You don't know who you are 'til you know where you came from

I went home, so to speak, last weekend, and it felt strangely good.

No, not Albany (although we did grab breakfast at the Latham 76 Diner on the way back home) but to a little place called Buckton, N.Y.

My cousin had invited my siblings and I up to her wedding in Massena on Saturday, and as she was my first partner in crime -- gossiping about our other cousin our age and having midnight rendezvous in the shower at my grandparent's house -- I couldn't turn down the opportunity to be there. Yet it also was an opportunity to share with John a little bit about the side of the family he knows little about, and the side I tend to gloss over in the construction of my identity.

As often as my brother, sister and I came down to Staten Island to visit my mother's family, we visited my father's relatives with equal frequency. In fact, we might have spent more time "up north" as we called it, at least around the holidays, since it was my dad's preferred hunting and fishing grounds and my grandmother could make a mean Thanksgiving or Easter dinner.

But my grandparents both died 14 years ago, and the house was left to go to the bank. My parents split up two years later and those hunting and fishing trips were mostly solo adventures. Yet the dirt roads and farmhouses of St. Lawrence county still hold a place in my memory of carefree, video game-less days picking blackberries as the birds chirped in my grandfather's milk-jug feeders.

Yet as I grew older, those childhood memories -- and family heritage in general -- became a bit of a joke. It's partially related to the perceived state of affairs in the North Country; stagnant, overwhelmingly undereducated, drug-riddled, poor, forgotten. There are no bragging rights that go with saying your father slept in the same bed with his two brothers in a tiny house on 40 acres of land sold in pieces to pay the bills. Not like saying your mother grew up with Son of Sam, the 1977 blackout and Studio 54 in the city (although Staten Island has its checkered past as well.)

But if I was taking the 7 hour drive all the way to Massena to go to a wedding, one which I would encounter relatives I hadn't seen in probably a decade, I had to go and walk the roads my dad sledded down, drive past dairy farms my great uncles and cousins owned, and embrace the lifestyle that so shaped my father -- and in a smaller way me.

So in deciding where to stay for the wedding, we eschewed the generic hotel/motels in Massena and decided to stay in a quaint bed and breakfast in the little town of Brasher Falls. I didn't remember much about Brasher in my childhood trips up north, except that my dad went to school there and that it wasn't far from the old farmstead as well as the reception site. It was a beautiful old house within eyeshot of the roaring St. Regis River, and it happened to be across the street from a little Irish Pub that was the site of the St. Lawrence High School Class of 1970 Reunion. Over breakfast of waffles, I learned that the tatooed man from Texas staying in the room across the house was attending the reunion, and even remembered my father and his older brothers and sisters.

The wedding was beautiful and the next day we met up with my family one last time for brunch, and as we were saying goodbye my father handed me a box. It was filled with fishing flies, ones we were supposed to use if John wanted to go trout fishing in Nicholville, my father's revered fishing spot up north. This was the opportunity to go to Buckton, see the old house, and then drive down the road to where the St. Regis flowed under the highway. We got in the car with Buckton as our first stop.

Calling it a hamlet is generous, as it doesn't exactly have it's own government or even a sign recognizing it's existence. It has a road and a cemetery where my grandparents are buried and a lot of farmland both in use and long fallow. We nearly drove past it on first blush, before I saw the little street sign -- yes they have street signs -- indicating Buckton Rd.

I had forgotten how far down the road the house was, and how little there was to see getting there. Of course there was no cell phone service but there were no gas stations or police stations or even houses within eyeshot of each other. But after rumbling up and down the little molehills, I could see a large white farmhouse with a pool in the back and a little dirt road with the unmistakable name.



As you might have guessed from my previous statements, the large farmhouse wasn't my grandparents but my great uncle Reg, who died a few years ago. The Noblett homestead was at the end of the dirt road, tucked in behind Uncle Reg's with a clear shot to "the meadow" where my father deer hunted and us kids weren't allowed to play in.

I didn't take a photo of the old house, partially because I didn't want to freak out the owners and partially because it looked nothing like what I remembered. Obviously they put a lot of money into the old house because it now had a porch, metal instead of wood siding, double-paned windows and various other accouterments. The last big upgrade I remember was when my parents and aunts and uncles ponied up for a oil furnace so my dad didn't have to spend a week every fall chopping wood for the boiler.

But despite the changes, just seeing that little house and the green street sign filled me with a sense of shared history and purpose with the farmers and truckers and correctional officers that call this sparse area home. I can move all around the country, but as far as I know there is only one Noblett Rd. and it's up there in Buckton. It may not be my home, but it's home for my family just like Italy or Ireland or Norway may be home for other families. Except I vividly remember this one.