Book excerpt: These stories tell of life, and lives lived in the forgotten days of the mountains and foothills of the great Adirondacks. The following stories here within are not true.Some are based on the truth of a myth, as I like to say. Leather Jack, follows somewhat of a true person.Of Old Hank; when my sister was young, our mother would tell her stories of "Old Hank."Old Hank was created by our mother, made up, he was and old man that for some reason had gone off to live by himself in a cave. 10 years younger than my sister, by the time I came along Old Hank, was kind of a family legend in story. The stories weren't really told to me as fully as they were to my sister, I being told bits and pieces. What I was never told was why Old Hank went off to live in a cave. Maybe there wasn't even a real beginning, to these stories, just a fanciful, "Once upon a time, there was an old man who lived in a cave."Half a century later, I have decided to give Old Hank a beginning.