Biography Neil Anthony Shortslef based on interviews conducted November 14, 2016 and later written by Susan Parsons Town of Sterling Historian On Decoration Day, May 30, 1930, Amanda Walrath Shortslef was not decorating the graves of loved-ones, as many families did in Sterling. She gave birth to Neil Anthony Shortslef on that day. Neil was one of eight children who were named Amenzo, Ward Jr. (Bud), Art, Evelyn, Robert (Bob), Neil, Harold (Chub) and Theresa. Four still survive: Evelyn, Neil, Harold and Theresa. Neil was born on the Green Road in Sterling, where he lived until the age of 23 when he was married. Brief genealogy: Neil’s father, Ward Shortslef, was born on April 25, 1891 in the Town of Hannibal on Route 3, just past Sterling Creek. He was a farmer who also worked at the cheese factory in Sterling Center and at Ceratt’s Apple Dryer in Fair Haven. (See below.) He worked for the Town and also helped construct the east pier of Little Sodus Bay. Neil was told that Ward used a team of horses in the construction of that pier. He drew rocks to fill it in. Ward also sold insurance for the American Agricultural Association. Neil points out that in those days people would work when and where they could in order to survive and care for their families. On the farm Ward raised string beans to be sold to Comstock’s canning factory in Red Creek. He also grew cucumbers, apples and peas by the acre. He raised chickens and delivered eggs along with a chicken or two, at times. Neil’s father was also a fiddle player. He died in 1964. His father, Neil’s grandfather, was Amos Shortsleeves (1862-1930). Amos married Margret Watts and they had five children: Ward, James, Hazel, Neal and Margaret. Neil’s mother, Amanda Walrath Shortslef was also born in the Town of Hannibal on Route 3. She was born April 8, 1897 and died in 1993. She was working at Curtis Canning Company in Sterling (1943) when she contracted blood poisoning and was forced to have her arm amputated just below the elbow. Neil pointed out that his mother could carry a pail of water by tucking in the bail at the elbow. She tried not to let the loss of her arm handicap her in any 1 way. She had an artificial prosthesis, Neil said, but it was so heavy that his mother did not use it. Neil thinks the amputation took place in the 1940’s. Today, antibiotics probably would have treated the infection easily. Penicillin was in use at the time but only for the military. Neil’s grandfather, Amos Shortslef (Shortsleeves), was a French Canadian. On his mother’s side his grandmother Margret was an immigrant to the United States from Ireland. Neil and his wife, Hope Marie Cooper Shortslef (born, 1936) have six children: Art, Lynn, Jim, Charles, Kevin and Rachel along with Nancy Anderson, who came to live with them when she was five days old. They have 16 grandchildren and 16 great grandchildren. Similarly to Neil, his wife, Hope was born at home in Sterling. Neil loves music and song: he states “I have music in me.” He plays the mandolin, guitar and bass and has recently begun learning to fiddle. He plays bluegrass music, these days, mostly at churches, but in the past he played at many festivals, such as along the St. Lawrence, Brandon Vermont, Sandy Creek, Central Square, the War Memorial in Syracuse, Fair Grounds, Hannibal field days, Weston, Vermont and Fair Haven State Park. At one time people from all over Central New York came to Fair Haven to listen to the music played at the park. Neil used to play every Saturday night at Regan’s Silver Lake. He did this for seven years. Over the years he got to know many bluegrass musicians, some whom have played at the Grand Ol’ Opry in Nashville. He explains that Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers started the bluegrass music movement. Only acoustic instruments are used, except for possibly the electric bass. Bluegrass music has a stronger melody and words are enunciated more clearly than in country music, which does use electric instruments. Neil is a tenor and he sings harmony but also will sing the lead. Neil’s father was a fiddler who played and called square dances. His mother had a baby grand piano which Neil first began playing at age four. He quickly progressed from using one finger to playing chords. He was not allowed to touch his father’s fiddle, though. The first stringed instrument he practiced on was a guitar followed by a mandolin. He has an old Gibson mandolin but the mandolin that he plays these days is an Ibenez. It does seem that Neil truly has music in his soul. 2 Sweethearts Neil, with guitar in hand, and Hope; 1940 Pontiac in background 3 Childhood: On the farm Neil’s family owned they milked about 10 cows. The farm had a concrete block ice house; the ice was used to keep the milk cool. The ice may have come from ice cutting at the Creek in Sterling Valley. Neil remembers the conveyor that was used to bring the ice up from the creek to a loading area south of the old mill, at the edge of the Hunter farm. Howard Irwin did much of the ice cutting. Some farmers brought teams with wagons or bobs (often four runners) on wagon beds that were to be filled with ice. Farmers cooled their milk with the ice blocks they stored in their ice houses. Curtis Cooper had a milk route. He picked up the cooled milk in cans and took them to the Hannibal Dairymen’s League, where the laundromat was later located. In 1936 the family barn burned down. A new one was built using beams from an old barn. After the fire the cows on the Shortslef farm were moved to Marshall Green’s until the new barn was completed. Lots of scrap pieces were left over from the new barn so Neil built a sled out of the scraps among other things he created. One day he took his handmade sled to school. Someone took it! Bob, Ward and Neil Shortslef 4 Neil’s father, Ward Shortslef at the silo before the barn burned in 1936. Note the horizontal lines on the silo. They were wooden planks, steamed and bent to encircle the silo. 5 Neil used to help throw wood from the woodshed floor in the winter. The family heated with wood and had a wood cook stove that had to be fueled each day. Eventually the cook stove was converted to kerosene and the family put in an oil furnace. His grandfather had kerosene lights on the walls in his house. No electrical wires went past his home. In the late 1930’s he finally was able to wire his home for electricity. Neil could recall that as a child, the kids used to put the lanterns from old buggies onto the stone pile and throw stones at them. Today those lanterns are valuable and Neil regrets their attempts to destroy the lighting from another time. Carriage lamps, courtesy ebay Remembering that his father, Ward, once worked for Ceratt’s Apple Evaporator in Fair Haven, Neil said he worked nights keeping the furnaces going. The heat would dry the apples. Neil remembers going to visit his father when he worked in Sterling Center at the cheese factory owned by Fay Burghart. Ward would weigh the milk in the milk cans, pour the milk into the vats, and then steam the milk cans to clean them. The covers would be returned to the cans and the cans were pushed back out onto the platform to await pickup by the farmers. The cheese factory made butter and some types of cheese. The milk in the vats was heated to a certain temperature while a “stirrer” used large paddles to stir the milk. It would lump up into curds. As the whey was drawn off, the cheese formed large slabs. The whey was drained to the outside where farmers took it to feed their pigs. The slabs of raw cheese were cut and eventually squeezed and put into cheese presses which would push in, further squeezing the rest of the whey out of the cheese. Once in a while Neil would get a taste of cheese from the factory. One year for Christmas, Neil got an electric train. He said it was the highlife of his life. In the winter he and other kids in the area would get out the sleds and slide down hills. Neil’s grandfather on his mother’s side had use of a camp on Eight Mile Creek. The family went to 6 stay at the camp for a week every summer. Neil recalls that they had fencing, some barbed wire and that they had a stile to get over. He would walk up some steps, open the stile, walk through, and walk down the steps on the other side. It was beautiful, he said. They fished, and played with a rowboat in the creek. He could see the big carp in the water. The marsh in that area was mowed each year for horse hay. Ward Shortslef, Neil’s father, had a 1934 Chevrolet, recalled Neil, and later a Woodie wagon of 1936 vintage. One day when Neil was age 11, he remembers playing cards on the family’s open stair case when at about 4 PM the news came over the radio that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.