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a working payphone in Preston Hollow
Friday, May 15 2026
location: rural Hurley Township, Ulster County, NY
I was up earlier than anyone else this morning, so I fed the two cats, who somehow manage to eat two full bowls of dry cat kibble every day (though I think some of that gets vomitted up). Later when I came down, I found Fern in the kitchen. She was wearing a black shirt with the Batman logo on it. "Batman," I said. This led to a conversation about why Batman might not be the hero our society seems to remember him being. He was, after all, an Elon-Musk-style billionaire whose only super power seemed to have been money. And his crime-fighting hobby wasn't exactly anti-establishment. But apparently Fern had been a Batman fan when she was young, and that was why someone had gotten her the shirt.
Late this morning, I packed up the Bolt and otherwise prepared for a weekend in the Adirondacks, which I would be doing with the dogs but not Gretchen (or Fern). One of the things I packed was one of the four cucumber plants Gretchen had bought when she'd thought she was only buying one. That's much more cucumber than a large Mormon family can eat, and I am the only one in our house who eats the unpickled kind.
On the drive north, I kept seeing robins (and perhaps also wood thrushes) fighting territorial skirmishes out in the roadway, which might form a convenient territorial border. I didn't see any dead robins, though the birds didn't seem too cautious about cars. Perhaps that's just part of the bravado that leads to winning a skirmish.
As usual, I stopped at the Hannaford in Cairo mostly for bread and beer, but also got a bag of cherries and a some Chex-mix to eat on the drive (as I hadn't had anything for breakfast).
I was worried that Neville hadn't had a bathroom break yet today, as he'd gone more or less from where he'd been sleeping (the laboratory bean bag) directly into the cat. So I stopped at the Bayard Elsbree Memorial Park just north of Preston Hollow to let the dogs out. I even found a way to get to the rip-rapped banks of Catskill Creek to get some water for Neville, but he didn't end up wanting any of it. As I was leaving the park, I saw there was an apparently functional payphone where its driveway reached Route 145. The cost for a call was fifty cents, though some calls could apparently be made for free. Payphones may serve as an important motorist safety feature here, as the cellular signal is extremely weak from Preston Hollow all the way to Franklinton.
Gretchen had wanted me to check to see if that vegan tea shop/café was still open in Schoharie. We hadn't been there in a long time, partly because the last time Gretchen and I routinely went through Schoharie it was during hours when it wasn't open. So today as I was driving through Schoharie, I parked on the street opposite from it just to see what was there. What I saw was that the building was now occupied by a tattoo parlor called Lita Inkz. Later when I looked it up on Facebook, I saw that Lita looked like an Amber, the kind who might have a brother neamed Cody. It looks like we won't have a reason to be stopping in Schoharie any more.
It was cloudy and temperatures were in the 50s at the cabin when I arrived. Temperatures weren't any warmer inside, so I made a fire in the woodstove.
Eventually I fixed myself a gin-based beverage and took the dogs for a walk down the Mossy Rock Trail to the dock, where I immediately set off in kayak to see some of the other docks at close range to see how inundated they were by high lake water levels. All the docks still had all their decking above water, but if the lake were to rise a couple more inches, some of the public dock decking would be completely under water.
I then took the dogs across the outflow creek to the Boy Scout campground and then across East Bifurcation Creek to the new beaver pond at the top of West Bifurcation Creek. From there, Neville and I hiked up the escarpment near Ramona Rock to the cabin.
I ate a small amount of ancient cannabis and proceeded to do the thing where I drink a lot of booze while watching YouTube videos. At some point after watching yet another video where a police dog alerts on a pulled-over car, I posted a question of Facebook that was as follows:
crowdsourcing a question: do drug-sniffing dogs ever not find drugs? the only time i dealt with a drug-sniffing dog, the dog found drugs. i did not have drugs, no matter how deep the police tore into my car
I was referring there to the time I was driving the Punch Buggy Green southbound on I-77 in southern Ohio en route from Oberlin to Virginia circa 1994 and was pulled over by cops. The cops then got a drug sniffing dog to sniff the car, and of course the dog "alerted" (whatever that means — it seems like such an interpretation is about as scientifically valid as Facilitated Communication). It was unlikely anyone would haul drugs in a car like that, so they must've gone through all that trouble looking for the personal stash they assumed anyone driving a car like that must have. But I was too broke in those days to have a personal stash of drugs.
The cannabis I'd eaten, combined with the alcohol, successfully messed me up to the point where I had difficulty walking around. Eventually I went off to bed.
Charlotte and Neville in Bayard Elsbree Memorial Park in Preston Hollow. Click to enlarge.
An apparently working payphone at the driveway to Bayard Elsbree Memorial Park in Preston Hollow. Click to enlarge.
Lita Inkz, the tattoo shop that replaced the little vegan café we used to visit in Schoharie. Click to enlarge.
A little of our shore, viewed from our dock on Woodworth Lake. Note the submerged stone "ice wall." Click to enlarge.
The nearly-flooded public dock on Woodworth Lake. Click to enlarge.
Ibrahim's dock dealing with high lake levels. Click to enlarge.
The Woodworth Lake outflow beaver dams and our stone causeway, viewed from below. Click to enlarge.
A perfect little den where a large flat rock was set down by melting glacial ice atop some round boulders just below the Boy Scout campground (to its southwest). Click to enlarge.
Neville encounters a low cliff just east of East Bifurcation Creek blocking his way on the walk from the Boy Scout camground. Click to enlarge.
Neville with the new beaver dam on West Bifurcation Creek in the background. Click to enlarge.
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