Forest and Stream 
Vol. LXXXI. 
February 14, 1914 No. 7 
Reminiscences of Old Shokan 
A Fair Valley, with Adjoining Glens and Gulches, now being Inundated to Fur nisnNew York City’s Water 
By William de la M. Cary. 
With Original Drawings by the Jiut ho r 
1 SUPPOSE that the onward march of civili¬ 
zation cannot be stayed by sentiment, and 
that it is best that improvements should be 
made even at the expense of banishing the sites 
of some of our most cherished reminiscences. 
And yet, as I hark back to the old days at Sho¬ 
kan, that beautiful and historic spot in the 
Catskill mountains, I cannot but regret that the 
dear old place is soon to be buried under the 
waters of the Shokan reservoir, which will, be¬ 
fore long, engulf all that was of its time-hon¬ 
ored land marks. It is thirty-five years, or 
thereabouts, since my family and I made our 
summer home in this little vil¬ 
lage, and for ten years we spent 
three or four months of each 
season environed by its pictur- 
.sque scenery and its genial 
and interesting inhabitants. 
Among the latter was Tom 
Davis, whose old homestead 
still stands on the spot where 
it was originally erected before 
the days of the Revolution. He 
was eighty years old when I first 
met him, and I still retain 
pleasant recollections of the 
many little episodes in which 
he figured during my residence * 
at Shokan, and which, in their 
quiet way, lent impulse to the 
peaceful charm of the quietly 
flowing tide of life. Tom, who, 
by the way, received his Chris¬ 
tian name in memory of my 
grandfather, is the son of a 
blacksmith, a man of the old 
school, who was fond of his dog 
and gun, and from whose sturdy 
inheritance he quite probably 
derives the philosophical dispo¬ 
sition to which he has fallen heir. 
Tom certainly has a philosophical disposition, 
as could be attested by anyone who had seen 
him, as I have, sitting beside his door calmly 
smoking his pipe, while the bees from his nearby 
hives buzzed unceasingly about his head. They 
never seemed to bother him in the least. He was 
more solicitous for the welfare of others, or else 
he had a secret understanding with these indus¬ 
trious little creatures, for I well remember the 
time when my son Clinton, who was then four 
years of age, stuck his head curiously between 
the hives, having, with the unerring instinct of 
youth, “smelled honey,” and received a terse, but 
well-timed warning from Tom that he would 
“smell more than honey if he didn’t take his head 
out of that.” 
Among the amusements in vogue in Shokan in 
the earlier days were corn huskings. During 
these festivities the young people gathered in the 
big barn back of the Davis house and pulled 
husks until it was time to choose partners for the 
dances, and, when the last dance was over, re¬ 
galed themselves with a good old fashioned sup¬ 
per, consisting of dumplings, mutton pot pie, 
apple sauce, cider and other delicacies, which the 
country matrons of that day knew so well how 
to prepare. 
About a mile south of the Davis homestead 
lived the Weidners, a typical German family, 
whose musical accomplishments added much to 
the enjoyment of the neighbors. The fact 
that they possessed the only piano in the vicinity, 
made their house one of the chief centers of at¬ 
traction, and I often recall the pleasant evenings 
which my wife and I enjoyed in their company. 
There were a number of professional musicians 
who boarded at the Weidner homestead during 
the summer months, and these facilitated our lit¬ 
tle musical entertainments to a considerable 
degree. 
Nor were their professional proclivities the 
only attainments with which they beguiled us, or 
rather with which they beguiled me. They tried 
on one occasion to do a little fishing, and it was 
my good fortune, all unobserved by them, to 
watch one morning their efforts to hook trout. 
I had taken my rod and trudged over to my 
favorite fishing grounds, the Gulch. It was a 
beautiful July day, and, what was more to the 
point, the trout had taken the bait with pleasing 
regularity. I hooked eighty beauties, splendid, 
black fellows, with bright red spots and crimson 
bellies and fins, and had about decided to rest on 
my laurels when I heard in the distance the sound 
of song, half drowned by the rattle of a fast ap¬ 
proaching wagon as it clattered over the rough 
road. It was the Weidner’s boarders, out for a 
fishing party. And a jolly fishing party it proved. 
The Gulch is situated in a deep cut in the 
Pekermont Mountains, and the road by which it 
is approached descends toward it. Waiting until 
the party hove in sight, I 
watched at a little distance. 
They had plenty of bait, not for 
the fish, but for themselves. It 
consisted of a keg of beer, 
which they imbibed freely, and 
which lent a distinctly German 
atmosphere to their first attempt 
at American trout fishing. They 
managed to get a lot of fun out 
of their frantic attempts^ to land 
a fish, but their efforts proved 
unavailing, until one of their 
number, more reckless than the 
others, stepped out on a little 
covered rock, and swinging his 
pole out over the brook, lost his 
balance. His feet flew over his 
head, and amid excited cries of 
“Ach, Mein Gott!” he fell 
splashing into the stream. 
The yell which he emitted 
ruined whatever chance his com¬ 
rades had of landing a real fish, 
but they made the biggest catch 
that had ever been made in the 
Gulch, when they hauled him 
out, chilled to the bone, and only 
too willing to suspend his fishing operations in¬ 
definitely. With great ado they kindled a fire, and 
immediately every one of those German fisher¬ 
men became a practicing physician, with a variety 
of remedies for chilled bones that would have 
rivaled in curative efficacy the remedies of some 
of our most prolific dispensers of patent medicine 
cure-alls. 
One thing they all agreed on, however, and that 
was that the patient must have brandy. This they 
supplied to him out of a large horn, filled with 
that time-honored restorative, which they had 
brought with them, considering it a necessary 
part of a successful trouting expedition. They 
then stripped him of his clothing, rolled him in 
horse blankets, and rubbed him assiduously until 
his benumbed circulation resumed its normal con¬ 
dition. After that they dried his bedraggled 
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