For instance, I learned on a recent visit that some locals were stunned when I wrote last week that bobcats can weigh as much as 70 pounds. I’d picked up that claim from a seemingly reputable website, but my neighbors’ disbelief set me researching some more. They were right. "Felis rufus," the kind of bobcat that stalks around here, can get up to 20 pounds, and a rare few reach 40. But no 70 pounds. I apologize, guys. But, hey, 20-to-40-pounds is already more wildcat than I want around my lambs.

Now, let me offer a great story heard at the store. Again my source was Lee Winnie, everyone’s friend and keeper of the recycling center. Several were talking over coffee (Harvard Blend) about Fly Creek’s past gas stations. Lee volunteered that, when he was 14, a full 10 pumps vended gas in the hamlet.

"I remember that it was 10 because us boys used to raid them late at night. We’d drain what gas was left in the curve of all those hoses. By the end, we’d have close to a gallon."

And why all that tedious work? Well, though none of them yet had a driver’s license, the boys had pooled funds and blown 25 bucks on a battered Chevy. They couldn’t take the car on the road, but they found a perfect place to give it a run for their money: the trolley tracks.

The actual steel tracks through Fly Creek had been pulled up for scrap metal during WWII, but the roadbed was still in place. It was a bit bumpy with half-buried ties, but that just made for a more exciting ride. So the 14-year-olds kept their Chevy hidden near the trolley station (now Les Sittler’s office). In the night’s small hours they’d pour in their purloined gas, pull the car onto the road bed, and roar for a mile toward Oaksville.

"Had to stop before there because a farmer had thrown a fence across the roadbed to keep his cows in," said Lee. "So we’d get that far, pull off and turn around, and roar back down to Fly Creek."

But not everyone along the boys’ route approved of their noisy jaunts. "Some old guy searched out the car and stole our distributor cap." Lee grinned. "But we had it replaced by the next night."

On one of the round trips, the Chevy snagged a trackside guy wire and got a hole in its radiator. "That meant we’d have to stop, up by the mud pond, to bail some water into it," recalled Lee. "Had to be careful not to dump in any tadpoles or frogs."

That Chevy figured into another Lee adventure, one that could have killed him. One night, tired of running the car up and down the tracks, the boys drove it up and into a big, hilly field just off Cemetery Road. (It belongs to Jim and Bunny Wolff these days.) Another boy was at the wheel, gunning the car up a hillside, then twisting the wheel to careen back down again. Lee was in the passenger seat, arm draped out the open window. That passenger door didn’t have much of a latch. In fact, Lee was holding it shut. [an error occurred while processing this directive]