To a child, the world is a kaleidoscope of new experiences. One after another they tumble into view and sparkle for a few moments until it's time to make room for the next. The actual events may not be grand in scale but to a brand new human being they are often explosively exciting.

I'll always remember my first taste of a "chocolate frosted." I must have been about four years old. My Uncle Edmond, up from New York City for the weekend, gave me just a sip. We had driven the eight miles from Rosendale, through Tillson, to New Paltz in his new Oldsmobile. He liked to show off when he had a new car, even to a four-year-old. He left me sitting in his marvelous car while he went into Dedrick's drug store. When he came out he was holding a waxed paper cup that had frost droplets sliding down the sides. He handed it to me saying, "Don't take it all. I want some, too."

How could anything be so cold and thick and chocolatey yet still come up through a straw to freeze your mouth with delight? That was more than sixty years ago but oh how clearly I remember it!

Another time he drove me to the hospital to have my tonsils out. Funny thing about that. I never knew what was going on before they slipped me the ether but I remember a nice man in the next bed when I woke up. He said, "I'll call the nurse and she'll bring you some ice cream." And she did!

Tillson, New York is about 85 miles north of New York City but on the other side of the Hudson River. It's only about a mile or so from where we lived in Rosendale but to a young kid in the 1930s and 40s that was far enough to qualify as another universe. Cars were slow and frequently undependable. Besides that, most country roads were dusty and full of potholes. Short excursions took on the aura of major adventures. A trip from Rosendale to Kingston, a distance of eight miles, might be undertaken once a week. The 14-mile trip to Saugerties maybe once in a whole summer. With travel from continent to continent now commonplace, to me the name "Saugerties" still sounds like a foreign principality perched at the edge of the world.

Since they are adjacent, theoretically the distance from Rosendale to Tillson is zero. In the world of human perception, however, particularly in those days, the two were not adjacent at all. Rosendale lay in one universe, Tillson in another. So true was this subjective reality that the same Uncle Edmund once bought a house in Tillson "to get away from the dampness in Rosendale." His daughter had asthma and it was thought the high, clear air of Tillson might provide her a more healthful environment. It seemed as distant and exotic as a health spa in the Swiss Alps.

New Paltz was important. It boasted a variety of stores, restaurants, a library, a movie theater and a special college for people training to become teachers. The school was called New Paltz State Normal. It always puzzled me. Were colleges for people who didn't want to be teachers considered abnormal?

New Paltz was so important there used to be a trolley line up the main street and on to Highland where there used to be a ferry that crossed the Hudson to the Poughkeepsie side. The trolley didn't run anymore when I was a kid but you could still see the tracks set into the cobblestone paving.

So that's what Tillson was for most folks: a place you went through to get to New Paltz. It meant that to me, too, but it also meant some other things, like haircuts, ginger snaps, a moon that never set and clam juice. I'll explain.

From Rosendale there are two main ways of getting to New Paltz. Both go through Tillson. On its way from Kingston, Route 32 dips through the Rondout Valley at the east end of Rosendale Village then climbs a limestone escarpment until it gains the high ground known as "The Plains". On the left, halfway to the top, the entrance to a deserted cement mine gapes fearsomely from behind a stand of trees.

At the top of the hill there's a small house on the right. In the Forties a pair of middle-aged brothers lived there along with their ancient mother. All three spoke with Italian accents. One brother was a barber and practiced his trade in the living room that had been fitted out with big mirrors, a hydraulic chair and a speckled marble shelf for tonics and masculine perfumes. The barber was short and balding. He had a round face and stomach to match. He made me think of the stout, little mouse in Disney's "Cinderella", the one in the movie that sang "Cinderelly, Cinderelly, Cinderelly" in a high-pitched squeal. He was gentle, soft-spoken and thoroughly non-threatening. It was hard to imagine that this benign fellow was spoken of as the arch-fiend of barbering by feisty Pete LoBello, the cackling little barber who cut hair in Rosendale next door to Doc Vaughan's drugstore. Sometimes honest competition brings out the worst in people.

The peaceful atmosphere in the Tillson barbershop was almost a bit too peaceful for me. It was unnaturally quiet. No one ever seemed to be waiting for a haircut and there was never any sound from the rest of the house. I imagined the brother and ancient mother holding their breaths in the next room, waiting for us to get our haircuts and get out so they could exhale.

There was nothing special about the Tillson haircut but when it was done the round, little barber would rub his hands together enticingly over the perfumes and ask if you wanted any tonic. Tonic was extra so the answer had to be, "No thank you." He would look disappointed and that made me feel bad.

You left the "shop" through a screened door that smacked shut behind you on a spring. Even in mid-summer, I remember that the warm air outside felt chilly behind my ears where the little barber had shaved me clean and swabbed my neck with witch hazel.

If you continued south on Route 32 you passed a scatter of houses on both sides until you come to the main crossroad, Tillson Street. Some called it Main Street. The post office was on the southeast corner. There's a restaurant in that building now, aptly named The Postage Inn.

If you look to the right down Tillson Street you see a succession of neat, well-kept residences and facing you from the far end, a little grocery store where Tillson Street makes a "T" with Elting Road. Halfway to the store, and 30 yards in from edge of the street, there used to be a red barn and silo, testimony to Tillson's agricultural heritage. I don't know if either is still standing. The barn looked pretty run down the last time I was by and that was some time ago.

If you were headed for New Paltz, as we generally were if we were on Route 32, you'd pass Deyo's Garage on the right, make a lazy "S" toward New Paltz and, whoosh!, Tillson was history. Well, almost. Just ahead, and still officially in Tillson, was one of the great wonders of the western world, at least by my childish reckoning: Half Moon Farm.

Farms were nothing special around Ulster County. This one had a barn that sat on a rise not far from the road. At one end of it a tall, off-white silo rose another twenty feet into the sky. But that wasn't what made the whole thing so special. It was the thing that was stuck on top of the silo. On a short stalk, so it seemed to float just above the silo's roof, there was a three-dimensional replica of a crescent moon. And that's not all. It had been outlined in neon so at night it glowed bright against the stars. What a marvelous thing for a little boy who was anxious to believe in magic! Years later, as I questioned life's mysteries more deeply, I wondered why the Half Moon Farm chose to display a crescent moon as its emblem. I guess the owner didn't want to change the name of the farm, and yet, a crescent moon is so much prettier. That farmer along Route 32 must have been a country gentleman: a businessman, an artist and a dreamer all rolled into one.

The barn and silo are still there but the moon is gone. Think about it the next time you shoot past on Route 32. If you've got any kids with you, tell them about the moon that once rode the clouds above Tillson, rain or shine. Later, read "The Wizard of Oz" to them and they'll understand it all. I'll bet you will too.

Barely 400 yards beyond Half Moon Farm is the Wallkill River. From the road it looks flat, brown and motionless. When I was a young boy you had a choice of crossings here, the new bridge or the old, wooden one. The covered bridge was more exciting. As our car moved slowly across it loose boards would slam and thump making great booming sounds that echoed from the walls and ceiling. Maps and plaques now identify the historic structure as Perrine's Bridge. We kids had another name for it. As our car approached the Wallkill we would pester our parents: "Boom-boom-bridge! Boom-boom-bridge!" We were relentless in our enthusiasm and if denied our choice of bridges we would whine our disappointment as long as the car was still moving. Our parents, driven to exhaustion, would keep repeating, "Next time. Next time." But sometimes they did turn around, anyhow, and take us boom-booming across Perrine's Bridge.

The other way to reach Tillson from Rosendale is to cross the Rondout Creek at the west end of the Village. From the bridge it's a steep climb out of the Rondout Valley with several sharp turns along the way. At one of them, near St. Peter's Church, another old cement mine entrance lies collapsed and hidden in the trees. You can't see the entrance, just a tumble of huge, stone blocks. If you walk up the hill instead of driving, you'll feel cold air from the cavern on your legs as it slithers about your feet and slips silently through the underbrush toward James Street.

Current maps identify this route as County Route 7. Trailways buses used to head for New York City up this hill exhaling clouds of diesel fumes as they struggled with the steep grade. To this day, the odor of diesel exhaust is not that unpleasant to me. It reminds me of summer days, skipping up the bluestone sidewalk past the rectory at St. Peter's.

Up and up goes the road as it makes a steep turn past the Wallkill Valley Railroad station. Then up even more steeply until it finally dives over the crest at Minnie Winter's house. Minnie's brother, Johnny, used to be the Rosendale stationmaster so he would walk downhill to the station. From Minnie Winter's the road rises and falls past the Catholic cemetery, then past a few homes and a pond where a cider mill once stood.

In the fall, at the first pressing, the mill owners would give away free cider to anyone who stopped. How sweet and cold it was! Their generosity was usually rewarded with sales. Our parents would buy several gallons to take home and store in the cellar. We drank most of it pretty quickly but after a while some of it became fizzy like soda pop. The grown-ups said the fizzy stuff wasn't good for us but didn't seem to mind drinking it themselves.

After the millpond, you pass another cemetery as you enter Tillson proper. The buses would cut east on Tillson Street to join Route 32. But if you weren't stuck in a bus and had a yen for a more meaningful experience, you'd continue straight ahead until Elting Road became Springtown Road, a romantic route to New Paltz along the Wallkill River past berry farms, fishing holes and past a couple of stone houses that have stood just where they are since before the American Revolution. Always to your right, the dark green Shawangunk Ridge hovers close, its core of pebbly, white conglomerate exposed in places as bright, vertical cliffs or in one case, as beautiful Bonticou Crag.

Once upon a time there was an actual "Springtown" along this road but no longer. There were homes, tourist resorts, even a railroad depot. But that's part of another, earlier story as are the colorful tales of the Indians and early settlers of the Shawangunk Ridge itself. So, back to Tillson, clam juice and ginger snaps.

In our family, if you weren't headed for New Paltz there were only two possible reasons to be in Tillson: Bagley's for ginger snaps or "One-Eyed Dave's" for nothing in particular that I can recall.

My Uncle René was the root cause of the ginger snap expeditions. He was one of those people who attach tremendous ceremonial importance to the act of satisfying their own likes and dislikes. We all have at least one of these people in our lives, a person who must drink only one certain brand of bottled water or conversely, refuses to eat a particular size pickle or whatever. Uncle René had strong, fixed opinions about a great many things, most of them associated with food. Unusual I think for someone who remained slender all his life.

For Uncle René, coffee in the afternoon seemed a life necessity. It could be truly enjoyed, however, only if accompanied by the perfect ginger snap. Unnoticed by most of us, all ginger snaps are not created equal. Some are bland and some are peppery. Some snap as you bite into them. Others accept their fate with silent resignation. Bakers take great pains to produce ginger snaps that snap. The results of their extra efforts did not sit well with Uncle René. His ginger snaps had to have a very certain amount of gingery bite to them but they also had to be a little mushy. As with most of his eating habits there was no room for either discussion or negotiation. Ginger snaps would be spicy and soft, not just one of the two. Period. End of discussion.

There was only one place in Ulster County where God, in His infinite goodness, had made available to man a ginger snap at least partially acceptable to Uncle René: Bagley's grocery in Tillson. Against one wall in the little store there was a metal rack. It supported a row of commercial size cookie and pretzel tins. They were tilted forward so the customer could observe the contents through Lucite windows in the lids. That way the cookies and pretzels stayed fresh and crisp, not an entirely good thing from my uncle's point of view. Bagley's cookies had the correct flavor but were far too fresh. A very resourceful fellow when seeking to satisfy his own pleasures, Uncle René was not to be thwarted. During our infrequent visits to Tillson he would buy ginger snaps in bulk then store them in a damp cupboard to mature. Despite even the thoroughness of this processing technique, he usually dunked the cookies in his afternoon coffee anyhow. There was no point in leaving matters of such importance to the vagaries of chance.

The other place in Tillson that earned our attention was One-Eyed Dave's on Elting Road. Dave didn't call himself that but he did have only one eye and wore a patch where there should have been another. I'm not sure I ever knew his last name.

From somewhere or other Dave had salvaged a wheelhouse from a large ship and hauled it to Tillson. There it sat, nautical as could be, right by the side of Elting Road across from the cemetery. Dave always wore a dirty yachtsman's cap. With the patch over his eye he looked as though he'd just stepped from the pages of "Treasure Island." Dave built a semi-circular counter around the front of the wheelhouse, set a half dozen nautical looking bar stools along it and hung up a sign. I think it said "Dave's Clam Bar" or something like that. I remember for sure that another sign, written in chalk on a blackboard, said "Fresh Clam Juice." The idea of that gave my stomach a turn . . . and still does. Kids are impressionable and make strange associations that often persist for life. I once noticed a bit of moisture coming from under Dave's eye patch. It was probably just perspiration but in my mind clam juice became associated with eye juice and there went my appetite. A half-century later and two thousand miles from Tillson, I still have trouble when I see a bottle of clam juice on a grocery shelf, all milky and thick.

As you can well imagine, I never ate anything at One-Eyed Dave's. I really don't remember ever seeing anyone else sitting on those bar stools either. I think the reason we stopped there was because my uncle Edmund liked to talk with Dave about antiques and salvage operations. Dave must have had great expertise in that area considering the fact that he'd been able to get a whole wheelhouse off a ship and overland to Tillson. I think he opened his clam bar not so much because he wanted to become a restaurateur as because he had a ship's wheelhouse in Tillson and couldn't think of anything else to do with it. Just recently I learned that Dave had been the Tillson trash collector. Maybe it all fit together in some peculiar way.

Looking back, I guess the whole concept of Tillson fit together with the rest of the area, too. Rosendale had the rugged terrain, the cement mines, a railroad trestle, the D&H Canal and the rushing, tumbling Rondout Creek. New Paltz had the college, specialty stores, a theater, old stone houses and lively commerce sparked by the Wallkill Valley Railroad. In my day, and perhaps still today, I guess Tillson served as what we now call a "bedroom community." It was quiet, neat and well maintained; an upscale, rural, residential community. It sits on a sandy floodplain created by the slowly meandering Wallkill River. With the help of Rondout Creek to the north, the Wallkill cradles Tillson in a gentle embrace, a half circle closed on the west by the straight line of the Shawangunk Ridge.

In the world of my childhood Tillson represented the epitome of safety, peace and tranquility, a place removed from the splash and dazzle of the region's more dynamic attractions. In short, for a kid in the 1940s, it was a nice, level place to ride a bike. Tillson seems much the same to me today. To the casual observer nothing has changed except perhaps for the addition of that new restaurant in the old post office building. I've been there to eat several times and the food is very good. But as I sit waiting for them to bring me whatever it is I've ordered, I find myself thinking, "I don't imagine they'd have any reason to put clam juice in any of their dishes, would they?"

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