In 1996, an auto plant in North Tarrytown, N.Y., closed. That same year, the village voted to change its name. It became Sleepy Hollow. Thirty Octobers later, thousands of visitors come for the Headless Horseman. The cemetery's superintendent would close his gates all month if he could.
Washington Irving wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in 1820. He set it in the Hudson Valley of the 1790s. Ichabod Crane, a nervous schoolmaster, chases a rich farmer's daughter and meets a headless Hessian rider on the way home from a party. Or maybe he meets his rival playing a prank. Irving never says. A 1949 Disney cartoon gave the story a second life, complete with a flaming jack-o'-lantern.
J.W. Ocker's Chasing the Headless Horseman (Countryman, 288 pages, $21.99) follows the story into the present. William Tipper, a Journal books editor, reviews it. The part that matters most here is the name. North Tarrytown, a village of fewer than 10,000 people, first tried to become Sleepy Hollow in 1988. The vote failed. In 1996 it passed. Ocker suggests residents may have wanted some distance from the auto plant that closed that year. The people who pushed the change told him “the reasons were aesthetic and historical.” Ocker points out that the new name showed up just as Halloween tourism was taking off.
What the Horseman pays for
Thousands now visit every October. Many walk through Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Irving is buried alongside Carnegies, Rockefellers and Astors. Jim Logan, the superintendent, warns day-trippers not to park on graves. He also keeps bridal photo shoots away from people who came to mourn. He told Ocker he'd like to “close the cemetery for the entire month of October.” Ocker also finds towns named Sleepy Hollow in Wyoming and Illinois, and admits to watching 82 hours of adaptations for the book. Tipper finds the cheeky humor a bit much but the main insight real. Irving's ghost travels well.
Our read
This is a Career story about a town, and a Cash Flow one. North Tarrytown lost its factory and leaned on something it already had, a two-century-old ghost story set on its own doorstep. It didn't invent anything. It noticed what was sitting there. Households often do the reverse. They stare at the 401(k) balance and forget the other things that already pay.
So here's the check for this week. Write down every income source you've already earned but don't count. The Social Security benefit on your statement. A pension from a job you left years ago. A survivor or divorced-spouse benefit you may be entitled to. Part-time or rental income you already have. Put a monthly number next to each. Many people find the list is longer than they thought, and the gap they worried about is smaller. The village didn't wait for a new factory to find its next act. A short review with that list in hand can change the whole plan.