Don Quixote in a NASCAR cap
My bride and I took a spin up to Rensselaer Falls Saturday to assuage my curiosity about a story that ran in the paper last week about efforts to keep an old mill in that rustic village from falling into the Oswegatchie.
We went to an open house at the old Morrison Mill, hoping to drink in a little history and enjoy the fall scenery. The scenery didn't disappoint, and I got way more history than I bargained for; I met Kyle Hartman for the first time. It can be overwhelming if you're not prepared.
Kyle is, by turns, a purveyor of old things, an amateur historian, a Rensselaer Falls booster, a fair self-promoter, something of a gadabout and a pack rat. He has also spent the past 35 years trying to help the old mill win its ill-fated battle against the river. To date, he has fought the river to a draw.
Kyle and his wife Sally bought the old mill in the early 70s, and began what looks like is going to be a lifelong battle to restore it. Over the course of the years, the Hartmans have weathered ice and floods and the DEC and the vicissitudes of a rural economy that hasn't exactly filled their pockets with gold. Kyle has, by his own count, more than a thousand old wooden doors that are just waiting for the right buyer to come along and take one or many home to finish that old-home renovation project. He has windows taken from old buildings, and old cars and a shack full of old millwork, several score of old tires and some old printing presses and even, imagine my shock to discover, a linotype machine.
The outbuildings of the old mill are filled to overflowing with the detritus of projects past. Back in 1983, the Times reported on Kyle's construction of two outdoor kilns to complete his wife's pottery studio. Kyle took us past them Saturday, and said they are no longer used because they're too expensive to fire up. Likewise, he announced in1985 that he was building a railroad depot next to the mill. It was, the Times reported, to house a museum and provide workshops for building and car restoration projects. Today, the bays, open to the north country weather, are filled to the brim with – well, to an uninformed eye, junk. The museum awaits completion.
The mill itself houses Sally's art studio, and an apartment. Where the studio ends and the apartment begins is a matter of conjecture. Kyle took us down into the bowels of the mill to show us the yards and yards of concrete he has poured over the years, trying to stem the ravages of time and the Oswegatchie. The mill dates to the 1840s, although this incarnation exists back to 1913, when it was rebuilt after a disastrous fire. It's laid stone foundation has been attacked yearly by the river, and Kyle has brought in reinforcements in the form of concrete stub walls to beat back the barrage. He is winning, but just barely; if you put a marble in the middle of any floor, it would still be gathering speed when it hit an outside wall.
A foundation wall that runs the middle of the building is, Kyle told us, disappearing into the river mud. While an engineer might suggest jacking the building up, pouring a substantial footer and then rebuilding the wall atop it, Kyle has decided to pour reinforcing walls on each side of the disappearing foundation, and add a giant I-beam above to carry the load.
His relationship with concrete is not unlike the Battling Bickersons; some of his pours have the look of solid craftsmanship, but others aren't so encouraging. One major setback came, he told us, when he used pine boards as his concrete form; the softwood splintered and the pour turned into a blowout.
Through it all, Kyle perseveres. His love of his adopted village, and of the cantankerous old mill, is obvious. He laments that he has been unable to tap the mother lode of government grants to help him pay for his work to preserve the mill (and when I say laments, of course, I mean he speaks with an epithet-laden bitterness usually reserved for in-laws and the IRS), and he enlists volunteer help from far and wide to help him in his almost daily battle.
You sense that Kyle doesn't consider his Sisyphean task to be such. Despite his unending battle against the Oswegatchie, he seems to love the river. And he speaks of his many, many failed plans as though they're all good ideas that just need more time to ripen. He put me in mind of a modern-day Don Quixote in a NASCAR cap, ready at a moment's notice to joust with the sometimes mighty Oswegatchie. Tilt away, fair knight…
