After putting it off for what seems like years, we have finally undertaken the overwhelming task of cleaning and organizing the basement. We realize that such a project would be much simpler if we didn't tend to save just absolutely everything, whether we need it or not. However, we hasten to point out that if we didn't save everything, cleaning the basement would be ever so much more boring. In the process we have discovered a number of interesting things, including a box full of clipped newspaper and magazine articles from around the country dealing with one of our favorite topics, Cooperstown.

We first encountered an April 1993 copy of the magazine "Travel Holiday" which had a note stuck to it which read "Take a look at page 76 - This is Aunt Olive's magazine but she can't see to read it anymore." So, as luck would have it, we got it. And sure enough, on page 76 there is an article by James Traub entitled "American Eden."

It begins: "Before there was a National Baseball Hall of Fame, even before there was Abner Doubleday, there was Cooperstown, New York. Many places in the United States are very much older than Cooperstown, but few have retained the essence of their character in the face of 375,000 visitors a year. This village of 2,300 souls, located in the middle of nowhere, may be the closest equivalent in America to the Tuscan hill town: a little shoebox of a place with a grandiose sense of itself and of its past." And so it goes, a rather rousing rave of a community designated a Eden. Of course that was in 1993 and here we are 10 years later, having moved from Eden to the "Most Perfect Village." We do have to wonder if that is upward or downward movement on the designation scale.

Our collection of articles touting the loveliness of Cooperstown is substantial. They include "Cooperstown: a grand slam travel bargain" by Larry Nagengast in the Oct. 8, 1989 edition of The Idaho Statesman in Boise, Idaho; "After Cooperstown, you forgive mom" by Tim Jones of the Free Press Canada Bureau, source and date unknown; "Touring Baseball and memories in Cooperstown" by Larry Griffin in an unknown magazine from November 1989; "Take me out to the ball game" by Joyce G. Fredo in Country Living, October 1989; "Cooperstown is special to visit" by James Sterngold, New York Times Writer which appeared in the July 5, 1986 edition of the Kalamazoo Gazette, Kalamazoo, Mich.; "Cooperstown wins as a resort village" by Jean Simmons, Dallas Morning News, which appeared in the April 27, 1986 edition of the San Jose Mercury News; "Stealing Home to Cooperstown" by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post, Oct. 21, 1985; and "Cooperstown" by Stan and Shirley Fischer in the March/April 1986 edition of Adventure Road. And so it goes. Although each article takes a slightly different point of view, they are all, nonetheless, basically the same in their glowing reports of Cooperstown.

There is, of course, the rare article which takes a completely different tack. For example, "Shadow of Change on Cooperstown's Tradition" by Jane Perlez (New York Times, Sept. 27, 1985) notes that "...the prospect of the first housing development on Otsego Lake in four decades has aroused the indignation of those locals who are sometimes blase about the sports archive, but never about their lake. Thirty-two condominiums are about to appear on a 30-acre bluff above the nine-mile long, fir-fringed lake, and they represent to many longtime residents an unwelcome 20 the century encroachment..." We well remember the horror which accompanied the building of the five mile point condominiums. Fortunately, not quite 20 years later that horror seems to have subsided. Of course, we suspect, it has been replaced with far greater horrors in the minds of many.

Unfortunately, we did not come across any article about Cooperstown in our collection that managed not to talk about baseball. Even the article "Cooperstown gets an opera house" by Thor Eckert, Jr. (The Christian Science Monitor, July 2, 1987), which is basically an article on the then new Glimmerglass Opera facility, begins: "What do baseball and opera have in common? Cooperstown, N.Y.! The village where baseball was said to be "invented" is something of a shrine, what with its Baseball Hall of Fame and Doubleday Field. And now it boasts Glimmerglass Opera's new home - a magnificent jewel of a house that has the potential to be the finest edifice of its size for opera in the United States."

In closing, we thought the most interesting article came from the Sept. 12, 1989 edition of The Trentonian of, we believe, Trenton, N.J. Written by Cheryl Batsden and entitled "Coopers return to Burlington," it points out that in 1989, the community of Burlington, N.J., was celebrating the life of James Fenimore Cooper, who was born there in 1789. According to this article "Even though he spent most of his life in Cooperstown, that city isn't doing anything to celebrate Cooper's birth," said Rhett Pernot, director of the Burlington County Historical Society. "It seems that town's celebrating an anniversary of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and just can't squeeze him in." Actually, if memory and a call to Hugh Macdougall serves us well, there was indeed a celebration, held at Christ Church, of the bicentennial of Cooper's birth. And furthermore, it was in 1989 that the James Fenimore Cooper Society, which is headquartered here in Cooperstown, was founded. So, contrary to what one might read, 1989 in Cooperstown wasn't all baseball.

We remain,

In these Otsego hills,

Where nature smiles,

The Ellsworths

The Ellsworths may be reached by mail at 105 Pioneer Street, Cooperstown, NY 13326, by telephone at 607-547-8124 or by e-mail at cellsworth1@stny.rr.com. They look forward to hearing from you.