A visit with Aunt Esther

Today Mom, Dad and I drove out to Westfield, NY, way down at the western tip of New York just below Lake Erie and visited my Great-Aunt Esther at her home. We drove to the little town of Ripley and had lunch at Meeder's restaurant for some home style cooking and more importantly, some delicious home made pies. I had a slice of tangy, slightly tart rhubarb and left nothing behind on the plate!




This part of New York is grape country, the Westfield town logo is a bunch of grapes and the big juicing companies (Welches, to name one) all have processing plants here. As a kid I remember walking to the end of her street which dead-ended in a grape field and picking bunches left on the vine on the end rows which the machines could not harvest.

I wanted to see the Lake (Erie) so on our way back from lunch we stopped by the old (1898) Portland Harbor in the town of Barcelona which is just five minutes from her house and now has public docks on it. Overlooking the little harbor is the 40 foot conical tower constructed of native rough split field stone and a keepers residence. The tower was lit by naturally occurring hydrogen gas (natural gas) from a spring source some three quarters of a mile away, the first publicly light building to use natural gas in the United States. More info can be found here.

Back at Aunt Esthers house we had a nice chat catching up on events and other happenings, and exchanged gifts. All too soon it was time for us to go, driving two hours back through several snow flurries but thankfully not bad weather.