As the Farm looks today:
One of the advantages to having a blog is the forum to help "save" historic relics by spreading the good word. One of these is the Sanford Stud Farm in Amsterdam, NY, now a series of horse barns flanked by malls and fast food joints on what was once 1000 acres of thoroughbred track. The broodmare barn building, nearly 200 years old, risks imminent collapse. It is a piece of history amid a sea of commercialization. We pass this beautiful, Shaker-like structure everytime we go to Home Depot or our favorite diner, The Windmill. It breaks my heart to see it languishing there, especially since it housed the ancestors of such notable race horses as Secretariat.
As noted in this article by Barbara D. Livingston,© 2001, adapted from an article published in NEW YORK THOROUGHBRED,printed by New York Thoroughbred Breeders, Saratoga Springs, NY, Sanford Stud:
Almost immediately, what was once a glorious track with popular matinee races became a shopping plaza named the Sanford Farms Shopping Center. Still standing quietly but proudly behind an Office Max, one of the few large remaining Sanford barns awaits its fate. But most of the buildings are now gone, replaced by an access road. And where once stood a grand, cherry-walled stallion barn, there is now a Wendy's.
Carnegie Development, aware of Amsterdam's ties to the Sanford history, proposed a peace offering. It donated the large broodmare barn and an additional small barn, along with an acre of land, to the town for a Sanford museum. The company also agreed to move the equine monuments to that acre, those strong testaments to the Sanfords' glory days and foundation Thoroughbreds... Hidden behind one of those remaining barns, slowly disappearing into the growing weeds, the monuments wait, each separated into three segments...
Every morning, daybreak washes over the faces of these monuments. "MOHAWK II", and "LA TOSCA", and "MOLLY BRANT" glow in their solitude. One stone, now separated from its base but seeming to belong to Chuctanunda's, simply states: "His only start at five years, six furlongs in 1.12 at Saratoga, the fastest time ever made in the East". Every evening, darkness again envelops these hidden tributes, which Stephen Sanford had carved so long ago.
For now, however, the Sanfords live on through other monuments: the blood of Raise a Native, Discovery, Native Dancer, Bull Lea....
It is through them, and through more recent Thoroughbreds descended from Sanford stock—names such as Secretariat, Affirmed, Cigar, Silver Charm and Fusaichi Pegasus-that the family should gain the most peace, and most pride for a job well done.
The Sanfords did not breed any one great horse in their lifetimes, yet they left us an entire legacy of them.
House listing pics are here: Troy House
...But if I moved I would miss the "Stop for Amish Buggies" signs, the homemade farm bread and farm markets, the sweeping views of centuries-old barns and silos on hilltops, the eagles soaring through the sky, and being able to see the patchwork of country fields from my front porch as I sip my coffee in the morning. And I would miss my and my neighbors' communal backyard and clothesline, the village coffee shop and antiques store, the sound of trains passing in the night, the sight of the Mohawk river rushing past my car window, the hawks circling lazily in the breeze, the geese and goslings nesting at mile marker 192 of the Thruway, and the deer eating grass by the riverside. It is all so lovely here. Maybe one day I will be able to sit and enjoy it for more than a day at a time...
 |
 |
It is my favorite kind of blog. Personal enough that you can glean the interests and obsessions of the blogger, but not so personal that you feel like your eavesdropping through someone’s kitchen window. It stakes a clear “domain” — retro lifestyle — but wanders freely, loping this way and that across the patch of land within that chunk of intellectual terrain. My highest compliment is that RetroModGirl manages to find idiosyncratic approaches to very accessible topics, in ways that gives retro “O.G.s” and retro nOObs something to savor. Other retro-themed blogs chat about MAD MEN and 50’s stoves and the like, but do other blogs show you the mansion that Magic Chef built?
RetroModGirl gets my “Green Monster” award for a blog that stirs feelings I say are admiration, is really just jealousy."
sixstringoutlaw , from the blog, RetroKustomHonkytonk
COMMENT POLICY
Comments on this blog are made
DOFOLLOW for the Google Spiders.
That means more link love for anyone
who comments on this blog.
Comments are moderated.
Spam will not be tolerated.
A belated thank you to the awesome Vintage Verve!
.jpg)
You might have seen one out in Minnesota
Or maybe down by the sea in Sarasota
But they were made back in Worcester Mass
Of aluminum and bakelite and glass
Like a locomotive they were streamlined
And the blue prints were drawn up from a dream of mine
Slap 'em up put 'em on the train
Out to Michigan up to Maine
You may find a diner down in Georgia or
Carolina off the twenty by the Piggly Wiggly
In the country out of Waynsboro
Or when it's getting late and rainy out in New York State
You hang a louie off the thru-way
And you go and grab yourself a cheeseburger
At the little gem diner off the six niner
Diner my shiny shiny love
In the night you're all I'm thinking of
Diner my shiny shiny love
The cruiser pulls in where the trooper's always stop
As we dine over the chrome and formica table top
The cashier she always squints
By the gum and the bowl of mints
She's tapping her toe
To the Dean Martin on the consolette
Booth service and a cigarette we're loving it so
Side of fries a dollar
Or the haddock plate two ninety five
A rootbeer float a pepsi
And be sure to save some room for some apple pie
Better make it a-la-mode
Chorus
Dean Martin god rest his soul
Talkin' to me from the cereal bowl
There's a couple from the show me state
Knockin' back a little meatloaf plate
Diner my shiny shiny love.
