Sunday, October 20, 2013

Game Warden Files--Time to Leave All That Behind

It was in the spring of 1986 that we had been upstate to visit my family.  Though spring had already come to Staten Island, it was sweeter yet in Columbia County.  One afternoon Lt. Molinelli stopped by the house after he'd had occasion to drive the Taconic Parkway down through our home area the day before.  "You've got to be crazy wanting to stay here" was his comment, "It's beautiful up where you're from."  But we did love Staten Island.  We were happy in home, work and church; our kids were doing well in school.  We were so comfortable that we'd had another baby and were now a family of five.  And then it happened.  As the department was starting to fill another academy class they opted to open up some additional transfer opportunities.  Two of them fell within that now smaller magic circle we'd drawn on the map.  Fulton and Saratoga Counties would be open and I was on the transfer list for both of them, was I really interested?

After agreeing that I was interested, we spent several uncertain days waiting for the transfer process to be completed.  At last I got the call, or Peggy did anyway.  We were moving to Fulton County.  We set the plan in motion, bought a house and arrived in the City of Johnstown in time for me to go to work over the July 4th weekend.  

You might think that being a couple country kids, both having grown up in the mid-Hudson Valley, we'd have fallen back into the role quickly.  We found, however that the culture shock of moving back upstate was greater than that of moving to the city.  The four years we had spent within the New York City area had forever changed us.  We remain convinced that those years were very well spent, and now we were off on a new adventure.  I was now the country game warden, the job I'd been after for all those years.

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