Monthly Archives: June 2022

What to Do on a Summer’s Day

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Sometime summer seems endless, but we know too well that it isn’t so. But what DO you do (especially if you’ve got kids!)? On a hot day… a rainy day… or just any day? There are simple things to do, and they’re not too far away.

*Play miniature golf. It’s an American tradition, and no two courses are alike! Windmills, spouts, and bridges abound, not to mention crazy slopes, and it’s all in fun, and if you don’t take it too seriously, everybody has a good time. The course at Harris Hill Amusement Park has entertained players for many years – there are also courses at Corning, Watkins Glen, and Ithaca Sciencenter.
*Visit the comic-book store. I personally patronize Heroes Your Mom Threw Out in Elmira Heights, where Jared Aiosa loves kids as well as grownups. (And yes, at his shop I HAVE found comics that my Mom threw out!)
*Attend a summer service at Garret Memorial Chapel, on Keuka Bluff. It’s a lovely stone chapel, built almost a hundred years ago in memory of an only son who died too young. It’s a quiet place, set in the woods, with services only in summers. You may find that you’re growing quiet too, in the best sense of the word.
*Amble along the Erie Canal. Fairport is known as “the crown jewel of the Erie Canal” – the towpath is a fine place to stroll, with restaurants and other amenities on the route or just a few steps away. The same is true in Pittsford, and many another canal town. For a quieter, more rural stretch, start in Brockport. Check ’em all out. Now two centuries old, the Canal still welcomes visitors. Nathaniel Hawthorne liked it! Why shouldn’t you?
*Shop at The Windmill, on 14A between Penn Yan and Dundee: Saturdays only, April through November, with an occasional added day for holidays. Wander in and out amongst 175 shops and stands – it’s one of the largest open-air farm and craft markets in the state of New York.
*Get an ice cream! It just isn’t summer if you don’t make at least one stop at an ice cream stand. I use Emmie’s near Lake Salubria in Bath! And also Hokey-Pokey on Corning Northside. Honestly, there’s ice cream stands just about everywhere, and I’ve never found one that disappointed me. The closing of the ice cream stands is a sure sad sign of the end of summer. Get into the season while the getting’s good!
*Get a hot dog, and eat it “al fresco.” Central Hots in Elmira is a good place. Jim’s Texas Hots is a good place on Market Street in Corning.
*Take a walk on the waterfront. Watkins Glen in particular gives you lots of waterline to stroll on, lots of boats to look at, lots of birds to watch. You can also see the schooner True Love (used in the movie High Society, with Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly).
*Listen to a concert in the park. Wow! LOTS of our communities have free evening concerts every week through the summer – I know for a fact you can find them in Bath, Hammondsport, Penn Yan, Watkins Glen… plenty of others too! Sometimes there’s a sort of ongoing theme, more likely there’s a different “sound” every week, from rock-and-roll to folk to country to “band music.” Somebody makes fried chicken, somebody sells lemonade, little kids run in and out… pick out the music you like, bring your lawn chair, chat with your friends, and enjoy the summer’s eve. Maybe stars will come out. Maybe you’ll see fireflies. “Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low, and the flickering shadows softly come and go; though the heart be weary, sad the day and long, still to us at twilight comes Love’s old song – comes Love’s old, sweet song.”

Those Who Died in the 1972 Flood

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Twenty bodies – fifty bodies – a hundred bodies….
Appalled residents and outsiders alike, discovering the vast destruction of the flood, were convinced that the death toll, once known, would be sky-high. Remarkably, that was not the case as day after day passed, and despairing family members finally found each other. Makeshift morgues were set up in Corning and in Painted Post (what’s now Painted Post-Erwin Museum at the Depot), with funeral directors drafted in to assist. Not all the bodies of those swept away were found immediately, but finally officials came up with the numbers and the names. While not as catastrophic as had been feared, the list was still far too long.
Two Killed in Almond (Allegany County), June 21: John Ide, Amy Ide
One Killed June 21, Between Bath and Kanona: Farley S. Stamp
Eighteen Killed in the Corning-Painted Post Area, mostly on June 23: Hobart Abbey; Daniel M. Atwood; Martha E. Atwood; Elmer Benton; Ivelyn Cash; Joel Clark; Mrs. Charles Craig; Mrs. Beatrice Forrest; James Horton; Penny Horton; Nina Hough; James Ketler; Olive I. Lane; Mrs. Luella Lathrop; Mrs. Lena Moulton; Martha Raymer; Brian H. Tong; Eva Wheeler
Three Killed June 25 in a Helicopter Crash at Hornell, while Surveying Damage for the Army Corps of Engineers: Duane Tyler; Robert Crooks; Paul Meinen
The 1935 flood killed 44 people in our region, but the Hurricane Agnes flood of 1972 took a heavy toll specifically in Steuben County. The first Steuben victim was west of Bath on today’s Route 415, where four men were swept from the roof of their car. Three eventually dragged themselves out of the rushing water, about a thousand feet downstream, but Farley Stamp was lost. On that same day, just a few rods over the line into Allegany, John Ide and daughter Amy were lost when their boat overturned as they tried to escape the overflowing Canacadea Creek. Mrs. Ide and another daughter were saved.
The worst of it, of course, was in the crescent formed by Gang Mills, Painted Post, Riverside, City of Corning, and South Corning. Eighteen people died in that stretch, including Dallas Craig, widow of former Corning mayor Charles Craig, and nine month-old Brian Tong. Many of the victims taken as they slept, without warning, in the hours after midnight. Hobart Abbey of Forest View Fire Department (Gang Mills) was the first lost in this crescent, as he assisted with evacuations. He was posthumously named New York State Firefighter of the Year.
As if all that were not enough, three indirect deaths took place as three men were lost surveying damage from a helicopter, when they struck power lines and crashed into Crosby Creek at the Hornell city line.
And despite these numbers, could we but know the facts, the full death toll of the storm and flood, even just here in Steuben County, has to be a good deal higher. If someone had an utterly unrelated heart attack, three days after the flood… and the phones didn’t work, and the roads were blocked, and the hospital was closed… that person probably died, even though a week earlier he or she might well have been saved.
How many succumbed to diseases picked up from standing water and rotted organics? Did any cut themselves as they were clearing rubble, and die of tetanus? And what of emotional tolls? Depression, phobias, survivor guilt, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder all weaken the system, making the body even more susceptible to health problems. Someone who died twenty years later – but who SHOULD have lived for thirty years, under more normal conditions – was also a victim of the flood. The full death toll of the flood will never be known.
The storm killed two people in Canada, seven on the island of Cuba, nine in Florida, 13 in Virginia, 19 in Maryland, 24 in New York (not including three men killed in a helicopter crash shortly afterward), 50 in Pennsylvania, and four in other states, for a total of 128 deaths… which may be low. At the time, it was the costliest hurricane in U. S. history.
(Corning-area names from The Flood and the Community. Farley Stamp information from Heritage of Bath. Hornell names from the Lockport Union Sun Journal, found by Steve Cotton. Detail on Mrs. Charles Craig from an obituary provided by County Historian Emily Simms. Ide information from Almond Historical Society newsletter.)

A “New Deal” Driving Tour

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Sometimes as you travel around you like to have a theme to guide, or at least punctuate, your wandering. Churches – town halls – parks. How many can you spot? What can you learn about them?
“New Deal” construction, designed to put the unemployed to work during the Great Depression, was vital not just to turning the tide in the 1930s, but to boosting the economic boom of the 1950s. You may pass some of these every day, but not realize that they ARE from the New Deal. So here’s a little local cheat sheet.
School construction boomed in those years. We are still using New Deal schools in Avoca, Arkport, Dryden, Ovid, Interlaken, Canisteo, and Troupsburg, not to mention the Cuba, Jasper and Prattsburgh schools, which all got major expansions or renovations. Cohocton school has an octagonal tower, hinting at Cohocton’s Orson Squire Fowler, who popularized the octagon house. These schools are now almost 90 years old, so it’s both amazing and delightful that they’re still plugging away, doing their jobs! Bear in mind, though, that all of these schools have been expanded and altered since the 1930s – we’re not seeing them now as they were when new.
Howard school (now used for business) is in private hands, and so is Curtiss Memorial School, with its stunning Art Deco front, in Hammondsport.
Modern bridges seem to have been a New Deal priority – we weren’t in horse and buggy days any more! Clinton Street Bridge in Binghamton has an Art Deco design. Corning’s Chemung River Bridge (on Bridge Street) was the biggest New Deal project in the city. Bath V.A. got a sorely-needed new bridge too, plus a hospital and a nursing facility, all of them replacing predecessors from back as far as the 1870s, and all of them still in use.
Bath proper also got a new wing to join separate buildings at the old Bath Memorial Hospital (now Pro Action) on Steuben Street. (Republican U.S. Representative Sterling Cole made sure his district got good projects from the Democratic president!)
Like the V.A., post offices were federal facilities, so post office projects could be arranged pretty quickly. Remember how much of the nation’s business used to be carried on by mail? Modern post offices sped things up, and they appeared in Painted Post, Honeoye Falls, Waverly, and Watkins Glen. Geneva, Newark, Canandaigua and Cortland* post offices all got significant additions. The 1939 Horseheads post office is now home for Community Foundation of Elmira-Corning and the Finger Lakes.
Folks who thought that the government should not be spending money on such projects got REALLY riled up about paying for artwork! But artists had to eat too, so several of these post offices got murals. Painted Post has “Recording the Victory,” in which Native Americans celebrate having captured Revolutionary War soldiers. This painting was damaged in the 1972 flood, and afterward restored. Honeoye Falls has a more peaceful agricultural scene, “The Life of the Seneca.” Waverly’s mural is about the early days of White inhabitation. Geneva’s post office has a mural inside, and a set of five bas reliefs outside! Cortland has a striking and unusual wooden relief artwork, “The Valley of the Seven Hills.”
If you like the art side of things, you MUST visit the world’s largest collection of New Deal art, at Livingston County New Deal Gallery in Mount Morris. About 10% of the collection is on exhibit at any time.
There’s plenty more stuff around, as you can see by www.livingnewdeal.org. Much of the work was in tree planting, storm sewers, guard rails, and such, but what we’ve listed here are all easily findable, and visually interesting.
Two words of warning! First, folks get understandably antsy when they see people hanging around the school. Take a look, check it off on your list, and move on – if you want to take photos, go on Sunday.
Second, as far as I can tell it’s not permitted to photograph the post office murals. This is supposed to be a “homeland security” thing, which I suppose is actually not about the murals, but about photographing the interiors of federal buildings. If you want a picture ask, but be prepared to be turned down. Apart from those caveats, hit the road! And have a good time! “Happy days are here again!”

JUNE is Bustin’ Out All Over

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June is bustin’ out all over!
That show-stopping Rodgers and Hammerstein number (from Carousel, 1945) is only one of numerous songs that ring in what might be everybody’s favorite month. Weather-wise, you’re pretty sure you won’t get frost, but the hot hot HOT summer weather hasn’t hit yet. The grass and the trees are green, and flowers are bright. Evenings are mostly pleasant, and the big thunderstorms still lie in the future. Birds are raising their young. Fireflies sparkle the night.
The movie musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers includes the number “June Bride,” for June is the traditional month for weddings – partly because of the weather, but party because many people used to marry immediately after finishing school. “Honeymoon, keep a-shinin’ in June,” by the light of the silvery moon.
June’s weather is so reliably good that Great Britain celebrates Queen Elizabeth’s birthday in June, even though she’s actually born in far-tetchier April.
On the other hand, June 1 also opens the Atlantic hurricane season. The worst storms usually come later in the summer, but fifty years ago, on June 23, 1972, Hurricane Agnes struck murderously, leaving 50 people dead in Pennsylvania and 19 right here in Steuben County.
The so-called People’s Liberation Army massacred pro-democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. The Stonewall Riots took place twenty Junes earlier, ushering in a new age in which homosexuality finally dared to speak its name.
D-Day, the American-British-Canadian invasion of Nazi-ruled France, took place on June 6, 1944. Which reminds us that June is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Awareness Month.
June starts out with Regents exams, and ends with high school graduation, that inerasable dividing line in our lives – exciting, gratifying, and scary all at once.
With Memorial Day in the week before June starts, and Independence Day right after it ends, June has been a quiet month for official holidays – Flag Day and Father’s Day are greeted more with politeness than with excitement. But last year President Joe Biden signed legislation making Juneteenth a national holiday to celebrate the death of American slavery. The Confederate army west of the Mississippi (mostly in Texas) didn’t get around to surrendering until June 2, 1865, almost two months after most of the other armies. News of Emancipation then trickled out through Texas, reaching various locations on various days, to free the last people liberated by the Civil War.
Midsummer’s Day comes in late June. It’s the summer solstice, the longest daylight period of the year here above the equator. Even though our world still warms, the light begins to shrink, back toward the darkest day of December. “On a midsummer night,” wrote Sara Teasdale, “I was fed with the honey of fragrance, I was glad of my life, the drawing of breath was sweet.”
If that’s the first day of summer, why’s it called MIDsummer? In olden times people only referred to two seasons, each six months long. The solstice fell smack in the middle of “summer.” It was long considered a magical time. Shakespeare wrote of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The story of “The Princess on the Glass Hill” takes place at midsummer. (The TV series Midsomer Murders is about a fictional region of England, but plays on the word suggesting a time when magic and reality merge.)
Even though June’s been shy of major celebrations until Juneteenth came to the fore, it offers up the official day, week, or month for Donuts, Fudge, Peanut Butter Cookies, Ice Cream Sodas, Vanilla Milkshakes, Peaches and Cream, and Chocolate Pudding! So one way or another, you should find SOMETHING you like about June!