I've seen salt bleach boots white and turn a fine cut of meat into a slice of cardboard. A kid asked me today, “Why you want to buy it up, Frank? Ain’t nothing grows there.” He’s right, there's nothing but dead grass and a few black trees. Looks hideous, but you’ve got to see what I remember. There was a time when there was more. There was a time there were people, happy people. They had children, and pets, and livestock. People wanted to be here. There were streams you could drink from, where the water didn't run black and thick like sludge. I know what this land used to look like, back when nobody knew nothing about the salt trapped in our rocks. I played in the woods, climbing the trees and chasing the deer. Trees covered the whole floor of the valley, but it took a lot of fire to evaporate those big lead salt pans.
The salt men would probably burn every tree in New York if the Eerie Canal hadn't been paved over. Some preferred the old-fashioned method of exposing the big salt ponds on warm days and letting the sun do her job. When it rained, the whole town would come running to push these big, rolling roofs to keep the extra water out. My mother used to throw a fit when I'd come home with my pants all ruined from sliding down those steeped roofs.
Back then, all the action was in Liverpool and Salina, whose name means 'salt.' Most people don't know this, but Liverpool stole her name. Back in England, for centuries and centuries, salt coming out of the port in Liverpool was known to be the best salt in the world. When the settlers started manufacturing salt up this way, they named the town 'Liverpool' to stamp it on their barrels and get a foot-hold in an industry with no desire for American salt. These days, that kind of false-advertising can get you sued.
I lived in Syracuse, which was just a little clutch of houses sucking the scraps from the salt towns like up until General Clinton got his ditch. Next thing we knew, our town was an important stop on the way from the West to the Capital, and down to New York City. It was still Liverpool salt, but it had to come through Syracuse. Next thing you know, everyone was using Onondaga salts., and our little town was a busy port. Big, burly monsters that cleared the forest were hired by farmers who eagerly bought up the land for grazing cattle and pork. One of my first jobs was loading salted pork on the barges.
Before the wells, our salt was collected from the brackish pools that seeped out of the mountains, but men grew tired with waiting on the salt to leach out of the rock, and a few intrepid souls went wanted to go right to the source, smashing their way down to the beds of rocksalt somewhere underground, where fresh brine could be pumped directly to the evaporating pans.
The drilling companies had been confident residents could look past the fouled water and the sick children and see the dollar signs. The debate lasted less than a year before the majority ruled the minority would be drilled. It didn't take long before the plan went afoul, either. The first couple holes dug salted the drinking water of more than a dozen families in the first week. Then came an explosion, with two people getting burned. All this in the first year. Some people started to wonder how healthy this would be. If you drink salt water, you eventually dry out. Most of us drank water from a hole we dug in our backyards.
I was there when they cracked the first vein. Machinery like I'd never seen broke up our roads to the hills above the brine pools. Those big long tubes looked like hollowed-out tree trunks getting pounded into the ground by a hundred thousand pound weight. That's what it seemed to a kid my size. We got up close as the weight came down again and again, the pole getting shorter and shorter, until there was this big 'crack' and a 'hiss,' and then the spray.
I might have imagined that cracking sound. That's called 'confabulation.' Anyway, I didn't make up the big fountain of brine shooting into the air. Let me tell you, it smells like the biggest, wettest pile a you-know-what you’ve ever going to come across in at least all of your life, if not more. At least a couple people vomited right away, but I managed to hold my guts until we were hit with the spray.
Nobody knew it was going to spray. Shoulda been obvious, looking back. That stinky water blasted out full of all kinds of eaters, chewers, grinders, and dissolvers all over us. This salt burned like nothing I'd ever felt before, and people were racing around, screaming and flailing their arms to get the solution off. Simple physics, really, just like shooting a spray hose in a wine glass.
I wanted to be right up front when they popped it. A couple of the miners had to hold me back at the line where non-company persons were not allowed to stand. I had no clue it would spash. First the smell hits us, then the water hits us. Only lasted a second until the drillers capped it all in, they didn’t want that salt soaking back into the ground. Only a second, but I puked and puked and puked.
There were jobs for everyone, money for everyone, and we could see nothing but a bright future through the black smoke that covered our skies. There was a 2 year stretch when I didn't see the sun once. The plants and animals started dying off right away. Deer hunting became a joke. The last few predators left alive started attacking humans. When was the last time you heard of a bear attack? I spent a lot of time in the woods, and I came close a few times. Swimming was no fun, because if the water wasn't full of salt, it was full of the chemicals, ash, and panscale used for processing.
All that seemed small compared to the sinkholes. You could be walking along, and the ground could fall out right under you. Sure, you laugh, but people got killed, especially when their house was sitting on top of the hole. I was walking down Salina St. one afternoon and watched an entire store fall into a hole that had not been there a few minutes before. The salt miners insisted they were not to blame.
It turns out most of us weren’t prepared at all. Houses stopped selling. Business stopped receiving deliveries. People didn’t have money to buy the bottled drinks that were necessary because everything else was spoiled. We weren’t ready in the least, and my parents had no money to move. I drank a lot of that salt water. When you’re a kid, you don’t know. Water is water, but I'm sure it turned my guts into a wine skin.
So why would I buy up all this land? By now, I must have at least half the acerage once owned by the drilling companies. Without the canal it's not worth the money to move salt. Nobody wants to live here. Most companies are willing to unload for pennies. My first ten acres came from buying a couple lunches.
That's still my favorite spot, up on a hill overlooking a valley that used to have gnarled apple trees and a twisted stream running on a bed of thick, black mud. It was a cow pasture and hay field, and I spent a lot of time there when I was a kid. I sometimes go there still, though my doctors advised me not to breath much of the air blowing up out of the valley. It still smells like coal fires.
I still remember what most of the valley looked like, with trees and tall grass and houses that were not caving in at the center. When I was little, I walked a lot, explored, poked my nose in where no nose had been poked for many years. When I was older, I was able to explore further. I loved to look at this land. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.
The land comes back. It takes time, but the soil filters out. I once visited a town that was burning underground. The roads split open, and smoke belched from a coal mine that had burned for thirty years. On the tops of the hills, I saw nothing for miles! No one could live above a burning mine. Little plants and grass took root though, their roots too high to be scorched. Bigger plants were creeping at the corners. As they died and decayed and became new dirt, the distance between surface and blaze grew wider. Eventually, it would be cool enough for trees. Even in the face of a fire that raged for decades, the land was coming back, and it would be beautiful again.
I’m thinking about my grandchildren, and what I’ll leave for them. Water moves fast. Within fifty years, the poisons will have washed away, and the trees will be growing thick once more. One day, this land will be something to look at, maybe as good as when I was a kid. I doubt I’ll see it, but that’s my sin to bear. I stood by and let it happen, I have no right to complain. I counted my money and kept my mouth shut. It’s taken time, but I’ve cleaned that money at last. No one can touch this land without my say. Nobody wants to, but when the land blooms once more, it will be my grandchildren holding the deed.
The salt men would probably burn every tree in New York if the Eerie Canal hadn't been paved over. Some preferred the old-fashioned method of exposing the big salt ponds on warm days and letting the sun do her job. When it rained, the whole town would come running to push these big, rolling roofs to keep the extra water out. My mother used to throw a fit when I'd come home with my pants all ruined from sliding down those steeped roofs.
Back then, all the action was in Liverpool and Salina, whose name means 'salt.' Most people don't know this, but Liverpool stole her name. Back in England, for centuries and centuries, salt coming out of the port in Liverpool was known to be the best salt in the world. When the settlers started manufacturing salt up this way, they named the town 'Liverpool' to stamp it on their barrels and get a foot-hold in an industry with no desire for American salt. These days, that kind of false-advertising can get you sued.
I lived in Syracuse, which was just a little clutch of houses sucking the scraps from the salt towns like up until General Clinton got his ditch. Next thing we knew, our town was an important stop on the way from the West to the Capital, and down to New York City. It was still Liverpool salt, but it had to come through Syracuse. Next thing you know, everyone was using Onondaga salts., and our little town was a busy port. Big, burly monsters that cleared the forest were hired by farmers who eagerly bought up the land for grazing cattle and pork. One of my first jobs was loading salted pork on the barges.
Before the wells, our salt was collected from the brackish pools that seeped out of the mountains, but men grew tired with waiting on the salt to leach out of the rock, and a few intrepid souls went wanted to go right to the source, smashing their way down to the beds of rocksalt somewhere underground, where fresh brine could be pumped directly to the evaporating pans.
The drilling companies had been confident residents could look past the fouled water and the sick children and see the dollar signs. The debate lasted less than a year before the majority ruled the minority would be drilled. It didn't take long before the plan went afoul, either. The first couple holes dug salted the drinking water of more than a dozen families in the first week. Then came an explosion, with two people getting burned. All this in the first year. Some people started to wonder how healthy this would be. If you drink salt water, you eventually dry out. Most of us drank water from a hole we dug in our backyards.
I was there when they cracked the first vein. Machinery like I'd never seen broke up our roads to the hills above the brine pools. Those big long tubes looked like hollowed-out tree trunks getting pounded into the ground by a hundred thousand pound weight. That's what it seemed to a kid my size. We got up close as the weight came down again and again, the pole getting shorter and shorter, until there was this big 'crack' and a 'hiss,' and then the spray.
I might have imagined that cracking sound. That's called 'confabulation.' Anyway, I didn't make up the big fountain of brine shooting into the air. Let me tell you, it smells like the biggest, wettest pile a you-know-what you’ve ever going to come across in at least all of your life, if not more. At least a couple people vomited right away, but I managed to hold my guts until we were hit with the spray.
Nobody knew it was going to spray. Shoulda been obvious, looking back. That stinky water blasted out full of all kinds of eaters, chewers, grinders, and dissolvers all over us. This salt burned like nothing I'd ever felt before, and people were racing around, screaming and flailing their arms to get the solution off. Simple physics, really, just like shooting a spray hose in a wine glass.
I wanted to be right up front when they popped it. A couple of the miners had to hold me back at the line where non-company persons were not allowed to stand. I had no clue it would spash. First the smell hits us, then the water hits us. Only lasted a second until the drillers capped it all in, they didn’t want that salt soaking back into the ground. Only a second, but I puked and puked and puked.
There were jobs for everyone, money for everyone, and we could see nothing but a bright future through the black smoke that covered our skies. There was a 2 year stretch when I didn't see the sun once. The plants and animals started dying off right away. Deer hunting became a joke. The last few predators left alive started attacking humans. When was the last time you heard of a bear attack? I spent a lot of time in the woods, and I came close a few times. Swimming was no fun, because if the water wasn't full of salt, it was full of the chemicals, ash, and panscale used for processing.
All that seemed small compared to the sinkholes. You could be walking along, and the ground could fall out right under you. Sure, you laugh, but people got killed, especially when their house was sitting on top of the hole. I was walking down Salina St. one afternoon and watched an entire store fall into a hole that had not been there a few minutes before. The salt miners insisted they were not to blame.
It turns out most of us weren’t prepared at all. Houses stopped selling. Business stopped receiving deliveries. People didn’t have money to buy the bottled drinks that were necessary because everything else was spoiled. We weren’t ready in the least, and my parents had no money to move. I drank a lot of that salt water. When you’re a kid, you don’t know. Water is water, but I'm sure it turned my guts into a wine skin.
So why would I buy up all this land? By now, I must have at least half the acerage once owned by the drilling companies. Without the canal it's not worth the money to move salt. Nobody wants to live here. Most companies are willing to unload for pennies. My first ten acres came from buying a couple lunches.
That's still my favorite spot, up on a hill overlooking a valley that used to have gnarled apple trees and a twisted stream running on a bed of thick, black mud. It was a cow pasture and hay field, and I spent a lot of time there when I was a kid. I sometimes go there still, though my doctors advised me not to breath much of the air blowing up out of the valley. It still smells like coal fires.
I still remember what most of the valley looked like, with trees and tall grass and houses that were not caving in at the center. When I was little, I walked a lot, explored, poked my nose in where no nose had been poked for many years. When I was older, I was able to explore further. I loved to look at this land. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen.
The land comes back. It takes time, but the soil filters out. I once visited a town that was burning underground. The roads split open, and smoke belched from a coal mine that had burned for thirty years. On the tops of the hills, I saw nothing for miles! No one could live above a burning mine. Little plants and grass took root though, their roots too high to be scorched. Bigger plants were creeping at the corners. As they died and decayed and became new dirt, the distance between surface and blaze grew wider. Eventually, it would be cool enough for trees. Even in the face of a fire that raged for decades, the land was coming back, and it would be beautiful again.
I’m thinking about my grandchildren, and what I’ll leave for them. Water moves fast. Within fifty years, the poisons will have washed away, and the trees will be growing thick once more. One day, this land will be something to look at, maybe as good as when I was a kid. I doubt I’ll see it, but that’s my sin to bear. I stood by and let it happen, I have no right to complain. I counted my money and kept my mouth shut. It’s taken time, but I’ve cleaned that money at last. No one can touch this land without my say. Nobody wants to, but when the land blooms once more, it will be my grandchildren holding the deed.
really nice piece, paul.
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