When I was a kid, there used to be this group of older gentlemen that sat at one of the tables in Stewarts off of Route 208. They’d sit and drink coffee and talk about this or that. Reminisce about the “ol’ days,” I assume. I’m 36 now and have been out of town for almost two decades. Sometimes, I wonder if they still meet there.

I pass through my hometown from time to time. Mostly, it’s when I visit my sister and her family who live a couple miles away near Orange Lake. Sometimes, it’s on my way back from a hike in the Catskills. In any case, I usually make it a point to drive through that one light town they call Wallkill.

On a recent flyby, I drove back from New Paltz. I had summitted a 3500 peak and marked it off the list I keep. I took 208 past the prisons. They still stand as they used to, like two opposing leviathans. The credit union is closed and can’t be called a relic. As it barely left infancy before its doors were shuttered.

Driving along the river, I see that the water still flows gently. I haven’t been up much during the rain, but I assume it gets going at times and its banks must encroach on the grass. The next landmark of my youth is the post office and the bridge that connects the hamlet to those vast open plains before the Gunks.

Bruyn Turnpike had been an area of youthful drives. Long straight distances where, as a kid, I could practice driving without much distraction. Albany Post Road was good too.

After the post office is the ‘main drag.’ There, the commercial center of town still stands. Albeit, with some changes. The Dolan’s is long gone, and whatever market came afterwards. Now it’s a Mexican-styled Restaurant. I always tell myself; I’ll have to try it next time.

The hardware store I had worked at part-time in high school is absent as well. I drove by too fast to see the name, it looked like a kitchen designer store had taken its place. Before the library and town hall, there used to be a Chinese restaurant. Now, it’s a memorial to what had been.

There’s a big building being built. It’s across from the park I remember walking to when I lived on Pleasant Ave. The land the new construction springs from used to be where a laundromat and barbershop stood. The barber I would see as a kid. I was in kindergarten or maybe first grade. I still remember the cuts he gave. I would get a bowl cut, not by choice, but not much is when you’re at that age. From what I remember, he did give out lollipops after each cut. That was fine. The walk home was short. Though, by the time I got back home, I had finished my lollipop.

I had seen the ‘new’ town hall a few times before, it still sits by what had been the ‘old’ firehouse. The ‘new’ firehouse is down a way. It stands across from my old middle school. It looks as if the old one-story firehouse could fit three times over in the new building. The bay doors of the new building are tall and wide, and you can see the apparatus inside. They look like sleeping babies clad in red and white. When an alarm comes in, they’ll wake like one too. Screaming and wailing all the way to the scene until they are put to bed again on the apparatus floor. The pastoral land down the hill behind the new firehouse gives it a picturesque view at times, especially when the sun rises. It gives evidence to the description of this land as “God’s country.” I think Thomas Cole would have liked to paint that scene.

After the firehouse is that one light. To the right of it is a sign with a cartoon of a famous cow. To the left there is a building that used to be a restaurant. The restaurant had used that same cow’s face as its mascot and the cow’s name as its own. It was a good spot to eat from what I recall.

I usually make the right at the light, and head down 300 toward Plains Road. There’s another light at that intersection. You could count that as a second light for the town, but I don’t.

If I’m being honest, I don’t know why I drive through the town on these trips. I guess they give me flashbacks to good and bad times. Sometimes I cringe and say, “What a fool you’ve been.” Sometimes I laugh and think, "What a time you had."

In any case, as I leave town, I do think about those old gentlemen who sat at that table in Stewarts off of Route 208. At 36, I’m starting to get that feeling I may have to ask for a seat at their table one day.

Joseph Dunnigan

Sleepy Hollow