The North Country

When most people hear "New York" they assume the city. When most people hear "upstate New York" they assume "Oh, like Albany?" No. Try four hours north of that. I grew up in Fort Jackson, St. Lawrence County, a village of two hundred people surrounded by several other towns and villages that dotted the countryside. Several of them have plagiarized their names from big and/or important cities as if to compensate for something - Potsdam, Canton, Stockholm, Lisbon, Norfolk (pronounced NOR-fork), and Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid). The town of Peru went an extra mile in that regard.

The school district of St. Lawrence Central / Brasher Falls Central High School, as it was alternately called, was comprised of several towns. I had about fifty people in my graduating class, and everyone in grades 9-12 knew the first and last names of everyone else in grades 9-12. The entire school was in mourning after the untimely death of one student, Kyle Cootware (details here).

The roads are based on old Native American trails and therefore loop around all over the place with little rhyme or reason. For long stretches between towns, they are hemmed in on both sides by trees, and only a road-sized ribbon of sky can be seen above. Sometimes the tree branches reach all the way over the road and this creates a beautiful sight in the autumn. In some spots the trees give way to houses or farmland. White-tailed deer like to cross the road, and it's not a question of "if" you will hit one with your car but "when". It may damage your car a lot in the process, but if it dies, you can take it home to eat. Growing up it never occurred to me how very redneck that is.

Farmer Boy

The guys in my high school cautioned, "If it's from Malone, leave it alone", but that town does have one mildly noteworthy thing to offer - the Almonzo Wilder farm. You may recall Almonzo as the husband of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the "Little House on the Prairie" books about her childhood and "Farmer Boy" about his. If you were absolutely spellbound by it, come see where it all happened.

Church History

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is so small in St. Lawrence County that it doesn't even have a stake (similar to a diocese); the Potsdam New York District is one of the few remaining in the United States. Before it was organized in August 2000, the Potsdam Ward where I attended church and my father served as bishop was part of the Montreal Quebec Stake. It was downgraded to a branch when the district was organized and since then has been called on more than once to supply presidents for other, weaker branches. Anyway, what this meant for me was that I was one of about five Latter-day Saints in my school, and that my classmates viewed my religion as an object of curiosity and amusement. I should have had plenty of missionary opportunities, but for the most part I was too shy and awkward to capitalize on them. From 2007 onward I traveled south with friends to attend youth conferences and dances in Albany, which I was astonished to find had two congregations in the same city.

​Very frequently, when people in Utah hear that I'm from upstate New York they ask, "How close were you to Palmyra?" Not particularly - almost four hours northeast of it - but closer than they are. The North Country has a couple of its own not-very-famous claims to fame, though. Joseph Smith's paternal grandfather, Asael Smith, was buried in Union Cemetery about ten minutes from my house. My branch president Benjamin Pykles, an archaeologist, was instrumental in getting a refurbished headstone to replace the faded and broken original. St. Lawrence County as a whole was the target of Elijah Ables (or Abel), one of the first black priesthood holders, on his first mission in 1838. I had no idea about this until after I moved away.