Chili Center 8

     My first experience riding the city bus was from the No.3 Firehouse at Chili and Chestnut to St. Helen's kindergarten. I don't remember much about it but it's kind of amazing to think that 4 and 5 year old kids were able to manage such things in the mid-1950's.

     The first really memorable bus ride was in what I remember to be 7th grade when I went to the Rundel Memorial Library with a classmate (Henry M).  I remember feeling like we were on a real adventure, going all the way downtown by ourselves, and exploring the library as if it were some incredibly rich source of information about everything - which it was to a 12 year old in those pre internet days.

     Throughout high school, riding home on the "Chili Center 8" buses became customary when one missed, or decided to opt out of taking the Gates-Chili school district supplied bus. Going downtown after school in high school was a bit of a thrill. Teenagers from all over would be walking around Midtown and you never knew who you might run into. The record store on the 2nd floor of Midtown was a favorite place to hang out, as well as Scrantom's Books, The Sibley's malt bar, the incredibly dense international newspapers and books shop, etc. A favorite place to eat was the Clintonaire Restaurant on South Clinton.
   
     When I was a junior in HS I got a job in a notions shop on Clinton Ave S. right near Main St. I would go there after school and pull orders for the big department stores (McCurdy's, Sibley's, Edwards) and deliver them via a hand cart. This meant, of course, that as all the cool high schoolers were hanging around downtown, I was pushing a handcart through the same spaces delivering buttons and zippers and thread and needles and a million other things to the notions departments in those stores….. so much for hanging out in the record stores or eating at the Clintonaire.
     We used the buses quite a bit in those pre-driving days. They were convenient and cheap and allowed us to go beyond our walkable boundaries.

50th Anniversary of SPX Class of 1964

     In three months it will have been 50 years since the SPX class of 1964 graduated. Yikes.

     It makes me wonder where those other 40+ people are today.

     Over the course of life we become members of various groups through school, work, hobbies….as well as religion, nationality, politics, fandom. Some of the memberships are important and others are simply coincidence, but they all shape us in one way or another.

     A grammar school class may not be all that important to anyone. We were just forty-some kids thrown together by chance and circumstance. And yet, on this 50th anniversary, I find myself wondering a little. We spent so many hours together over those years …. funny and a little sad to think that graduation day would be so final in that respect.

    I was sad when I heard some years ago that Sr Felicia had passed away. I would have loved to run into her when I was an adult to be able to tell her what a lasting impression she made…..and thank her.

     I'm not a reunion guy, per se, but I would sure like to run into some of my classmates by chance. Not living near Chili anymore certainly reduces the chances of such encounters …. so I will just say here: Happy 50th Anniversary, best wishes, and thanks for the good times.

   

JFK 50 years ago

We were the 8th grade class at St. Pius X in November 1963. I can't remember too much about that day we heard about the assassination…just a few snippets. Sr. Mary Leonard being called out of the classroom (very unusual) and then returning in a very unfamiliar state. There was a wait time, it must have been after we had some word, when we were alone in the classroom and the banter was about the Russians…..those were the days of atomic bomb fears…..Soon after we were let out (early?) and we walked home to what would be a period of national mourning which put a veil over the Thanksgiving weekend.
All we did was watch the news and the ceremonies of the funeral. I was watching TV alone (was it Thanksgiving Day?…it seems like everyone else were eating a meal in the dining room) when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald live on the screen. How crazy the world had suddenly become. How out of whack!
And all this shaping us. We were just discovering girls and independence….thinking about high school as the next big step. Hanging out after school as long as we possibly could before returning home. Looking for places we could hang out out of the sight of adults. And now we were learning that the world…already known to be dangerous after growing up with talk of bomb shelters, the missile crisis and end of the world scenarios….was less predictable than our exceptionally regular, peaceful life in Chili had shown us.
We have a lot in common, all of us who went through all that together. It characterizes us in a way that is a little different from all others. This commonality cannot be re-generated because all the living we've done in the last 50 years has separated us as we've lived out our divergent lives. But here's a toast to our commonality despite later differences.

Paper Route: Democrat & Chronicle

In the early 60's, I'd guess 1962-1964, I had a paper route...delivering the morning Gannett Democrat&Chronicle paper in the Chestnut Heights neighborhood. (In those days there was an evening paper, The Times Union, also published by Gannett Monday-Saturday.)

What a different thing a newspaper was in those days. It really delivered the NEWS and it was so full of ads that the weekly delivery rate was 60 cents. Think about that! They got an elementary school kid to get up every morning at 5:30 or 6:00 and deliver roughly 35 weekday/50 Sunday papers in the rain, or snow or freezing cold, by foot, before anyone went to work, and then go around weekly to those 50 houses on Friday afternoon and Saturday to collect the 60 cents...all for maybe $5.00 a week.

But there were some benefits :)

You got to read the headlines before anyone else and get the sports results. There were some absolutely beautiful mornings which would otherwise have been missed. You got to be the first one to walk through new fallen and sometimes crusty snow. You got to know every family in the neighborhood...at least to say hi and  to visit houses you might never had had a chance to otherwise (with real, live teenage girls!!).

There were some grumps of course.....a few men who were waiting impatiently at the door if you were 10 minutes later than usual. There were those who never seemed to be home during collection which necessitated several visits back and sometimes paying up front for their paper.

But there were also some great folks who showed real kindness. It's funny. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but kindness to a kid doing a job for you is remembered for a long time and creates in that kid a positive sense about the world. So thanks to all those neighbors who were nice.

Oslo

From time to time I'd like to share a few places I've visited besides Chili.

There is a park in Oslo, The Vigeland Sculpture Park,  that is filled with statues of people....all sorts, young and old, men and women, happy and sad, strong and week, big and small....hundreds, maybe thousands, of figures that can absorb you for hours.

I have visited this garden several times and have to say that it is as delightful on a clear warm June day as on a dark gray November day.

It is in walking distance from the center of Oslo (a great place to stay is the Frogner House, delightful service, delicious warm breakfast) and a must see for anyone visiting this beautiful city where the summer sun shines about 80% of the calendar day.

The statues are the work of Gustav Vigeland. The number, scale and variety boggles my mind when I think of how much work must have gone into such an exhibition.

Maybe most people won't have a chance to go there in person but with modern tools (google, youtube, etc) you can make a virtual tour of one of the sculptural wonders of the world.

Just one picture to whet your appetite........

Sports Teams and Play

        My favorite teams as a kid were the New York Yankees and the New York Giants. There were also the Rochester Red Wings and the Rochester Americans. That may seem like a limited span but things were different in the 50's. Sports were not pervasive like they are today. There was a baseball Game of the Week and a Football Game of the Week on TV and otherwise there was the radio.
       I was an avid baseball fan. I knew by heart all the information on the back of the Yankee baseball cards. I was crushed by their game seven defeat in the 1960 World Series but in general I was elated by their winning, seemingly every year during my intense fandom in the late 50's and early 60's. I would listen to games on a little black Japanese portable radio while going to sleep or on a Sunday afternoon. I only ever went to one weekend of games when friends of my parents drove my brother and me to Cleveland for a weekend 3-game series in August of 1961 (Saturday afternoon and a double header on Sunday) where I snapped a black and white photo of "Mantle talking to Reporter" which I treasured for years but went missing in time. That was the year of the "M&M boys" when Maris broke Babe Ruth's home run record of 60 by hitting his 61st in the last game of the season......something I heard on that little black radio.
        Football was only an 8-team professional game in those days and the Giants were the "locals". We would watch the games on Sunday afternoon and play football catch during halftime in unfenced backyards. It wasn't nearly the big deal it is in the 21st century but memorable games like the  famous blizzard championship between the Giants and the Colts built the foundation.
        Hockey was more of a curiosity. We did play hockey (on Steckle's pond) or in the frozen street but we knew, as in baseball, that Rochester was just a minor league town. We played basketball on driveway courts and K of C Catholic elementary teams, played football in backyard stadiums covering several lawns, baseball at the sandlots, badminton in the backyard....but no tennis, or soccer, and no karate. Besides KofC basketball, the only organized sport was baseball which everyone played through Little League, but very few played beyond that and it lost its popularity by High School. [Secretly, I really wanted to keep playing but it was too far from cool.]
         One more thing that was great fun was whiffle ball (and kick ball). I remember especially some great evenings in the Muncil's back yard. Mr. Muncil would have the radio on playing the Red Wings game and we would play until we couldn't see any longer for the darkness. Those games drew gangs of people every night after dinner. I suppose that was the way before computer games and cable and worries about kids "roaming the neighborhood" after dinner.
         

Recent Visit - Summer 2012

I just returned from a visit to Rochester. The weather was summer perfect with constantly changing skies but mostly full of sunshine. I stayed at the new 384 East Ave Inn which had beautiful rooms, plentiful parking and great location. The Inn is still under development (because of which they are offering bargain rates) but from what we experienced it is going to be a super addition to a busy and beautiful part of town. From a personal perspective, the Inn is interesting because it is in the place of the old Treadway Inn. The Treadway had a nice (fancy to us) restaurant where we used to go after family First Communions. The new owners expect to have the new restaurant serving by next summer so we'll look forward to visiting again.
Walking around the East Avenue to Park Avenue area is a pleasure on a nice summer day. We had breakfast one day at the Frog Pond and lunch one day at the corner of Park and Oxford joining others who were eating at sidewalk tables. This was fun because I used to visit The Roosevelt apartment building on the opposite corner when I lived in Rochester. I was very surprised to see that the building at Oxford and East is no longer the home of the nuns who once hosted retreats there. But I did notice that the residence behind the old Cenacle building is still there - all covered in ivy like an out of place forest dwelling.
Of course we stopped at Abbott's to enjoy some frozen custard and took advantage of easy access to Wegmans (which we have to drive 15 miles to get to where I live nowadays). It was a short trip, mostly spent at a delightful family reunion which was held in Penfield. I always wish I had more time to roam around when I'm in Rochester...to see what has changed and also to see what has not.
All you folks who are living there now are lucky....especially during the beautiful summer days.