Monthly Archives: August 2022

Where to Park, in the Southern Tier!

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“If I had a dead fish, I’d share the carcass –
If I had a car, I’d parallel parkus.”

Stirring words from the Sherman the shark, sage of Kapupu Lagoon! But seriously, if you (or your guests) are touring the Finger Lakes, where many of our streets were laid out BEFORE the horse and buggy, you’ll sometimes find parking to be a challenge, or at least an annoyance. Here are some ideas, drawn from rich experience.
Parking in downtown Owego can be a challenge, especially since most of the on-street parking has a two-hour limit. There’s a small public lot on Church Street, but it’s often full. Two lots for county employees are available, but open to the public ONLY evenings and weekends. You don’t have to go very far to hit residential neighborhoods, with on-street parking not limited to two hours.
What you may not know is that the large Hyde Lot, off Temple Street behind the village hall, has free three-hour parking. It’s exactly what you need in Owego on a business day. Since the entrance is a block or two away from the business district, we visited Owego for decades before realizing it was there. It certainly simplified our visits!
Corning offers some challenges in the Southside business-government district. Tourists sometimes get caught (and ticked) (and ticketed) because they move from Zone A (for example) when the time limit’s up, and park at another spot. BUT if you find another area marked Zone A, THE SAME LIMIT APPLIES – it’s a TOTAL of two hours a day for ANY Zone A. So you have to move to a differently-lettered zone, or pay for parking… or pay for a ticket. There is a pay garage off Market Street, plus there are pay lots along Denison, next to the library, and elsewhere. The automated kiosk system at these lots is kind of a nuisance. You memorize your space number and go to the kiosk, key in your number, put in the appropriate money, get a slip, go back to your car, and leave it on the dashboard, after which you can finally go about your business.
This is tough on tourists who don’t know the system, the disabled or elderly who have trouble getting around, parents with small children, and anybody who doesn’t like walking or standing in sleet (snow, rain, hail, high wind, lightning). I believe the kiosks now take debit or credit cards, which helps if you’re out of cash. There’s no fee on weekends.
Hammondsport is a small town that gets large crowds. There’s a parking lot at Main and Shethar, and another at Mechanic and Shethar (both on northeast corners). There’s also a strip of head-in spaces at the waterfront, near the Depot, and two or three fringes of spaces at Liberty Square (Mechanic and Lake). Otherwise it’s on-street parking… try getting over to Lake or other away-from-the-center streets, and you may do well. For some events they arrange “remote” parking with free shuttles in and out.
Bath recently took out a few parking meters in the downtown business district, making free parking available for limited periods, helping people who need to step into a store or the post office. Many metered spaces (both parallel and head-in) are available. There’s also a large municipal lot (metered) behind the row of buildings on the east side of Liberty, between East William and East Steuben.
Watkins Glen has a small free lot on Third Street, behind the visitors center. The state park lot charges eight dollars sunrise to sunset. There are also spaces near the marina, and on-street parking… no meters in Watkins.
All of this is subject to change! And none of this is official! But it’s overwhelmingly accurate, and at least gives you a starting point for when you visit. Have fun in our small towns!
(By the way, that “If I had a dead fish” poem is by Jim Toomey, in his “Sherman’s Lagoon” comic strip. Check it out – it’s a great strip!)

Cartoonists of the Southern Tier — Johnny Hart

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From Jamestown to Binghamton, the Southern Tier is a grand place to find… cartoonists. Some of the best-known, best-loved, most enduring cartoons and comic strips were crafted day after day after day, right here where we live. And we begin on the east, with the “Hart” of Broome County.
Long after Alley Oop, but well before the Flintstones, Johnny Hart brought forth “B.C.,” a deceptively-simple humor strip about cavemen. Bill Mauldin contrasted Johnny’s style with the work of “rivet man” – cartoonists who drew every rivet on the boiler. They could overwhelm the reader with rivets! But place two cave men against a horizontal line, said Mauldin… a line that could be “the top of a swamp or the bottom of an overcast…” and you’d better get that line RIGHT. This, he enthused, Johnny Hart always did. Charles M. Schulz was another enthusiast.
“B.C.” first hit the stands in 1957, which means that the strip (now helmed by a grandson) has been running for just over 50% of the history of comic strips. Johnny was the subject of a WSKG documentary, “Hart of B.C.” – B.C. standing in the case for Broome County, Johnny’s lifelong home. He repeatedly used his characters to boost the community, including wheel-riding Thor on the Broome County buses. (Though one of his gags, as a character contemplated “nothing,” was, “This reminds me of a weekend I once spent in Endicott, New York.”)
That was in “The Wizard of Id,” which he co-created. In 2007, at the age of 76, Johnny Hart died literally at his drawing board.
In his later years Johnny drew flak for bringing Christian religious themes into “B.C.” One in particular showed a menorah transforming into a cross. I’ve studied that strip, and I think what he was TRYING to do was show Christianity’s origins in Judaism, and its debt to Judaism. But even if I’ve read him aright, appropriating somebody else’s religious symbol, and literally transforming it into one of your own, is discourteous and wrong.
With 50 years on “B.C.,” and 43 on “The Wizard of Id,” Johnny Hart racked up almost a century of jokes, gags, thought-provokers, and funny pictures, and he did it for EVERY DAY of 93 years . Al Capp wrote that one of Johnny’s books was “full of genius, and if you happen not to be an older and envious cartoonist, you’re going to have a very good time.” Rod Serling put it even more simply, in the forward to another collection of “B.C.” strips. “Just don’t sit there, Johnny Hart… go ahead and make me laugh!” Mission accomplished, Johnny. In fact, we’re STILL laughing, even at strips we’ve read a million times. Thank you. Rest well.

Fair Week

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It’s Fair Week in Steuben County. In fact, August is the month for county fairs all over this part of the state.
County fairs got started with state funding and encouragement, back in the 1800s. The Legislature was anxious to improve agriculture in what we now call the Empire State, and they figured that fairs were one way to do it.
How so? Well, put yourself in the shoes (assuming they had any) of a farm family in western New York, right after the War of 1812.
First of all, you were probably somewhat isolated. Travel was miserable back in those days, and besides, who had the time to do it anyway, if they were trying to farm for a living?
On top of that a noticeable number of farm folks were illiterate, or inadequately literate. Here in the northeast that was actually uncommon, but there were still too many to disregard. Even if you COULD read, there were no magazines to speak of, and… out here, at any rate… not enough postal service to be very helpful.
But once things settled down in the fall, maybe you COULD make a family trip to the fair, possibly sleeping in (or under) the wagon for a night or two. And at the fair, you could learn about better farming techniques.
You could find out about better strains of crops.
You could inspect tools and equipment, brought in by vendors who would never have made the journey out to your lonely farmstead.
Even the prizes awarded for everything from pies to pumpkins to squash to succotash – from horses to hens – from sheep to goats, from bread to needlework – were created to encourage improved production and techniques.
Of course the fair also provided opportunities to socialize, to politic, to be entertained, and to be separated from your money. All in all, a fair back then had just about everything that a fair has now.
As the agricultural population has shrunk to microscopic levels, the need and purpose of the fair comes into question. It still provides everything it used to, but in different proportions.
And while the full-time professional farmer still can learn and benefit from the fair, maybe it’s even more important to the hobbyist, specialist, or small operator. Here you can learn to improve your beekeeping, or your sugaring, or your cheesemaking. These operations don’t have the impact of the old small general farm, or the new large specialized farm, but they are in fact important… to the consumer, but especially to the operator. For these specialists, what they learn at the fair, or at least the contacts they make at the fair, can be vital.
Back in 1901 Hammondsport businesses closed down during Fair week, because the customers were gone anyway. Photos from 1908 show people shoulder-to-shoulder in the Fairgrounds. And the Fair was in September.
Nowadays the Fair is firmly set during school vacation. It’s not the attraction it once was. It’s not as significant, even to the farm family, as it used to be. But it still meets all the purposes that the Legislature had in mind over two centuries ago.
Steuben County Fair got its start in 1819. While there were two break periods (when state funding was dropped), the Fair has run continuously starting in 1853, and continuously on the same site since 1854. That includes the years of the Civil War, two World Wars, Vietnam, the COVID, the Spanish influenza, polio outbreaks, the Great Depression, the flood of 1935, the flood of 1972, AND the dramatic dwindling of the agricultural population. Hooray for the never-failing Ag Society!
One MODERN function of the Fair, not thought of back in 1819, is the “history corner” – the one-room school, the pioneer museum, the log cabin museum – not to mention the exhibit of old-time farm equipment on the upper level of the Fair House. Steuben County Historical Society operates the one-room school, and helps operate the rest of the history corner. Please stop in and see us!

“Faded Coat of Blue” — Steuben’s High Cost in the Civil War

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Steuben County counted 66,690 souls in the 1860 census. Since just about half of them would have been male, figure that at 33,345. The looking at males of military age – would a third of those males be a reasonable proportion? That would make 11,115. Several thousand of them went off to fight in the Civil War, where they saved the Union, destroyed slavery, and re-established democratic majority rule. But they paid a high price, and over 500 of them died.
That’s a big number, and some of it came from sickness, and some from inadequate medical care. They were lost forever, while others came home, but came home incomplete.
One man, I believe from Caton, lost his hearing entirely, due to a bomb blast. A young man from Almond was part of a small rear guard left on the wrong side of the river to delay the attacking Confederates (they expected to be killed or captured) as Union troops retreated. They escaped in the end, and he had a distinguished civilian career. But all the rest of his life the sound of a whippoorwill “filled me with horror,” flashing him back to the long and terrifying night.
An Addison man came home despite having been shot in the head, but fell into despair at how many of his friends and neighbors did NOT come home. He found some measure of peace through prayer, church, and physical labor in the farm fields.
A Howard man was shot at a battle in Louisiana. The bullet drilled completely through his pocket diary, and mangled but did not pierce a tintype of his wife and child. He returned home to father more children, and lived a long life.
Monroe Brundage of Hammondsport lost an arm at Antietam – still the bloodiest day in American military history. Brundage stayed in the field commanding his men until doctors amputated on the following day. He tried to return to duty a few months later, but soon recognized he was no longer strong enough. He went home to a successful law career, but died young ten years later.
Lieutenant Henry C. Lyon was sent home after being gravely wounded at Antietam, but he died on the way, never seeing Pulteney, or his family, again.
R.C. Philips of Prattsburgh was shot in the shoulder defending Little Round Top at Gettysburg, and while a surgeon saved his arm, he lost the USE of that arm. He then became an officer (only one arm needed) with the U.S. Colored Troops. But farming was a struggle after the war. That caused much family pain two decades later, when he demanded that his eldest son, rather than continuing his education, stay on the farm to do the work that his father couldn’t.
Morris Brown Jr. received the Congressional Medal of Honor for leading his men out into the field of Gettysburg to attack Pickett’s Charge from the flank. He was finally killed between the lines in the Siege of Petersburg, and his body was never recovered.
Benjamin Bennitt signed up for an infantry hitch and a cavalry hitch, and became a P.O.W. He escaped four times from Confederate captivity, once cutting his way through the floor of a moving train. Civilians captured him after one escape, and Confederate Home Guardsmen had to pull him away from from a lynch mob. He was finally returned to Hammondsport on a prisoner exchange, once P.O.W. camp had rendered him so weak and sick that he could never fight again.
Marine Private Charles Brother was a runner on Admiral Farragut’s flagship during the Battle of Mobile Bay. “Men blown to pieces… Killed and wounded in every form,” he wrote. “Our cockpit looked like a slaughterhouse.” He returned safe home to Bath, but the war shadowed the rest of his life, which ended in what may have been suicide.
West Pointer W. W. Averell came from Cameron, but lived much of his adult life in Bath. The army rated him disabled by wounds from Indian fighting, but he immediately returned to the colors in 1861. He then contracted malaria, but nevertheless fought through most of the Civil War, and rose to be General.
As we said earlier, they saved the Union, destroyed slavery, and re-established majority rule. But the price, for them and their families, was very, very high.

There is many a boy here who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell. – William Tecumseh Sherman

Bronze-Faced August

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AUGUST is a magnificent month. It’s also a bronze-faced, unforgiving month. It pours out many beauties and joys, but can also bring either droughts or floods, hurricanes or hammering heat waves. August may usher in thunderstorms and tornadoes. Or beauty, clement climes, and the very best of summer. The thing is, you never know. And August doesn’t care.
Caesar Augustus, Julius Caesar’s heir and grand-nephew, had finally conquered the Roman world by 30 B.C.E. Just as his great predecessor had named a month for himself, Augustus figured that he was entitled to do the same.
In August the Summer Triangle beams down on us from directly overhead. You can spot it without excessive effort, because it’s formed from three of the brightest stars. They’re among the first to appear on an August night. They’re old friends, and they visit every summer of our lives.
Sirius, the brightest star of all, is getting higher night by night. The ancient Egyptians figured it was SO bright that its rays must be adding to those of the sun, making August extra hot. Since it’s in the constellation Canis Major (“Big Dog”), we have the expression “dog days of summer.”
Also speaking astronomically, August brings us the perseid meteor shower, almost always the biggest of the year. At their peak, the perseids average a meteor a minute, so it’s not high-tech sound-and-light show. But if you’re happy to be still and wait, it’s one of nature’s glories.
One very sad note – an August 30 train crash in Wayland killed 30 people in 1943. It was the second-worst single-incident disaster in Steuben County.
Hiroshima was atom-bombed on August 6, 1945, Nagasaki on August 9. Japan announced its surrender on August 15, or V.-J. Day. Only Hawaii and my native Rhode Island still celebrate it, now called Victory Day, on the second Monday of the month.
Even with Victory Day, August is curiously bereft of any major holidays, though Britain has “August Bank Holidays,” two Mondays on which businesses are closed, and millions of Britons head for the beach. Other than that you can enjoy National Immunization Awareness Month, National Milkshake Day (8/1), Coast Guard Day (8/4), or, if in Vermont, Battle of Bennington Day (8/15), though the fighting actually happened in New York.
The fact that August is big in thunderstorms means that it’s also big on rainbows, maybe rivalling only April in that regard.
Marcus Garvey was born in August. So were movie people Jason Momoa, Peter O’Toole, Lucille Ball, Alfred Hitchcock, and Sean Connery. Orville Wright and Neil Armstrong were born in August, making a GREAT juxtaposition – the first man to fly an airplane, and the first man to step on the moon, not quite 66 years apart. WOW!
Napoleon and Mother Teresa, avatars of sharply different world views, were born in August. So were literary types Herman Melville and Francis Scott Key. Other August birthdays come to presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Most of the birds have raised their young, but the monarchs are still struggling northward, laying eggs in the milkweed as they pass. The geese are not gathering QUITE yet, but hidden in the woods, you can see the leaves starting to turn, and the season with them. In the last week of the month, even if the weather’s still summery, the sky takes on a slightly different shade of blue. It takes a LITTLE longer for the morning air to warm up, and darkness comes just a LITTLE earlier.
August is the month for swimming, beach parties, clambakes, blueberries, corn on the cob. And suddenly – back-to-school sales. Displays change in the stores. Mothers start stocking up on school supplies, and checking how much the children have grown since they last wore their “school clothes.” If you’re a kid, it seems horribly unfair. But even so, it’s not September YET! The water’s still warm. Another swim would be great.