By C. Kihm Richardson Walking from Strykersville ... - Fulton History

PAGE 90
Memories of Java and Strykersville (continued)
FOOD MEMORIES
It is indeed unfortunate that by the time a man is
able to afford to buy and eat anything his heart
desires, he can't afford the calories. I don't know
that I was ever terribly hungry after eating a meal,
but I could always have eaten more up until I was
about 30 years old. I doubt if this was a situation
peculiar to myself only. Some of the memories
related to food in my younger years were visiting
a farm at lunch time and having a full dinner with
more ham than I could eat, my mother buying a
basket of grapes or peaches from a man with a
hayrack full of fruit he had picked up from the
fruit country (about 1924) watching my grandmother
stand at the wood stove finely chopping hash while
it was frying, a stick of hard summer sausage in
the cupboard of her pantry, sliced roast beef sandwiches
on bread made by my aunt, a wiener from
the meat wagon, and beef soup made by my mother
with rice and a small amount of meat, the pork
sausage given us in the fall when the neighbors
killed a pig. The wiener from the meat wagon was
remembered more for the lesson learned from it
than for the food.
THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME
For a week or two each summer in my early
teens I would visit my grandmother and uncle in
Strykersville, and among other things go on the meat
route a couple of times. This started out from the
market near the small creek that crosses Route 78
in the center of Strykersville with a box on the back
of a Model "T". After we had gone a distance, my
uncle Peter Kihm asked me if I wanted a wiener.
The first time this happened I said, "I don't care."
My uncle said, "Well, if you don't care (and he
knew I did) you don't get one, if you want one, say
so." He only had to tell me that once.
In conjunction with these visits there were also
trips into Buffalo to pick up meat. Atone time meat
sold in Buffalo was generally grown locally and
slaughtered in Buffalo. Then in the late 1840's
herds were being driven in from the west and in
the late 1860's meat was being shipped in refrigerated
cars from Chicago. So in the 1920's Buffalo
had only a trace of stockyards and slaughter
houses. There was a slaughter house behind the
meat market in Strykersville which until the advent
of reliable automobiles and tires had been used to
slaughter much of the meat sold at the market.
Going back to before my uncle's time the butcher
made sausage.
There was also an icehouse behind the meat
market for storing ice for the meat cooler. At the
time of my visits there was an occasional slaughtering
of a cow. Of course this meat from an old
cow did not compare with the young beef slaughtered
in Chicago. The cow was killed by tying its
head down, shooting it, cutting its throat, putting a
APRIL 1978
spreader between the hind legs and hauling it up in
the air with a hand operated windlass, skinning
it starting at the hind legs, as it was raised by
degrees. When the hide was off the head was cut
off, it was gutted and was left hanging overnight
to cool off. This was in the summer and there was
no protection from flies.
Ice was taken every few days from the ice house
to resupply the meat cooler. Sawdust was removed
from over the ice and the amount to be used was
removed and the sawdust replaced. After the ice
was washed off, it was raised to the top level of the
cooler again with a hand windlass and put in place
through a door near the top. I never was present
when the ice house was being filled but I have been
told ice was cut by hand from the mill pond down
Mill (Sanders) Road and hauled by horse and sleigh
to the ice house. I can imagine what a hard task
this was to lift, haul and raise all this ice up into
the ice house. The blocks were all separated by
and covered with sawdust.
At an earlier date some places, on a railroad,
made a business of cutting ice and storing it for
shipment into cities in the summer. They were
put out of business by large ice making plants
in the cities. Of course, they in turn became obsolete
with the development of the modern refrigerator
for the home operated by gas or electricity.
WATER POWER
The last water power used in Java Village was
probably sometime between 1904 and 1915. A gasoline
engine had been installed in the grist mill
there in 1904 but I believe this only supplemented
the water power at that time. The flume for bringing
water to that mill from up Beaver Meadows
Creek was removed for the lumber in the early
1920's, reported to be in excellent condition and
used for building silos. The sawmill and grist mill
at Strykersville on Sanders Road (or Mill Rd.)
operated with water power until about 1929. In
fact, I can remember seeing them build a new
concrete dam to replace the wooden dam. This
would have been about 1922. Unwashed gravel was
used for this but a greater problem seemed to be
that the dam did not go far enough into the banks
and down into the stream bed, and water washed
around it; Buffalo Creek really gets quite wild
when there is a cloud burst or fast thaw. Electricity
came to the area about 1926 and an electric motor
was installed in the grist mill. The mill burned
about 1932.
Electric refrigerators did not come to the area
until about 1930. This made it necessary to use
different foods and to store them differently. Ice
boxes were not as common as in the cities; more
use was made of cellars. A cellar to me is different
from the modern basement with its concrete
walls and floors. Cellar to me in those days meant
stone walls and no cement floor. This made for a
cooler and probably damper environment and was
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