Steamboats, Seneca Lake, and the Haudenosaunee

A BOATHOUSE ON SENECA LAKE - Longtime Finger Lakes resident David Beardslee Schwartz has penned a clever collection of Seneca Lake-region tales from his view at his Lodi boathouse that will bring back memories and trigger a torrent of emotional remembrances in his newly released book, Waiting For The Steamboat at Lamoreaux Landing.

The memories and emotions certainly were there for me when I read his 19 entries beginning with a heart-wrenching tale about the first patient at the Willard Asylum titled Woman in the Crate. His finale, Waiting on the Steamboat,  engages the reader in a bit of time travel (as he does in other chapters) and ends a memorable book-long stroll down memory lane.

A bit of self-disclosure: David Beardslee Schwartz is my brother-in-law and although he has published other books, this very personal work is the book I have been waiting for him to write for decades. Sitting in the very boathouse to which he refers often in Waiting For The Steamboat, he has spun some of these stories as he and I chatted. He is a practiced story teller and it's great for me to see him publishing them in this volume for a wide audience. 

The ability to communicate in writing and music stretches across the Beardslee generations to whom this book is dedicated. Waiting For The Steamboat is introduced with a poem by Brett Beardslee, David's nephew known locally as Poet Laureate of Hector and for his musical performances around the Finger Lakes. The sentiments in Brett's poem, entitled The Old Outboard, will be familiar to anyone who has ever unsuccessful tinkered with an outboard motor with a carburetor. David writes wistfully himself about a 1958 outboard in the third chapter in which he skillfully describes the engine's aging - just like himself.

In addition to many personal memories linked to Seneca Lake and the region, David writes at length and with empathy about the Native American Haudenosaunee people, upon whose land virtually all people around Seneca Lake are living.

Across all 19 chapters, the author skillfully mixes his personal stories with current life in the Fingers Lakes. There's the sense of the slow-creeping shadow of age in Waiting For The Steamboat as time passed. But it's not wholly negative. David's writing offers more echoes of acceptance and contentment of a life well-lived.

The book will be officially released Monday, Oct. 21 at Rasta Ranch Winery on Route 414 in Hector from 5 to 8 p.m. to which the public is invited. During Monday Night Blues with Brett Beardslee, David will read from his new book and play some blues with his cousin.

Michael J. Fitzgerald Oct. 13 2024