Chestnut Heights

Chestnut Heights is a post-war housing development of the late 1940's - early 1950's situated between Chili Avenue and West Side Drive. The main connector, Chestnut Drive, had the original houses and the rest of the neighborhood grew up quickly in the first half of the 1950's. The houses were small but in many cases packed full.

To those living there now it might be hard to imagine "the woods" , "the sandhill", the "back track", the  "old/new Wilelen" and no outlet on the east end of Hallock but a walking path through the Head's property to get back and forth to the city bus stop on Chili Ave.

Growing up in that neighborhood meant a lot of yard play (kickball, whiffle ball, badminton, croquet, garage basketball, tag, mother-may-I, multi-yard football, etc), a lot of adventures in the woods (underground "forts", first cigarettes, getting lost, endless hikes, pollywogs in the creek), endless time at the diamond (a baseball field originally real sandlot but later upgraded to t-shirt league/little league quality), playing at the hill (leaping into the dunes, Cowboys and Indians, running away from the Fenton Rd toughies) - all with seemingly dozens of kids of all ages sprung free from the modest sized houses.

In the 60's and 70's further development eliminated the woods, the baseball field and the sandhill.

It had to happen, just as the original Heights eliminated the asparagus farm (a good crop for sandy soil). But let it be said that for the first generation of us this neighborhood offered freedom, safety and a diversity of activity that gave a lot of us a great start in life. I'm sure the kids growing up there now have their own unique ways of having fun and enjoying the beauty of the changing seasons Chili has to offer. At least I hope so.

RIP Tom Perkins

     Tom Perkins was a buddy of mine all through high school. He lived on Chili Ave, just inside the city line, a St. Augustine guy.  We played pool at Olympic Park, went to the Grange, played football, hitchhiked around town. He smoked Larks. He was a really nice guy. We hung out all the time during those four years and then I never saw him again after graduation. Today I saw that he passed away 6.16.14. RIP old buddy.

Learning Spanish

Hace seis años empecé aprender español. Yo he estudiado casi todos los días y ahora puedo leer y escribir un poco pero todavía hablar o escuchar es difícil para mí. He usado muchos recursos del internet para aprender lo que he aprendido. Tengo la buena fortuna de tener alguien en mi casa que puede ayudarme y esa persona ha estado muy paciente conmigo. Ella me dice que la sola manera para aprender a hablar y escuchar con habilidad es ir a un lugar donde todas las conversaciones son en español. Es verdad, cuando hemos viajado a México mi comprensión me parece mejorar. Por ahora, voy a continuar con mis estudios y con trabajo duro y buena suerte puedo aprender más y más cada día.

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.