If I could walk up to my fourteen-year-old self and say, Listen, you’re going to be a professor of science at a college; you’re going to write multiple books; you’re going to speak in public—

The following is a transcribed interview with Vince Wallace, a decades-long National Guardsman, maintainer of the Civil War soldiers’ section of Hudson’s Cedar Park Cemetery, a survivor both of the Great Depression and at least two brushes with death, and a former hot air balloonist who, nearing his eighty-fifth year, continues to embrace chances to get into the clouds.

What a shame to have a park with excellent river access gated off at the road until seven in the morning.

That was the aggravation on a recent morning as I arrived with my kayak in the back of my truck, ready for a long paddle from Schodack Island State Park in Castleton.

More than sixty years ago, Greenport resident Joe Krupa became somewhat of a local celebrity for his skill in racing small boats on the Hudson River, back when the fabled Hudson River Marathon stock boat race from Albany to New York City was a huge deal. Joe went to stock boat nationals in Tennessee in 1951 and became the class B national champ. He was known for being his own mechanic, with no official sponsors. Joe and I know each other as fellow members of a boat club. I can attest that Joe has probably spent hundreds of evening hours in recent years puffing a cigar while the sky darkens over the mouth of the Roeliff Jansen Kill. He's part of a segment of his generation that can take apart any type of motored machine, identify the thing that's wrong with it, fix it, and put the whole thing back together. I've been trying to get him to agree to an interview for this site for months and he finally gave in Tuesday.

Chances to own an island in the Hudson River don’t come along very often. And even if a price tag hovers at $559,000—which is what Campbell Island in Schodack is listed for on privateislandsonline.com—it’s fun for a river frequenter to imagine being able to lay claim to 97 acres of riverfront land.

When I didn’t see Bill Rosecan—who I know through working with Camphill Hudson—where we had planned to meet, at the Henry Hudson Riverfront Park in Hudson on Wednesday evening, I walked around for a bit. I eventually thought to check the train station. Inside, Bill, a train enthusiast, was talking with the station attendant, getting information on the schedule for the evening. Bill smiled and apologized for having lost track of time and we walked down to the park. The following is a transcription of our talk at the waterfront. At a couple different points in the interview, as you’ll notice, he briefly stops his narrative to greet passersby.

Part of my incidental routine for outdoor adventure is to be lackadaisical in the planning stage, which often makes for some aggravation during the trip, but makes for a better story to tell when the trip is over.

This past week, my brother and I escaped our normal lives long enough to paddle on the Hudson River from the mouth of the Roeliff Jansen Kill—which is the boundary line between the towns of Livingston and Germantown—south for about ten miles to Tivoli Bays.

When I walked into the Savoia Monday afternoon, Jacob Walthour was sitting at the end of the bar, watching an episode of Gunsmoke on TV. He welcomed me to sit down and I soon started asking him questions. When his wife, Barbara, with whom he runs the Savoia, came in, the interview shifted to her and Mr. Walthour went off to run some errands for the bar. Toward the very end of the interview, there’s an appearance in the interview by Rick Nardone, regular patron of the Savoia. The following is a transcribed version of Monday’s talk.

Helen Henderson, whose maiden name is Coons, has been living in the Livingston-Germantown area for more than a century. The first time she saw an airplane, leaving a jet stream behind it, she and everyone else who were at a garage at the time, stopped and looked up at the sky in awe. She remembers when “boatmen” would go door to door offering Shad and Herring from the Hudson River. She vaguely remembers the celebrative churchbells that chimed at the end of World War I. She can speak to the struggle of fruit farmers during the Depression and the taste of applejack from local speakeasies during Prohibition.

What follows is a transcribed version of a talk we had Monday at her home in Livingston.

This is an updated version of a story that appeared first in 2015 and which has continued on its own to draw hundreds of readers a month.