a kid in the 1940's. There were mountain men like old Johnny Mack and Bob Anson. There were unschooled Turks and Yugoslavs fresh from the old country... the Handabaka's and the Kisic's. There were Germans like the Geisler's, Ziebold's and Jaeger's and a farm couple from Alsace-Lorraine, apple- cheeked Albert Ebtinger and his squat, hare-lip wife. So international in flavor was the Mountain Road of my childhood that I remember one home where, if you knocked at the front door, a parrot inside called back in Serbo-Croatian.

That was the same ethnic soup that engulfed my grandparents when they first saw Mountain Road around 1900. Dr. Alfred Mooney and his wife Olga fit right in. She was half French, half Yugoslav. He was half Yugoslav and half Irish, born in Turkey and educated in New York City. He spoke a lot of languages, all with a brogue courtesy of his Irish, sea-faring father.

One day while young Alfred was playing on top of a rickety structure by the Adriatic Sea with his sister and a girl named Olga, his sister's little friend lost her footing and began to fall. According to family legend, Alfred grabbed her and saved her life. They became childhood sweethearts and were married many years later. Alfred called her Mishitsa, Yugoslav for "little mouse."

By the late 1800's, though still a young man, Dr. Alfred Mooney had built a lively, multi-ethnic medical practice in New York City. From his Yugoslav patients, he and the Little Mouse would hear marvelous stories about a place called Rosendale. They said it was a lovely place to spend a few days in the country, particularly nice for homesick Yugoslavs because there were so many of their fellow Croatians there.

Yugoslav immigrants willing to work in the cement mines were very welcome in Rosendale and made up a large part of the local work force. Some bought homes and rented rooms to others. A few opened little hotels in the village. Dr. Mooney decided to take his family on a vacation to see if the stories were true.

Around 1900 Rosendale was a very busy place. Muffled sounds of blasting could be heard from within the mines. Mills ground rock by day and kilns glowed red from the hillsides at night. Between shifts, weary miners could be seen trudging through the village streets. The cliffs of Joppenbergh Mountain echoed back the calls of canal boatmen and braying draft mules. And now, at the turn of the century, Wallkill Valley Railroad locomotives had begun to add their mournful howls to the chorus as they rattled noisily from cliff to cliff atop the giddy expanse of the Rosendale trestle.

The landscape was all hustle and bustle. And yet, there was peace and quiet to be found as well. From Mountain Road, with almost no trees to mar the view, you could see the tumbled rocks of Joppenbergh and the black trestle flying high above the houses in the valley. You could see the D&H Canal, too, as it made a gentle turn away from the river to snake past a row of cement kilns and through the Village.

From Mountain Road you could see it all as though it were a model railroad or museum diorama. From a distance, the scene had a gentle, dream-like quality. Alfred Mooney and his Little Mouse fell madly in love with everything--with Rosendale, with the activity there and with that magical Mountain Road that followed a dusty path toward heaven through farms that seemed to brush the sky.

But even a medical doctor cannot pick up and go where he pleases. There were realities and responsibilities to be considered-- his New York practice and the insecurity of trying to establish a new practice in a rural area where poor miners might be unable to afford medical care. And by now, Alfred had a family of six to support!

The sad truth is that the country dream never became a complete reality for Alfred and his Little Mouse. They bought a house and land on Mountain Road and Alfred tried to divide his medical practice between Rosendale and New York. But it was never quite possible, financially, for them to live year round in their beloved Rosendale. Perhaps the tantalizing vision of that goal, just out of reach, made the moments they spent there all the more delicious.

Many, many years later, my mother would tell me bed time stories of the "old days" in Rosendale. Her accounts bubbled with joyful recollections of innocent delights. I would grow sleepy as she spoke of hay rides through fields just beneath the sky, of sun drenched picnics amidst oceans of swaying grass and of horse and buggy excursions to see splashing water falls, yawning chasms and cascades of mountain laurel along the trails at Mohonk and Minnewaska. Gently, I would drift off to sleep, the birds of Mountain Road still warbling their goodnight songs to one another.

Usually I was more than ready for slumber, worn out by a busy day of boyhood adventures-- peering into deserted cement mines, exploring dark forests and racing down Mountain Road to watch a steam engine pull a freight train through thin air across the slender, black trestle.

I've sometimes wondered what it is about Rosendale that captures the hearts of so many. For me, was it simply the enthusiasm of youth? Could I have loved another place just as much? I don't think so. Were earlier people drawn only to the cement rock that offered wages to the poor? Could it be something as obvious as the river, so lovely it provided artistic inspiration for painters like Luminist, John Kensett? John Burroughs, the widely read, turn-of-the- century author and friend of poet Walt Whitman wrote:

If there ever was a stream cradled in the rocks, detained lovingly, by them held and fondled in a rocky lap or tossed in rocky arms, that stream is the Rondout.

As for me, days in Rosendale have always been full of wonder and my nights there peaceful, just as they'd been, in earlier times for my mother and before her, for a handsome young doctor named Alfred who staked his claim to a little piece of heaven on Mountain Road, high above the Rondout--with Mishitsa, his beloved Little Mouse.

Note: Dr. Mooney began visiting Rosendale with his family in 1900. He bought a house and land on Mountain Road in 1906. His youngest daughter, Mireille, was born there in 1909. At age 90 she still visits on weekends- She recalls, "While everyone else was downstairs in the carriage ready to start back to the City, I saw Papa kiss the walls of our little house good-bye."

Editors Note: Charles Barnett, a Society member, presently lives in Arizona. He makes occasional visits to Rosendale and his boyhood home. The Mooney house still stands on Mountain Road and is still owned by Dr. Mooney's descendents.

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