A Trip to Sleepy Hollow

One of my favorite books as a child was my 1967 Grosset & Dunlap edition of the tales of Washington Irving, including the quintessential Halloween story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow". In retrospect, I think this tale was very influential on me. It fed into all my later obsessions with humor, history and horror (and the connections amongst the three).The venal, sniveling anti-hero Ichabod Crane, who mooches meals, can barely ride a horse, is terrified of both physical confrontations and encounters with ghosts (but is cruel to his students), and who slyly insinuates himself into the home of his beloved Katrina Van Tassel (is it she whom he truly loves or the prospect of owning her father's farm?). And the prankster Brom Bones, a countryside proto-Brownshirt with an oaf's sense of right and wrong. And the atmosphere of the Hudson River Valley in autumn, so like my native New England. Walking outside on a cold, pitch-black night, shuffling through piles of dead leaves...that remains my idea of heaven...which is only one of the reasons why I love Halloween so much (its associations with hell notwithstanding).

I not only had a copy of the book of "Sleepy Hollow", I also had a 45 rpm record of actors reading a truncated version of the tale (with sound effects of course). And I remember enjoying the animated Disney version of the story, which used to be shown periodically on The Wonderful World of Disney. (The much later Tim Burton movie, beautiful as it is to look at, is sort of irrelevant in relation to the actual tale). At any rate, this past weekend, I fulfilled a long-standing personal goal by heading out the actual Sleepy Hollow to take in the annual Halloween-related festivities. On my arm was the blogtista sometimes known as Caviglia. See her concurrent post for many more photos of our experience.

We started out at the Old Dutch Church, the oldest continuously operating house of worship in New York State. It dates from 1685 and is thus the same  "Old Dutch Church" that appears in Irving's 1820 story. Being the independent souls that we are we abjured the Ipad tour they were offering and snooped around by ourselves.

In the adjacent Sleepy Hollow Cemetery we came upon Irving's grave...

Gate to the Irving Family plot

Sadly (but not unexpectedly), the picturesque covered wooden bridge we have in our heads from countless illustrations and dramatizations is long gone. A very wide, very trafficky modern asphalt bridge is in its place. But this sign marks the spot:

Notice the two headless children

Coolest of all, in the Old Dutch Burying Ground, we saw the grave of Catriena Ecker Van Tessel, supposed model for Katrina Van Tassel. But its kind of hard to read in the photo, so we also include some Van Tassel descendants below:

Up the street is the Headless Horseman Diner. Where do you put your bacon and eggs when you have no head?

An added bonus (no accident) was that we were in town on the day of Sleepy Hollow's local Halloween parade.

Good Lord...look who's at the HEAD of the parade...

To cap off our evening we had a choice of two activities. One was to see a local actor read "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" at the Old Dutch Church. But we figured, nah, we have no shortage of hams in our lives and careers (including your correspondent) who could and would be only too happy to interpret the tale at the drop of a tri-cornered hat. Much more to our liking was Horseman's Hollow, the haunted house attraction at Philipsburg Manor. And an extremely wise choice it was! I can't remember the last time I had so much fun. Designed by haunted house professional Lance Hallowell, the event makes full use of the Philipsburg Manor grounds, and plays off the actual history of the place to come up with genuinely evocative (and believably scary) environments. For example....the ghosts of mangled Revolutionary War soldiers....a coven of colonial-era witches worshiping the devil....a woman in a shawl and bonnet using butcher tools to flay her victim (and needle and thread to make a blanket out of human faces)....a corn maze diabolically calculated to thwart your inevitable second guessing, the better to startle you....people tied to stakes like scarecrows....this isn't even half of it. The event employs close to fifty actors and all sorts of special effects, and climaxes with a bigger, scarier headless horseman than the one I snapped above at the parade. I was enjoying myself too much to take pictures, but Caviglia got some good coverage. Look for her pix here. I highly recommend this experience. And it only costs $20. You wouldn't feel cheated if you paid twice that. You have one week left. For tickets and info go here.

The Beer Garden at Bohemian Hall

Here's the beauty of having a blog. I've wanted to experience and write about what is widely publicized as New York's last beer garden for more years than I care to relate, but had no real basis on which to pitch to a publication. It's already been covered extensively and my track record is in arts writing. So, by the beard of Good King Wenceslaus, I'll do it for the blog.

In the 19th century, beer gardens (mostly German or Austrian, but some "Bohemian", meaning Czech) were a huge cultural mainstay in NYC and other major US cities, when they were teeming with immigrants from those parts. Many of the vaudevillians in these annals got their starts working in such establishments, as singing waitstaff, and the like. These types of venues existed into the 20th century. One is depicted in the silly musical Moonlight and Pretzels, reviewed here. By the end of the 20th century though, the Beer Garden at Bohemian Hall in Astoria Queens was rumored to be the last one. (I recently saw what looked like a brand new German one over near the waterfront in Williamsburg a couple of weeks ago, however. I guess I'll have to check that out too. )

But of course, my timing as usual was off. Because it is OCTOBER, the month that usually precedes FEST in a beer-swilling context, I was expecting throngs of jolly, red-cheeked villagers shouting folk songs to the sound of an accordion. But of course it is a Tuesday night, and it is also OCTOBER, when we begin to see our breaths and our cheeks are red not with warmth but with cold. So it was me and Becky Byers, choreographer of my upcoming saloon show at Bowery Poetry Club, and perhaps a couple of dozen quiet, sedate folks out in the enormous beer drinking pen. Here they are:

The pumpkin ale we quaffed was quite delicious. No doubt it came from this fellows' skull:

Alright! Check another one off the bucket list!