“Local Deep Down”: A Response
by Alison Sickler

In the Spring 2009 issue of About Town, Dorothy Dow Crane ponders what it means to be “local deep down.” Crane is a Tennessee native but has lived in the Hudson Valley for over 40 years: I’m 23, so that means she’s been here longer than me by default. And yet, because Crane cannot not claim the “deep roots” that seem to characterize a true local, she is considered by her neighbors an outsider, a newcomer at best.

Fair enough of Crane to question what “we” mean when we boast that we are “local,” but in a place like the mid-Hudson Valley, the term means so much more than generational heritage or local savvy. It is something that must be protected. You see, Crane is right on the money when she surmises that “localness” has something to do with “a complicated relationship between power and class.” Look deeper into what’s been happening in this region for the past century or so and you’ll see that localness has everything to do with the deep desire not to be supplanted, both physically and culturally.

I am very familiar with the scene that Crane describes at the beginning of her piece about the older gentleman saying to the frantic woman at the deli, “You city people move too fast.” While the man’s remark may appear rude and unsolicited, the opposite scene is not uncommon. As Crane notes: local is “a common putdown by newcomers of those who have lived here for so long that they seem ‘behind the times’ and ‘out of touch.’” On more than one occasion I’ve watched visitors and new residents storm out of local establishments, furious that we do not carry the Times—only that “local rag,” the Freeman. Once, while sitting on a bench in Rhinebeck after a hearty morning walk, I overheard a group of fancily-clad visitors giggle, “The people here are so quaint.” Another woman fresh off the Rhinecliff Amtrak consoled a friend, “Remember, intelligent life is just a train ride away,” referring to the proximity of Manhattan. Some of my fellow students at Bard whine about the apparent dearth of shopping and cafés and the crassness of “townies” who sit on lawn chairs watching cars go by.

Certainly not all visitors and new residents have this mindset, but in my experience, a great many do. And they wonder why local residents are averse to the newcomers? What kind of food you can afford to buy, what news is important to you, and how you choose to make your fun has everything to do with power and class, and us “locals” are often the ones with less power. The very fact that city residents can afford to take a residence in the Hudson Valley and also keep one in New York is tough news for locals, many of whom have trouble making ends meet with one residence alone. So when some Manhattanites seek to refine the surroundings of their second homes, it only adds insult to injury. Why should you be embraced as a “local” if you disparage your new neighbors and strive to make this place more like the one from which you escaped?

Like so many who consider themselves local, my family has existed in this region for generations. My father’s side of the family landed in Ulster County with the Dutch in 1680, and my mother’s side immigrated from Austria-Hungary during World War I. Most of my extended family remains clustered around Kingston. There’s even a small mountain in the Catskills that bears my last name. Yet despite these deep roots, I don’t know if I can stay here, to settle here and raise children here as generations have before me. My parents purchased our house in 1975 for $20,000, which after taking inflation into account would be about $63,000 today. Yet somehow our little bungalow is now worth ten times as much as it once was, even with the housing crisis. If prices had been like this in ’75, my parents would have undoubtedly sought a more affordable community outside the Hudson Valley, and my life would have been completely different.

People have always come up to enjoy the Catskills, but now more than ever before, things are changing. The old couple across the road from us in Stone Ridge sold their beautiful cottage to a pair of men who came up every weekend to escape their cluttered lives as Columbia law professors. They’re friendly, but we hardly ever see them. A French restaurant moved into Stone Ridge, the nearest town down the mountain, and boasted in a local newspaper that its menu was “not priced for the local wallet.” The old pine barren was mowed down to house a quaintly-shingled strip mall with a Rite Aid and a gourmet grocery, which forced Stone Ridge Market, an old local fixture, out of business. Sometimes my family and I feel like strangers in our own town.

I do not resent the people who have moved up from the metropolis to make a life here. In fact, when I see them walking around gaping in wonder at oaks and white pines that are taller than some Manhattan buildings, I feel I have more in common with them than not. Still, every day it becomes clearer to me that, as graduation nears, I cannot afford to stay here. Local wages have not risen the way taxes and property values have, partly because many people who live here do not work here. Every once in a while my parents talk about ditching the area and finding a sweet eyebrow colonial somewhere upstate where it’s still quiet and easy like it was here when they were kids. But unless they are forced to vacate, I know they do not want to leave behind our family: all those above ground and below.

The tension between New York City and natives of this area is no new thing. In the late nineteenth century the Water Commissioner of the City of New York knocked on the door of my great-great-grandparents’ house near Woodstock and said that they must pack their things and leave by order of eminent domain. All the hamlets in the area succumbed to the same fate. Their homes and businesses were leveled and drowned by a reservoir to feed thirsty mouths 100 miles south. Olive Branch, where my ancestors settled, is now an upstate Atlantis. The Sicklers and their neighbors dug up every grave and dragged the coffins to what is now the banks of the wind-rippled Ashokan Reservoir. Generations of hard-earned wealth in the form of houses and farms are now nothing but a few roads and rock foundations that poke up out of the water in a drought.

This destruction was not the fault of the people of New York City. Nor can they be blamed for their superior purchasing power today. Still, we’ve learned over the course of a century that the City has always made living here a little too difficult to be fair. Today I feel like I’m being uprooted simply by the cost of things up here and the lack of jobs. But what if I don’t want to leave? What if I want my children to inherit the wealth of generations I’ve had the honor to inherit here? What if I want them to learn to walk on the Ashokan dam beneath the Catskills as I did? I swear I am “of here,” as Crane says. The Hudson has always been my north-south compass, my spinal column—everywhere I go I think of where I am in relation to the River. I love to see the world beyond here but whenever I’m gone for too long I feel this strange, sick tingle, like a fear of heights: the farther I am from home, the farther I am from the ground. I’m not alone in this feeling.

I do not blame the people who have come here to build a home, but I envy their privilege as I mourn my own. Localness here is not just a badge of honor to make others feel bad about themselves: it is a fragile shield. It is the belief in a right to live in this beautiful place simply because your father did and his father did, even though you may not have what it takes to afford it anymore. Crane asks what it means to be “local deep down” and I answer: Whether you are born here or not, you are local deep down if when you must leave this place for another, you leave behind more than what you take with you.