I get around a fair amount in our region, and delve into its history pretty deeply. And idly to my mind have been coming thoughts of the “best” of… well, everything. So here’s an unorganized, eclectic, and utterly idiosyncratic look at the cream that rises to the top of our jug.
*Top innovator: No disrespect to Corning Glass researchers and many others, but the palm has to go to Glenn Curtiss. Somehow blending his eighth-grade education, a hyperactive mind, a demeanor so austere it must have seemed terrifying, and explosive flamboyance in any powered vehicle, Curtiss built a breathtaking fortune from innovations in engines, airplanes, motorcycles, and travel trailers. He’s still our star in this field.
*Top entrepreneur: With a tip o’ the hat to Curtiss, various Houghtons, Joe Meade and many others, who could we name here but Tom Watson? Born and brought up in Campbell, educated there (in a one-room school that’s still standing) and in Addison, he worked hard and dreamed big, eventually betting International Business Machines on a yet-unbuilt computer. Results were generally considered satisfactory.
*Best view: It’s a tie! Mossy Bank lookout overlooking Bath, and Harris Hill lookout overlooking the Chemung Valley are both spectacular. See the seasons change, and watch the world go by.
*Best walk in the woods: The Finger Lakes, Trail, duh. What an incredible resource – right in our backyards! It runs all the way from Allegany State Park to Catskill State Park. With its various branch trails, the system is a thousand miles long. Best walk ON the main trail… between Mitchellsville Road and Pleasant Valley. Gorges, pines, a stile, Cold Brook, expansive forest flowers in season, a vineyard – what could be better?
Library superlatives
*Best selection: Steele Memorial in Elmira, the biggest library in the five-county region.
*Coolest building: Howe Library in Wellsville. It looks like it was airlifted from Williamsburg, and it’s great fun to poke around in.
*Biggest surprise: Dormann Library in Bath, with its own in-house cafe (“Chapters”).
*Best comic-book store: Heroes Your Mom Threw Out, in Elmira Heights. Honorable mention to Comics for Collectors in Ithaca, and Pulp Nouveau in Canandaigua.
*Our comic-book hero (artist): Dick Ayers, who passed away earlier this year just after his 90th birthday. Famous for inking and penciling Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Sergeant Fury, the original Ghost Rider, and many many more, he will probably be most fondly remembered for his westerns, which he often set in the rocks and ravines of Colorado, and based on the rocks and ravines of Pulteney.
*Our comic-book hero (writer): Joe Simon of Rochester, who co-created Captain America… not to mention the proposed character that eventually morphed into Spider-Man. He and Jack Kirby also generally get credit for more or less creating romance comics.
*Best hot dog with meat sauce: a geographically-convenient three-way tie between Central Hots in Elmira Heights, Jim’s Texas Hots in Corning, and Texas Cafe in Hornell. Honorable mention for Light’s in Elmira.
*Best choreographer: Bill T. Jones, who arrived as part of a migrant worker family that made its home in Wayland. Since then he’s gotten a MacArthur “Genius” Award, a Tony, six honorary doctorates, Kennedy Center Honors… and induction into the Steuben County Hall of Fame.
*Most determined fighter: Margaret Higgins Sanger, originally of Corning. After years of fighting for women and workers, Sanger was arrested in 1914 for mailing obscene material (birth control information), after which she fled the country and took an assumed name. Back in America again she was arrested in 1916 for providing birth control information. In the 1950s she raised money for the research that created the birth control pill, and died in 1966, not long after the Supreme Court finally and definitively ruled contraception legal.