Remembering the good times together
Autumn in Central New York is a time of exceptional weather, with cool evenings and varying daytime temperatures. Sometimes you think July has returned and a few days later you can be convinced that snow is just around the corner. The weather this early autumn has been good, but it has been a bummer as far as the well-being of my old-time pals.
Mayo Snyder told his wife Betsey that he was going to watch Monday Night Football and stroll on his treadmill. In the process of getting organized, Mayo had a spell of some sort and fell to the floor dead. Betsey called 911 and begin chest compressions immediately, but he was gone when he hit the floor and her efforts yielded no positive results. The Cooperstown ambulance crew was in the house in eleven minutes and continued compressions with oxygen. They transported him to the hospital, but he never showed a spark of life.
Mayo’s family lived on State Street in Skaneateles and Mayo went to high school here. He also lived in lots of other communities, as his family moved around during his youth. I never really got to know him then, as I was an in and out resident myself.
In the summer of 1955, I was teaching sailing at the Dark Harbor Yacht Club on the island of Ilesboro, Maine. I had a little house on the club grounds at the end of the long floating dock. It had a bed, chair, sink, and facilities, plus a few square feet of floor space. I was as happy as a quahog clam in the mud. There was no kitchen, but the cook took good care of my victuals.
Things slowed down in early August because many members departed at the end of July. One day I was called to the kitchen to take a call. This was not unusual, as I often got notice of where the social activity was forming up for that evening.
The voice on the end of the line said he was Mayo Snyder and he had missed the last ferry. Could I come over to Lincolnville and pick him up? It was a short trip and I had a good boat for my program. I soon had Mayo back at my house and the cook fixed him a few leftovers. He was an excellent conversationalist, a fine sailor, and a good guy to have around. He was four years older than I and well into his parade of graduate schools. He just fit on my floor.
He was soon crewing on some of the bigger sailboats during the weekend and Wednesday morning races. He talked my boss into letting me have a few days off during the middle of the week so that he could take me up to Mount Katahdin, the highest point in Maine.
In the course of getting to the mountain, we stopped our first morning on the road at the football locker room on the University of Maine campus for a cleanup. Mayo had found that vagabonds could find a good spot in any college sports locker room in August.
We stopped at The Old Town Canoe factory and Mayo asked if they thought fiberglass would be a good material for building canoes. The chief engineer said wood would never be replaced and the plastic canoe would never be accepted in the marketplace. We all know how that worked out. You can still find wooden canoes, but they are very expensive and only sought out by wooden canoe aficionados.
It was a long trip up to that mountain and we arrived at the end of the day. We managed to sleep in Mayo’s Beach Wagon, then got up and rounded up some food for breakfast and lunch on the climb. We made it to the top by 1 pm and would have liked to have hiked down the west trail. However, the car was on the east side of the mountain. We messed around for another day, but I can’t remember where we stopped or who we talked with, etc. Mayo was very curious and very personable and had a broad understanding of lots of things. We got back to Ilesboro and he continued to crew on the larger sailboats in the weekend and midweek races.
One evening we rounded up a couple of girls who wanted to go over to Camden to see if we could find a party, as they had heard you just had to ask around at the docks and you could get a ride to a “do”. Sure enough, we found gals that took us to a party. At about 10:30 or so, I thought we should be on our way, as it was a rather dark night
I had a good lighted dory compass that I could use and a good idea of the headings to get back to Ilesboro. However, it was darker than I had imagined, and the islands that had definition in the daylight were just shadows as we eased along. I was quite concerned and not 100% sure we would find our way until daylight. I figured if we were lost and could not find a compass heading that would get us to something we recognized, we could find a numbered buoy we could identify on our chart and we would be able to progress point-to-point by the headings on the chart until we got into our own neighborhood.
Needless to say, I did not worry the girls and we made it back to our dock. Sometimes it is hard to get around in the dark, even on Skaneateles Lake, if you are eight to ten miles down and out of sight of the village.
Mayo hung out for about twenty days. He paid the cook for his food and worked his way onto the big boat crews at the races. Finally, Mr. Mosley, the owner of Vanity (a beautiful thirty-six foot sloop) asked Mayo if he would sail with his captain to Greenport, Long Island. I drove Mayo’s car home, which was more convenient for me. Otherwise, I would have had to somehow get all my stuff from the club to the ferry and then from the ferry to the train. It was easy coming up as I had joined my boss on the train in New Haven and it seemed as if the whole island had sent Beach Wagons over to meet the masses coming for July 4th on Ilesboro. Most had left by the last weekend in August. Labor Day on the Maine islands is not the occasion it is in Skaneateles. I eventually delivered Mayo’s car to New Jersey by the middle of September.
Mayo, Betsey, Sue and I had many trips and outings to lots of places. Life goes on, but to have a close friend for sixty-one years is quite an accomplishment. Needless to say, we are very sad. Betsy has been a great friend of Sue’s and we three recall the many adventures that the four of us shared.
