It’s all Hudson River Valley today, as Bartender’s Skills with a Manhatten takes a drive to Mellinsville Great worsting. BSWAM says…

When a traveler in north central Columbia County takes the wrong fork at the junction of Taconic parkway just beyond that old Indian Trading Post with the bogus totem pole he comes upon a lonely and curious country.
The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered automobile museums wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation.
Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the pot-addled hippies and woefully misinformed second-home owners spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-strewn golf courses. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do, for example, whoever owns and drives this van.

When a rise in the road brings the mountains in view above the deep woods, the feeling of strange uneasiness is increased. The summits are too rounded and symmetrical to give a sense of comfort and naturalness, and sometimes the sky silhouettes with especial clearness the queer Circle Museum which, who knows, your guess is as good as mine.

Gorges and ravines of problematical depth intersect the way, and the crude wooden bridges always seem of dubious safety. When the road dips again there are antique shops that one instinctively dislikes, and indeed almost fears at evening when unseen wooden monkey wheelbarrows chatter.

Worst well. TO BE CONTINUED….