Other Voices

Frank Beretz operates an antique machine once used to roll roads. It is one of hundreds of historic steam, gasoline, and oil engines that will be displayed along with antique trucks, cars, and military vehicles this weekend, June 12 and 13, and next weekend, June 19 and 20, each day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission to the Gas Up, at 130 Murphy Road in Schoharie, is free. The annual event — back this year with safety precautions after a year on hiatus because of the pandemic — is run by the Hudson-Mohawk Pioneer Gasoline Association of which Beretz is president. “It’s like stepping back in time,” he says of the Gas Up in this week’s podcast. The Gas Up features live music as well as ice cream cranked by a hit-and-miss engine, a barbecue, and souvenirs for sale. At age 73, Beretz has a barn full of antique tractors he’s restored — 22 to be exact, ranging in age from 1937 to 1959. Every one is special to him — he brought each of them back to life. His passion began when a friend had a tractor “all in pieces” that he was going to take to the dump. Beretz paid him for the worth of the metal and put the tractor together so it would run again. People who used the old machines and repaired them for a living are gone, Beretz notes, so members of the association, which has about 200 members with about 50 active members, help each other. “We’re trying to preserve history,” said Beretz, noting members are eager to explain their machines to visitors. The Gas Up, he said, is a way to get out after COVID had “everyone boxed up” and is also a way to “escape the modern time.” He concluded, “It’s like it used to be before computers took over the world.”