Putnam County Has It's Charm

 Discovery of Cold Springs

Within a second, the train started up as the passengers walked off and we were headed north. I knew then I would return and I would never go back to urban living while feeling the same way about life outside the city.

The following weekend, I was one of those passengers who got off at that very stop. It was as though I was in a time warp.  I made my way through a narrow passage where the early 19th century iron fence lead me along the train tracks.

It was a very warm summer, but in upstate New York you still can have pine trees.  Pine trees, so green towered over me like the comfort of a child holding the hand of an adult walking through a new place.

The path opened up to the mouth of Main Street ahead of me were displayed cookie cutter houses with bicycles and shoes laying on the top of steps with no apparent worry of them walking off. 

A county, mounty stood with hands on his hips over two Caucasian men in orange jumpsuits painting the siding of a house.  I noticed a box with "take me I'm free" filled with books at the bottom of steps. They were white trimmed steps with no markings of shoes or dirt of any sort.


Store fronts with people sitting at the entrances eating ice cream looked welcoming and relaxed. I noticed an interracial gay couple holding hands with, whom I assumed was their child, feeding her ice cream and laughing. A man was walking with his son in one hand, a kite in the other.  An older couple was sitting on their porch; the woman in a house dress, cutting potatoes and a man wearing a cut off shirt, while holding a beer and waving hello to me as I strolled by.


Across the street stood a house that was the residence of another couple, a hundred years ago. They had financed the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. It stood proudly with the American flag draped on its porch.


A store front had a sign printed "Antique photos and vintage furniture sold here." Another saying, "Hudson House by the River now open for lunch."

Some say Washington slept there when fighting the British. Did you ever meet a town in America that said, "You're welcome?"

This is the town of those who retired in the comfort of it, I think.

Quietly.


I questioned where I was.

What did I just enter?

I felt this might be like a Utopia Americana that made a promise and kept it.