Monthly Archives: June 2018

A Trip to Seabreeze, and Old-Time Minigolf

On the last Monday in June we did something we’ve been planning on for a couple of years, but kept getting stymied by broken legs and such. But it was one of those gorgeous Finger Lakes days, sunny, light breeze, temps in the low seventies, just right for a drive to Seabreeze and a round of miniature golf.

*This is NOT, let me say clearly, in the Seabreeze Amusement Park, but in the nearby hamlet of Seabreeze, in the Town of Irondequoit. We were headed to Parkside Diner’s Whispering Pines Miniature Golf.

*And why did this call for a trip from Bath to Lake Ontario? The minigolf course is on the National Register of Historic Places; it’s probably the oldest miniature golf course in the United States; and it preserves the early 20th-century style of course, making it quite different from most others.

*Here we don’t find turning windmill blades, little barns and churches. The original builders seem to have assumed that you came for the game, not the kitsch. If there’s a theme here, it’s obstacles.

*At the first hole, for instance, you have to drive up a fairly steep slope, hoping to get your ball under a low stone overhang, and down the reverse slope onto the green… except that there are posts and angled barriers along the way. It’s sort of like teeing off inside a pinball machine (without the lights and the noise).

*Unsurprisingly there are shafts, chutes, and tunnels to shoot into. There’s a “sea” theme here at Seabreeze, so many of the obstacles are bollards, heavy rope, and other nautical accessories. (The only miniature building on the course is a lighthouse.) Crabs, lobsters, and lobster traps decorate the course – salt water stuff, rather than the fresh water of Lake Ontario, but who cares?

*One tee just plain bewildered us. You had to clumb several steps onto a small platform, and then – what? We studied for a spell, utterly without success.

*But a mother, who clearly knew the course well, was playing a round behind us with her young boy. She pointed out that we actually had to tee up and drive from the platform, ten yards or so onto the green (which was surrounded with a sort of baseball backdrop).

*What with that broken leg we mentioned, Joyce didn’t want to climb to the platform, and told me to drive on her behalf. This worked out to her benefit! Unsure how much force to put into it, I dropped my own drive into the grassy rough… drove from there, and still came up short… and was on the green in three. By the time I addressed Joyce’s ball I had the hang of it, and left her lying one on the green.

*All the holes were par 2 or 3, and on most holes one or both of us either made par or birdied… though on some other holes we shot six or more. But we’re out of practice… we can’t remember when last we played… so that’s not too bad. (In our opinion!)

*There were perhaps half a dozen parties making their way around the links, shaded by beautiful evergreens. In my experience most miniature golf courses give an ephemeral air, using lightweight materials. Seabreeze is solid – built for the ages, with fossil stone brought in from the west, almost 90 years ago. It’s also delightful.

*Naturally we had lunch at the next-door diner, and enjoyed it very much. So did quite a few local folks – the place was pleasantly busy, but not overcrowded. The web site is www.parksidediner.com, where you can print off coupons for both diner and golf.

*If you’re reading this in the Corning area, I really don’t recommend a trip solely for the golf and diner. We did it, but that’s because I wanted to write about it. It’s 90 miles each way from Bath, so you might do better to take it in while you’re in the area. But if you’re in the orbit of, say, Canandiagua… or anyplace closer… you might find it’s worth the drive. We did!

 

 

About Angelica

On Saturday morning I told my wife I thought I’d run over to Angelica. Let me do the dishes, she said, and I’ll come too. And 45 minutes later, we were on our way.

*Another 45 minutes and we were easing our way around the circular village park, and pulled up on Main Street, in the shade of a long row of maple trees. Angelica is a beautiful place.

*On that particular Saturday the Lakeshore Model A Club had also taken a drive to Angelica, so we got to inspect half-a-dozen of these fine old Fords. A couple of decades back I impersonated Henry Ford for the Lakeshores, and I hosted many vintage car tours when I was at Curtiss Museum, so I’ve always got a fond spot for such outings. Yes, vintage car folks do this for their own pleasure, but I’ve found them to be unfailingly welcoming about sharing their pleasures with the public.

*After admiring the Model A collection, I used the library rest room and we strolled down to Delectable Collectibles, an antique store in an old garage. I enjoy this store very much, for its setting but also because it usually has lots of “pop culture” stuff, including comic books, which was the point of Saturday’s trip. We made our way through aisles and around corners, and studied a chest that has potential for our front hall, but all I actually got that day was a Little Audrey comic book ($3), which I wanted for my Harvey Comic collection.

*We walked back down Main under blue sky and bright sunshine, stepping into a couple more antique shops before coming to the Circle.

*This traffic circle raises the small village from the pleasant to the memorable. Five churches stand on the outer rim of the Circle, along with town hall, several residences, and the 19th-century post office.

*Inside the circle is a large grassy park with a tree-lined walk, where we bought a basket of ultra-fresh strawberries at the Saturday farmer’s market before turning back to the shopping district, where I had a fine Greek salad (Joyce got quesadillas) at The Canteen, from which we watched a motorcycle tour trundle through before we returned to our car for the 45-minute drive (all on I-86) back to Bath, enjoying the vultures, deer, and horses all the way. And the daisies. Dame’s rocket. Blue sky. White puffy clouds. Glorious green. All this, and Angelica too.

ABOUT ANGELICA

*Angelica, in Allegany County, is at Exit 31 on Interstate Route 86 – RIGHT at the exit, so you don’t have a drive once you get there. Many folks know Angelica in the winter. At Christmastime folks make the trip just to visit the post office, and get angel postmarks on their Christmas cards. In late winter and early spring folks pass through on their way to Cartwrights’ Maple Tree Inn, or stop on their way back.

*Angelica is also home to Allegany County Fair. It has a public library, part of the Southern Tier Library System. Houghton College, Alfred State, and Alfred University are all within short drives.

*Angelica is a village within the town of the same name, commemorating Angelica Schuyler Church, daughter of a Revolutionary War general and sister-in-law of Alexander Hamilton. The Churches owned substantial land in the area, and built the huge Belvidere mansion.

*That 1804 mansion is on the National Register of Historic Places, as is the 1819 town hall (old county courthouse), the Angelica Park Circle Historic District, and the 1809 Moses Van Campen House.

*Angelica sometimes claims to be the birthplace of the Republican party, though that takes a little convolution to assert. A more reliable claim is that it was a Civil War bugler from Angelica who first played “Taps.”

*If you like antiques, if you like pleasant small villages, you should make the trip to Angelica. We do!

Join Us for a Walking Tour of Painted Post!

Once upon a time, there was a painted post.

*This was a shaped and embellished tree trunk, standing in a Native American town where the rivers (Conhocton, Canisteo, Tuscarora) came together to form the Chemung. European folks called it the Town by the Painted Post, and the surrounding space they called the Painted Post Country.

*When Steuben County was erected in 1796, Painted Post was one of six “supertowns” that were each eventually subdivided into half a dozen smaller towns. When that process was pretty much done, the Town of Painted Post changed its name to the Town of Corning, after the major landowner.

*The old name passed into history, until a Village was incorporated within the Town of Erwin (part of the original supertown, and also named for a major landowner). The Painted Post name came officially back onto the map, and there it has stayed ever since.

*The rivers were highways back in the early days, and also power sources, as the nearby “gang mills” demonstrated. Painted Post’s position where eastbound/southbound traffic came together… or where westbound/northbound traffic divided… made it a perfect point to stop, to rest, to do business.

*Unfortunately, of course, it was also a perfect spot for flooding. And flood it did, repeatedly, until one flood did away with what remained of the original “painted post.”

*To commemorate that landmark, villagers commissioned one of their neighbors to create a sheet-metal Indian in two-dimensional silhouette… they paid him one cow. This figure watched over the community for decades until a newer version was created. In the late 19th century came a fully-rounded cast-metal statue that actually looked like an Indian, or at least like what someone in a factory THOUGHT an Indian looked like.

*After that statue blew down and got damaged during a 1948 wind storm, a local art teacher created the statue that we know today. Like its predecessor, the new statue stood right smack in the middle of Monument Square, tangling traffic on Water and Hamilton Streets.

*That space (and much of the rest of the village) had flooded in 1901, and catastrophically in 1935, 1946, and 1972. After that last flood the river was moved, and so was the statue, finally out of traffic to the northwest corner of the Square, by the urban-renewal Village Square Shopping Center, replacing a couple of blocks lost to Hurricane Agnes.

*ALL THREE of the 19th-century Indians are in the Painted Post-Erwin Museum at the Depot, which doubled as a makeshift morgue in 1972, accomodating the remains of 14 of the 19 Steuben County residents lost in that terrible night.

*When the Erie Canal opened in 1833, the river routes became quaint memories, making Painted Post a sleepy little place. But that changed in 1851 when the Erie RAILROAD came through, connecting Lake Erie with New York City. A few years later Painted Post also became the start/end point for the Erie’s Rochester Branch. Routes 15 and 17… now succeeded by Routes 415, I-86, and I-99… continue Painted Post’s history as a major transportation hub.

*“I have fallen in love with American names,” wrote Stephen Vincent Benet. “Senlis, Pisa, and Blindman’s Oast, it is a magic ghost you guard. But I am sick for a newer ghost: Harrisburg, Spartanburg, Painted Post.”

*We love Painted Post too, and at 4 PM on Friday, June 15, I’ll be leading a historic walking tour of the Village, starting in the Museum at the Depot (where we’ll see those three early Indian figures), winding down to Water Street and Monument Square before making our way back to West High Street Cemetery, where we’lll hear from our own “Cemetery Lady,” Helen Kelly Brink. This free Steuben County Historical Society walk was postponed from June 1, when we had torrential downpours. We hope to see you June 15 – weather permitting!

The Farming Story Part 7: Our Third Century

Farms in our area went back to scrub and forest as agriculture dwindled in the 20th century, and the deer came back as the trees grew up. Much of our forest is actually very young – it’s grown up since the Great Depression, or even since the Second World War; starting in the 1950s and 60s, farms went out of cultivation in huge numbers. This is also when the Amish and Old Order Mennonites started coming in. They WANTED small farms that could be operated by a family, and bought land that otherwise had no takers.

*Another significant change took place in the grape and wine sector. Men such as Charles Fournier and Konstantin Frank had pioneered bringing in European strains and producing more premium wines. Along with that specialization, in 1976 Governor Hugh Carey signed a boutique winery act. If you produced at least 51% of your own wine, and kept output under a certain amount each year, you could sell directly to the public, operate a tasting room, pay reduced taxes and fees. As we know, the number of operations has boomed.

*So as we are well into the third century of European-style farming in Steuben County, what do we see? Those marvelous muck lands in the northwest continue to be very productive. The uplands are rather limited in large-scale farming, but Amish and Old Order communities preserve the family farm, often using draft animals. Maple production, often selling raw sap, is important in the southwest. Lumbering has continued on small scale, but dairy has dwindled almost to nothing, though the Dairy Festival continues.

*Only three or four high schools have F.F.A. programs. M. J. Ward closed and dismantled the last grain elevator in Steuben County a few years back, and has now gone completely out of business. The County Fair continues, and while it still has a large agricultural component, it must always appeal to the NON-farm folks to keep the fair running. Interestingly, Steuben County has become one of New York’s most significant hunting areas – number one county in deer take, top five in turkey – BECAUSE so many farms have gone out. Hunting, much of it by out-of-county visitors, pumps a tremendous amount into our economy.

*Besides the small family farms of the conservative anabaptists, and besides the ongoing productive use of the mucklands, there are two possible portents for the future. One is the proliferation of small farmer’s markets, which ties in with the local-food movement and the direct-to-consumer movement, particularly C.S.A’s, such as that operated by the Peace Weavers in Wheeler.

*Secondly, such changes as the transition of Blue Gill Farms, operated by the Weaver family on Mitchellsville Road in Bath. Long a substantial dairy operation, Blue Gill moved out of that ten years back or so. Now they raise hogs for Hatfield, with the pig barns in the hills of Wheeler while they grow much of the feed on the flats in Bath.

*And around Keuka Lake, of course, the story is grapes. Throughout several millennia of human history, steep, inaccessible, or unproductive land has been reserved for grapes and graveyards. Grapes, it was said in the 1870s, were the first thing Pulteney folks ever found to justify the taxes on their land. The Steuben County shield bears a picture of a wheat sheaf. In 1900 it might have been a milk can, and in the 1930s a bushel of potatoes. If the shield were being created today, it might well bear a bunch of grapes!