Author Archives: kirkhouse

Mossy Bank — One of Bath’s Crown Jewels

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If you’ve ever visited Bath, you’ve almost certainly noticed the 500-foot wall that looms over the village from the south, just across the Conhocton River. That wall was formed in part by the glacier – the same glacier that gouged out Keuka Lake, then the vale of Pleasant Valley, slammed to a halt at Bath.
Mostly. While most of the glacier stayed put, its very top edged over and kept going for a spell, leaving behind “glacial erratics” – boulders and smaller stones that started out far to the north, and got swept along (actually, got inched along) by that last glacier.
Back in the early days of Bath several small groups of Native American people lived up at or near the top, and on several occasions officials from down on the flat had to trudge up to the top, in order to negotiate arrangements for peaceful co-existence.
In the 1840s a woman diarist wrote that it had become “a fad” in Bath to ride up to Mossy Bank to walk around and have picnics. Since that’s still going strong 180 years later, we probably can’t call it a fad any more!
By the 1850s the vista from Mossy Bank was noted as one of the two or three great “views” in Steuben County. Logging went on, though the slope made the work challenging. Whether with horses or on foot, you it was quite a job to get your picnic up to Mossy Bank. People found it worth the trip.
Ira Davenport built his “Riverside” mansion right over the Cameron Road bridge from Bath, roughly across from where the S.P.C.A. is now. In 1864, having seen the terrible death toll of the Civil War, he built a castle-like “Female Asylum” farther back from both the river and the road, right at the foot of the slope. He passed away in 1868, but his orphanage still made a home for distressed girls for another 90 years.
Mr. Davenport’s property included the steep slope and the Mossy Bank area, which became part of the orphanage after his death. “Davenport Girls” had their own Scout troop, and often enjoyed hikes up to the top.
The Appalachian Plateau begins at the top of the cliff, and while much of that is hilly, there’s a mile or so of fairly flat space first, and some of this is still used today as pasture. In the 1960s a forest fire burned for days between Cameron Road and Babcock Hollow Road. Folks pulled up lawn chairs onto the unfinished Southern Tier Expressway, and watched the show.
After the fire Mayor John Langendorfer fulfilled the dream of many years, turning Mossy Bank into a public park. Today there are picnic spaces, the Ted Markham Nature Center, occasional nature presentations, rest rooms, playground, a fitness trail, multiple hiking trails, and the lookout.
If anything defines Mossy Bank to most people, it’s the lookout and the view. Unsurprisingly, you get a great view of downtown Bath, the railroad, and the Conhocton River. The county fairgrounds. Several cemeteries. Lake Salubria. The West End, and beyond. Mount Washington blocks any view of Keuka Lake, but you can clearly see the roads to Hammondsport and Mitchellsville. If you know where to look, and conditions are good, you can spot the wind turbines in Howard, and the other batch between Prattsburgh and Cohocton.
Bath’s Christmas star is mounted on the lookout pavilion. Lately it’s again been lighted, this time in blue and yellow, to show support for the beleaguered people of the Ukraine.
At a little remove from the main body of the park is a smaller 14-acre section, largely taken up by a pond used for fishing and bird-watching (not to mention firefighting, if needed).
Mossy Bank is famed because eagles and osprey often nest within sight down below, and sometimes soar overhead, or even right in front of our faces. It’s a favored spot for many migrating birds and butterflies, including the monarch.
White-tail deer abound, and bears can be present, though I’m happy to say I’ve never encountered one.
The park is open to auto traffic from May 1 to October 15, and you often find families there on hot summer evenings, for the temperatures are commonly three to five degrees cooler than they are down below. Foot traffic is allowed the rest of the year, but so is hunting in season, so exercise good sense and care. Mossy Bank has 168 acres. It’s one of the crown jewels of Bath.

July — the Height of Summer

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JULY is the height of summer, the ideal of summer… the only month that is all summer, all the time. Spring creeps into early June, and by late August the geese are gathering, the green is going brown, the nights are growing chilly. But not in July.
Julius Caesar reformed the calendar (which sorely needed it) back in ancient Rome, and one of the reforms he felt SURE the calendar needed was a month named after him. So we still salute Julius, one-twelfth of every year, after two centuries and two millennia.
July celebrates our Independence Day, going back to 1776, with music and fireworks, just as John Adams predicted. On July 4, 1826, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson both died. July 4 of 1827 ended slavery in New York. James Monroe died on July 4, 1831. Two smashing Union victories in 1863 doomed the Confederacy. In 1876 it marked huge celebrations for the nation’s centennial, and again in 1976 for the BIcentennial.
In 1908 Glenn Curtiss spectacularly flew the airplane “June Bug” in Pleasant Valley. As a boy he had loved to have his grandmother read the poem “Darius Green and His Flying Machine,” which was set on the fourth of July. Glenn did much better with HIS flying machine than Darius had with his.
George M. Cohan, creator of “Over There,” “Give My Regards to Broadway,” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag” was famously born on the fourth of July, though it was actually on the third. His was a show-business family, and his father saw the publicity potential in an Independence Day date.
July 1 is Canada Day. July 14 is Bastille Day, the French counterpart to our Fourth of July. On July 16, 1945 scientists, engineers, and military men exploded the first atomic bomb. Japan surrendered, and World War II ended, 29 days later.
July is part of hurricane season. It’s also a month where thunderstorms roll across the land, though it shares that “honor” with August. On July 8, 1935 drenching rainstorms suddenly spawned destructive and murderous floods, killing 44 people between the Hudson and Hornell.
Thurgood Marshall was born in July, and so were presidents Calvin Coolidge (on Independence Day!), George W. Bush, John Quincy Adams, and Gerald Ford. Beloved children’s writers E.B. White, Beatrix Potter, and J.K. Rowling first saw the light of day in July. So did P.T. Barnum, John Paul Jones, Robert A. Heinlein, Ringo Starr, Nelson Rockefeller, Henry David Thoreau, George Eastman, George Washington Carver, Rembrandt, John Glenn, Camilla Parker Bowes, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Onassis, Henry Ford, and Alexander the Great (before there even WAS a July!).
On the down side, we should mention Lizzie Borden and Mussolini. Also on the down side, Glenn Curtiss died unexpectedly on July 23, 1930, at the age of 52. He was buried in Pleasant Valley two days later. And a July 4, 1912 wreck involving THREE trains killed at least 39 people near Gibson, making Steuben County’s worst single-incident death toll.
The Summer Triangle is straight overhead – how I remember my father pointing it out to me, one night in our driveway! The Perseid meteor shower begins in July, although it peaks in August.
Though we don’t really notice it, and hardly believe it, the days are getting shorter. But we push that knowledge aside, and drop it from our minds. After all, it’s July. And summer will last forever.

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!

What Were Their Names? The “Memory” in Memorial Day

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The year rolls around and our lives wend on, and Memorial Day has come again – even on May 30, as so many of us remember from our long-ago youths. In many ways, with school almost over, it seemed like the opening of summer. But of course it was, and is, so much more.
Caton’s a small town, but it took the lead once the Civil War was over, before even “Decoration Day” was solidly established. Caton created the first Civil War memorial in Steuben County. It’s an obelisk (popular in America at the time) and a cenotaph – a memorial for those buried elsewhere. And on it, they carved the names of their fellows who were never coming home.
Statues soon took the place of obelisks, and granite Union soldiers still stand guard over Corning, Hornell, Hammondsport, Painted Post, North Cohocton, and Bath. There are also Civil War memorials at Bath National Cemetery (another obelisk), and at Bath’s Nondaga Cemetery – not to mention smaller plaques and “all wars” monuments, and maybe even some stained-glass windows in churches.
Following “the Great War,” Frederick Carder created a striking glass memorial with the names of Corning’s dead – including his own son. It’s now at Corning City Hall, facing Market Street. It replaced an earlier list installed on the clock tower.
Grand Army of the Republic (Union veterans) had named their posts for fallen comrades – now American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts followed suit. There were also “architectural” war memorials – Bath municipal building, a library and a stadium in Corning.
During World War II many communities created displays listing their residents in the service – with gold stars added for those who died in the line of duty. After the war some of these were preserved, often little-noticed, until 21 year-old Maya Lin’s design for the Vietnam Memorial was unveiled, to public uproar. Her plan was a 500-foot wall of reflective stone, bearing the names of the American dead – now over 58,000.
Bigots, of course, screeched at the notion of an ASIAN-American designing a U.S. monument, but mostly people were just bewildered. Everyone, of course, was familiar with statues of horseborne generals, waving swords and delighting pigeons. But what in the world was this? How could we ever “honor” the dead with a goofy avant-guard creation?
The governing commission, though rattled, stuck to its guns, and compromised by adding a few discretely-placed traditional statues. When the monument opened, visitors were staggered. To walk down 500 feet of nothing but 60,000 names made an experience far beyond what anyone expected. No tugging of heartstrings, no sounds, no images, just the names. Even people who had no direct connection at all burst into tears.
We came to recognize the impact and importance of the NAMES. Each one was a person, an individual. Each one was given his or her name by delighted parents, seconds after they drew their first breath. Each name was called by friends – C’mon Johnny, Guido, Sharif! Their names were read when they graduated from high school. They’re still whispered in the privacy of darkened bedrooms.
Bath, Hammondsport, Cohocton, and Prattsburgh have created their own “name” monuments, some going back to the Revolutionary War. Hammondsport Central School exhibits the names and the photos of its fallen alumni. Many communities now have street banners with the names and photos of veterans. “At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them,” Laurence Binyon wrote in 1914. “What were their names, tell me what were their names,” sang Woody Guthrie in 1941. “Did you have a friend on the good Reuben James?”
Every war at some point passes from living memory, and all at once those names are “only” names on a list, or names cut in stone. That’s why we have memorials. Why we have Memorial Day.

Farewell, With Sadness, to the Courier-Advocate

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We have come… very sadly… to the end of the Steuben Courier Advocate. Bath will be without a newspaper… THIS newspaper… for the first time in over 200 years. Since 1816. When James Madison was president.
Unfortunately it’s no surprise, for ALL papers have been struggling, and many, especially the smaller ones, have perished, leaving us all much poorer.
The paper started off as The Steuben and Allegany Patriot. America stopped at the Rocky Mountains, Texas and Florida were still Spanish. Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were seven years old. Queen Victoria was not yet born. George III was still King of England, and Napoleon had just finished his first year of exile on St. Helena. Bath became a legally incorporated village in 1816, while pioneer prophetess Jemima Wilkinson still ruled her flock near Penn Yan. Mary Shelly created Frankenstein.
The Courier brought competition in 1843. Papers back then were politically affiliated, and the Courier became the Republican party paper, while the Advocate hustled for the Democrats. In 1958 the two merged as a general-interest newspaper, The Steuben Courier-Advocate. And, in 2022, it closed.
By 1958 the consensus was that newspapers should be neutral and objective, and that everything in them should be verified. There’s an old saying among reporters, “If your mother says she loves you, get confirmation from an independent source.”
Some say that neutrality and objectivity are impossible, so everybody should just put their cards on the table and report according to their biases. I see the point about impossibility, but I also see objectivity, neutrality, and confirmation as goals – things to strive and struggle for.
As papers have lost ground to TV, radio, and the Internet, moment-by-moment information is available. What’s been lost is the local reporter, schlepping out to zoning board meetings and other boring stuff.
Boring, but vital. The reporter learned the issues, and the regulations. He got to know the people. I’ve been a reporter in the Allentown PA area, in the Geneseo area, and here. I always figured that my job was to stand in for the citizens who couldn’t (or didn’t) make the meeting. And having me, or any other reporter in the room, week after week, reminded the officials that someone was watching.
Who’s watching now? And what does that mean when temptation comes in the official’s way, even if it’s “only” the temptation to be a little bit lazy?
The reporters are mostly gone now, even from the smaller daily papers, let alone the weeklies. Also gone are the snippets from the local libraries, churches, schools, clubs, and Scout troops. Yes, some of it’s available on line, but not all in one convenient package – not as a community. You’ve got to hunt and scrabble.
The world changes, and we are changed with it. There’s nothing sacred about the local paper, but there is something sacred about the job they do, assuming they’re not afraid to report the facts and let the chips fall. The Courier won’t be doing it any more, and some will no doubt say that Bath will be no worse once it’s gone. Maybe not. But I can say for sure, that it won’t be better.

2022 — a Double Handful of Anniversaries

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Anniversaries! Why do they matter?
Well, actually, they don’t, when you come right down to it. A hundred years isn’t any more important than eighty years… or for that matter, than thirty-nine years and six months.
Still, human beings constantly thirst for patterns, which can help keep us alive. And we’re tuned to the cyclical pilgrimage of the years, with ever-returning spring and her sisters greeting us in the same pattern, all through our lives.
Anniversaries matter to us. They can be an occasion to remember, observe, and (depending on the type of event), celebrate. And 2022 offers repeated possibilities.
First of all, the TOWN OF URBANA has its bicentennial this year. It was created in 1822 from territory belonging to Bath, and incorporated as its own municipality.
Look at a map, and Urbana is the fist that grips the upright of Keuka Lake’s slingshot. Some of the very earliest grapes in the Finger Lakes region were cultivated in Urbana, and Pleasant Valley Wine Company, formed before the Civil War, is still in business today. Urbana’s lakeside slopes make good ground for vineyards.
Though the Town’s mostly rural, there are unincorporated settlements such as Rheims, Pleasant Valley, Urbana, and North Urbana (which is southwest of Urbana – go figure). The Fish Hatchery and the Davenport Hospital are in Urbana, but the best known part of Urbana is probably the Village of Hammondsport, which was indeed a port back in canal-and-railroad days. It’s also, of course, the home of Urbana’s most famous son, the aviation giant Glenn Curtiss, who lies buried just a few miles from where he was born, and just a few rods from where his first flights electrified the nation.
Also incorporated in 1822 was the Town of Cameron, far from the Lake and high on the Appalachian Plateau. Cameron is the birthplace of General William Woods Averell, whose Civil War career was followed by a life of diplomacy, invention and enterprise – he invented an early form of asphalt for roads. Cameron and West Cameron (but not Cameron Mills) are unincorporated settlements. The land was originally separated from Addison.
Centenary Methodist Church in Bath is enjoying its bicentennial this year, though Methodists had been meeting informally before that. It took them a few years to get their building up, but once they did they shared it with any congregation, such as the Baptists and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion, in need of a home. They are now on their third edifice, and are currently hosting the Seventh Day Adventists.
This year Avoca Baptist Church enjoys its 175th anniversary. There’s also a sad 175th to acknowledge. On November 30 of 1847 Marcus and Narcissa Prentiss were killed in Oregon Territory. Later on we’ll look at the ins and outs, and rights and wrongs, of that affair (watch this space!). But for now we’ll just note that Narcissa Prentiss was a Prattsburgher, an alumna of Franklin Academy, while her husband Marcus had practiced medicine in Prattsburgh and Wheeler, before they went to Oregon Territory as missionaries.
Hornell Intermediate School was opened in 1922 as Hornell High School. It was perhaps the first of our truly modern schools, and it’s the oldest school in Steuben County that started as a public school, and is still used as a public school.
This is the centennial year for the Village of Riverside, incorporated within the Town of Corning in 1922. Earlier called Centerville, the new Village gave itself a new name. Unfortunately at some times Riverside could have been called River-In or River-Under. The Village was badly flooded in 1935, 1946, and 1972.
Which reminds us that this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Aniello’s Pizzeria in Corning, on June 22, 1972 – and then of the Hurricane Agnes flood on June 23. It’s certainly not an occasion to celebrate – it killed 19 people in Steuben alone – but it must be remembered. And we’ll do so soon, in more detail, in another edition of this blog.

1972 — the Flood, AND…?

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On June 18, 1972, five burglars were arrested at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. “No one knows yet why they were there,” Garrick Utley announced on the evening news, “but I have a feeling we haven’t heard the end of this story.”
Indeed. The Watergate scandal would consume us all for the next two years. Local folks can be excused if they lost the thread for a few months, since Hurricane Agnes devastated the whole region just five days later. It would be quite a while before they could focus on Richard Nixon’s “dirty tricks.”
But of course, there was a great deal more going on in the world. On January 30 British paratroopers in Northern Ireland went wild and massacred 14 Catholics staging a protest march. It ratcheted up “the Troubles,” a 30-year guerilla war.
Like Garrick Utley, Jim McKay made an announcement that still resounds for those who heard it. After broadcasting 14 hours straight for the Munich Olympics hostage crisis, it fell to him to tell the English-speaking world, “Our worst fears have been realized… they’re all gone.” Thirteen Israeli hostages had been killed.
Another tragedy unfolded in the snowbound Andes, when 45 passengers and crew of an airliner were given up for dead. Two months later two survivors walked out, and 11 more back at the mountaintop crash site were quickly rescued. Some had resorted to cannibalism, from the frozen bodies of the dead.
Here at home the big story was Vietnam. Jane Fonda visited Hanoi. The last draft lottery was drawn, though those numbers were never called. Secretary of State Kissinger announced that “Peace is at hand in Vietnam” just in time to help Nixon coast to victory in his re-election campaign. After the election Nixon ordered massive bombings over Christmas, and fighting dragged on until 1975, mostly without us after 1973.
On a cheerier note (and not a moment too late – we need a little cheer), Volkswagen sold its 15 millionth “beetle.” Atari sold the very first computer game – Pong! – in an arcade version. (Still no home computers yet.)
But we DID have the first hand-held scientific calculator from Hewlett-Packard, the size of half a brick, weighing over half a pound, and retailing at $395. Well I remember the day when math majors at my college trooped off to buy their own, because they’d gotten a deal for only $200! And for the first time ever, the Down-Jones Industrial Average broke a thousand. Seems quaint today.
The last men on the moon got to drive the Lunar Rover, and Mariner photographed Mars.
Believe it or not, France conducted its last guillotining (the last TWO, actually) in 1972. That’s a little unsettling.
Of course, the presidential election was big news that year, with Nixon and Agnew running for second terms. Democratic candidate George McGovern named Senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate, but Eagleton dropped out once public hysteria exploded over news that he had been treated for depression. (So, of course, have millions of other people, including me.) Sargent Shriver then took the second spot.
Besides the dirty tricks, Nixon blasted McGovern, and Democrats in general, as pathetic and gullible peaceniks. McGovern chose NOT to counter by bringing up his Distinguished Flying Cross, and the 35 combat missions he piloted in Europe. Shriver had a Purple Heart, “won” during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Agnew, by the way, was a combat foot soldier in Europe. Nixon’s service was all in rear areas.
Nixon carried 49 states to McGovern’s two (96% for Nixon!). He got 97% of the electoral vote. An unprecedented landslide! But that’s misleading. Nixon did NOT have near-100% support. When you look at the actual VOTES (not states, not electoral votes), he got 60% – still a very big win, but noplace near unanimous.
At the victory rally, supporters chanted “Twelve more years!” – four for Nixon, and eight for Agnew. But despite their huge victory, in less than two years their crimes had found them out. Nixon and Agnew had both resigned in disgrace, to be replaced by Ford and Rockefeller. So all in all, 1972 was a very busy year. I suppose they all are.