The Pugilistic Preacher

by Izzie Hayes

          Before my dad was Rev. Charles A. Dayton, or even a DAD, his dreams were fairly simple. Like most teenagers, he wanted to complete his schooling, find a beautiful, loving companion, support his church, hunt and fish, and enjoy whatever came along. Abruptly, at sixteen, he found it necessary to drop out of  high school and assist his family with unexpected medical expenses. His father had been seriously injured at work in the mill in their isolated Upstate New York town. Situated on the Hudson River, the mill, the International Paper Company, had the river as an easily accessible power source for their industry and had become the chief employer for the men living in the nearby Adirondack Mountains area.

          As the oldest son of five children, Charles began his own brief career as a mill worker. Already a rugged young man, over six feet tall, handsome, affable, and ready for action, he quickly became known for his quick wit and “brute strength,” which he was happy to share whenever needed. Every lunchtime, after setting aside their metal lunch buckets, the men gathered to let off a little steam before returning to their presses.

Charles Dayton (left) c.1920

          Modesty dominated the Dayton genes in that generation, and bragging was a definite no-no, so I am not certain how he acquired his skill as a boxer in that circle of mill workers, nor how proficient his opponents were. It’s human nature to cheer on the newcomer, and I think those seasoned mill workers probably looked forward to lunch hour and a chance to see “the kid” pummel the current top contender! I did hear that he at one time unseated the highly touted “top man to beat.”  I doubt there was a ring—with ropes, and I think he only fought bare-fisted, without the protection of gloves. I can visualize a pan and a hammer for the bell and a “dead serious expression” on the faces of the timer and the “crowd,” as they cheered on the newcomer.

          In my childhood memories, there were times when the threat of being pummeled by our resident “Jack Dempsey,” was my biggest nightmare. He knew the moves, and he was 6 feet, 4 inches tall. His were playful jabs, but I never developed any skill in “parrying” to his playful thrusts.

          When a higher calling drew him out of the ring, he became involved in the educational training for the ministry, and abandoned the draw of boxing.

My theory is that you can “take the man out of boxing, but you can never take the boxing out of the man.” My sister Doris and I, and often my mother too, were reduced to assuming the fetal position whenever Dad took the stance and said ,“Put up your dukes!”

          Years later, televisions screamed from the neighbors’ houses, as the excitement of the Monday Night Fights blasted through the open windows.

I sensed my dad leaned into the sound. It may be a bit sad to realize that his promise as a boxer never materialized into a reality. Boxing is “a sport,” of course, but  in my adolescent mind, knowing how useless I was as a competitor, and that all of his strength and agility and thoughtful approach to every challenge seemed wasted to never have had a chance to be proved!!!!

I always surmised ,i.e., a  thought without any strong evidence on which to base it at all, that Dad would have loved to be pushed into a situation in which the only honorable solution would be for him to step up and PASTE THE VILLAIN ONE!  For the Gipper, maybe!!!

         

This conclusion was a part of my psyche so much so that when I was working a swing shift in a small hosiery mill in Cohoes, N.Y., for some much needed college money in the mid 1940’s, one of the regular crew became  determined  to plant a kiss on the college kid. I thought he was slimy, and I was equally determined that he wouldn’t. My mistake was in telling my dad that he had!! I think Dad went berserk. He was insistent that he be at the gate when my next shift was over. “Just point him out to me!” I don’t know if it was my mother’s tears or my suggestion that the headlines would surely be amazing the next day: “Local Minister Mauls Mill Worker.”  Something prevailed;  a crisis was averted. And poor old dad never got to plaster a sleaze-ball! It’s my story—— “HE COULD HAVE!!”

Advertisement

Challenge On The Hudson River

Today’s post find’s two characters, Chip and Chop Dayton, daring each other to cross the Hudson River by walking across pulp wood blocks which filled the river. I’ll leave it up to you to decide the outcome. These brothers were the Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn of the Hudson River. If I had to guess, about 90% of you chose the correct outcome of the story. It’s always fun to listen to Chip, the master story teller, recount the event.

Profile of Rev. Charles A Dayton’s 50 year Career

Cammie Luckey is in the process of digitizing her father’s hoard of documents which he collected over the course of his 50 years of active ministry. I am going to send them out as posts so they will be captured as a long term repository on my blog.

This first entry is a tribute from a long-time freind, Ray Smith. Click on the link below.

ray-smith-tribute-to-charles-daytonDownload

The Cigar Cutter

Rev. Charles Alexander Dayton, my Uncle Chop, was a man who was bigger than life.  He was the Paul Bunyan of Upstate New York country pastors.  But in his younger days he was the Huckleberry Finn of the upper-Hudson River. Todays story is a tale of a childhood prank gone bad as told by his younger brother Chip [Chester]….the master story teller.

There’s No Place Like Home

There’s No Place Like Home

By Dave Hayes (Grandson of Charles Dayton)

         Living the life of a nomadic military family had its ups and downs.  Sure, we got to see so much of the country and even sampled some life overseas.  But when it came to the holidays, we were more aware than ever of being far from the “North Country” and the family we loved.  The other service families were in the same position, so we became a sort of “surrogate family” for each other.  Still, we missed seeing grandparents, aunts & uncles and lots of cousins!

          Enter Grampa Charles Dayton!  No matter where we lived, Grampa, Gramma Jo and Cammie always came to visit us.  I remember their visit to Killeen, Texas, accompanied by Rev. Floyd Tyler & his wife, Helen, where they continued south to Mexico and returned with a large bull whip which they enthusiastically demonstrated in the front yard.  It’s a wonder no one was hurt!  They also visited us in California.  We ushered them to the redwoods, the seashore, the town wharf with its stores and restaurants, one of the string of California missions, and many other local sites of interest.  And they even came to Italy, where Grampa helped Dad to lead the Easter Sunrise Service on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.  We made a quick trip to Rome to see the Sistine Chapel and several other monuments and sites, and they even got a bonus trip up through Germany to see the windmills and tulips in Holland and the lovely gardens in Belgium.  Now that was a whirlwind trip!

          For us, these visits were a crucial tie to the family we had left behind!  But it was also a reminder that we were loved and cherished and certainly not forgotten.  My father’s devotion and patriotic service to his country as well as our family’s sacrifice of a life surrounded by our extended loved ones were honored with each remote stay.  Cammie became more than our aunt…she became a friend and a remembrance that, even as kids, Keith and I had roots deep in the hills of upstate New York.  Grampa & Gramma Jo brought news from the home front and dived into the local culture and customs wherever we were, fully enjoying themselves in a distant or foreign locale.  It tied us together more strongly, and that lasting bond is still unbroken.  What a gift it was to greet my grandparents at my house and to know that they were bringing the love and caring of a family we loved so much, there in the Adirondacks! 

          Thanks, Grampa & Gramma Jo & Cammie for those treasured times!

West Chazy Campground-Observance Present, Memories Past

DFH Volume 1 Issue 24

Continued from Vol 1 Issue 23

By Camilla [Dayton] Luckey, daughter Of Rev. Charles and Josephine Dayton.

Gerald Ralph was there, old guard and “extended family”— his mother was sister of Charles Dayton’s first wife, Gladys MacDonald, making him cousin of Izzie Hayes. Gerald was putting vinyl siding over the wood siding my Dad and I long ago salvaged from Chazy’s Miner (Minor?) Institute as it was being razed, early ‘60’s (same era as the cement block frenzy began; same era as my dad built that whole row of four or five cottages). The oak flooring throughout the Ralph cottage is still tight and gorgeous. I remember helping lay it. Gerald has changed the windows to vinyl and added an interior partition. He even has installed a hood above the stove!

Gerald stopped for a break, and we enjoyed a leisurely chat about various Daytons and about campground changes. Gerald told me about the Baptist youth group, I believe numbering a few hundred, that rents the grounds for a week or so annually. The kids are quite the “Jesus Group,” he says.  Sounds to me they are what everyone wished my generation to be.  Gerald and I also talked about Gerald’s fabulous collection of vintage woodworking hand tools and his and Carol’s recent move from Corinth to a Queensbury condo. They spend a lot of the summer season on the campground. “It’s home,” he said. They’ve had the cottage for more than forty years, first owners.

Carol was antiquing in Canada with Beth and Amy until Sunday morning, when I caught her in her bathrobe on my last lope, my third that morning, ‘round  the grounds, looking and listening for sounds of people stirring so I could say good-bye before my own departure. There were lights and sounds (these cottages aren’t soundproof) at the Ralph’s. Carol had been awake for hours, she said, but just relaxing in bed, where Gerald serves her coffee every morning!. My intended five-minute chat became a two-hour heart-to-heart; I was her flower-girl in the ‘fifties.

Saturday afternoon I slipped into the tabernacle, closed but not locked. I sat for a while on the platform steps. They seemed in the exact same place, maybe even the same steps, as in the former tabernacle, the one that collapsed under a heavy snow and was rebuilt as The Charkas Dayton Tabernacle in 1970(?). Lots to remember, lots to regret, lots to wish to re-live. Then I worked out a little minor-key melody on the old upright (piano), right next to a timepiece organ (surely not the Stevenson original?!), and finally I dared stand at the pulpit to pray and pretend. Lots of noise in those rafters and that metal roof when the place is empty, and the trees fan the wind. Of course it wasn’t really empty!

Chow Line at Old Dining Hall in early 950’s

The dining hall was closed except for the men on retreat, so I bought a terrific country breakfast at Guma’s, a sort-of-new (new to me) local restaurant on the edge of town and a fave for campers.  Best raspberry jam I’ve ever tasted. I assumed Guma’s was empty, as I walked in at seven a.m. Mine was the only car in the front parking lot and I didn’t know there was another lot at the side. So I was extremely startled when I heard “Cammie! Come join us!” Whoa! Where’s the ghost? And who would immediately recognize me after decades of absence?  But the voice was Phil Hunter’s. He and the campmeeting association president were seated, nearly hidden, in the corner booth. After introductions we three embarked on a conversation so engaging my eggs were cold before I touched them Truthfully, I don’t think we really did finish the conversation, just put it on pause. That’s what I hope.  I can hardly wait for more. The subject was holiness camps and the Holy Spirit. No chitchat breakfast, that one!  I liked both guys and I am pretty sure the new president liked me. He certainly seemed to enjoy our discussion. He is relatively new to West Chazy camp life. His name is Paul Robar.

As you exit the campground, if you turn your head left  (as a driver always should, before turning right) you can see, looming large, a silver silo with … ears?…propellers?…antennae for receiving  messages direct from heaven? No!….there’s a newly built windfarm on yon hill, in the direction of Altona!!

Other than that, the whole area seems as economically depressed as ever, except for the deservedly popular Guma. But the fields and hedgerows are heaven if you love native plants.

Old, Original Tabernacle

The cow creek (remember the swimming hole in the back pasture?) has shifted course a little and has filled in quite a bit. I can’t imagine Bud Hewitt, nephew of Reginald and childless Jo, taking a dive, as I once saw him do. I think Dad dared him. They use the creek for baptisms now. Looks to me they’d have to prostrate themselves to get their bellies under! And they mow to the creek! The place is packed with lovely buzzing creatures, a few flowers and ferns that look to be on steroids, so rich and free.

Shirley Pauling (in his 90s and, as mentioned above, owner of Dad’s fireplace cottage near the tabernacle, between the Seaman and Stevenson cottages) is the association volunteer who mows the “back forty,” the former cow pasture that stretches to the creek. He has an eye—beautiful job, nice balance between mown grass and waving wildness. We must remember, of course, it was the time of the annual men’s retreat, so the grounds were what is probably unusually spiffy. (Meaning: freshly mown.) I hope the Paulings eventually offer Dad’s cottage to me. I have no idea how much they paid or to whom. Or why they chose my dad’s! I told Shirley Pauling,  perhaps not wisely, of the night the priest at St. Joseph’s (across street) noticed a car convoy slowly rolling, lights out, down the campground road beside the dining hall. The priest, good neighbor, called the cops. But by the cops’ arrival the crowd of kids already in the attic of my dad’s cottage was heavy enough that some kids downstairs heard a rafter crack, I learned later. It could have been a catastrophe.

Anyway, before the dissolution of Wesleyan ownership several years ago, long before the association’s re-organization,  I, not being Wesleyan, was not allowed to own, either through inheritance or purchase. How things have changed! This summer I recognized approximately half the cottage names. I wonder, how many are still Wesleyan? The president of the board is not Wesleyan. This year’s men’s retreat speaker was. And the Charles Dayton Tabernacle no longer has pews but cushy, stackable chairs!!

“Everybody” was kind enough to welcome me, a non-member never mind a non-man, at the Saturday night end-of-retreat campfire. Imagine, a crackling, ember-tossing open fire right under those trees!  And my dad was the pyromaniac?! It was a beautiful stacked-stone pit with a Scout-worthy blaze, located midway between the Perry Motel and the kiddie tabernacle area. That area is now furnished with various genuine playground equipment, gone the stony sandpile and its few rusty toy trucks.

Many Dayton readers won’t see much that is immediately personal or relevant in this West Chazy report. Never mind; I didn’t write it for you but for your grandchildren and my own.

West Chazy Campground–Observance Present, Memories Past

DFH Volume 1 Issue 23

By Camilla [Dayton] Luckey, daughter of Rev. Charles and Josephine Dayton.

AUGUST 2019:   It was my high school 50th— Beekmantown Central, the sprawling, district school a few miles south of West Chazy on Rte. 22. Yes, class of ‘69, summer of love, Age of Aquarius, Woodstock. My class! Maybe I’ll get to my part of that story later.  

Joyce Timpson Schauer, lifelong friend from Corinth, had mentioned that Norma, her sister, spends lots of time in West Chazy these days. Norma stays on the campground, I believe with Lori, John’s widow, who has Uncle Paul’s cottage. It occurred to me that if I were to attend my Class of ‘69 reunion I might as well pay the campmeeting association instead of LaQuinta, if, that is, the new campmeeting association would allow. They would.  Phil Hunter, of that long-faithful Glens Falls family, was my contact, suggested by Norma. Phil seems to be the official groundskeeper, although association members share never-ending tasks such as leaf-raking and roof repair; there are prices to be paid for that glorious old-tree canopy.

I stayed at the Perry “Motel,” built in the sixties-seventies cement-block frenzy that followed whatever year it was that my dad’s autumnal leaf burning ritual—a solo task that year—turned disastrous. One of his several simultaneously burning piles of leaves (he was always a person to multi-task) turned to embers the dorm and two or three cottages that directly faced the tabernacle. In those days, towering shade trees, heavy with leaves, graced the now bare, blistering lawn today used more for parking rather than for picnics.  The century-old wooden dorm and cottages were tinder boxes. Dry leaves had collected underneath and lay there, waiting.  I remember the afternoon but not the year. I know from other afternoons the crafty, peek-a-boo glint of those sparkly orange snakes as they try to curl their way onto the route and destination of their own choice That day they succeeded, and the campgrounds were forever changed.

The Perry “Motel” was built for tabernacle access, like the wooden dorm it replaced, but the Perry is sited at one side, not the front, of the main tabernacle (Charles Dayton Tabernacle) and is equally close to the Missionary Tabernacle, sometimes called the Ladies’ Tabernacle.

The Perry is located approximately where stood what I believe was the Hewitt cottage, the one with the friendly screened-in front porch, the one that should perhaps be intentionally typo’d ‘perch.’ The Hewitt cottage was heart and center of the campground, a watchman’s perfect tower or a gossip’s paradise. Every flow of pedestrian or vehicular traffic was visible and, it seemed, every passerby’s conversation or crunch of gravel was clearly audible. Jo Hewitt’s porch rocker was probably closer to the tabernacle pulpit than was the back row of tabernacle pews, and Jo was anything but a gossip. She was a person of fewer-than-few words and a perfect person to overhear material that needed to be lifted in prayer. She, widow of Rev. Reginald Hewitt, conference president who preceded my father, was a watchman who had suffered much. Reginald had died in 1961(?) in a flaming car crash only a few minutes from West Chazy camp, his destination. My own last memory of the quiet Mrs. Hewitt—remarkable to a child (and to me even as a young adult) for her veined apple-red cheeks and cute little apple-shaped body bestowed dignity by a permanently flawless French chignon and super thick rimless spectacles—was my mother greeting Mrs. Hewitt the summer after Mrs. Hewitt had just endured a winter of chemotherapy. Mrs. Hewitt nodded, not speaking aloud, her cheeks still rosy with red spider veins set now upon a palette of pea greens. Her chignon, maybe a bit thinner, was unchanged. My mother held her horror till we’d passed from earshot. My mother didn’t know, of course, that only a few summers later she herself would have her own pea green chemo pallor.

The Perry, as of 2019, is twenty bucks a night.  It’s a little rough but the water’s hot, the sheets clean, very few spiders (nothing worse!), and there were two bottles of water as well as a souvenir frig magnet in my welcome packet. And air conditioning!  Alas, to have AC, a window unit, meant the sole window was sealed, at least it could not be opened (!), and thus I could not enjoy the melodious sweet summer breezes which I believe are the campground’s hallmark natural beauty, a glory of the leafy trees.

Those fabulous trees are losing the battle to practicality  “Fire and ice” prudent board members have forever intoned, understandably. That’s a lot of leaves to rake. Fires are a proven danger.  Just read the above paragraphs! And who will pay for the roof when age or ice brings down a limb from one of these high and mighty beauties? and the roof moss!! I note that several cottages have been given shiny metal roofs, including my dad’s cottage that Shirley Pauling now owns. Cottages that have been let go, and there are several, belong on movie sets, romantically covered and drooping from pretty, green decay. Nevertheless, if you, dear reader, are looking at these lines  “in future years” and the pragmatists have won and the entire campground is scalped to a silent but easily mown-and-raked grass green, not moss green, with no standing timber.  Be aware that there was another time, a time when Mother Nature (and the Atwood family, local farmers) gifted West Chazy with a sanctuary much bigger than the cement-block tabernacle interior and naked front yard. There was a place where the psalmist would have felt at home, where Nature’s praises of her Creator were in glorious concert. There are just enough trees and just enough space between them to make beautiful worship music, as well as problems.

I was given, besides my Perry key, which I never used, and two water bottles and a frig magnet and registration form, a standardized and very general “holiness” statement requiring my signature. It was so general it presented no problems. Anyway, who doesn’t want holiness?  It’s just the type of lifestyle that puts ten-year-old girls into garters that I find problematic!

 Anyway, the entire experience felt very strange and very precious on counts too numerous to give in detail. One I will mention: the continuity of some of the population.

(to be continued next month—November 2019, Vol 1 Issue 24)

Protected: There’s No Place Like Home

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Remembering Corinth, Part 9-Back Home In Corinth

DFH Volume 1 Issue 18

Remembering Corinth, by Dave Hayes, is a ten-part series about Dave’s remembrances of Corinth in the late ‘50s.  Dave, a retired elementary teacher and guidance counselor (36 years), and part time adjunct professor in the Counseling Dept. at nearby West Chester Univ. (24 years-8 after his “first” retirement) lives in Pottstown, PA.  He and his wife, Kathleen, had four children, Heather, Jeremy, Emily (d.2008) and Benjamin.  He descends from Wilber Sr. as follows: Wilber Sr., Rev. Charles “Chop” Dayton, Isabelle “Izzie” [Dayton] Hayes, David Hayes.

Part 9 – Back Home to Corinth

When Grampa passed away in 1992, I wrote a poem to commemorate his life and my return to Corinth after so many years.  I was no longer a young, starry-eyed 4^th & 5^th grader but a 43-year-old husband, father and teacher/counselor.  My arrival in Corinth took me quickly back to that year in my childhood spent there.  And as we gathered to honor and remember my grandfather, Charles Dayton, I also reflected on the impact that he and Corinth had on my life.  I penned my thoughts into a poem that I hadn’t read for years…until just now.  The same memories are still very much alive, I see, and I have repeated most of them in my writing here.  We moved from Corinth in late 1959 to California for 3-1/2 years, onto Italy for 3 more years, and then to Springfield, Mass. for another year (while Dad was in Vietnam and we lived near Uncle John & Aunt Dorie and the kids).  I have lived far and near but if someone asks me where my “home” was, I always say “northern New York, where my parents are from.”  Even though Dad was born and raised in Hague and Mom born in Corinth and lived in many places around the Champlain District, I would suspect that the village of Corinth would still feel like home to me.  That was a profoundly meaningful year in my life and I’m glad that I got to share it with my loving family.  Thanks, Corinth, for such amazing and meaningful memories you shared with this young boy.

Editor’s Note—Next week is the final part of this ten-part series.  Part 10 features a poem which Dave wrote upon the passing of his grandfather, Reverend Charles Alexander Dayton. The poem is a profound, eloquent and reverent tribute, and I will not trivialize nor diminish the impact of it by adding any other article or commercial next week.  We will resume the Dayton stories on July 7.  The only thing I have added are two Holy Bible scripture verses which I hope will complement the text and amplify the relevance of the poem to Corinth and our heavenly home.  The poem will surely soften your spirit and touch a special place in your heart.  Since Dave sent it to me for this newsletter, I have read it several times and it gets better every time I read it.  It will be a joy for you to read it next week. 

Dave, on behalf of the subscribers of this newsletter, we offer you a huge thank you for the masterful way you gave us a glimpse of your year spent in Corinth.  It makes me long for my home there too.  We all hope you can write for us again soon.

Remembering Corinth, Part 8-After Church

Remembering Corinth, by Dave Hayes, is a ten-part series about Dave’s remembrances of Corinth in the late ‘50s.  Dave, a retired elementary teacher and guidance counselor (36 years), and part time adjunct professor in the Counseling Dept. at nearby West Chester Univ. (24 years-8 after his “first” retirement) lives in Pottstown, PA.  He and his wife, Kathleen, had four children, Heather, Jeremy, Emily (d.2008) and Benjamin.  He descends from Wilber Sr. as follows: Wilber Sr., Rev. Charles “Chop” Dayton, Isabelle “Izzie” [Dayton] Hayes, David Hayes.

Part 8 – After Church

It wasn’t just “in” church where there are strong memories.  I have wonderful recollections of times spent in the parsonage with Grampa, Gramma Jo and Cammie.  We would run up and down those stairs and listen to the grownups in the kitchen through the grate in the bathroom upstairs.  We would play in the bedrooms and sometimes have sleepovers, too.  I loved to spin around in my grandfather’s chair in his study just inside the front door.  It somehow felt like a “holy place.”  After church, there were often snacks and a time of family fellowship.  That was after we got back from helping Grampa take home some of the folks from church.  Now THAT was an adventure.  We would drop them off at their homes and then Grampa would begin to coast down the hill in neutral to see how far we could go without accelerating.  We kids would laugh and encourage the car and even get out to push the extra few feet to see how far we could go.  When not coasting, we would be singing a rousing rendition of a hymn or chorus or listening as Grampa told us some outlandish story.  It was a magical time and I never wanted it to end!  Even after all these years, those after-service trips remain a very special memory.  [What got me thinking about those late Sunday evening trips was the picture in the latest Dayton Family Newsletter…the one with the map of Corinth and the corner by the Baptist Church.  Grampa was in a hurry one time (surprise!) and he took that corner on two wheels!  That moment is indelibly etched into my memory as is that particular corner.]