You Don't Need a Weatherman

Cloudy... Paul Simon wrote a song about it, and that's what it is. Grey and cloudy, a harbinger of fall. Pumpkin season, leaves fluttering to the ground, warm apple cider and donuts. There's a museum, of sorts, in upstate New York, somewhere near Hopewell Junction, that advertises their display of a two-headed sheep. That's their specialty, although they have other oddities as well. And as befits their name -- The Old Cider Mill, I think -- they also serve apple cider, warm or cold, with or without donuts. Not good donuts, but tired little donuts from a box. And the cider comes from a jug.

I can't imagine that the place is still there, but on my one and only visit some thirty-odd years ago, the place was sad. Sure, there was a stuffed-and-mounted two-headed sheep, high on the wall, but it was barely visible beneath the cobwebs. The building was something on the order of an old barn, nominally a two-story structure, and everything that was on display seemed to be very high up. A fence kept curious onlookers from getting too close.

The kid serving up the donuts and cider was, as I've mentioned earlier in this sentence, a kid. A not-even-seventeen kid. He didn't look terribly pleased to be spending his Saturday serving up cider and donuts to a bunch of tourists who were, to put it mildly, unhappy that they had come as far as they had just to see some stuffed and mounted animals covered with cobwebs. One of them complained, and the kid tried to explain. "It's just us here," he said. "We can't help what they put in those books."

Neither my girlfriend nor I minded very much, since it was just so pitiful that it was funny. She had been talking about the place for weeks. Or maybe days. As I said, it's been a long time. The place, clearly, was not as she had remembered. The donuts were tiny and dry, the cider was ordinary, and the cobwebs were pervasive. But we didn't care, since we had each other for entertainment. And besides, we hadn't been led astray by the travel guide and we were in our own backyard.

Oddly enough, though, we never went back.