Casperkill Watershed Oral History Project

Phillys Teasdale is 87 years old. Having spent most of her life in the Casperkill watershed, Mrs. Teasdale has many fond memories of events and locations along the Creek.  Her son Chris grew up on Boardman Road, where he remembers playing in the big playground that was the Casperkill and its surroundings. Chris and Phyllis Teasdale shared some of their favorite memories with us.

Phyllis Teasdale was born on Fulton Court in 1922. During her childhood and early youth, Mrs. Teasdale remembers visiting the Kimlin Cider Mill on a regular basis:

They had what they called a museum in the back room.  It had a hodgepodge of things, and one of the things was a two-headed calf.  I was absolutely fascinated by it.  Of course when I was young I’d say, “Mommy, why are those calves dancing?” because they were connected all the way down the side.  Then, when I figured out that it was just a freak of nature, I was a little bit turned off, but not enough to not want to go see it every time we went to the cider mill.

But, primarily, we went there for the cider.  The cider was just fantastic.  In those days they put everything that fell off the tree along with the apples into the cider; they didn’t pasteurize it or anything.  It was just wonderful.  We’d take our jug; you had a Kimlin’s jug.

Between 1939 and 1943, Mrs. Teasdale attended Vassar College.  Like so many other Vassar students before and after her, she enjoyed many a fun moment on Sunset Lake:

We used to skate on Sunset Lake.  There was a shed on the west bank with benches.  We’d sit there and put on our high skates and lace them up and go out on the lake. After I was out a few feet I’d be on my bottom.  But it was a lot of fun.  I remember playing with –the President of the College was Henry Noble McCracken, and he lived in the President’s House with his family, and the oldest son was Calvin. And, of course, I worshipped him because he was my sister’s age.  Calvin McCracken would be out there and we’d play Red Rover.  “Come on over, Red Rover, Red Rover,” we’d have to skate through and they’d have to stop us, or whatever it was; I don’t remember.  All I remember was that (in a dreamy voice) Calvin McCracken was there.

In 1960, Phyllis Teasdale moved to Boardman Road with her husband and children. The first houses along Boardman had been built in the 1950’s; before that, the road had served as the entrance to the Kenyon estate. Even in the 1960’s, the area was not yet fully developed, which made it an ideal place for children. Chris remembers playing football in the farm fields next to Spackenkill Road and riding his bike on the IBM parking lots. He also remembers skating on a small pond along Boardman Road:

Phyllis: We used to call it Reynolds pond because the Reynolds lived there.  All the neighborhood kids, as soon as it froze over, which was pretty early since it was small, would zero in on Reynolds pond.

Chris: It was big for hockey and skating.  The houses on this road were built in the 1960’s, right in the Baby Boom era, so there were lots of kids; there were probably about 15 or 20 kids, all the same age.

The Casperkill itself was a source of entertainment for Chris and his young neighbors. The stream flows right through the backyards of several houses on the west side of Boardman, including the Teasdales’, so Chris and his friends would take little one-person paddle boats down the stream. Sometimes they even boated on more sophisticated vessels:

The neighbor, Mr. Taylor, built a significant raft made out of two 50 gallon oil drums with 10 gallon gas cans, and the whole thing was welded together.  Boy, you could not tip that thing if you tried.  It was a significant regatta kind of thing.  We could paddle up a quarter of a mile and then down to the culverts below Zach’s Way.

Chris also remembers the Casperkill on Vassar campus:

As a kid, I would ride my bike along the creek starting on the other side of 376 and going onto the Vassar property.  My recollection is that it always got a little industrial as you got into where the power plant was because there would be coal cinders.  It always just felt…I don’t know what the word is, but it wasn’t the play place of just sort of outdoors: trees, grasses, all of that kind of stuff.  There were cinders and I imagine that there was stuff seeping into the creek right there.

He also told us about a very special spot on the Vassar Farm; a treeless hill. At the top, he believes there must have been a sheep farm:

As you go into the Preserve there’s a jog in the road and there’s the rugby field.  That hill was completely denuded of trees except for three trees at the top. Three tree hill.  And you could find old goat skulls as a kid.  Even then, in the 1960’s, it was old. The goats and sheep were no longer there, but the forest had not come back yet.  At the end of the road on the Preserve there was an old barn and an old house and we called it the haunted barn and the haunted house.  There’s still a well over there.

A lot has changed in this area since the 1960’s. Mrs.Teasdale has seen developments take over much of the green space that once surrounded her home on Boardman:

The older residents did kind of resent the developments.  Now we’ve gotten used to it like you get used to it.  We say, “oh well, let them eat their cake in their fancy houses.”  But I will say this…I used to be a schoolteacher, for much of my career I taught junior high—which, if you can remember your junior high days is the absolute pits—so I’d have what I would consider a rough day and I would come home and come up Raymond Avenue, turn onto 376, and as I turned onto Boardman Avenue, I’d feel the cares of the day just wafting away.  There were lovely trees.  But Boardman Road was just sort of a peaceful place to come to.  And I haven’t lost that feeling.  I still like to turn into Boardman Road.

For more stories from the Teasdales, see The Kenyon Estate and Boardman Road

Images from:

Vassarion 1943, Vassar College Yearbook

Chris and Phyllis Teasdale’s personal collection