Memorial Day weekend in the country
May 31st, 2010 at 10:15 pm ET
Just back from a long country-house weekend in Dutchess County, about 90 minutes north of the city, with friends and family. Since I like reading these kinds of travelogues, I’ll subject you to mine, or at least an abbreviated version, complete with some photos of the high points, two of which were Pawling village, and the Stormville Flea Market. (I’ll cover our Sunday night movie, The Room, in another post.)
The village. We were staying just outside the village of Pawling, home of Norman Vincent Peale as well as a wartime cryptography school, more recently the home of McKinney & Doyle, the beloved bakery and highfalutin’ restaurant.
The earliest settlers came to Quaker Hill in the 1720s, and the area is still home to families of long standing, along with country-house professional people from the city and the odd plutocrat or two. Pawling village has the sheen of a place that has remained continuously prosperous, despite being a shade too far off the beaten track to attract tourist traffic in volume, and some new businesses have opened since last season. Here are a few photos to give you a sense of the village:
The Stormville Airport Flea Market. I can’t stomach Stormville — the biggest gathering of antique, junktique, junk, and funnel-cake vendors on a dusty plain I’ve ever experienced — more than about twice a year. But a couple times a year, it’s worth it. In my apartment in the city I have nifty midcentury side tables and a midcentury orange swivel desk chair that came from Stormville, and every time I go, I hope for another find.
I didn’t really score this year, although I did pick up this fascinating how-to crafts guide (and I assure you that the inside pages are just as creepy as the cover), sold to me by a very earnest woman:
The real winners were our comic-collector friends, who came along in search of comic books and were not disappointed:
Here are a few more shots I took:
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by Edward Rutherfurd
by Ben Macintyre
