Cheese and The Town of Chateaugay, New York

After visiting the Saint Patrick Cemetery, my stepmom and I did a little “tour” of the town of Chateaugay itself. It being a during a work day, it was quite deserted. There’s the town proper, then there’s also lower Chateaugay River, where a few other places, like the Hollywood Restaurant are (great restaurant, great view of the Chateaugay River, where we watched some people boat right off the river to the restaurant!).

Anyway, we stopped in Chateaugay proper to see what we could check out, but not much was open–the library and town offices were all closed. We did visit an antique store, called Ann-Tique Anny, but the “funny” thing we visited was…a cheese store!

Yes, the venerable North Country actually has its own brand of nationally (internationally?) known cheese: McCadam cheese! I’ve seen this cheese in stores out where I presently live, in Colorado, but I had forgotten all about their location until my stepmom, the ex-Franklin Country Clerk and Recorder (who knows everything about everything-upstate New York) took me for a drive!

This just made me laugh and smile…while not an official connoisseur of The Cheeses, I am quite the fan of The Cheeses.

Yes, cheese is almost like candy to me.

“You people” like your chocolates and sweeties and whatnots, and me and my people like our swisses and chedders and goudas. “You people” reach for milk chocolate…we reach for brie.

Sn-ap!

Yeah. I’m out of the Cheese Closet.

I know there are others out there…so join me in our own “rainbow” of hope…our “cheesebow,” if you will. Be proud!

Okay, enough Cheese Pride.

So, forgotten, had I, about McCadam and the North Country—I mean, I did know there was a cheese factory somewhere out here, but it was kinda cool to be reminded of it and to actually arrive at the very factory where its cheeses are made.

Well, okay, the outlet store, if you wanna get technical.

But we did drive past all the agro-industrial stuff on the way in, so one could saaay that…yeah…I’d actually been to the factory.

Kinda.

Okay, near it.

I loved the small-town atmosphere of the store, from the neat, folksy signs (I don’t like the term “signage”…it’s not a word, we already had a word before it came along, this new word is longer than it needs to be, so let’s stop using it!), and just the whole North Country general store thing. I like general stores. You just never know what you’re gonna find in them. In more populated locales general stores are called your Wal-Marts and Costcos, but in the less populated, rural and boondocky locations, yeah, they’re “general stores,” and I love em! They’re small, cozy, and personable.

So, we shopped around…I looked at cheese…bought a black cherry soda (in a bottle!)…and my stepmom bought gardening boots. We both had a pleasant conversation with the lady at the register, and of course she and my stepmom knew some of the same people.

Cause that’s how we roll in the North Country.

Every time I go out in public with my dad and stepmom it’s like being out with movie stars. They know everyone and everyone knows them.

So, out we exited, me with my black cherry bev-er-age and my stepmom with her flowered rubber boots, and we headed to our next destination: Morningside Cemetery, in Malone.

My stepmom knows how to show a guy a good time.

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