We Have Lost an Adirondack Legend

I was very saddened to learn that yesterday a very dear friend of mine, Peter Hornbeck, died suddenly morning at his home. True to form, he went out the way we would all want to leave this world- swiftly, at home, without any previous suffering, and surrounded by his loving family- a class act to the last moment. To know Pete Hornbeck was to love him- once you were aware of his quirks! Anyone who has known him would have appreciated his kindness, humor, generosity, quick wit, artistry and vast knowledge of all things Adirondack. He seemed to be of another time- a simpler one with no computers, cell phones, or even electricity. He would have been happy living in a simple cabin- like the ones he built on his own property.  The world is a sadder place without him, and his passing puts the year 2020 into an even more cruel and despicable class by itself than it already was. Peter was an unforgettable character, and although he is no longer a living legend, he was a legend in his own time. I will always carry a little piece of him in my heart, and will remember him and thank him for his accomplishments every time I get into my Black Jack and set out on a pond, stream, river or lake anywhere in the Adirondacks.

In his honor I am reprinting the vignette I wrote about him in 2008 that became a chapter in my book Never a Dull Moment. I will also be creating and adding to a photo album of the many photos I have taken of him over the years we paddled and camped together as co-founders (with another legend, the late Patrick Sisti) of the League of Extraordinary Adirondack Gentlemen in my website photo gallery dedicated to him.

.                                    Peter Hornbeck

                           Boatbuilder, Olmstedville

                                   November 2008

 

                                 Peter Hornbeck

July 4, 2008 was a beautiful day on Blue Mountain Lake. I had just bought a Hornbeck Black Jack canoe from Peter Hornbeck’s shop in Olmstedville, and I was eager to take it for a test run. It was a picture-perfect day, with beautiful cirrus clouds dancing across an azure sky, while a light breeze stirred up the warm summer air. There are few things in this world that are more enjoyable than paddling a kayak or canoe across an Adirondack Lake, with the combination of vigorous aerobic exercise, refreshing water, and Adirondack scenery all around. I had been enjoying my 50-pound Perception kayak for seven years, but found its weight a hindrance. Now as I glided effortlessly across the water toward Eagle Lake in my 11-pound, carbon-fiber canoe with the trademark red stripe running its length, I noticed John Collins, the erstwhile Chairman of the Adirondack Park Agency and Director of the Adirondack Museum approaching me in a small motorboat. Nodding appreciatively, he called out “nice boat!” as he passed. Gliding past The Hedges to my left, three attractive young ladies were paddling toward me from the historic resort. As they crossed my bow, the lead girl called out “I like your boat!” I noticed she was paddling a Hornbeck Lost Pond canoe, and realized that this Black Jack wasn’t just a well-designed vehicle to get me around the waters of the North Country; this was bling, Adirondack style! I realized I owed it all to Pete Hornbeck.

 

                Peter in his boat shop

 Pete, like so many other successful Adirondackers, is a man of many talents who had to re-create himself eighteen years earlier in order to make a living in this economically unforgiving area. A native of western New York State, he had earned a teaching certificate from the University of Buffalo before serving in the US Army during the Viet Nam War. After receiving postgraduate education at Geneseo in 1969, he began a 22-year career as an elementary school teacher at the Johnsburg Central School in North Creek, teaching kids ranging from eight to eleven years of age. But as far back as 1970 he had an almost instinctive interest in experimenting with the construction of small, lightweight boats. “When my Dutch ancestors came to this country,” he explained to me in the summer of 2009, “their name was changed from Hoonbeek to Hornbeck. Hoonbeek is Dutch for ‘village by the river’. I guess it’s in my blood.” He began experimenting with fiberglass, then Kevlar and later, carbon fiber- trying to create the perfect boat for the waters of the Adirondacks. It began as a hobby, then a part time career as his successes became known to the many avid paddlers in the area who were searching for the same ideal craft that he was. His life changed course abruptly in 1991 when he felt a pressure in his chest while jogging. “Go figure,” he recalls: “The only jogger in Olmstedville has a heart attack!” As it turns out, it was a blessing in disguise.

“Teaching was hard to beat,” he reflects. “You’ve got your summers off, and you’re working with kids whose minds are still open to all kinds of things. Being a part of the community and watching the kids grow up- that part was fun. But there was always something missing.” He took a medical leave of absence for a year, much of which time he spent in his boat shop. He rediscovered the reason he came to the Adirondacks in the first place- for its flowing water. “White water was always my big thing. I always wanted to live in the Adirondacks, and teaching started out as a means to an end. It became more than that, but having a heart attack at age forty-nine made me realize that I needed to make some changes in my life. The inflexibility of teaching rankled- I didn’t have time for anything else. Now I was enjoying the freedom- a lot!” He began building boats full-time, and it showed him what had been missing in his life- the need to create something with his own hands that he could share with others. He also discovered he could make a living doing it, which made everything in his life seem to fall into place.

                  Hard at work on St Regis Pond

His craftsmanship is not limited to his boat building; he is also a talented self-taught artist. Studying the technique of Winslow Homer, his watercolors could be mistaken for them, and reveal the depth of his connection to his surroundings. But his boats are what have made his name a legend in the Adirondacks. I already appreciated what they represented- a means of escaping the ordinary to experience the extraordinary. And with the distinctive red stripe along the sides, one could do it in style. “That red stripe was my wife’s idea”, Pete confessed. “One day Ann told me she didn’t like the way my yellow Kevlar boats looked. ‘They look like a urine sample!’ is how she put it. So I asked her what I should do about it, and she said ‘I think you should put a red stripe along the sides.’ The rest is history.”

Peter has carved out a small kingdom in Olmstedville, and Ann is unquestionably his queen. His two workshops, warehouse and guest cabin sit between his sales office and “Lake Inferior”, a small pond where customers can test-paddle his boats. His home and barn can be found elsewhere on the 100-acre complex, where he sponsors fund-raising parties and environmental conferences when he is not designing a new boat or working on a watercolor. He generously donates his canoes and artwork to worthy causes, while overseeing the production of approximately 400 boats every year. “…and I never get tired of seeing my boats around, people using them and enjoying life,” he admits. Over 5000 of his craft ply the waters of the world, as far away as Sweden. Yet he prefers to keep his business small and personal, with only five loyal employees and no plans to expand. “The way it is now, Ann and I can manage things without too much stress. I could easily expand, and wholesale my boats to other retailers. I could hire more workers, open another store or two and sell a lot more boats- but then it wouldn’t be fun anymore.” As it is, a visit to his shop on Trout Brook Road in Olmstedville is like a pilgrimage for those of us who appreciate what he does and how he does it. If there is such a thing as an Adirondack paddler’s boutique, his store is the model.

Peter is now so seamlessly entwined into the landscape he likes to paint that the name Hornbeck has become a trademark for what makes the Adirondacks such a special place. And all because of lifestyle changes triggered by a myocardial infarction. There’s a lesson in there somewhere- perhaps Peter Hornbeck’s teaching days aren’t through just yet!

               Pete admiring his handiwork on Little Clear Pond

My First Adirondack Christmas- 1957

My First Adirondack Christmas

The absolute belief in the existence of Santa Claus used to be one of those magic and irretrievable things about being a child. Nowadays, Santa Claus is usually considered a hackneyed anachronism whose existence is not often fostered by parents. Even when it is, a jaded peer or older sibling will usually squelch it at an early age in a moment of pique or cynicism.

In the 1950s, when we Baby Boomers were kids, things were different. Most parents wove elaborate webs of benevolent deceit in order to preserve that wide-eyed naïveté in their children for as long as possible. I remember my own parents leaving a few Christmas presents by the back door, claiming “Oh look! Santa must have dropped these on his way out the door!” My own cousin Wesley Garrett kept the faith throughout most of his first decade, willing to fight anyone who challenged his unswerving belief. Since he was of above average intelligence, I can only conclude that the strength of his conviction related to the efforts of his parents to preserve it. His father, my uncle Dick Garrett, who maintained his inner child throughout his life, always took impish delight in leading us down the garden path to the point where we really believed that the North Pole was in Keene, New York on Whiteface Mountain.

Before 1957 my family had spent Christmases at our home twenty miles west of Philadelphia, where the notion of Santa coming down the chimney was already being swept aside by the relentless tides of progress. The weather didn’t help either- all too often December 25 was a greenish-gray washout. But when we would make our traditional Christmas phone call to my Aunt Peggy and Uncle Dick Garrett as they spent the holiday at my grandparents’ house on Coolidge Avenue in Glens Falls, it was invariably white with fresh snow. We did visit Bompa and Nanny Garrett often during the summer, since they owned a rustic lake house nearby at Pilot Knob on Lake George, but never in winter.  How I longed to spend one Christmas up north in that century-old house with all its familiar antique charm, situated in what seemed a storybook city almost at the doorstep of North Pole!

So I was thrilled in 1957, when I was about six and still skeptically clinging to the concept of Santa as a living, yet immortal being, my parents announced that we would be spending Christmas in Glens Falls at my grandparents’ house! Nanny and Bompa, Aunt Peggy, Uncle Dick, cousin Rick, brother Dave, sister Kathy, and my parents would all be together, and there was already some snow on the ground!

 My rascally Uncle Dick Garrett

The youthful anticipation I felt on the six-hour Christmas Eve drive north was exquisite. By the time we reached Albany, the drab grays and browns of the landscape had turned to white, and as we took Route 9 through Saratoga (before the Northway even existed) a quiet but steady snow began to fall. When our 1957 Pontiac Safari pulled up in front of my grandparents’ house just in time for dinner, the snow already lay piled on the porch railings, while the Christmas tree lights winked at us through the living room window.

 My senses were on full alert as we entered the house. There was the quaint scent of my grandmother’s perfume which seemed to mark her as being born in the last century (which she was), and the feel of her powdered cheek on mine as she greeted me with a hug. My grandfather smelled of clove gum and a trace of Bourbon, as he shook my small hand with his bony grasp. There was the creak of the old floorboards and the slow muted “tick-tock” of the banjo clock hanging in the foyer. The dining room air was rich with the aroma of juicy roast beef cooked medium rare, and homemade mincemeat and pumpkin pies. The freshly-cut balsam tree, festooned with vintage ornaments and aluminum tinsel filled the living room with a clean, woodsy fragrance as the Nutcracker Suite played on the hi-fi.

During dinner, as the adults ate in the dining room, my siblings, cousins and I got to eat in the kitchen, where we were able to exchange the latest phrases, expletives, and imitation body sounds without fear of parental censure. After a sumptuous meal, my father, uncle, and grandfather occupied one end of the living room smoking their Briarwood pipes, while my mother caught up on all the hometown gossip with my aunt and grandmother the other end.

 
  Frances and Walter Garrett, Don and Mary Way

After dinner, as the snow continued to fall in the darkness outside, we kids would explore the old house, just to make sure nothing had changed. It hadn’t. In the basement lurked the huge, sinister coal furnace with its hollow metal arms reaching upward to the upstairs floor registers like some gigantic upside-down octopus. In the living room there were the family portraits and photographs on the mantle, the Philco TV in its mahogany cabinet by the picture window, and dominating the back wall, a huge full-length portrait of my grandmother in her youth painted by her art teacher. The dining room was occupied by the seemingly ageless and faded goldfish in his small bowl on the sideboard. In the kitchen were the long- obsolete appliances, worn linoleum floor and the wall-mounted bottle opener that look like a set of false teeth (Bompa and Uncle Dick were dentists).

The attic, however, was where the real fun was. To get there you had to go to the landing on the second floor, across from the bathroom with its pedestal sink and black-and-white tiled floor that resembled a giant checkerboard. Opening the squeaky attic door, we were greeted by a gust of cold air down the steep unpainted stairway, where dozens of dusty issues of Readers Digest and TV Guide were stacked on either side. Climbing the steps, we felt an energizing chill from the unheated attic air. We smiled as we recognized that special musty odor generated by decades of accumulated dust and the many wonderful relics that made the smell unique to this particular attic. I felt we could spend a happy lifetime playing with all the stuff up there. My great-grandfather’s Civil War uniform and accoutrements, my grandfather’s old glass-plate- negative view camera, foot-driven dental drills and rusty old rifles, and my uncles high school boxing gloves all begged for attention. My sister reveled in adorning herself and her grandmother’s old dresses, wigs and shoes.

At one end of the attic was the best thing of all- an unused maid’s bedroom, the dingy neglected likes of which made it suitable only for visiting grandchildren to play and sleep in. Despite its faded wallpaper and cracked plaster, its remoteness from the rest of the house made it the perfect hideaway, far beyond the world of grown-ups. My brother Dave and I shared an old wrought iron double bed tucked under the eaves on one side of the room, while sister Kathy occupied a cot across the room. A single, floor level window gave us a view of the holiday scene far below, with Christmas carolers making the rounds, snowflakes silently settling on front door wreaths, and the old-fashioned glass Christmas lights casting their greens, reds, blues, and yellows on the deepening powder.

Bompa’s Christmas lullaby

 Finally, after returning to the living room to watch Bell Telephone Company’s marionette production of Clement Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas” on the Philco, followed by Bompa’s rendition of “Silent Night” on his violin, we were too tired to fight off sleep any longer. Bidding a Merry Christmas to my aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandparents, my siblings and I once again ascended the creaky stairs toward our drafty little aerie to be tucked under several layers of sheets, blankets by our mother and father.

As their footsteps receded down the stairs, Kathy, David and I began reviewing our wish lists for Santa. Kathy expected a set of oil paints, while Dave wanted a Daisy air rifle. I hope for a View-master, Mouseketeer ears, and anything related to dinosaurs. Soon, the sounds of slow deep breathing told me that I was the only one still awake. As I snuggled contentedly under three layers of bed clothes, I could feel the Sandman beginning to overtake me as well.

That’s when it happened… I became dreamily aware of the jingle of sleigh bells-very distant at first, then louder until they seem to be almost outside the window. In an instant I was wide awake and quite curious. Then to my amazement, a deep baritone voice bellowed out of the winter darkness a jolly “Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!”

Now I was transfixed. My eyes were as big as snowballs and I was afraid to move a muscle. After all, “He knows when you’re awake….” A harsh scraping sound coming from almost directly over my head was followed by a rhythmic thump-thump-thump that seemed to make its way across the roof, perhaps toward the chimney on the other side house! By then I could contain my excitement no longer. Leaping over my still-somnolent brother and almost landing in the not-quite empty chamber pot in the middle of the room, I dashed to the window to try and catch a glimpse of something. But there was only the relentless silent snowfall. After hearing nothing more, I finally crawled back to bed, and I remember wondering only why I had never actually “witnessed” Santa’s arrival before?

The next morning, before opening our presents, I shared my excitement over the preceding nights happening with my family. My uncle and his family had returned to their home in Hudson Falls late the night before, but my parents and grandparents reacted with the sort of “so what” complacency that only reinforced my faith even more.

It wasn’t until years later that I realized their reaction could have meant something else. Although I no longer remembered what I received from “Santa” that special Christmas, I remembered his alleged appearance on Bompa’s roof in 1956. Over the intervening years my siblings, cousins and I had been treated to many ingenious and elaborate pranks by my uncle Dick. Sometime after my wife Harriet and I moved to Glens Falls (where we remain to this day, living three houses down from my grandparents’ house), I recalled the special magic of that Christmas Eve with Uncle Dick over another Christmas dinner. I told him that after a while I figured out it was he who shook the bells and bellowed “Merry Christmas”, and I deduced that he must have somehow dislodged a large sheet of snow off the roof to sound like a sleigh landing. Even then he was reluctant to divulge the truth, but in his eyes, I could see the mirthful recognition of his modus operandi. But I was still puzzled about something.

“How did you make the sound of footsteps coming across the roof to the chimney, Uncle Dick?”

His eyes changed to a puzzled stare. “What footsteps? I didn’t make any footsteps!”

Could it be…..?

 

Uncle Dick with my mother Polly, Nanny and Bompa seeing us off on Coolidge Avenue after our 1957 Christmas visit. Sister Kathy is in the car

My sister Anne Way Bernard is an amazing artist. She created this color cutout portrait on wood of "Old Mountain Phelps", the legendary 19th century Adirondack guide, from a sepia photograph taken by Seneca Ray Stoddard back in 1876! It took her 15 hours to complete the job, but she literally brought his image back to life!! Check out her Facebook page and her website at annewaybernard.com!

LEAG builds a boat for charity at Hornbeck Boats August 30th!

Seven members of the League of Extraordinary Adirondack Gentlemen (Pete Hornbeck, Tom Bessette, Dan Berggren, Mike Prescott, Tom Curley, Dan Way, and our newest member, Neal Estano) spent the day building a boat for charity. Please watch Neal's excellent time-lapse 2:26-minute video of us creating the hull from multiple layers of Kevlar fabric in less than two hours! Here's the link:

https://www.facebook.com/nealestanownyt/videos/955791118238558

WWII exhibit at the Chapman Museum

Today I visited the Chapman Museum in downtown Glens Falls to take in the wonderful exhibit of War Bond, recruiting and moral-boosting posters. The art work is incredible, as is the emotional impact. There is even a side-display of my father's contribution to the war effort.  Studying his exhibit, the posters, and the 1944 Hometown USA photoessay from LOOK Magazine which is also on display, makes it easier to sense the drama, danger, and sacrifice that existed in Glens Falls and throughout the country during the war's 4 1/2 years. If only Americans today had the same willingness to do what is right and contribute to winning the war against the COVID-19 pandemic and supporting the BLM movement :-(