The Village

Driving through the village that I claim as my hometown, you'd never guess that it was once big enough to need one hotel, much less two. It had at least two hotels in the past, though, as well as several churches. There were factories, and bakeries, and it was more than just a few streets and a huge number of horrible people. Most of it's gone now, since most of it burned down, but there are still traces.

One of the bakery buildings still exists over behind where the old post office was (before it burned down):



although it's not a bakery anymore. The churches are still there, and we still have a Depot Street with train tracks, even though the trains mostly go through without stopping.

Driving through, you'd probably be struck by how green and pretty everything seems to be, with the streams:







and the tourist footbridge:



(Seriously, why did they even build that? It doesn't connect anything important to anything else important, and the seating section in the middle just faces a different bridge that cars drive over:



Who is this fancy bridge even designed for?)

and the water tower:



and the horses and buggies:





and the replica Statue of Liberty:



which, other than my family and friends, is the only thing I love in Philly now that they got rid of the stretch limo up on blocks:



but never forget:

Philly is an awful place populated mostly by awful people.

You see, at the beginning of summer in 1994, I went to the village office:



to apply for a village summer rec job. I was not able to apply, though, because there wasn't an actual application. Instead, I was told that those jobs are only for people who are related to other people, even though they were municipal jobs partially funded by my parents' taxes and the taxes of all the other village residents who lived there but weren't related to the mayor or members of the town board. Home for the summer without a car, I applied for the only job in walking distance that claimed to be hiring, but it wasn't hiring because the village was practicing nepotism and discrimination, the latter of which I watched it dispense freely throughout high school.

I never spent a full summer in my village again.

I always enjoy my visits home, but I always make sure I leave again.

Hazy Shade of Winter

I like my town, kind of, and I like the state of New York, conditionally, but on some level I also always think of upstate New York less as the place I come from and more as the place I escaped from. Spending a week here in the dead of winter rather than during November, which used to be the dead of winter but now (possibly thanks to climate change?) is kind of hit or miss on whether it will even be chilly, much less whether there will be snow on the ground, has done nothing to sway me from the certain knowledge that no, I don't want to move back home on a permanent basis. Not now, and not ever.

Did I ever tell you the story of the train that goes by my house at night?

When we first moved here, and I had to come back for the whole summer after freshman year of college (still the only full summer that I have ever spent in my town), I was miserable. I didn't have a car and couldn't find a job in walking distance because I was male and unrelated to the members of the town board (as I explained in the link above, town and village jobs were held for relatives of the town and village government, and the gas stations only hired women), and everything was so flat. This used to weigh on me at times when I actually sat and thought about what I hated about living here, and tried to quantify it into words. This part of upstate New York is a lot of rolling farmland, so all I could see from my house was horizon. So much horizon, so far away. As a normally overdramatic and also prone to depression person, this began to weigh on me, this feeling of being trapped in a terrible place with all of the sky pressing in around me.

Enter the 11 PM train.

Our house was only air conditioned on the ground floor and in my parents' bedroom, so I had to sleep every night with the windows on either side of my bedroom opened to get a cross breeze to flow over my bed. Generally, since we live in the country, evenings were quiet except for the random interruption of the fire whistle less than a mile away, and the 11 PM train that I managed to hear every night, even if I was already asleep. I'd snap awake, lay in bed, stare toward the ceiling (I can't really stare at the ceiling, since I can't see the ceiling from my bed without my glasses on, so I just kind of point my eyes toward it), and listen to the long, mournful whistle of the 11 PM train as it passed through the village every night without stopping. The whistle was mournful, of course, because I was unhappy.

You probably already figured that out, but just in case, it's just a regular old train whistle unless you're a depressed teenager.

Anyway, one night at dinner toward the end of summer, I was all kinds of fired up about something, and raging and carrying on over how awful it was to live here and there was nothing to do and all you could think about all the time every day was how much you wanted to get away and how exciting it would be to live somewhere, ANYWHERE, that wasn't Philadelphia, New York. (I'm fairly certain that I also referred to my town at least once in this rant as "Philthy", rather than Philly, as I still refer to the sexist gas station as Philthy Fuels to this day.) I was in full dramatic fervor, just short of weeping and tearing at my hair, really all the way into Shelly Winters at the bus station in "A Place in the Sun" territory in terms of hysteria and Veda talking about dollar days and the smell of diner grease in "Mildred Pierce" in terms of content, carrying on about this terrible place and these terrible, inbred, nepotistic people who lived and died here and never dreamed about anything but their sad, terrible little lives and wanted everyone else to fall into the trap of staying in upstate New York with them. My parents, more than used to this, barely gave it an eyeroll while eating and watching the evening news with me, and that's when I hit the climax of teenage drama and launched into an impassioned, Emmy-worthy speech about the 11 PM train.

"Every night! Every night I lay in my bed, and I stare at the ceiling, and I hear the train go by! I listen to it whistle as it blows through town, and every night I wonder about that train, and where it's going, and who the people on it are! I wonder what they're doing, and if they're just passing through, or if they're getting out of this terrible place, with these terrible people! Every night I hear that train and I wonder where it's going and I wonder what it would be like to ride on it, to ride out of here, to get away from Philthy and get on that train and go somewhere! Somewhere far away!"

I probably should have followed this with weeping, but my dad, who had only been half listening (if you've listened to the same rant every night for a whole summer already, why give it your full attention?), turned around and casually asked, "Did you just ask about the 11 o'clock train? The one that goes through at night?"

"YES! The one that LEAVES HERE!"

Dad shrugged.

"There's nobody on that train."

"Wh...what?"

"That's a freight train. It goes from Watertown to Potsdam and comes back in the morning. There aren't any passengers on it."

And then he turned back around and kept watching the news.

I was speechless.

I think my mom laughed.

At the time I interpreted this as "Nobody understands me!" in my teenage wailing, but now I think about this story and giggle about what a bratty little asshole I was and how my dad waiting for the perfect moment to casually puncture my teenage drama balloon. My parents are awesome.

Upstate New York?

Slightly less so, especially in winter. Talking about that was the original point of my post, as I realized this week that in addition to being flat and soul-crushing for people without cars, winter also leaches the color out of everything, rendering the entire landscape in a pallet of white, black, and slushy gray. As proof, I submit the following:























The sky blends right into the ground and even things that have color seem less bright.

And that's the other reason why I can't move back home, ever.

Snow.

I lift my lamp beside the... gas station door?: Part 1 of my trip home

Remember when I went to Bizarro Philly and mentioned that there's really nothing all that special about my hometown of Philadelphia, NY? All that has changed, and my town now has something of note.

I'm not talking about the historic one-room schoolhouse:



which they've sold off and had moved away since the last time I was home, or even the stretch limo up on blocks by the high school:



now in its second year of gracing the side of the road on Route 11. No, I'm talking about a semi-permanent monument, a symbol, the kind of thing that might pull some tourists off of the highway and show them that our town cares enough about our country to erect a statue in between the Stewart's Convenience Store, about which I have nothing but good things to say, and Philly Fuels, for which I have nothing but scorn.

I give you the Philadelphia, NY, Statue of Liberty and flagpole:



Let the kind of patriotism that only a ten foot replica statue of another, better monument somewhere else can provide wash over you for a moment, and then I'll take a moment to explain my simultaneous love and hate.

Why I love it: Oh, God, it's tacky. I love tacky roadside monuments like a pig loves rolling in mud.

Why I hate it: The Statue of Liberty celebrates America's welcoming and acceptance of immigrants from all over the world. My town, on the other hand, is pretty unwelcoming toward outsiders. When I was in high school the military base near the village was expanding, bringing in lots more kids to the school district. I was one of them, and for pretty much the entire time I was there the local chatter was all about "outsiders" and "transient military people" and "those people", and that's not even getting into the variety of racist terms that were bandied about since the high school stopped being all-white.

Not only that, but it stands in the village of Philadelphia, where summer jobs are only available to people who are related to other people who live in the village (a fact that was confirmed for me by my friend, the mayor's daughter), and it was purchased by and erected on the property of Philly Fuels, a business whose proprietor told me in the summer of 1994 that they only hire females to work in the store, because "Boys are too much trouble, and the trucks like to see girls behind the counter."

The idea that my village, home of the high school that willingly purchased alumni directory software that did not allow LGBT people to list a partner, rather than spouse, before gay marriage was legal in New York and then wouldn't ask the provider to change it, is suddenly welcoming to the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the homeless, and the tempest-tossed strikes me as ridiculous, especially since the anti-Jewish graffiti that I noticed on village property in 2008:



still hasn't been cleaned off as of last week:



I suppose it's possible that some of the things I mentioned have changed since I was in high school and college and that my village is now a whole other place, but I seriously doubt it. Instead, I bet that from the outsider's perspective it's still pretty unwelcoming.

You probably wouldn't notice, though, if you only stopped long enough to get some gas and stare at our new statue.

doll parts

That's my grandmother's antique babydoll. At my grandparents' house, she sets it on one of the beds in the guest rooms, and Chester the cat goes up during the day and lays next to it. My parents and I, who each take a room, have a habit of moving the doll from room to room because it creeps us out and no one wants it on their bed.

You probably don't think that doll is all that creepy, but you're not looking close enough:



It has teeth.

And don't get me started on the eyes:



Not only are they creepy, but it's one of those babies that the eyes close when you lay it down, so when you're moving it to the bed in dad's room, for example, the eyes roll up at you. I know it's my grandmother's cherished childhood toy, but that doll is nightmare inducing.

Doll exposure aside, my trip home wasn't bad. I didn't have to sit next to anyone on any of my plane rides, which was awesome, but I had US Airways for part of the trip and they charge you for soda and for having a suitcase, which is not awesome. It's still better than Northwest, though.

I landed in Albany, where they have some new art on display in the airport:





I had to fly in there because my parents were at the southern end of the state hunting in the beginning of the week, at camp:



The view of the Catskills from hunting camp's windows is amazing, as they wrap all the way around the first floor of the house, and it's also filled with antiques to stare at if, like me, you're not hunting and you get bored with your book:







Eventually we headed back upstate, so that they could keep hunting there. There wasn't really a lot of snow when I got there, because it rained for the whole first day, but then it got cold again, and the snow started.



It starts out with those cute cotton ball flakes, and you think it's sort of picturesque. Then it starts snowing a little harder:



Penny and I sat and watched it for a while, although Penny was mostly watching for birds. The snow stayed pretty steady for a while, coating the trees and covering up the bare spots the rain made:



By Friday morning, when we went to get an oil change for mom's car, it had progressed to full out blizzard and crushing snowfall:



That's one of the cars in the lot at the dealer. I don't see them making a lot of sales with nothing plowed and a foot and a half of snow on their cars, but that's just me.

I could be wrong, though. People buy all sorts of things that I think won't sell, like deer print Christmas stockings trimmed in safety orange fake fur:



Only at Wal-Mart, people. Only at Wal-Mart.

our town

I'm currently stranded at my parents' house in upstate New York. I use the word "stranded" because I flew home instead of driving, which means I'm pretty much stuck at the house unless I can convince someone to drive me somewhere. While I'm here, though, I've been reminded by a discussion with Stan that I never finished talking about my June summer vacation, and now that I've got nothing to do but read and walk around the house taking pictures of normal objects on extreme closeup, I may as well address some of that.

(Stan is probably reading this and scratching his head, since the only discussion we had was whether or not "upstate NY" was the same town it had been in high school, but my brain took that and ran with it.)

My relationship with my parents' town, Philadelphia, New York (not to be confused with other, larger Phillies that may spring to mind when you hear that name) has always been sort of contentious, my impression forever colored by the one summer I spent there between freshman and sophomore years of college. That was the summer I tried to get a job in the village, and found out that the local gas stations, stores, and village summer recreation offices freely admit that they only hire females, relatives, or some combination of the two. Since then I've pretty much always viewed the town as a backward collection of prejudiced nepotistic inbreeders, and do my best to avoid interacting with actual townspeople whenever I happen to be here. I never spent a summer here again, and don't intend to.

Given that I view the village through a somewhat biased lens, it's surprising that I still find parts of it attractive. I have, for example, always been fascinated with the cemetary in the elementary school outfield:



It's not in the best repair:





I've always wondered why, since the cemetary seems like the oldest part of that area, the baseball field and the neighbors' backyards are pretty much right in it:



Wouldn't it have made some kind of sense not to build those things so close?

Besides my trip to the cemetary, I walked over to the boat launch, where I saw gorgeous views of the Indian River:



Not surprisingly, I also managed to find a hate crime:



I'd like to point out that, while I expect the village to be filled with hateful, small minded people, I totally wasn't looking for that. All I did was go out for a walk and there it was. Given that the paint doesn't look especially fresh, I can only conclude that a number of village maintenance workers have viewed that and either agreed or at least not been offended, but that's to be expected from people whose minimum qualification for hiring was "cousin".

To make matters worse, I realized when I walked down to the launch that there was additional anti-Jewish vandalism on the side of the bridge, in much plainer view:



You'll need to click the picture to see it, but all I had to do was stand on the dock and turn my head. Again, it's in a pretty visible location, and it's not a small swastika, so I can only assume that the town either condones it, ignores it, or is somehow incapable of removing or painting over it. It's still a nice view, though, if you stand so the tree blocks that part out:



I also saw a number of large tadpoles developing in the water, although my shadow kept scaring them:





At least the river isn't poisonous.

My trip this summer was also the first time in years that I was in town for Quaker Days, the annual (except for one year that my mom says they skipped) festival celebrating our founding:



The Quakers, apparently, were big fans of cotton candy, games of chance, and a flashy midway. The people of Philly, on the other hand, didn't seem very interested when I stopped by:



There were random collections of people at the rides, but it was mostly deserted:







Tiff and I were the only ones betting on the cake wheel:





And we still didn't win! Not that I needed a whole cake or anything, but it would have been nice to win just the same.

I'll just hold that grudge against my town for a few years, too, in case I ever forget about that summer when no one would give me a job because I was from out of town.