As we move deeper into the digital age, those of us who still appreciate a hard copy of our favorite newspaper in the morning find ourselves increasingly at odds with much of the population. And, while proclaiming allegiance to the printed page may expose me as a Luddite right out of 1811 Nottingham, I’ll go even further and express my true love for those chronicles that represent the faded past. The older the better. For when you actually sit with a newspaper of yesterday and turn each physical page, you are, it seems, drawn into a more intimate understanding of who and what we once were.
Certainly, there are the sepia-toned newspapers of yesteryear that we most recognize, those with headlines that shout "Japanese Attack Pearl Harbor," or "Dewey Defeats Truman." (In my household they also reflect the rare - very rare - triumphs of the New York Mets.) But beyond the famous headlines, copies of old, local newspapers serve as a gateway into days known only by those who went before. Much like reading someone’s personal diary, local newspapers offer a daily account of the twists and turns of our hometown long before any of us traveled along its now paved streets. Even the early advertisements hold a fascinating mirror to our changing needs, wants and vanities.
Such was the case when I recently came across the words of Bruce Herrick. Over the years, Herrick, who Alf Evers once described as "Woodstock's hometown poet," wrote about his beloved Woodstock for the Kingston Argus, the Catskill Morning Star, the Woodstock Press and the Kingston Daily Freeman. In addition to his writing, he also maintained Herrick House, a boarding home along Tannery Brook begun by his father and, in later years, known as the Tannery Brook House.
Herrick seems to have reveled in stories that reflected Woodstock's earlier years. Much in the same way Will Rose offered accounts of growing up in Woodstock during the early days of the art colony in The Vanishing Village, Herrick could take readers across time and distance, offering a sense of what an earlier Woodstock was - and wasn't. The title for some of his articles, Fact & Fiction, seems to summarize his fascination for both the lore and reality of his hometown. Such is the case in one of his more enlightening articles, as Herrick offers his description of the tinker who gave Tinker Street its name.
While the naming of our town's most recognized street has been steeped in both myth and conjecture over the years, Herrick attributes its genesis to one John Brandow who operated a "small nondescript tinker shop... with no approach other than the street itself" along the town’s main road in the latter part of the 19th century. The shop (which was located on the current site of Apothecary) was announced to passerby's by a simple sign that, today, reads like a 21st century tweet gone haywire, "Eny 1 wantin ena thing fixt kin got it dun t' Brandows." Brandow, according to Herrick, "boasted" that he could fix most anything. And, it seems, so he could - from the windmill that once operated at the end of Old Forge Road to baby buggies. Even your "mother's stew kettle" found mending in his “cumbersome,” yet “effective hands.’
While Brandow's skills as a tinker were without dispute, it appears his character was something else. As Herrick described him, "Brandow was a necessary evil. People by no means liked his manner, but had to employ him." Brandow's physical appearance also merited notice by those who encountered him. "The tinker himself was a figure once seen, never to be forgotten," recalled Herrick. "He was a large man, dressed in whatever came handy. There were black whiskers too, of a sort. Like a remark made about a prominent politician some years ago, he had some whiskers, but they didn't look as if he liked 'em."
Despite appearance and his gruff and sharp manner, Brandow was in high demand, not only for his "tinkering skills," but also as a town chimney sweep and mender of roofs. In Herrick’s description of the tinker on the way to tackle yet another job, one can almost envision his physical form moving along the very same street to which his shop gave its name, “He was a weird combination of the pseudo mechanic and the medieval chimney sweep. With coattails flying, whiskers tilting in the breeze, fire pot in one hand ablaze and roaring and soldering iron in another, he was indeed a force ominous and formidable.”
Other “theories” exist as to the origins of the Tinker Street name, including one steeped in the very same lore Herrick admired. As attributed to Woodstock’s “teller of talltales,” Jim Twaddell, a traveling tinker passing through Woodstock one day encountered the springtime mud that was Woodstock’s main road. Slowly the horse, wagon and tinker began to sink. With cries for help unanswered, the tinker was lost beneath the very road we now travel. Twaddell would further claim that, “when conditions are right,” you can still hear the jingling of tin ware echoing from below. It’s a good story. Still, Herrick’s portrait of Brandow, the contrarian tinker of Tinker Street, adds a more authentic piece to the puzzle that is Woodstock's story. Equally important, it also points to one more example of the important role the individual has played as architect of our town’s foundation. And, to tell you the truth, I kind of like the old guy.
Richard Heppner
