Alvin Hall, big in every way except stature. And thus a neighborhood yarn. When the wild pigeons went to the Willowemoc swamps to nest in the spring, farmers along the Neversink made beds of buckwheat and chaff, and when the unsuspecting birds alighted to feed after their long trip from the south and were enjoying their first northern meal, an ingenious net was sprung, and they were table fowls.
Alvan Hall's intended, Phoebe Drake, was helping her father at one of the beds and nervously sprung the trap too soon, and so got only a few birds. When her father chided her, she said; "Well, dad, a small Hall is better than no Hall."
Along the Neversink in the Seventies
Monroe Wright
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