I didn't Tarry in Tarrytown, but I was tempted to sleep for twenty years in Sleepy Hollow, NY.

The woman at the bar corner, talking to the 21 year old woman  bartending, called this town the mini-Bronx, and told all her inlaws to sell off their real estate twenty years ago. Now, it's down by half. She gave me directions to the graveyard, where is buried Ichabod Crane in what she can easily endorse as the loveliest cemetery in New York State. She also proudly talked about the town's Halloween celebration, which must be remarkable in a town begun in 1640, a town with an old ghost story. I was hoping for a town with a bit of a colonial feel, but such is life. I cannot see the waters, but at the bottom of that hill lies the Tappan Zee. No time really to go see Ichabod, but I am moved to read his story again, probe it for lessons, as I am a man twenty years older than a young man of twenty eight.

The Thomas Dewey Throughway crossed the Tappan Zee just south of here, and I was determined to hug the east bank of the river up to Albany, the Nine, the old Albany Post Road. The trip up to Albany will take two hours, plus stop times. As for Dewey and his throughway, I feel an irony. I have eaten Tim Horton doughnuts on the grounds of the torn down house where Thomas Dewey was born, on the Shiawassee River in what passes as downtown Owosso, Michigan. Exits Nine through Twenty Something are labeled as portals into the Hudson Valley region. At least I'll know it under the sway of night and winter. Like the headless horseman, I charge forward by night.