Affluent Lake Placid beggar (right) dressed in London Fog trench coat, heavily cleated Bass Weejuns and snappy trousers, is non-plussed when ignored by most passersby; he knows some inevitably will drop big bucks in his tin cup. Lake Placid's "Affluent Beggar"
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LAKE PLACID, NEW YORK - Good Lord, there's a beggar!
It couldn't be; not here, in one of the nation's most affluent resorts. Lake Placid, New York. In the Adirondack Mountains.
But it certainly was true. There he was, a beggar with a tin cup. Surrounded by fast-moving joggers and athletic types in tights sipping latte from paper cups as they walked their bichon frises.
At first Dolores thought he was just hanging tightly to his cappucino. Soon we realized the awful truth,revealed when folks stuffed bills, mind you, in his cup.
His droll complacency at either being ignored or gifted showed how cool this guy really was. He had to be to pull off beggary on Lake Placid's main street, across from a $500 a night hotel.
Of course this is a droll place where you don't get a parking ticket, you get a friendly warning with a polite request fora donation. I am not lying about any of these things. I am a news reporter, and news reporters do not lie -- at least most of them.
"Welcome to Lake Placid. THIS IS NOT A TICKET. Our Traffic Control Officer has issued you a Parking Warning. Weare extending you an additional 30 courtesy minutes from the time noted below. After said time, you will be issued a parking citation. Please respect our parking regulations. All meters take quarters only. (My rental car license plate, the date, time, and officer's initials were listed in pencil) Kindly help us maintain this program by placing a contribution in this envelope, then mail it to our office or give it to a police officer. Lake Placid appreciates your business. Please come back again. Lake Placid Police Department."
We were impressed. We were convinced redneck comedian Ron White would not be "thrown into public" here no matter how drunk he was.
This Adirondack village, site of the 1932 and 1980 Winter Olympic Games, is indeed different and marvelous. You fly into Syracuse, see, and drive 200 miles straight up toward the moon on tortuous winding roads through thick deciduous forests.
By the way, Bay City basketball star Eric Devendorf has taken Syracuse by storm, as a freshman earning headlines and sportswriters' diminutive "Devo." The student paper is watching his every move and misinterpreting some. The name Devendorf is a common one in the nearby Mohawk Valley, so maybe he has returned to his ancestral home. Good for him; we wished him luck but didn't have time to catch a game.
Through the mountains the GPS system kept blinking "Antlers, Antlers, Antlers." Never even knew it could know that, but it did, confirmed by frequent "Watch for Deer Crossing" signs along the road. If a satellite can pick up deer in the woods, it's smarter than I ever imagined. Then again, it didn't specify the type of animal it was warning us against: could it be moose, elk, King Kong with a baseball bat?
Five hundred families with youngsters playing in a hockey tournament were in town. We had to sign a paper acknowledging that it might be noisy in the halls at night and giving us a really good deal on the room. It was noisy, but we got a better deal the second night when the place emptied out after the tournament.
A tony private prep school, Northwood, was playing its home match the night we visited the historic 1932 hockey arena. A sign noted it was the site of "Miracle on Ice," the 1980 victory of the Americans over the Russians 4-3. The recollection that the monumental win was a quarter century ago shocked me.
It is a very tony place, but laid back too, all in all. School kids practice lacrosse. Folks go late to church wearing ski jackets. Services start late as people drift in preoccupied, I suppose, with the good life. After all, they did make it to church.
Everything isn't in Lake Placid. Nearby Saranac Lake boasts Robert Louis Stevenson's cottage and museum. The famed author came from England in 1887 to live in Saranac Lake; he skated on nearby Moody Pond and jibed across the lake sporting a yachting cap.
Saranac Lake is home to a chef's school at Paul Smith's college; the school runs a hotel and the food and service is an experience in itself.
My geneaology quest was answered in finding my great, great, great, great grandfather Francis Rogers and his Revolutionary War roots in the Mohawk Valley. Answers to other mysteries will surely come.
We had seen all possible in a short trip: the Erie Canal so important to Michigan's development, sprawling Ft. Ticonderoga with windblown leaves skittering across the ground like so many soldiers in flight, wooden-slabbed Ft. William Henry, the John Brown Farm and Graveyard, the Essex County courthouse where abolitionists guarded Brown's body all night after his hanging in 1859, and on and on historically.
As we drove down the mountain from Lake Placid on a gorgeous fall day we thought: What could be better? Then we saw local folks on their porches, scanning the horizon for signs of snow, and we knew. Ski season could be better.
But we were tired and glad to be heading home. We hummed in unison: "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!"###
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