Gail Cassidy-Jellesed
Gail Cassidy Jellesed
My first husband, Gerald Cassidy, he was born and raised here. His dad, Jim Cassidy, owned property down across the tracks with a series of little houses. Me, I was born and raised in Ticonderoga. That’s in upstate New York, right there below Montreal, Canada, and those winters were really harsh! We just got dumped on! Well, that’s where we met; see, he was in the Navy and I was a senior in high school. So I ended up getting married to him back there in ’66. He only had about 30 days leave before he went off to Yemen—they were over there protecting something. He was an electrician on a destroyer there escorting the Kitty Hawk.
Well, we came out here on our honeymoon, and he introduced me to some really interesting critters—the two-legged kind! Like I said, we only had about a month to come back here. Then we ended up coming back to live in one of his dad’s houses, the little blue one in the row across the tracks, in ’68 when he got out and went to work at the mill. Gerald, he was a different kind of guy, and he liked all those old odd characters.
Old Whitey, he lived below the dump, eating whatever wandered out of it and got hit crossing the tracks—raccoon, skunk, porcupine, whatever! His shack was there between the tracks and the river, you know. Well I never ate anything like that before. They didn’t have characters like that back in Ticonderoga.
Homer T. Davis, he made moonshine way up O’Brien Creek. Just the kind of old guy Gerald loved to hang out with, so he took me across the river to meet ol’ Mr. Davis one day. Went up Rabbit O’Brien way to this old shack in the woods. Way back in there up this road you could hardly tell was a road. This was our honeymoon, remember, and I was looking for adventure, and getting to know the place this guy I just married came from! He was making something up there that day when we got there.
We sat down out front, and he said, “Can I get you anything?”
I said, “I’d like some water.”
“Oh, okay…” and he went off into the cabin.
He came back with a mason jar, just about one big drink in the bottom. I took a swig of that, but it wasn’t water, no! Oh God! I fell straight back out of my chair to the ground! Gerald just laughing his butt off!
“You think you’re so funny,” I said
“I just want you to meet all my friends!” he said, kinda sly.
He grew up with these old duffers, see. They were, to him, just part of his home, part of where he came from, and that’s how I got to know Troy, meeting all his old friends like Mr. Davis, who lived to be almost one hundred. We figured he must have been pretty well pickled. Anytime someone asks me about Troy, I think of those old guys. I treasure getting to know those old guys.
