Monthly Archives: March 2017

Ever-Returning Spring

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Meteorologists say it’s March 1, astronomers say it’s March 20. In Vermont, it’s when the crows come back. Or else when the maples put forth their buds and the sap run ends. You boil your last sap down, scour the pans and buckets, and forget the whole thing until February.

*Once upon a time in Rhode Island, the old folks told me long ago, they’d go arbutusing… searching the still-barren land for the early arbutus blossoms, pushing through the snow and the leaves.

*It’s not as elegant, but it also happens when the skunk cabbage rises from wet streaks in the still-frozen bogs. The willow shoots green up. The robins return. When I was young, it was new clothes for Easter. Nowadays it’s the Cadbury Eggs and peanut butter eggs in the store. For a century or more, it’s been the Burpee Seed Catalog in the mail.

*School kids swapped coats for jackets, put the sleds and skates away, and ferreted out the softball bats. The calendar became a matter of intense interest, because summer suddenly didn’t seem too far away.

*Walt Whitman said that to him, ever-returning spring meant “scent of lilac, lowering star in the west, and thought of him I love.” In Bible days, it was the time when kings go forth to war, but it was also the time when the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land.

*Chaucer heard the birds of “Aprille” too… the smale foweles maken melodye.” Today we rejoice when we see our first robin.

*When I was a kid, it was time to gather some early blooms, and hang a May basket on someone’s door.

*What (and when) is spring to us, here in the southern Finger Lakes as we approach the third decade of the 20th century?

*When my wife walks or drives on Haverling Street and County Road 13, she knows every bed of bulbs for a mile or so out past the Bath village limits. Snowdrops, crocuses, tulips and irises come in on different schedules, so spring unfolds for her like page after page of a book.

*Spring to our cat is the time when the windows come open again, and STAY open pretty consistently, at least until the sun goes down. And through those open windows, both he and we hear the spring peepers in the little pond across the road.

*For me, spring means that Mossy Bank Park overlooking Bath opens its gate again, and the eagles return to their nest. Round-lobed hepatica appears on the Finger Lakes Trail, and trout lily later on. Soon the Canada goose couples will lead forth lines of goslings. Juncos shift to elevations that are higher, even if only by a few yards. If you live in the countryside you take down the bird feeders, for a bird feeder is also a bear feeder.

*One day, the world has butterflies again.

*In Hammondsport, Penn Yan, and Watkins Glen, visitors will take seats at sidewalk tables. *When the snow and ice are gone from the shaded clefts, Watkins Glen State Park will open the trails again. Youth groups and others will start laying plans to build floats for the Dairy Parade. Choirs practice Easter anthems. Those who observe the solemn season of Lent see it coming to a close, ushering in a season of joy.

*Disc golfers make their way around the course at Hickory Hill Camping Resort, scraping the rust from skills that have lain unused through the long winter. Orion sinks lower, the Summer Triangle creeps up higher. Spring has come.

Steuben Folks Make the (Educational) Comics

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A number of Steuben County folks have made enough of a splash in the world that they have become the subjects of biographies, documentaries, and histories. Using the Grand Comics Database (www.comics.org), I recently did some exploration to see how Steuben County has fared in “educational” (or even entertainment) comic books.

*Glenn Curtiss of Hammondsport, perhaps our closest approach to a superhero, appears in eight publications, beginning with a caricature in a 1909 aeronautical publication. (Tom Baldwin, who at the time was living and working in Hammondsport, also appears.)

*The other Curtiss appearances are all non-fiction pieces on the history of flight — two of them in Norwegian!

*The next most-frequent is Marcus Whitman, who shows up in five comics, PLUS cover appearances (as small insets) in Real Life Comics (1945) and True Comics (1946). Two of his appearances are in Norwegian, and there is probably also at least one Dutch reprint.

*Other Prattsburgh-area folks, such as Narcissa Prentiss and Henry Spalding, also come into the Whitman stories. But Henry appears on his own in a 1958 story about Chief Joseph.

*Corning-born Margaret Sanger has two current book-length graphic biographies: Woman Rebel, published in Canada, and Our Lady of Birth Control. Sanger ally Katherine Houghton Hepburn, also of Corning, appears in a photo in the notes to Woman Rebel.

*Corning Glass Works appears, though not by name, in a 1961 story about making the 200-inch disc for Mount Palomar observatory. And numerous Steuben men appear in caricature in a 1907 private publication by the Steuben County Society of New York City.

*In a class by himself is Dick Ayers, who passed away two years ago shortly after his 90th birthday. Dick lived in Pulteney for a couple of years during the Great Depression — Hammondsport teacher Stan Smith got him his first paying art commission. A mid-March check of the Grand Comics Database showed that Dick, who worked in comic books for about 70 years, penciled 3349 stories; inked 5274 stories; lettered 832 stories; wrote 76 stories; colored 1 story; and appeared as a character in 22 comic-book stories — even beating Glenn Curtiss! Considering how long he worked in the field, no doubt there are many more stories yet to be discovered.

One Century Back — We Go To War, in 1917

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Germany rolled the dice in 1917, accepting war with America by an aggressive unrestricted u-boat campaign that sank anything approaching the British Isles in hopes of starving Britain before we could get organized to fight.  When the Germans also used American facilities to send a coded message to Mexico urging war against the U.S., the roof caved in.  America was in the Great War.

We’d had three years to get ready, and hadn’t done much of anything.  A “Home Guard” quickly formed to protect Corning from attack, and almost as quickly faded away.  A draft was soon in effect.  Germania Winery changed its name.  The Curtiss plant in Hammondsport worked around the clock.  When people came over the hill from Bath, they could hear the aircraft engines roaring in their test stands near the Glen. 

Thousands of prospective pilots started training on Curtiss Jennys, mostly made in Buffalo.  Willys-Morrow in Elmira became a Curtiss subcontractor (making engines), and so did Fay & Bowen in Geneva (making seaplane hulls).  Katherine Stinson, flying a custom-made Curtiss biplane, set the American distance record at 606 miles.

America bought the Danish Virgin Islands, and made Puerto Ricans U.S. citizens.  An early spring revolution in Russia toppled the Czar, while an early winter revolution brought Lenin’s communists to power.  Three children reported visions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima.  Exhausted French soldiers began a series of mutinies.  Lawrence of Arabia captured Aqaba.  The first Pulitzer Prizes were announced.  Lions Club was formed.  Race riots in East Saint Louis killed dozens of people.

Mata Hari was executed.  Arthur Balfour declared that the British “look with favor” on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.  U.S. “patriots” brutally attacked people suspected of not fully supporting the war.  Germania Winery near Hammondsport changed its name to Jermania.  On November 14, prison guards attacked and tortured 33 suffragettes in Virginia. 

Clemenceau, “the Tiger of France,” became his country’s premiere and announced his policy: “I make war.” The National Hockey League was formed.  Allenby took Jerusalem.  In Halifax, the biggest man-made explosion until the atomic bomb killed 2000 people.

Folks in Wheeler and in Mossy Glen (South Corning) formed Granges — the Wheeler Grange is still in operation. New York men approved a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage, three years before it came on the national level. (Voters in Steuben, Chemung, Schuyler, and Yates all rejected it.)

Buffalo Bill died, along with Admiral Dewey and Count von Zeppelin.  So did Scott Joplin, Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, and Mother Cabrini.

Births for 1917 included Zsa Zsa Gabor, Desi Arnaz, Ernest Borgnine, Cyrus Vance, Hans Conried, Ella Fitzgerald, Raymond Burr, Dean Martin, Lena Horne, Andrew Wyeth, Phyllis Diller, Robert Mitchum, Jack Kirby, John F. Kennedy, and Man o’ War. For them, the war would be gone even before they knew about it.

African Americans of Bath — in 1899

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The 1899 Directory of Bath, New York, published by Interstate Directory Co., separates the names of “Colored People.” While “colored” was, or at least often was, a courteous term at the time, it’s mystifying as to why this would have been considered worthwhile. The directories of 1868, 1891, 1906, and 1917 do not distinguish racially in any way, and there were no longer any laws in New York that called for separate treatment. Bath schools were integrated as far back as 1867.

*Whatever their intent, the Directory publishers gave us a snapshot of African American life in Bath as the new century approached.

*Noting 38 families (out of 962), the Directory identifies 56 African American individuals over the age of 20 (out of an estimated 4500 of all ages in the Village and immediate environs).

*Of those 56 individuals, eight are identified as laborers, and one as a gardener. Three men are hostlers, one a teamster, and two are drivers. One works at the county jail, but in what capacity is not specified.

*There are two ministers, a teacher, and a clerk.

*Eight are identified as barbers, which was an occupation of some status at the time among African Americans, and was also one in which white Americans felt comfortable seeing African Americans excel. One woman operates a hair store, and one man is a bootblack. One woman is a dressmaker.

*Residence patterns suggest that there was no “black street” or “black neighborhood” in Bath at this time. There is some concentration on the short West Steuben (numbers 27, 107, and 124, along with the Imperial Club at 17-19, and barber shops at 14 and on the corner with Liberty), plus outliers on Buell, Howell, and West William, along with the church on Pine, but that whole section, like the rest of Bath, is predominantly white. There’s another cluster on Warden, Hudson, and Geneva, with the same caveat. Additional residences are on Rumsey, Purdy, McMaster, East Steuben, West Morris, West Washington, Hubbell, Charles, and Water Works Lane, plus one man apparently residing at the jail, next to the courthouse.

*One man operates a second-hand goods business at 24 Liberty Street rear, while another is a peddler. Two men are chefs, and one woman is a cook. One man is a farmer.

*Six barber shops are identified, along with the farmer, the dress maker, and the second-hand store, suggesting that 11 people own their own business. Some of the barber shops may be partnerships with family members, which would raise that figure a little.

*Besides the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church on Pine Street, there is also an Imperial Club at 17-19 West Steuben, for African Americans.

*ALL of the occupations engaged in by African Americans are ALSO engaged in by European Americans. This would suggest that there was no significant backlash, or possibly that the numbers just weren’t consequential enough to bother. It is also possible that the business of, say, a dressmaker, was almost entirely among African Americans, meaning that there was no real competition effect.

*Besides the farmer and the laborers, a number of people engaged in occupations which white people at the time considered “suitable” for African Americans… chefs, cooks, dressmakers, barbers, drivers, animal handlers, gardeners, bootblacks, ministers in the “colored” church.

*Farmer Jacob B. Storey of 3 Warden Street was apparently the father of barber Walter Storey, of teacher Florence Storey (who later married Reverend T. A. Auten, one of the two “colored” ministers), and of dressmaker Julia Storey, who later married William Murrell, who was born a slave but who later rose to become a state legislator, and inductee of the Steuben County Hall of Fame. This suggests that Mr. Storey had a remarkable family, but it also suggests the best-educated people of the small community gravitating toward each other (unsurprisingly). Like Colonel Murrell, Reverend Auten also had a significant career beyond Steuben County.

*None of the African American residents appear on the Directory’s list of civic officials, fire company officers, and the like. The Imperial Club is listed as one of two clubs in Bath, the A.M.E. Zion as one of seven churches.