September 27th Dave Wrote

I'll send my scheduled letter later this week, but I just realized that I should have updated Mom's letter before I sent it out last night. We had a great week in NC and a safe trip home. Now I'm back at work pulling things back together for a hectic several weeks of apple harvest.

October 12th Dave Wrote

Hello everyone --

I think I'm late! I could tell you that my eyesight is just bad and that I thought there was a "1" between "Oct" and "3" in the date after my name. That would make this letter just about on time. However, my eyes really aren't that bad and I know that this is letter is long over-due. I notice that my lateness must be encouraging others to be late as well (Is that right, Ruth? :). Anyhow, maybe we can get three letters in one week if Bill finds time to write his this week.

The last time I wrote was Aug 9. That seems like ages ago. Since then, both of our boys have headed back to school. Matt left first for South Carolina, and about a week later we took Nate up to Cortland (about 3 hr drive). He had so much stuff that we took may pickup truck with the cap on the back. Nate rode in back laying on several bean-bags, but we stopped to let him get into the front before we pulled up his dorm so his friends wouldn't assume that he'd spent the summer as a migrant laborer.

After we got him settled in his 9th floor dorm room (nice view, if you're still breathing after running up the stairs), Carol and I took a day to wander back through the Catskills and celebrate our freedom again. We stayed in a 100-year old hotel in the small town of Greene, then followed the Delaware River from Hancock down to Port Jervis (across from Milford, PA), visiting antique shops along the way. I've never traveled that section of NY before, and it was quite interesting, especially the Roebling Bridge that was constructed as an aqueduct to carry the Delaware & Hudson Canal across the Delaware River. The bridge was built to carry six feet of water at a height of about 20 feet above the Delaware River so that canal boats carrying coal could be pulled across the river by the mules that moved the canal boats. After the canal was no longer used, they converted the aqueduct-bridge into a one-way car bridge that is still operational today. The designer of this bridge later went on to design the famous Brooklyn Bridge in New York City.

Nate still seems to be enjoying Cortland. We don't hear to much from him, but he is expected home over this week-end and through part of next week for their fall break. Matt is back at Coastal Carolina University near Myrtle Beach, but he's struggling with a required Math course that he's failed once already. He has a real (and verified via testing) disability with math, and he's thinking about changing from a business major to a political science major so as to avoid some of the math requirements. I'm not certain what he'll do with a political science major, but he's always been interested in history and may find some kind of public service job fits well with his interests. He got a part-time job as a waiter in a steakhouse soon after he got down to school, so he's plenty busy and is finally facing the time crunches common to those of us who live in "the real world."

We see Sara, Terence and Jordan fairly regularly on week-ends. Jordan started Kindergarten in September and seems to be getting along just fine. Sara is the typical worry-wart Mom all concerned about whether he can handle the change, so I think the transition to riding a bus and going off to school was harder on her than on Jordan. Alan, Sara would like you to move up here and run the school bus system in Newburgh. Jordan gets picked up at the last stop before the bus reaches his school, and for the first several weeks the bus arrived anywhere from 10 min before the appointed time to 20 minutes after the appointed time. On the first day, the bus drove right by without stopping because of some screw-up with drivers not knowing where all the stops were. So Terence has been dealing with the logistics of helping Jordan get to school by bus or by car while Sara's been calling from her work location in Manhattan to harangue the busing manager about unreliable bus service!

Carol is back teach nursery school from 9-12 on Mon, Tues, and Wed mornings and a ladies Bible study group on Thursday mornings. Of course, she spend many hours prepping lessons and projects for nursery school as well. She only has 7 kids enrolled this year, down from 15 last year. Enrollment has been really erratic the past five years. Many parents need full-time day care for their preschoolers and cannot deal with getting their kid(s) transported to and from a half-day nursery school.

Since our vacation in Oregon this summer, I've flown to Michigan to give several talks at a grower meeting there on Aug. 13. Then Carol and I vacationed on the Outer Banks of North Carolina with Mom, Fries, Spaeths, and Smiths during the week of Sept 20-26. We had a great time and I really enjoyed having time to catch up with aunts and uncles that I see relatively infrequently. I attended an agrichemical company meeting in Newport Beach, CA, on Oct 6-7 at a high-class resort that was several notches above my comfort level. The meeting was sponsored by a company that is introducing a new fungicide, and the meeting content was excellent. However, I get a bit squeamish when I find myself boxed in by a line of Mercedes, Rolls Royces, and Bentleys on one side of the building and million dollar yachts on the other side. One yacht right outside of the hotel looked like it had come from a James Bond movie set (a streamlined 50 or 60 foot speed-boat) and reputedly had cost $17.6 million to purchase. The company sponsoring the meeting I attended picked up the tab. Otherwise, university folks like me could never afford that kind of meeting site.

In between travels, I've been teaching the adult Sunday School class at our church, picking apples, running postharvest experiments to evaluate new technologies for maintaining apple quality during storage, and trying to complete collection of harvest data from our summer field trials. It's a really hectic but a really fun time of year, and the fall weather has been fantastic this year. Last Saturday, a group of children, youth, and adults from our church came to the lab to pick apples and then came back to our house to make cider in our back yard. About 15 people came to the orchard, but we had about 30 here for the cider making and I think that we must have made about 30 gallons of cider. Everyone got to take some home and we had several gallons left here that we froze. The apples this year have really been great, and the cider was fantastic.

With the field season almost over, I'm getting ready for my "meeting season" which extends from late October through February. I listed out today the things I've already agreed to do this winter and noted that I'll be making about 20 presentations at grower and professional meetings over the next five months at locations that include NH, VT, CT, VA, WI, Ontario, Washington DC, and of course various locations within NY State. I enjoy the travel, but I keep thinking that I should get Carol a dog to keep her company while I am gone on over-night trips. She really dislikes the idea of having a dog, so this suggestion is always good for a short argument. Thus, life is never dull, even when there is just two of us in the house!

I guess this is getting pretty long -- I hope the rest of you don't feel that you need to write lengthy letters when it is your turn to write. We sure enjoy hearing from everyone, but I realize that, unlike me, most of you don't have jobs where you get paid based on how much you write! With 27 years in that kind of job, it's no wonder my letters tend to run long.

Incidentally, have you all been watching the political debates? I haven't spent much time watching them, despite the fact that I am one of those "still undecided" voters. I decided that if I needed hot air it would be more efficient to just turn on the hair dryer.

I hope all of you are enjoying the fall as much as I have been.