The following interview with local apple farmer Harold Teeple, by Huron Historian Rosa Fox, was written for the Spring/Summer 2016 and Fall/Winter 2016 issue of the Sodus Bay Historical Society magazine Flash. This is the complete 2-part interview. Sincerest appreciation to Harold Teeple, Mary Teeple Anjo, and Eugene Teeple for assistance with this interview material.
An Interview with Harold Teeple
By Rosa Fox
Part 1
Henry K. Hess (wearing hat) sitting on the sand bar in front of Lake Bluff, Sodus Bay’s East Side, September 1928.
Answering a 1930 ad in the Newark Courier, Harold’s dad came to work as a chauffer for Lake Bluff resident Henry K. Hess. Hess earned a sizable fortune in the late ‘20s, for his invention of the repeating mechanism for the phonograph record machine. Hess purchased a substantial parcel of land at Lake Bluff. The Teeple family resided in a house located in the valley east of the Bluff. The house in that valley is now long gone. Willow trees and a beaver pond now give little clue that there was once a residence and fertile crop land here.
Harold’s childhood memories provide a story of life on the east side of Sodus Bay during the early 1930s – a time before Connelly’s Cove, the two-lane LeRoy Island Bridge, or even the Boy Scouts on Eagle Island. Children had a playful connection to the bay, the outdoors, and simpler means of entertainment. This was a time when children still walked to school. Children living on the northeast side of Sodus Bay attended school at the south end of Sloop Landing Road.
Harold and his older brother, Arnold, walked the two-mile distance to and from the Sloop Landing School House each day. The boys had the good fortune to walk to school with their teacher – Gertrude Correll – better known to many on the east side of the bay as Gertie. Joining Gertie and the Teeple boys on the walk to and from school were the O’Neil children from Eagle Island. The O’Neil family lived in the Eagle Island farmhouse, and traveled across the bay to the mainland through wind, waves, and ice to go to school.
Gertie and her husband Ed owned what we now know as Connelly’s Cove Restaurant. Ed constructed a good sized building in which he had a shop where he built some of the best wooden rowing boats on the bay, rented out boats, had a dance hall, a small restaurant, and a store. Gertie helped Ed with all aspects of his business, especially during the summer months. The couple lived across the road from the commercial building in the small house on the hill.
The Teeple and O’Neal children usually met Gertie at her place to walk to school. One day, Gertie was not there to meet her students. Apparently she had gotten a ride from a neighbor. The Teeple boys, figuring their teacher had not gone to school, decided they would not go to school, but would spend the day hanging out around the bay. When the mailman stopped by the school, Gertie handed him a written letter addressed to the boys’ parents, requesting the mailman deliver it promptly. The letter informed Mr. and Mrs. Teeple that Harold and Arnold had not been in school. The boys “caught it” when they got home that afternoon. For punishment, they were not allowed to go “over the hill to play around the bay!” The Teeple boys didn’t miss any school after that.
As a teacher, Gertie was tough in many ways. Harold remembers she would never break up a “good fight.” She would let the children get their energy out during recess, and then they would come in ready to learn.
Harold recalls his connection to this special teacher. Years later, when Harold was trying to figure out how to layout his orchards, he called upon Gertie to help him with the formula for figuring out how to make the corners square – and she told him how to do it.
The Teeple brothers Harold (left) and Arnold (right) at around 8 and 9 years of age.
Harold was a hero to his older brother Arnold. One cold February day, the bay iced over, the boys were walking along the approach to LeRoy Island Bridge from the east. Arnold picked up a long pole – maybe a fishing pole. Arnold then started to walk on top of the steel wall with the pole – poking it at the bay ice below. Arnold fell off the wall, pole and all, and couldn’t get out. Harold was too small to pull him out, so Arnold told him to go get help. Only a few feet away, Arnold called to Harold, “Come back, I can’t hang on!” So Harold returned to the scene, and, somehow, put forth all his might to haul his big brother out of the bay and over the wall. Hero Harold walked the mile trek home with his soaked and freezing brother who was dressed in a sheepskin jacket.
As stated earlier, Harold loved to “fish more than eat.” He recalls heading out to that special place on the bay in front of LeRoy Island with his dad and Arnold. Using minnows and a bamboo pole rigged with a cork bobber, they would fish for pan fish – sunnies and perch. Every once in a while, they would hook a pike. “Pulling that pike in was like catching a whale.”
After only a year at the bay, in 1931, the Teeple family moved from Lake Bluff to North Rose. They stayed connected to Sodus Bay, coming back to the Bluff on weekends to go fishing. Eventually, the Teeple family returned to Sodus Bay in 1945, buying a farm on the bay.
Part 2
On April 1, 1945, Byron and Elsie Teeple bought the 150-acre Hill farm on Lake Bluff Road across from LeRoy Island Road. The north end of the farm went all the way to the lake – including the root swamp between Lake Bluff and Garner Road (pre-Chimney Bluff State Park). The south border went to what was then Correll’s (formerly Connelly’s Cove Restaurant). More orchards and farmland were acquired to include the Owen Farm on Owen Shores, the Benjamin farm across from Skipper’s Landing, and the farm on the ridge across from the Sloop Landing Road intersection with Lake Bluff Road. Other orchards were purchased over the years to expand the Teeple Farm acreage to approximately 300 acres by the 1960s.
Harold Teeple was in the service during World War II at the time his parents purchased the farm. His brothers Arnold, Ralph, and Gene helped their parents in the early days of the farming venture. Locals said the farm was a “white elephant” – that “nobody ever made it here because the land was too wet.” A lot of the land was planted in peppermint from about 1918. The peppermint was harvested for the Hotchkiss Peppermint factory in Lyons, New York. Cattle, pigs, and a team of horses came along with the farm and were cared for by the boys. Corn, red beans, squash, and apples of all varieties – Baldwin, Ben Davis, Sutton Beauty, Golden Russet, and Mann apples “from big old trees” were grown on the farm. Mann apples are green, dense, and heavy. Late-keeping apples, Manns were used primarily for making cider.
Harold’s youngest brother, Eugene enrolled in the engineering program at Syracuse University upon graduation from North Rose High School. Gene took a trigonometry class at Syracuse that first summer of college. He recalled sometimes riding with a local student, and also hitchhiking to class in Syracuse. Gene still worked on the farm that first summer, however, he eventually had to sell his pigs and turn his muskrat trap line over to someone else.
Harold was released from military service in October 1945, and came home to work the farm. On April 5, 1946, Harold married the love of his life – a girl from Macedon named Elsie Baker. Harold and Elsie were married in a double wedding with Elsie’s twin sister Elma. Yes, Harold’s mother’s name was also Elsie – Elsie Brown. Mail delivery was always interesting – which “Elsie B. Teeple” was the mail intended for?
Harold’s dad, Byron, passed away in 1948. Harold and Elsie had been living in a small house down the road, but decided to move into the big house to be closer to his mother. The Teeple family was also growing, as by 1948, Harold and Elsie had three sons, two of the boys – twins!
Harold with oldest son, Russell, sitting atop Farmall tractor (Circa 1949).
Eventually Harold bought the farm from his brothers, and began to purchase additional orchard acreage. Some of the orchards were quite “ancient” and very over grown. Harold recalls a neighbor of one of the orchards, Elmer Veley, raised bees. Elmer told Harold he wouldn’t let his bees go into these adjoining orchards. If the bees went in, they got lost in all the over growth and couldn’t get out.
In telling about muskrat trapping, Gene recalled that he had eaten muskrat stew at local game warden, Earl Sutherland’s Lake Bluff home once. Harold went on to relate about a gentleman inquiring about muskrats he had in a bucket – wondering if he ate the critters. Harold told him he didn’t but knew of some local people who packed the muskrats up in shipping tins. They sent them off to New York City where they were sold as “marsh rabbits.” Harold then asked Elsie, who was present at the time of the gentleman’s question, what was for supper that night – her reply – “muskrat legs.” And indeed – muskrat legs they had – well prepared, too! Muskrats were very prevalent in the 1940s and 50s. Harold recalled trapping as many as 35 in a single day and selling the pelts for $4.00 each.
Elsie was always eager to trying new adventures. One morning, she wanted to go with Harold out in the boat to see what it was like to take in a day’s fish catch from set lines – which in those days were still legal. So, out they headed in their little rowboat. Elsie began pulling in the line and – at the first hook – an eel! Elsie did not like snakes. Eels were no more likeable. Every hook along the line had an eel. The harvest that morning brought in a total of at least a dozen eels – and “not one single bullhead!”
During the 50s and 60s – cottagers on the east side of the bay were increasing in number and in creating landscaping of their bay front lots. The Teeple children were active working on the farm helping to improve the orchards. Some of this improvement was in the elimination of stones in order to ease the plowing and mowing of the fields and orchards. The Teeple children, four boys and a girl, picked stones, loaded them on a tractor-pulled wagon, and took them to the bottom of the hill on Lake Bluff Road. The stones were then sold to folks on the bay who used the stones for cribbing, beach landscaping, and shoreline retaining walls.
From his hill top house, over looking Hog, LeRoy and Eagle Islands, thinking about days gone by, Harold humorously remembers the smell of paint wafting across the marsh on hot summer days – when islanders were putting a fresh coat of paint on their cottages. Harold has many fond memories of the bay, and his love of the bay is keen. His wish for the bay is that future generations take time to connect with the bay, and most importantly, that they respect, love, and maintain the land and waters of Great Sodus Bay.
Note: When the Sloop Landing Schoolhouse closed in 1935, instead of moving to one of the new and larger consolidated schools at North Rose and Wolcott, Gertie decided to go into the Real Estate business. Passing the Real Estate exam, Gertie ran a successful realty business for many years on the east side of Sodus Bay.