Some Observations from the Hill
By HH "Hub"Brown of Owego

Editor's Note: This month, we are featuring an "Observation from the Hill" that appeared in the October 1997 issue of The Community Press.

 I don't know what the altitude here is, but on a clear night we can see the lights on the tower on Chestnut Hill Road and on a good day we can see one of Henry Huyzinga's silos. The former owner and occupant of this farm claimed that from his highest field you could see land in every town in the county except Lockwood He wasn't positive about that. This man, William Welch, everyone who knew him well called him Billy, used to tell me about that field. He said that on two different years he had got lost mowing and again raking the hay on that field. I suppose because the field was quite a ways from the barn, it never got any manure spread up there and back then that was the only fertilizer he used. Because the vegetation was so sparse they used to call it the Lisle Road Prairie.

 This is why the Lisle Road baseball team always used this field as their own diamond. Billy was always very interested in baseball, liked to listen to the games on the radio. Later on as he became partially deaf we found him a second hand TV. He placed it on his kitchen table and he'd sit down just a few feet from it and turn the volume up so that from 4/10 of a mile away we could keep pretty close tabs on how the game was going. These pickup teams from different localities usually played Sunday afternoons.  Billy never said much of his ball handling abilities but was quite proud of the way he could sew the cover back on a baseball. Now the umpire, if he suspects the ball has any scratches or digs on it, takes it out of the game and puts in a new one.
 
Back then when everything was done by hand, some of these farmer boys with their muscles hard as nails, given a ball that was misshapen and probably had had the cover sewed on more than once, could make that ball do some crazy things. He never told me just how many teams there were but did mention how in late summer they enjoyed playing the Gaskill team. I don't remember who his favorite team was but do remember that he always watched the Yankee games hoping that he would see them get beat. He disliked them because he said their owners were so rich they could get any player they wanted.
 
Billy used to have some strange expressions like telling of a family he had known who would pick on each other and find fault but let some outsider say anything about a family member and they would hang together like a hairy dog tired. The day we moved on the hill in ‘31 the truck got stuck in the mud and Billy came over with a team to help. It started to get dark and we could see a light over on East Beecher Hill come on. A young mover said to Billy, "God it's lonesome up here, have you lived here all your life?" Billy said, "Not yet!"