The Dots

Nancy Adams
Jul 27, 2017 · 3 min read

There are two ways to get from Forestville to the cabin. One goes along Walnut Creek out to Chicken Tavern and then past Black’s and Town’s Corners, through Farrington Hollow, and then right on the Cassadaga-Hamlet Road. The other tackles the change in altitude straight on, up RTP 39, then up and up and up Center Road. There are a few downs, but mostly we can see more and more of Lake Erie in the rear view mirror. As we go up, the temperature goes down. By the time we are in Arkwright proper it is 4 degrees cooler. We finally get to the top of Cardot Hill. The family loves this hill, because you lift your foot from the accelerator and the car accelerates itself from the steepness of the hill. We pretty much always drive the hill this way.

Halfway down is the Cardot house and barn. Actually, the big dairy barn is gone now, and the house is racing to join it as a memory of a place. The back wing is off. Trees are growing through the old porch. But it was a grand dairy farm when I was little and even when our kids were little. As the car went faster and faster, the memory of fresh milk would flash by. The milk that got drunk with molasses popcorn and a long serious game of checkers.

One day we stopped, the kids and I, and soon the youngest of the Cardot family shyly invited our little boy and girl to the barn, to see the cows, the hayloft, the wonderful sights I remembered. The great Holsteins were mostly grazing in the pasture, but a few heifers were in the barn to meet up close. I talked for a while with Mrs. Cardot, catching up on her oldest set of children. Then she gave us a container with milk and we finished the trip to the cabin.

We walked the long walk back into the woods, me carrying the milk jug and the kids racing ahead on the path. I put the jug in the cooler, buried in ice. It was as good as I remembered. We drank the milk as the evening came, ending the the last cabin day of the summer. A cool night. Goldenrod in the fields. We remembered the milk and the summer on our long drive back to the school where we worked and lived. Kids learning about life from the television set. Clips of farm life on Sesame Street. Milk you get from the grocery store. In cartons.

I stood in the kitchen of the apartment and stirred the oatmeal on the stove. The round oak table was set for breakfast. I was blue. The great Chautauqua County 7 foot sofa couldn’t transport me back. It was as stuck as I was, as the kids were, in a barracks-like concrete walled apartment in a boys’ schools dorm. I could stir the oatmeal over the gas stove, but no amount of stirring would take us to the wood stove. I wanted to be stirring oatmeal over the wood stove with the smell of wood smoke in the air. I wanted to see the woods, the hills, the farms. I wanted to be at that place that was ours. I wanted to be surrounded by our hemlock walls.

Our little toddler girl sat on the edge of the sofa watching Sesame Street. All of a sudden she screamed with excitement “Mom, the Dots, the Dots!” This was a new word to her. I ran into the living room. I looked around. What was she talking about? The clip on the television showed the Holsteins placidly moving toward a barn. She looked at me. She waited for my understanding. She confidently and emphatically repeated “The DOTS!” She got off the sofa and pointed directly at the cow. “The DOT!” I finally got it. I finally understood.

The Cardot barns and herds are gone, but the Cow Barn of the Chautauqua County Fair still has beautiful blue ribbon winners, one from the Crowell Farm down the road in the Hollow. Maybe we will go to the fair, the newest toddler and me to see the DOTS!

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