CURTAIN UP ON MY STAGE

Prologue In October, I paid my respects to Taughannock Falls, perhaps the several hundredth time I have done so. That magnificent view never gets stale for me. As usual, I was not the only visitor. Several other folks were there reading the material on the kiosk, descending the steps to the lower lookout or getting their group in just the right position for a photo. The flow of water that day was low, as it often is in fall. Leaves of red and gold fluttered on trees clinging to the steep banks. As I visited, I recalled the story told to me of the day my parents first stopped at that spot. It was 1927 when my parents, Benjamin and Gladys Duddleston, drove out from Ithaca in a Model T Ford with their three young children. They had been told that this was an excursion worth taking, a place to view an impressive remnant of the last glacier. To escape from a small Collegetown apartment for a few hours probably made any excursion worth taking. Now, there before them was an unexpected sight. Dropping in a single fall of 215 feet, water from a small creek fell into a deep green plunge pool. They were surprised and impressed. Growing up in rural Wisconsin and later living in Indiana, they had seen no waterfalls like this one. The last glacier had covered Wisconsin too but hadn't left any such memorial. They gazed at this waterfall across a large rock-walled amphitheater, carved out over centuries by wind, rain and ice.