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XVI

A place that still looms large in my memory of my youth in Syracuse, is the Knapp farm near Onondaga Hill where, in my childhood, we'd go for Thanksgiving dinners along with many others in the family. The farm had 60 acres but the really important feature of it was the apple orchard which must have had five or six hundred trees and yielded thousands of bushels of top grade apples annually. When I first went to the farm, Unc1e Judson and Aunt Maggie Knapp were still active although probably in their 60s, Unc1e Judson with a long, white beard. Then there was Cousin Kate, their unmarried daughter, who lived at the farm and was a dynamo, gradually taking over the farm management as her parents aged. Cousin Kate was remarkably attractive and sophisticated, almost unbelievably so for a girl brought up on a farm and I imagine she had had a pretty good education in town, maybe had even gone away to boarding school. As I first remember her, she may have been in her late 30s and by the time my father died, I suppose she was in her 40s. She must have been quite pretty as a girl. She was short like her mother, but she had a figure that would have qualified her for a Playboy Magazine centerfold; it impressed me even in my childhood so it was good. She was very fond of me and I of her. Recently, I found a letter from Cousin Kate to me when we were at Lake Clear in July 1912 when I was ten years old, starting, "My sweetheart" and covering 6-1/2 pages just sparkling with thoughtfulness, wit, interest in my activities and just plain personality-plus. I am still at a loss to understand why Cousin Kate never married but from what I remember hearing of the good old days, the Knapp farm was a popular gathering place for many of the gay young blades from town, and Kate and her sister, who'd been dead for years, were very popular. There was a Henry Freeman whose name was linked with Kate's and probably several others but I guess she either never found the right man or he never found her. I always thought it was a tragedy, anyhow. After my father died, Mother and I spent a few weeks up at the farm each summer for two or three years. I believe the old folks had passed on by this time and Kate was glad of Mother's company; also, I tried to pull my weight by helping with the farm chores. Of course, there were always one or two hired men, but also, there were always plenty of jobs and I think I was of some help.

To get to the farm, we would take the trolley to Elmwood and then walk up the hill past the cemetery and on out into the country, a distance of a mile or more, until we reached the farm, which was maybe a quarter-mile below the village of Onondaga Hill.  The house was two-story, white clapboard with a huge side porch facing out toward a magnificent view of the city, and another porch on the front. The house was a hundred feet back from the road and the big front yard was full of big, old horse-chestnut trees. A driveway went in on one side, circled the rear of the house, and came out on the other. Behind the house, was