A passage from "Memory Traces"
by Irving Luban, published 2001
Lifelong friends
Gilbert Hall Flint and I met on the campus of Cornell University more than a half century ago. We have remained lifelong friends since then and although miles apart, correspondence and the telephone had kept us in close touch with one another. Hall, as he was known to friends, was the product of 200-year ancestral annals. Whether fact, fancy, or fib, he claimed that a family relation, one Captain Flint, was the pilot of one of the caravels that hit the shores of the New World.
“My sister Catherine died on 8/11/90. The funeral was in our Smithfield church, not far from what used to be Flint Hill. She was buried in the church cemetery along with my relations of the last 200 years” recently wrote my roommate of so many years ago.
The name “Hall” stuck and fate determined our link on the campus grounds of Cornell more than fifty years ago: he was a tall, spare taciturn farm boy from the bucolic hills of the country, and I came from the swarming paved streets of a crowded city.
Coupled for good, we never lost touch as years passed; our friendship was solid and durable throughout school, careers, war, births, and the remotest of distances. We exchanged two or three letters each year and made phone calls to each other. This kept the lifeblood of our friendship unbroken, flowing, and very much alive.
In those long college years, farm training was absolutely essential to remain in good standing in the Agricultural College of the University, especially for city-bred kids. We had to work on a farm for four consecutive summers in order to matriculate. The Flint family dairy farm, on Flint Hill, whose ancestors settled near the tiny hamlet of Amenia, Dutchess county, over 200 years ago, became my home for those wondrous summers of my youth.
His letter continued: “I drove up over Flint Hill last week. There is now a winery and a fancy restaurant on top of the mountain. At Amenia, Route 22, there are many signs directing you up Cascade Mountain Road, where Martha used to drive her horse-and-buggy carriage to high school.”
Probably the same gray mare on the same rocky road, but now mare and Flint Hill are no more; farmstead is gone, progeny scattered.
But then, both Hall and Martha knew, I’m sure, that the immortal souls from the nearby churchyard graves were still keeping a watchful eye on their beloved ancestral grounds.
Gilbert Hall Flint was born August 14, 1918 and raised on Flint Hill Farm in Amenia, New York. His formal education began in a one-room schoolhouse in Smithfield. He graduated from Amenia High School in 1936 and from the Cornell University College of Agriculture in 1940. He taught high school agriculture from 1940 to 1944, served in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1946, taught high school agriculture from 1946 to 1963, and finished his career as a school principal from 1963 to 1975.
Gilbert Hall Flint passed away on December 16, 2009. The letters are published in his memory. To view the letters in chronological order, please click a timeline label from the side bar menu, scroll to the bottom, and read up.
Gilbert Hall Flint passed away on December 16, 2009. The letters are published in his memory. To view the letters in chronological order, please click a timeline label from the side bar menu, scroll to the bottom, and read up.
Showing posts with label Cornell 1937. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cornell 1937. Show all posts
Post #13: A college prankster
A passage from "Memory Traces"
by Irving Luban, published in 2001
A college prankster
Over the years, those farmlands at Flint Hill were passed from father to son until they were about to rest on the shoulders of my friend Gilbert, or Hall, as he was known to his friends, who, after tasting the glories of farm work for his first eighteen years, decided he wanted no part of it and departed from the land of his ancestors to attend college. Along with his deeply inherited sense of puritanical humor, he landed on the same campus I had chosen. We met, became friends, and bunked in the same house; his room was directly above mine.
Those were hard years. However, we did not know that we were poor and we felt very fortunate to have had a bed to sleep in, work, and enough energy to squeeze through our exams. In order to survive, we each had to hold down two or three jobs, working in between classes and on weekends. Seven days a week I had the additional problem of fending off Yankee skullduggery when, frequently, Hall would get into his periodic prankish moods.
Both of us in my room were cramming for the following day’s heavy exam, late into the night, when Hall called it quits and left for his room upstairs. All was quiet during my attempts to decipher some complicated formulas in Chemistry I when a light tap on the window snapped my attention from the books. The tapping noise continued and it broke my concentration, enough to force me to proceed to the window and investigate. At that late hour, I wondered who the devil it could be. It was when I pulled the window up to peer outside that I realized I was caught in a trap - again. But by then it was too late; the waterfall had already drenched me, body and soul. The Yankee rogue had struck again! A dangling broom did the tapping, and a pail of water did the rest.
I called Mrs. Truax, our landlady, to witness this abomination. We climbed the stairs rapidly to the room above mine. There lay Gilbert Hall Flint, under his blanket, sound asleep. Only when I ripped the blanket off and exposed a fully-clothed sleeper, did a smile escape his angelic composure. Well not exactly a smile, more of a Yankee inner chuckle.
by Irving Luban, published in 2001
A college prankster
Over the years, those farmlands at Flint Hill were passed from father to son until they were about to rest on the shoulders of my friend Gilbert, or Hall, as he was known to his friends, who, after tasting the glories of farm work for his first eighteen years, decided he wanted no part of it and departed from the land of his ancestors to attend college. Along with his deeply inherited sense of puritanical humor, he landed on the same campus I had chosen. We met, became friends, and bunked in the same house; his room was directly above mine.
Those were hard years. However, we did not know that we were poor and we felt very fortunate to have had a bed to sleep in, work, and enough energy to squeeze through our exams. In order to survive, we each had to hold down two or three jobs, working in between classes and on weekends. Seven days a week I had the additional problem of fending off Yankee skullduggery when, frequently, Hall would get into his periodic prankish moods.
Both of us in my room were cramming for the following day’s heavy exam, late into the night, when Hall called it quits and left for his room upstairs. All was quiet during my attempts to decipher some complicated formulas in Chemistry I when a light tap on the window snapped my attention from the books. The tapping noise continued and it broke my concentration, enough to force me to proceed to the window and investigate. At that late hour, I wondered who the devil it could be. It was when I pulled the window up to peer outside that I realized I was caught in a trap - again. But by then it was too late; the waterfall had already drenched me, body and soul. The Yankee rogue had struck again! A dangling broom did the tapping, and a pail of water did the rest.
I called Mrs. Truax, our landlady, to witness this abomination. We climbed the stairs rapidly to the room above mine. There lay Gilbert Hall Flint, under his blanket, sound asleep. Only when I ripped the blanket off and exposed a fully-clothed sleeper, did a smile escape his angelic composure. Well not exactly a smile, more of a Yankee inner chuckle.
Post #12: Summer at Flint Hill
A note from Jim Flint ...
In reading through my father's letters, I wondered about his college roommate and lifelong friend. Through an internet search, I located a listing for Irving Luban, age 94, with references to places he had lived.
The directory included Irving's children, Nina, Michael, and Malva, whose names I remembered from family visits in the late 1960s. A subsequent query brought me to a medical practice in Chicago -- and a photo of Michael Luban which bore a striking resemblance to my own memory of Irving.
Michael responded warmly to my email and shared that his dad was very much alive and doing well in Florida. Nina emailed a day later and attached a few chapters from Irving's book, "Memory Traces: A family's life journey," with permission to share the passages on the "Dear Folks" blog.
The phone rang yesterday with a call from Irving. We talked about the times they spent together at college and on Flint Hill, the visits and letters exchanged with each other, and their endearing bond of friendship over so many years, beginning in the spring of 1937 at Cornell University.
A passage from "Memory Traces"
by Irving Luban, published in 2001
Summer at Flint Hill
The first in our family, and in our Brooklyn neighborhood to go to college, I entered Cornell University, School of Agriculture in 1936, received my B.S. degree in 1940, and was pursuing graduate studies when I was drafted into the United States Army on August 7, 1941, six months before we went to war against Germany and Japan in World War II.
College tuition was free then. But in order to qualify for acceptance, I had to work during my vacation time, four summers and parts of the winter, on a family income-producing farm. My roommate at Cornell was Gilbert Hall Flint, Hall as he was known to his friends. His folks owned a herd of 50 Holstein cows and over 500 acres of mountains, woods, and farmland. It was there that I worked, sweated, enjoyed, and shared their life on the land that had been in their family for over two hundred years. It was called Flint Hill.
I am still in close contact with Hall and Martha, his sister, whose poems about her beloved Flint Hill I possess to this day.
The great gray house on the hill, the family, barns, cows, horses, and the scent of freshly-cut bundles of timothy and clover ... all were real. Now, fifty years later, they are but a dream.
My introduction to a Puritan way of life was not easy. I did not relish awakening at 4:00 a.m. to retrieve fifty head of Holstein cows from distant foggy pastures; sleep-swollen head leaning heavily on the cow’s flank; stripping every ounce of milk by hand from each udder; fifteen- hour days of scorching labor in the fiery fields of hay; meager, very meager meals (dairy farmers were getting less than two cents per quart of milk produced) and learning the art of reading by candlelight.
But we were young and optimistic then. And it did not take long to form a ringingly active group, almost foreign to the enduring solemn farm life and to the indigenous silence of timeless meadows and lonely, distant mountain tops.
There was Catherine, Hall’s older sister, married but still full of zest and plenty of youth. And slim, statuesque, blue-eyed Martha, Hall’s other sister, with windblown, autumn glistening, shoulder-length hair, who was the poet and avid researcher of her family’s ancestry, whose striking poems of life and freedom on her beloved Flint Hill still reside and echo from the files of my extended family.
Actively outgoing, Martha once shamed me into mounting the old gray workhorse. Out of character, the mare suddenly developed a fast trot as it approached the narrow, stony mountain road. My first time on a horse and with no saddle, swaying wildly as I desperately held on to its neck and billowing mane. This did me absolutely no good as horse and I soon parted company. The old gray mare went one way and I went the other. I recall my very secret love for Martha fading as I observed, from my less than elegant prone grassy sprawl, her inelegant, ear to-ear-grin.
In reading through my father's letters, I wondered about his college roommate and lifelong friend. Through an internet search, I located a listing for Irving Luban, age 94, with references to places he had lived.
The directory included Irving's children, Nina, Michael, and Malva, whose names I remembered from family visits in the late 1960s. A subsequent query brought me to a medical practice in Chicago -- and a photo of Michael Luban which bore a striking resemblance to my own memory of Irving.
Michael responded warmly to my email and shared that his dad was very much alive and doing well in Florida. Nina emailed a day later and attached a few chapters from Irving's book, "Memory Traces: A family's life journey," with permission to share the passages on the "Dear Folks" blog.
The phone rang yesterday with a call from Irving. We talked about the times they spent together at college and on Flint Hill, the visits and letters exchanged with each other, and their endearing bond of friendship over so many years, beginning in the spring of 1937 at Cornell University.
A passage from "Memory Traces"
by Irving Luban, published in 2001
Summer at Flint Hill
The first in our family, and in our Brooklyn neighborhood to go to college, I entered Cornell University, School of Agriculture in 1936, received my B.S. degree in 1940, and was pursuing graduate studies when I was drafted into the United States Army on August 7, 1941, six months before we went to war against Germany and Japan in World War II.
College tuition was free then. But in order to qualify for acceptance, I had to work during my vacation time, four summers and parts of the winter, on a family income-producing farm. My roommate at Cornell was Gilbert Hall Flint, Hall as he was known to his friends. His folks owned a herd of 50 Holstein cows and over 500 acres of mountains, woods, and farmland. It was there that I worked, sweated, enjoyed, and shared their life on the land that had been in their family for over two hundred years. It was called Flint Hill.
I am still in close contact with Hall and Martha, his sister, whose poems about her beloved Flint Hill I possess to this day.
The great gray house on the hill, the family, barns, cows, horses, and the scent of freshly-cut bundles of timothy and clover ... all were real. Now, fifty years later, they are but a dream.
My introduction to a Puritan way of life was not easy. I did not relish awakening at 4:00 a.m. to retrieve fifty head of Holstein cows from distant foggy pastures; sleep-swollen head leaning heavily on the cow’s flank; stripping every ounce of milk by hand from each udder; fifteen- hour days of scorching labor in the fiery fields of hay; meager, very meager meals (dairy farmers were getting less than two cents per quart of milk produced) and learning the art of reading by candlelight.
But we were young and optimistic then. And it did not take long to form a ringingly active group, almost foreign to the enduring solemn farm life and to the indigenous silence of timeless meadows and lonely, distant mountain tops.
There was Catherine, Hall’s older sister, married but still full of zest and plenty of youth. And slim, statuesque, blue-eyed Martha, Hall’s other sister, with windblown, autumn glistening, shoulder-length hair, who was the poet and avid researcher of her family’s ancestry, whose striking poems of life and freedom on her beloved Flint Hill still reside and echo from the files of my extended family.
Actively outgoing, Martha once shamed me into mounting the old gray workhorse. Out of character, the mare suddenly developed a fast trot as it approached the narrow, stony mountain road. My first time on a horse and with no saddle, swaying wildly as I desperately held on to its neck and billowing mane. This did me absolutely no good as horse and I soon parted company. The old gray mare went one way and I went the other. I recall my very secret love for Martha fading as I observed, from my less than elegant prone grassy sprawl, her inelegant, ear to-ear-grin.
Post #11: Prince and the Pauper
Ithaca, New York
Sunday afternoon, April 1937
Dear Folks,
I have just finished some back reading in English, and I decided this would be a good way to rest my eyes. I haven’t had much of a weekend, as yesterday morning I made up a Botany lab and yesterday afternoon cleaned house over at the cooperative.
One of my friends who belongs to a veterinary fraternity (Alpha Psi) gave me a bid to a formal that they were giving in the banks downtown last night. However, I was so busy the last few days that I didn’t feel like making the necessary preparations for it, and instead I went down to see the “Prince and the Pauper.” I read the books several years ago, and I enjoyed both very much. I took a girl who sits next to me in English class and with whom I have become quite well acquainted during the term. She belongs to a sorority house and invited me to take her to an informal dance they are having next Friday night. Her home is in Detroit and her father is an airplane designer for the Army.
The Monday after I returned they had a large Beef Sale of cattle from all over the state. Briarcliff Farms had a large group of cattle there, and also Bethel Farms Inc. and Mr. Bontecue. Mr. Bontecue brought the highest priced animal - an Aberdeen Angus bull for $625. The auctioneer was supposed to be one of the best of his kind in the county, and he sure could talk fast.
I stopped in to see it for a half hour on my way back from lab. I saw Sam Morrison but didn’t bother to stop to talk with him as he was pretty busy. I finished up a report for Ag. Engineering this morning and had to go to work at 11:30 until 2:00 for one of the boys who worked for me when I was away. I will also have to work tonight and for two more Friday nights before I am all caught up. I have a series of prelims coming up this week of which I haven’t started studying for and probably won’t get around to it until the night before. I was up at 4:30 every morning this week also.
What room will Irving Luban and I be able to have this summer? We want to room together as we are going to next year. We have two beautiful rooms on the west side of this house overlooking the city. We are going to be able to get them for the same price that I am paying for this cubby hole this year, and it’s only one block further down. The prices are going up here next year.
I would like to have Irving come as my guest and be entitled to the same privileges as I would receive, as he is superior to me in many respects and possesses an admirable personality, and I feel that the two of us could accomplish a lot if placed under similar circumstances, trivial things included.
I have just been out having a catch for about 15 minutes. It gives you a chance to be outside and breaks up the monotony. I received your letter. I will be able to store a lot of my stuff in the place where I room next year.
Love, Me
Sunday afternoon, April 1937
Dear Folks,
I have just finished some back reading in English, and I decided this would be a good way to rest my eyes. I haven’t had much of a weekend, as yesterday morning I made up a Botany lab and yesterday afternoon cleaned house over at the cooperative.
One of my friends who belongs to a veterinary fraternity (Alpha Psi) gave me a bid to a formal that they were giving in the banks downtown last night. However, I was so busy the last few days that I didn’t feel like making the necessary preparations for it, and instead I went down to see the “Prince and the Pauper.” I read the books several years ago, and I enjoyed both very much. I took a girl who sits next to me in English class and with whom I have become quite well acquainted during the term. She belongs to a sorority house and invited me to take her to an informal dance they are having next Friday night. Her home is in Detroit and her father is an airplane designer for the Army.
The Monday after I returned they had a large Beef Sale of cattle from all over the state. Briarcliff Farms had a large group of cattle there, and also Bethel Farms Inc. and Mr. Bontecue. Mr. Bontecue brought the highest priced animal - an Aberdeen Angus bull for $625. The auctioneer was supposed to be one of the best of his kind in the county, and he sure could talk fast.
I stopped in to see it for a half hour on my way back from lab. I saw Sam Morrison but didn’t bother to stop to talk with him as he was pretty busy. I finished up a report for Ag. Engineering this morning and had to go to work at 11:30 until 2:00 for one of the boys who worked for me when I was away. I will also have to work tonight and for two more Friday nights before I am all caught up. I have a series of prelims coming up this week of which I haven’t started studying for and probably won’t get around to it until the night before. I was up at 4:30 every morning this week also.
What room will Irving Luban and I be able to have this summer? We want to room together as we are going to next year. We have two beautiful rooms on the west side of this house overlooking the city. We are going to be able to get them for the same price that I am paying for this cubby hole this year, and it’s only one block further down. The prices are going up here next year.
I would like to have Irving come as my guest and be entitled to the same privileges as I would receive, as he is superior to me in many respects and possesses an admirable personality, and I feel that the two of us could accomplish a lot if placed under similar circumstances, trivial things included.
I have just been out having a catch for about 15 minutes. It gives you a chance to be outside and breaks up the monotony. I received your letter. I will be able to store a lot of my stuff in the place where I room next year.
Love, Me
Post #10: Not a very Good Friday
Ithaca, New York
March 26, 1937
Dear Folks,
I just received the package this afternoon after returning from Botany lab. Everything is very nice and I surely appreciate your thoughtfulness. I also received your letter Tuesday and was very sorry to hear about Peter’s death as it will be very hard for his wife and children, won’t it.
It has been a very blustery day here with a hard wind and plenty of snow and ice along with it. I believe it snowed harder than it has any time yet this winter, but only for short periods of time. Nobody seems to think that it is a very “Good Friday” after all.
I have plenty of work to do over the weekend as I have four prelims coming along near the beginning of next week. I had two this week. I am not sure when I will be coming home so will make no definite plans – probably Thursday or Friday – but don’t expect me until you see me as my plans have been changed and I probably won’t come home with Wesley. I am looking forward to my vacation very much because this life is getting rather monotonous and a change will do me good.
I didn’t go to the 4-H meeting this week because the last time I went I sat up half the night doing my Chemistry, and besides I have been going quite a bit lately. In Hygiene Monday we were shown moving pictures of the sewage disposal systems at various state hospitals, two of which were Wingdale and Hudson River State Hospitals.
I am planning to go to the Easter Service at Sage Sunday and may also go up tomorrow afternoon when they broadcast a program over the Columbia Network. The Cornell choir and orchestra are participating.
I am glad Papa sent me $10 instead of $5 because I have had to get my laundry done and buy some school supplies. I will not bring any dirty clothes home with me as it makes too much luggage and I can get them done here very reasonably. No, I don’t think I really want a radio now as I probably wouldn’t use it very much.
One of the boys told me that Professor Bevan spoke here last year and that he liked him quite well. I can’t think of anything else to say now but will make up for it when I get home. I hope the roads don’t get too bad.
Loads of Love,
Hall
March 26, 1937
Dear Folks,
I just received the package this afternoon after returning from Botany lab. Everything is very nice and I surely appreciate your thoughtfulness. I also received your letter Tuesday and was very sorry to hear about Peter’s death as it will be very hard for his wife and children, won’t it.
It has been a very blustery day here with a hard wind and plenty of snow and ice along with it. I believe it snowed harder than it has any time yet this winter, but only for short periods of time. Nobody seems to think that it is a very “Good Friday” after all.
I have plenty of work to do over the weekend as I have four prelims coming along near the beginning of next week. I had two this week. I am not sure when I will be coming home so will make no definite plans – probably Thursday or Friday – but don’t expect me until you see me as my plans have been changed and I probably won’t come home with Wesley. I am looking forward to my vacation very much because this life is getting rather monotonous and a change will do me good.
I didn’t go to the 4-H meeting this week because the last time I went I sat up half the night doing my Chemistry, and besides I have been going quite a bit lately. In Hygiene Monday we were shown moving pictures of the sewage disposal systems at various state hospitals, two of which were Wingdale and Hudson River State Hospitals.
I am planning to go to the Easter Service at Sage Sunday and may also go up tomorrow afternoon when they broadcast a program over the Columbia Network. The Cornell choir and orchestra are participating.
I am glad Papa sent me $10 instead of $5 because I have had to get my laundry done and buy some school supplies. I will not bring any dirty clothes home with me as it makes too much luggage and I can get them done here very reasonably. No, I don’t think I really want a radio now as I probably wouldn’t use it very much.
One of the boys told me that Professor Bevan spoke here last year and that he liked him quite well. I can’t think of anything else to say now but will make up for it when I get home. I hope the roads don’t get too bad.
Loads of Love,
Hall
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