Dreiser penned that passage concerning the Susquehanna Valley as he, Booth, and Speed (at the wheel, naturally) left Binghamton, following their looking about the city, and their passage through the just re-named Johnson City, which lies to the West by a short bit.
Just re-named Johnson City because as the company was informed, it had held the name Leicestershire until, it seems, shortly before the Pathfinder arrived. The "Johnson" was R.G. Johnson, owner of a shoe-making concern which apparently brought such boon to the city that he was honored by his place and name being somewhat synonymous. Said change was excuse for a celebration, including floats, soldiers, "...girls and boys in white (principally girls)..." and signs "...labeled 'Boost Johnson City.' "
Some day I may look-up why the street where so much Retail sits is named Harry L Drive.
At the time of my visits, either of them, I could see no evidence near the Susquehanna that anything remains of a shoe-making factory. Ordinarily, if such a thing had still been rearing even the remnant of a smoke stack, I would spy it out; nothing doing.
Anyway, after my much desired night's sleep, I was off in the direction of Lake Erie.
After spending most of the previous day under generally cloudy skies, I was dismayed to see, looking out the window of my room, that this Saturday morning was likewise overcast. I nearly conceded the thing, with a thought to remaining for another night, rather than spend a second day driving in that peculiar 3/4 light of the occluded sun. "Oh, hell - then again, I may as well press on," I muttered (or words to that effect) and proceeded anyway to exit Johnson City and continue the journey.
The view in the wing mirror made the decision seem dubious.
Above: Johnson City to Savona.
New York's Highway 17 C (for which "C" is designate of, I know not what) looked to be the most likely route West. It mostly keeps to the North bank of the Susquehanna, and passes through Owego, Waverly, and Chemung, and principally on Main Street of those towns before disappearing into the Highway 17, Expressway version (an Interstate in most ways save designation). At some point during the previous couple of days, I found that I had not packed my Gazetteer map of New York State, to my dismay, and would be relying on Rand McNally: good to a certain level of detail, but missing a few things. In the main, this was not too detrimental, though there were a couple of times when it would have been nice to see some smaller roads.
Johnson City seemed to just quit, soon after I turned onto 17C, and for a short stretch I was in company of trees and rail road tracks before arriving in Endwell. On the map, though, it's easy to see why: I was driving adjacent to a country club. It amazes me that so many places have country clubs, but I don't feel like getting into a socio-economic diatribe right now, so I'll spare you.
ANYway, Endwell: as with other places that I had gone through, or was going to go through, Endwell seemed one of those towns that simply continues to exist because it's there. Once a certain amount of construction has been established for a long enough span of time, people will continue to reside, even if an outside observer (such as myself) sees no good reason for it. It is, therefore it will be. Maybe even unto the end of days.
Endicott was next down river. I thought it would be much the same.
This arch memorializing the Square Deal caught my attention, and perhaps it's ironic that I took this photo from a McDonald's parking lot.
According to Endicott's Visitor Center website, the workers E-J Workers who are celebrated on this arch, the employees of the Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company (the same Johnson for which Johnson City is now named I suppose, though the George F. and R.G. are a little differing) were the beneficiaries of George F. Johnson's ideals of fair pay and respect: the "Square Deal."
Johnson's ideals were Progressive; he believed that the employer and the employee had a relationship that required an amount of reciprocity: the work is hard, but in return, you receive among other things health care, low rates on housing, and shoes for your children. With a nod to his own impoverished childhood, Johnson had carousels built that were to run free for the riding. At the worst of the Depression some 15,000 workers, reduced to a three-and-one-half-day work week, still voted "NO" on union organization. Johnson's funeral in 1948 drew a crowd said to number 40,000, and his coffin was passed under this memorial arch, built in 1920.
Funny to think now that Dreiser might have actually liked Mr. Johnson's ideals, but they passed out of Binghamton and Johnson City with only this remark being written of that consideration:
" 'Well,' I said to Franklin, 'now you see how it is. Here is the reward of virtue. A man builds a great business and treats his employees fairly and everybody loves him. Isn't that so?'
Franklin merely looked at me. He has a way of just contemplating you, at times -- noncommittally."
After passing under the arch, the town picked up a bit, to my eyes at any rate, in its "tone," capped by the Corner Drug Store. If I lived about here, I might just patronize this establishment on principal.
Shortly after, Endicott also seemed to quit pretty quickly, and ahead were the rolling hills bounding the Susquehanna's course.
After living in Indiana for a few years, I should be more used to towns simply "ending." In my mind, I suppose, I still have the idea that municipalities sort-of wend along and slowly fade rather than simply coming to a halt at someone's demarcation. Depending on which way you drive out of Lafayette, even it seems to dwindle away rather than simply ending.
"It was soon after leaving Binghamton that we encountered the first of s series of socalled [sic] 'detours,' occurring at intervals all through the states of New York, Ohio and Indiana, and which we later came to conclude were the invention of the devil himself. Apparently traffic on the roads of the states has increased so much of late that it has necessitated the repairing of former 'made' roads and the conversion of old routes of clay into macadam or vitrified brick."
Fortunately, I encountered rather less in the way of detours -- at least of the formal kind -- as I made my way West in New York. My personal detours are another matter, as my turns-about were not left behind in Jersey or Pennsylvania.
The day was starting to look brighter -- literally -- as the clouds broke up and SUNLIGHT! began to cast its warm glow on the world. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Pittsburgh has a lot of overcast days in Winter, and that never seemed to bother me much, but for Summer to feel like Summer, there really has to be direct sunlight. Not so much hot, but sunny. I'm O.K. with highs in the mid- to upper 70s in Summer.
Above: NY 17C heading West outside of Endicott.
And here, some of the admixture of the Southern Tier. There are very few places one can visit today, perhaps even anywhere in the world, that might be even mostly insulated from the layering-over by the current technology, infrastructure or what-have-you. It is all strata, with elements representing decades to view, showing us the history of maybe the last 150 years.
I think this might be Campville.
As had happened along US 11 in Pennsylvania, climbing away from Nicholson, here New York's Southern Tier Expressway (Hwy 17) has removed much of the traffic from the local two-lane.
Not that I'm complaining. New York devotes more right-of-way to shoulders along their roads, which affords me much better chance of being able to stop to take photographs; and with less local traffic, the chances increase yet again. All around I'm rather happier with this!
So here, where my less-traveled road passes close to the Susquehanna, could I take a moment to exit the saloon and frame a few shots.
Looking back East-ish along 17C.
A typical road-side hill view.
Granted that I have only been through these hills and river valleys but twice, and not in Winter, but I rather like the country of the Southern Tier. While getting to, and staying over, in the Binghamton area, I was looking forward to revisiting these stretches of road.
I certainly was not expecting to find a Lockheed-Martin facility out here. But I suppose, as with so many other research and manufacturing companies, the lure of land outside the high price- and tax range of the more urban areas is as tempting.
Oh, yes -- there it is! Nearing Owego, I came once again to the landscape of the Chains. I was dismayed all over again. Sure the sun was out (finally! Sun!) but seeing the usual crap on the outskirts of town was a let down. I should have been used to this, should be now, and yet, I can't escape the feeling of ---- at seeing the same signs in the same proximity to each other and the road.
But, to my pleasant surprise, the older portion of Owego still had the feeling of being well occupied, and while there were some less-used buildings in its center, for the most part, I believed it still showed an amount of life that was heartening to observe.
"Soon Owego appeared, a town say of about five thousand, nestling down by the waterside, amid a great growth of elms, and showing every element of wealth and placid comfort. A group of homes along the Susquehanna, their backs perched out over it, reminded us of the houses at Florence on the Arno and Franklin had to make a sketch of these. Then we entered the town over a long, shaky iron bridge and rejoiced to see one of the prettiest cities we had yet found."
It was through a miss-reading of this passage that I was looking for a bridge with buildings perched upon it, or some evidence that such existed. I found nothing of the sort, of course, but I did find one of a long line of bridges built across the river here. That passage also indicates that Dreiser & Co were traveling along the opposite bank of the Susquehanna than I had driven. But, it's a bit late to fix that discrepancy.
On the other hand, the local highway on the South side of the river runs in parallel with the NY 17 Expressway for a goodly number of miles over which I traveled in 2014; that routing is much more populated and built up, so the "view" is so many commercial buildings, and a lot more traffic.
"Curiously, I was most definitely moved by Owego. There is something about the old fashioned, comfortable American town at its best -- the town where moderate wealth and religion and a certain social tradition hold-- which is at once pleasing and yet comfortable -- a gratifying and yet almost disturbingly exclusive state of affairs
At least as far as I am concerned, such places and people are antipodal to anything that I could ever again think, believe or feel. From contemplating most of the small towns with which I have come in contact and the little streets of the cities as contrasted with the great, I have come to dread the conventional point of view. The small mind of the townsmen is antipolar [sic] to that of the larger more sophisticated wisdom of the city.
It may be that the still pools and backwaters of communal life as represented by these places is necessary to the preservation of the state and society. I do not know. Certainly the larger visioned must have something to direct and the small towns and little cities seem to provide them."
I think this passage of Dreiser's illustrates pretty well his contradictory feelings of the American small town, and hints at the nostalgia he wrote of concerning "destination Warsaw, Ind." I'll concede similar contradictions, which always bubbled up a bit when I heard a line in Don Henley's song "The End Of The Innocence:" "...somewhere back there in the dust / in that same small town in each of us..." I have many vague memories of visiting relatives in Kansas or Oklahoma, summer days in small towns on the plains, so very much different in atmosphere and appearance from the Greater Los Angeles Metro. Those thoughts are caught up in the mix when I pass through or spend a little time in towns like Owego, and I have the strange yearning to settle in some little burg. But something always tempers that yearning, and I return to the idea of a city instead.
The bridge at Owego.
As has been done with many towns or cities of nearly any size these last couple of decades, the land alongside the river has been "parked," to barrow Dreiser's word -- what-ever had been upon the bank now removed to the utmost, and the immediate riverside planted in green with trees and grasses, benches and walking trails. It is pleasant to look at, and surely restricts foul run-off from a direct path to the riverene system, but of the many like parks I've seen, they seem under-utilized. (The exceptions would be the park along this same river away downstream in Harrisburg, PA, and Fairbanks Park in Terre Haute -- which principal roadway is named for Theodore's brother Paul: Dresser Drive!)
In an interesting contrast to world events -- well, in contrast to the Great War, that is -- Dreiser had a conversation with a bar owner in Owego, who's chief concern was whether he would be allowed to keep his business open long: the "dry" movement was voting "no license" "all over the state."
But that's kind-of America all over. It would be some time before there was any real movement toward entering the War; most people wanted little or nothing at all to do with the problems of Europe. Whether citizens could take a legal drink was much more of a concern.
At right: 17C climbing away from Owego, and below, the view over the Susquehanna Valley.
"We were careening along a cliff overhanging this river and as we did so along came a brightly lighted train [they were driving at night here] following the stream bed and rushing somewhere, probably to New York. I thought of all the people on it and what they were doing, what dreaming, where going; what trysts, what plots, what hopes nurturing. I looked into a cottage door and there a group of people were singing and strumming..."
And yes, somewhere down there are rail road tracks. I suppose 17C to be the right road at this point in both our tales, since, as can be seen, there is no cliff to careen along on the opposite bank, nor tracks. 17C is much improved however.
There are, along here, a number of small towns or "wide spots" that might have hosted Dreiser & Co for an "oil and gas" stop. Dreiser and Booth occupied their time considering the different roads and towns they might tour through having left Owego. Dreiser was for directness, Booth preferred better roads. There were conflicting opinions to spare, but generally the roads to Buffalo were ajudged to be of good quality, so, directness aside, Dreiser also had a desire to visit Warsaw (the New York Warsaw) they agreed to make Elmira and a night's sleep before deciding. They would pass through "Waverly, Elmira, Corning, Hornell -- which on our map were marked as easy of access."
A typical Southern Tier Valley, where 17C briefly leaves the Susquehanna's immediate river-side. In the vicinity of Barton.
Despite the large numbers of automobiles that were piling up on America's roads and highways by 1915, I think even Dreiser and Booth would be taken aback by the sheer, overwhelming quantity of the machines that exist now. In several places I noted a place like this, an auto auction site, where used car dealers come to get their deals.
On the edge of Waverly.
Waverly, a town with "...typical American atmosphere...the America of a slightly older day." It's amusing, perhaps with a touch of rue mixed in, how apt some of Dreiser's observations of an hundred years ago are still so applicable.
"There was a time not long ago when Americans felt that the beginning and end of all things was the home...just a comfortable home in which to grow and vegetate. Everything had to be sacrificed to it...These houses, a little faded now, a little puffy with damp..."
Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Have we ever, in this country, really strayed away from the idea? The "dream" may have waxed and waned a bit depending on the decade, but even now in the aftermath of the last great recession, the house is still upheld as a major factor of America's life and economy.
Of course Waverly had its smattering of "fine" houses, as well as those "puffy with damp."
After Chemung.
At Waverly, NY 17C ceases; staying on a "17" highway meant the Southern Tier Expressway (which dips briefly into Pennsylvania to avoid Waverly!), and the Expressway also carries I-86. County Road 60, however, maintained a path along the river. At Waverly, too, was the Susquehanna was left behind; now it would be the Chemung river for some miles, the Susquehanna having made a bend to the South.
It was in Chemung that Dreiser & Co took rooms for the night, having only made a few more miles. And rooms only, let out in a big house, and by a young man Dreiser describes as an "angular country boy." They were woken the following morning by the pounding fist of that young man on his father's bedroom door, with the shout of "Get up you drunken hound!"
At right: where the county and state roads run in very close proximity.
Sitting in their room that morning, Booth described his taking correspondence courses as a way to learn the basics of drawing, and how that led to his submitting poems and sketches to an Indiana newspaper.
That was the start of his career, a career which would find him famous for his time, having his drawings reproduced in national magazines.
As they were leaving the house in Chemung, Dreiser recounts, another car stopped off from the road, three women and a driver, their car carrying a pennant declaring they were from Lansing, Michigan. "Pennants seem to be a habit with cars coming from the west...I was morally certain that they [stopped] because of my presence here. They thought others were breakfasting." He was not taken much with the other tourists.
I don't recall much of Chemung; a few miles after, though, I noted a sign for The Newtown Battlefield State Park. I didn't know anything about a battle or about Newtown, but it seemed like as good a place as any for a stop and a look-see.
The Park Service roads looked like what I think of when I consider the old roads that had only just received a hard surface by 1915.
In some places, those old roads probably looked much more like this service drive, which leads to the park's maintenance yard.
The battle at Newtown was fought between Loyalists, British Regulars, and their Native American allies against Revolutionary American forces for control of the area, part of a campaign to secure the Finger Lakes region for the nascent United States.
The obelisk at right, was put up in 1912 to memorialize the battle, the only major fight of the campaign, according to point-of-interest placards.
An overlook downhill from the obelisk offers a wonderful view of the Chemung River Valley:
From here, Elmira was but a short distance.
And here, Elmira, as seen beyond the Expressway, with the Chemung River beside.
Scenes of Elmira. NY 352 is the route through, and beyond to Corning.
I was of the mind in 2014 that Elmira "felt" as if it were a bit dried up, "wheezy" I termed it, despite the decent size of the place, and the newish buildings in its river front district. Then, it was a three-day weekend for the 4th of July, so it wouldn't surprise me if the population en masse had decamped to the Finger Lakes, save for the poor folk tending counter at the Dunkin' Donuts. So, maybe it was more traffic this year, or maybe I was just willing to be more generous toward the place, but it seemed to have more life as I drove through. Perhaps I would give it a better assessment if I stayed longer?
Approaching the church above at left, I had already slowed to take the photograph, and believed I had captured a decent image. It would be hours before I saw that the minivan had got in the way.
"Chicken and Waffles"
Of the exchanges Dreiser relates in his text, one of my favorites occurred in Elmira. As noted, too, in my last year's account, Dreiser and Booth were again contemplating possible routes, and had gone in search of maps and information regarding road conditions. They appealed at the local Auto Club office, speaking to a man there who was "...small, stoop-shouldered, eye-sockety..." and greeted them with a "smirk." Dreiser inquired about heading West toward Ohio, but was told that the best roads, and hotels, were bent toward Buffalo:
" 'That's a fine road, good hard macadam nearly all the way, and when you get to Avon you strike one of the best hotels anywhere. When you get up there...walk into the restaurant and ask 'em to give you some of their chicken and waffles. You'll just be about ready for it when you get there and you'll thank me for telling you.'
I fancied I could see the cloven hoof of the Avon hotel keeper mystically present in that speech. However, far to the left on another branch of the same trail I saw my beloved Warsaw, New York.
'What's the matter with the road up through here?' I asked, putting my finger on it.
'Well, I'll tell you,' he said, 'there it is mostly dirt and there are no good dirt roads as you know...'
I seemed to see the Avon hotel keeper smiling and beckoning once more -- a chicken in one hand, a plate of waffles in the other -- but he didn't appeal to me at all...I said to myself 'why must everything be turned into business?' "
Some recommendation: "...good hard macadam nearly all the way..." Nearly! When was the last time anyone had to consider such in this country? "That road is almost all paved, so that's your best bet!"
In July of 2015, an Interstate bridge spanning a creek on the North-East side of Lafayette, IN, was found wanting. During a project to widen the highway, engineers noticed that the bridge deck of the North-bound lanes was subsiding in a manner that would leave it unsound to carry traffic. The Interstate was closed for a couple of days while a "fix" was constructed and placed. In the meantime, traffic was diverted to local highways resulting in miles-long traffic jams. After a brief re-opening, the "fix" was declared unsatisfactory as further inspection revealed that one of the bridge piers was resting on an artesian well, and would not hold up without more serious work. The Interstate was closed again, this time for several weeks while repairs were effected.
At right: traffic detoured off of I-65, and on to US 52 Northbound. This was from the first instance of the Interstate being closed. The latter closing saw more trucks finding alternate routes sooner in their journey; this day it was a surprise.
Passing by an on-ramp to the North-bound lanes of I-65 and seeing them barricaded and signs announcing ROAD CLOSED was very strange.
We have become so used to the infrastructure that we've inherited from the last 50 or 60 years that, despite its sometimes lousy condition, to really have to consider alternatives is nearly mind-boggling. The alternate routes in most cases are totally inadequate to handling the traffic, too, as the Interstates carry such a ridiculously high volume vehicles.
En route toward Warsaw, NY, the Pathfinder and its passengers enjoyed "...one of the most delightful days of any..." with blue skies, the sights and sounds of harvest, "...marvelous herds of cattle..." all the wonders of rural America. Dreiser remarks, after leaving Elmira, that "...along the first portion of the road...I was beginning to get an idea of the magnitude of the revolution which the automobile had effected. Thirty years ago these roads would have been traveled...by wagons and buggies..."
Not something Booth included in his sketch, I guess; more in keeping with the Pastoral (above).
I had hoped to capture a similar perspective as I passed out of Elmira; I recollected this valley from last year's drive, and did make the attempt, though it's not quite the same:
This view, from 2014, is still one of my favorite photographs taken on that run.
The image at the head of this chapter was taken a few miles past this location.
I was actually looking forward to returning to Corning. Corning, NY, is still home to Corning Inc., the multi-national company that produces glass -- like Pyrex -- and so much more (including imaging mirrors on the New Horizons space craft that did its "fly-by" of Pluto in 2015!). They maintain a Museum of Glass, which was recommended by Ron, my co-worker in the university's scene shop. He said it was pretty impressive, and probably not what you'd expect for a "museum of glass." He was right; I went, and it's impressive (more of that on a separate page soon).
But I suppose (as noted last year) it's that economic giant that keeps Corning alive. It's not a large town, but both times I've been through, I've found it quite nice. At least the streets around the Corning Headquarters; a revitalization from some decade, I'd guess, but none-the-less, a nice effect. I did have a fleeting fear that something would have happened in the intervening months, I would find the place dusty and closed-up. I needn't have worried.
On the road to Corning:
In the vicinity of Big Flats -- no detour at this time, but a nice, fresh, black-top!
The view West on W. Market St.
As I opined last year, you might claim that this little market district along Market St has been "gentrified," and maybe that's true. The out-skirts of the city have the usual National Chains, but what place doesn't? O.K., I could name some small towns that don't have them, but, this had still the atmosphere about it that I remembered, and plenty of people out-n-about on a perfect Saturday afternoon.
Above, and right: the Old World Cafe and Ice Cream. Doing a good lunch business, and making a really fat sandwich for it. That lunch counter is only a small part of the establishment; the ice cream parlor was pretty big, and both were busy.
At left, Jim's Texas Hots, where you can get a bite in a classic, hole-in-the-wall eatery, maybe before catching a movie at the Palace, above. Still an operating cinema, the Palace shows both first-run and classic films. I can't say if their operating hours coincide, so check first before heading down to Market.
If I had seen Jim's first, I might have had a "hot" instead of a sandwich down the block. Maybe later. Don't know when I'll get back to Corning, but I think I just might at some point in time. Maybe I'll add it to the list of places I'd like to have a vacation home in!
Below left, "T.G. Hawkes Place," an instance of some developer going for the higher-end residence scheme; you just can't get away from it! I mean, hey! if it works in other towns, why not here? Riiiight?! If anything, I'd call this a case of gentrification, certainly. And I thought that it had been gentrified when I passed by last year? What had been a mixed use building with a glass and crafts studio/shop at street level is now advertising "luxury apartments" to open in the Fall of 2015. Yech! Reminds me of the mills in Paterson.
Below is the drive to the fore-court of Corning's Headquarters campus.
"In Corning...we found a city as prosperous as most of the others apparently...It being Saturday, the natives from the surrounding country were beginning to come in, but I did not notice any of that rural flavor which had seemed to characterize them in my youth. On leaving every town where we had loitered too long we made a solemn pact that we would not wast so much time in unimportant towns that were nearly all alike; but whenever one rose into view and we dashed into a principal street lined with stores and crowded with people, it was beyond human nature not to get out and look around a little.
Here...it was that I first noticed that Franklin had a peculiarly sharp nose and eye for ferreting out ideal rural types...not the crude, obvious, one might almost say burlesque types, but those more difficult...who do their best not to seem to be of the country and yet who are always so obviously of it...the boy or woman or young man...dressed in those peculiarly new and store-y clothes that makes them so appealing and so pathetic to me."
There's little these days of "new and store-y" clothes to mark out a "rural" who has come to town. If I've noticed anything traveling from one place to another -- and I've seen a few places -- it's the clothes. Oh, yes, there are types, sure, and the "rural" amongst them are far from likely to bother with anything new or store-y. It might be more the opposite: that people in town are more apt to dress like their rural counterparts these days.
I refrained from shopping in the three or four antique stores along Market this year (sigh) and after lunch managed, after some inadvertent detouring (can't read the street signs!) got on the way to Savona and "the toon o' Bath."
NY 352 appears to exist only to link Elmira and Corning, so at Painted Post (pictured here), post detour, it was a left turn onto NY 415.
This view was simply too charming to me to not take a photo. The houses, the trees, and the hill rising in the distance, all conspired to affect me.
NY 415, a couple miles beyond Painted Post. The Cohocton River is downhill of the tree-line at left.
And here, another one of those views that just begged to have it's photo taken!
Above: contrasts. I passed quite a number of sites that hosted these mobile, or manufactured, homes. I think "manufactured" is more appropriate, since I've rarely seen one "mobile" beyond its initial trip from the lot from which it's purchased to the plot where it's landed and hooked-up to utilities. Many never leave those places, but instead simply see a transfer of title whilst remaining anchored to the ground.
Dreiser probably never cast an eye on the like, though I would venture that he would hold such in to the same esteem he ventured on the "hives" of mill-workers' tenements he described in Wilkes-Barre. For myself, I can only think that as a lower-cost alternative the manufactured house must seem so much the better for the money. A comparable monthly out-lay by the tenant might only net one a lodgement in the small rooms of a contractor's apartment complex, where residents are subject to the attentions -- or lack -- of the landlord, and the neighbors are only a few inches-worth of sheet-rock-clad-wall away. Here, too, one can leave one's auto nearly at the door, instead of down the walk and out across the car park.
"Beyond Corning came more delightful small towns, 'Painted Post'...Campbell...Savona, a hot country store street where Speed stopped for oil and gas. Anent Savona, which hadn't a tree to bless itself with, where Franklin and I sat and baked while Speed replenished his stores, Franklin told me the story of why the principal street of Carmel, his home town, was treeless. Once there had been trees...but with the arrival of the metropolitan spirit...it was decided to widen the street...The idea which first popped into the minds of all who desired metropolitan improvement was that the trees should come down...
'Why?'...
'Well, you don't see any trees in Main Street, Indianapolis, do you?'
...Indianapolis was the criterion. 'Are we going to be like Indianapolis...or New York -- or are we not?'
What rural would save any tree as against being like New York, I'd like to know. That is why, I suppose, we baked for fifteen minutes in Savona."
I'm pretty sure this was Savona. If it had not been for the stop light at this intersection, I'd like to have missed it entire. And still no trees. (O.K., there are surely trees elsewhere; I just find it amusing that right there there are none one hundred years later.) The glimpse I had of this was of the dusty little town left behind since the Expressway went through. There is some small town on the map, and the Expressway has an interchange here, but -- some places just get passed by anyway. It's just never been large enough or far enough away from everything else to attract attention, maybe.
Yet again, a stone's throw from the Expressway. About half-way between Savona and Bath, and the Interstate is "right there!" as had happened before. You could throw a rock at it, but if someone caught you, you'd probably end up in front of Homeland Security.
In "the toon o' Bath" next to the town square.
There is a historical marker on this square, embossed: "Pulteney Square Here in 1793 was made the first clearing in Steuben County by Col. Charles Williamson founder of Bath"
"And then came 'the toon o' Bath,' as we forever after called it...a dear lovely, summery town, with a square so delightful that on sight of it we instantly got out and loitered in the shade...
...like some [other squares] in New England [it] was especially pleasing because it had no courthouse and no monuments, merely a bandstand and a great spread of benches placed under wide-armed and sturdy trees."
Dreiser & Co came into conversation with some of the former soldiers of the Union Army of the Civil War. To their wonder there were many about the square, but they learned that there was a soldiers' home in Bath; there is still a Veteran's Affairs center here.
One of the men of the Grand Army told them of "...the only building in the toon o' Bath that ain't got no sides but just front and back..." with gales of laughter that Dreiser describes as "...artificial, and mechanical..." The building referenced was being built with common walls between two other extant structures, and so nothing really out of the ordinary, but "toon o' Bath" stuck with them.
Dreiser goes on to wonder at these old soldiers, and how their lot in life.
"I began to feel the undertow of this clanking farce called life. What a boneyard old age seems, anyhow!
There was another old soldier, tall heavy, oleaginous...who explained that he lived in Brooklyn up to the year previous, and had been with Grant before Richmond and in the battle in the Wilderness. These endless, ancient tales seemed a little pale just now beside the heavy storms of battle raging in Europe. And I could not help thinking how utterly indifferent life is to the individual...What's the good of all [the]...fuss about war to these ancients? How does ...[it] avail them now they are old...Fifty years ago they were fawned upon for the moment as the saviors of their country. And now they hobble about such squares as this..."
Around the toon o' Bath:
Above two views including the square; below what I came to see as the typical town elements.
It was while I was turning about this toon that I glommed onto the idea of "tribes." Nothing new, I'm sure, but the idea seemed to make more sense here suddenly.
Along one street here, I saw some young men standing on a porch engaged in the conversation and lighting of cigarettes as some young men do (young men by my lights thinking them in their mid-20s probably). Wearing denim trousers (or "jeans" if you prefer) and a "T-shirt" that had a dark background and swirl of not-quite psychedelic colors, hair brushing the collar of that shirt, one man caught my brief glance as I passed.
There, I thought, is a mode I have seen in so many places; a wearing of the hair in like fashion that I have seen in as many; and painting with a very large brush perhaps, I'll go on to state that this man and his companions (I think they were of two) were "hangin' " in a part of town of lesser houses and a general aire indicating a certain lower economic stratum. Yes, to be generous I could be wrong about this last, and looks can be deceiving it's true -- but many times the appearance is true.
As I passed by, it came to me that this fellow, and probably his friends, could exist just as they were in so many places, and find companions of people who have adopted their manner of raiment, adapted their manner of speech, are attracted by the same musical acts, and like as not have a similar outlook on life, for, like as not, similar facts of life where employment and prospects of the future are concerned.
They are part of the same "tribe." Or maybe "Tribe." They, and members of any tribe across this country, indeed around the very world, would recognize easily members of their Tribe at a glance, and could fall into conversation or other activity at the proverbial drop of a hat (if they had a hat amongst them).
At a later date than this, I noted a woman of middle years in a "laundr-o-mat," in company with a much younger woman I took to be a daughter. Their clothes set them out, to my eye, as not often -- O.K. not at all -- using a coin laundry: the denim of their shorts (as such they were attired) was too perfectly indigo, their "polo" shirts had some emblazon on the breast from a club of some kind; the Converse "Chucks" on the daughter's feet were perhaps trendy but unscuffed and the rubber trimming far too white to make me think she wore them very much. The Tribe this pair belonged to was vastly different from the Tribe of the young "rocker" in Bath I think.
I pondered on this question over many miles, and I wondered: are they inevitable? Do we need them? Are they only convenient as a short-hand to other personal development? Does Tribe affiliation hold after our "teenage" years, our "high school" years, and continue because we don't know how to grow into something else beyond that milieu? Or are they a natural out-growth of being human? A bit of "all of the above?"
Such were the things that occupied my mind. I had a lot of time to consider them. Still: Tribes. I don't know what mine is.
Leaving toon.
Generations of transportation: rails, local highway, and Expressway.
Across the street from this, the Retail Corner containing the Rite Aid (What?! Not a Walgreens?!) a Family Dollar, and an AT&T storefront among other things.
What I did not note until this writing was that Bath is only a few miles from Keuka Lake, one of the so-called Finger Lakes of New York. Then, Dreiser didn't mention those, and I wasn't looking for them at the time.
Dreiser & Co left Bath, driving out into what he called "a Dutch landscape." Passing a stream, Dreiser was inspired to by the Pastoral scene to take a swim, to which Booth responded "That looks rather inviting," and so they did.
NY 415 followed the approximate path of the Pathfinder, as after Bath, it led to Avoca, another town I was surprised to find on the map -- but there it was!
Following their swim, Booth noted on their map East Aurora, home to Elbert Hubbard's Roycroft compound. It was East of Buffalo, and Booth wished to try the place. Dreiser explains his own distaste for the Roycroft or "Arts & Crafts" movement, but it was on the way after Warsaw, and he was at least interested in visiting the place. The Falls of the Geneseo, supposed to be quite a sight, were also on that route, so they had their next slice of itinerary.
It was in the vicinity of Avoca that the swim and map reading came about. Well, then -- to Avoca was I bound.
Along 415 were these pleasant Southern Tier scenes, along with another unexpected instance of manufacturing: the Bombardier plant. Bombardier builds train cars for passenger rail concerns. I recognized the name, and (as at left) this style of car: when New Jersey Transit introduced new carriages a few years ago, they were made by Bombardier in the two-deck model visible peeking around the corner here.
Avoca, when I got there, was another of the very tiny towns that I would pass through in the Southern Tier. Like Savona, there is only little distance to the Interstate, but Avoca looks mostly frozen. Only a few signs of the new -- literally: one of the signs was for Progressive Insurance -- but they're hanging outside older buildings.
Above left, the sign announces that the Avoca Free Library was established in 1915.
Dreiser gives Avoca a few brief words concerning its pleasantness, but they could not get a decent meal. When approaching Avoca, I had made a quick bearing to the right, off of NY 415 and up the main street. Thinking that I would find 415 pretty soon on the other side, I continued on my merry until I saw a public access site to allow fishing at a trout-stocked stream. A fine place for a halt!
I had the wonder of thinking through here "This could be the very place! The road that they drove over! Granted, better pavement, maybe, but right here!"
Scenes at the trout stream. Reminiscent of the stream that Dreiser and Booth swam in? Maybe the stream that they swam in? Well, maybe. I suppose it might have been the same, though probably not right here. If I were shooting the movie version of A Hoosier Holiday, I'd consider filming that scene here. Hmm, why not a movie version of the book? Well, finding substitutes for the now at least somewhat modernized towns might be difficult. A movie would probably need to be shot in Canada or Czechoslovakia or some place where hiding the McDonalds would be easier.
I had a cup of coffee and relaxed for a few minutes before looking again at my map. My thoughts of driving over the route of the Pathfinder were dashed when I saw that Arkport was to the West, and I was headed North. Oh, the wrong road again! But at least it was pretty, and the stream was nice.
As in so many other places, the near-by Interstate had taken the traffic away, and very few vehicles accompanied me.
It was here that I really missed the Gazetteer. After Avoca, the Pathfinder rolled to Arkport; there are smaller ways to Arkport that are more immediately around Avoca, but Rand McNally does not show them. After driving back through that town, I turned West on a county road, 70A, that roughly parallels, again, the Southern Tier Expressway. Looking at the Gazetteer today, I can see that there are ways through this neighborhood on the smaller, local roads, but I can only accept that I was at least mostly in the right place.
The stereotypical slow truck-and-trailer on a rural highway. All that traffic that I hadn't been seeing? Yep, it all piled up behind me and this thing.
70A intersects NY 36 near North Hornell. 36 led to Arkport, so I entered the town from the South, rather than the East. But that did allow me to see the Colonial Era house pictured below.
A historical marker notes this as the house of Christopher Hurlbut, built 1806-1808. At times a used as a home, at times a tavern, it is "one of the oldest frame houses in Steuben County."
Below: the typical small town once more.
On NY 36, North of Arkport.
Dreiser writes that, out of Arkport and headed for Canaseraga, the Pathfinder alternated position with another vehicle, playing the pass-and-be-passed-and-pass-again game that most anyone who has driven long distances is probably familiar with. The passengers in the opposite number were three women and a driver; one of the women, wearing a pink hat, seemed interested in someone riding in the Pathfinder, though none of them would accept being the object of her attentions. The "automobile flirtation" ended when the other car turned off one way, the Pathfinder the other.
" 'That was a good little car they had,' called back Speed consolingly. 'That girl in the pink hat certainly had a fancy for someone here.'
'Not me,' said Franklin. 'I know that.'
'Not me,' I replied. 'She never looked at me.'
'Well, I know damn well she never looked at me,' added Speed. 'She must have liked the car.'
We both laughed."
From Savona to East Aurora, including the "Whoops!" beyond Avoca.
Turning off of NY 36 toward Canaseraga on NY 70. The roads through here run as much across the hills as between them.
"Before we reached Canaseraga we traversed a number of miles of dirt road -- 'one of the finest dirt roads anywhere,' a local enthusiast described it, -- and it was excellent, very much above the average. After Canaseraga it continued for twelve miles, right into Portageville and the Falls, and even on to Warsaw and East Aurora...we found out later."
NY 70 on the way to Portageville.
A few miles out of Portageville, 70 quits at NY 436. I paused at the intersection for a few photos. I really liked taking pictures up there.
"Deep down in a valley below the Falls we found Portageville, a small, crossroads place that looked for all the world like one of those cowboy towns one sees so persistently displayed in the moving pictures...two or three frame hotels...and a collection of small white frame houses, with a host of rather primitive looking Americans sitting outside the hotels in rocking or armchairs, the men in their shirt sleeves. Franklin, who is precise in his apparel, was rather irritated, I think. He was not expecting anything quite so crude."
One of the two or three frame hotels? Possibly; the carriage on the corner would have you believe it; the window framing style would have me believe it -- no one frames and cases like that since before the Second World War.
After Portageville, I wound my way into Letchworth State Park, which encompasses a large area along the Genesee River Gorge. When Dreiser & Co arrived, the name "Letchworth" was already being applied to some parkland, but Dreiser observed "...it did not seem to me that much parking had been accomplished." That has certainly been remedied; it is very much controlled in the manner of the great scenic parks, with retaining walls to keep you from driving into the gorge, car parks, pathways -- and tour buses.
Dreiser was underwhelmed by the Falls -- which are a trio of steep steps over which the river drops -- but I thought they were pretty enough.
The Upper Falls.
Dreiser noted in 1915 that there was a rail trestle over the gorge; I imagine it's been replaced since -- but maybe not.
Outside the park, I picked up NY 19A, heading North toward Warsaw, and US 20A, which I had driven across in 2014.
"Over a road that was singularly smooth for a dirt one, and through land as flat as Illinois, a tableland on the top of a ridge -- which proved the last we were to see -- we raced Warsaw-ward. It was strangely like my school days home, or I romanticised myself in the belief that it was...
...as we dashed along toward Warsaw under a starry sky...I allowed myself to sink into the most commemorative state. When you forget the now and go back a number of years and change yourself into a boy and view old scenes and see old faces, what an unbelievably strange and inexplicable thing life becomes! We attempt solutions of this thing, but to me it is the most vacuous of all employments. I rather prefer to take it as a strange, unbelievable, impossible orchestral blending of sounds and scenes and moods and odors and sensations, which have no real meaning and yet which, tinkling and kaleidoscopic as they are, are important for that reason...
Why should something want to produce two billion people...billions of trees, flowers, insects, animals, all seeking to feel, unless feeling without socalled [sic] reason is the point? Why reason anyway? And to what end?...Give me this gay, sad, mad seeking and never finding about which we are all so feverishly employed. It is so perfect, this inexplicable mystery.
And it was with some such thoughts as these that I was employed...this night...only half awake and half in a dreamland...The houses that we passed with open doors...people reading, girls playing at piano...were in the world of twentyfive [sic] or thirty years before, and I was entering the Warsaw of my school days. There was no real difference.
'What ideas have we today that we did not have then?' I was dreamily asking myself. 'How do people differ?...are their emotions any richer or keener or sweeter?'...The general feeling is that we are getting on, but I should like to know what we can get on to, actually. And beyond the delight of sensory response, what is there to get on to?
Man uses all the forces he can conceive, and he seems to be able to conceive of greater and greater forces, but he does not understand them, and his individual share in the race's sensory response to them is apparently no greater than ever...Has any writer, for instance, felt more poignantly or more sweetly than those whose moods and woes are now the Iliad?...
I may seem to grow dim in my researches, but I can conceive of no least suggestion of real change in the sensory capacity of life. As it was in the beginning, so it appears that it is now --and shall I say, ever shall be? I will not venture that. I am not all-wise and I do not know.
When we entered Warsaw I had just such thoughts in my mind, and a feeling that I would like very much to have something to eat."
In Warsaw I turned West onto US 20A, which road commenced to rise and fall across the hills, rather than running between them. Anyone given to motion sickness might like to stay on the Interstate as many of these two-lanes are much the same as riding a boat among deep-troughed seas.
In 2014, I came this way, not knowing at that instance that I would deem 20A the route of choice. Which means that I went through Warsaw, and as I climbed the hill out, as seen at left, I recalled the road coming in which might have been steeper.
It was while traversing these hills and vales that I came behind someone in a minivan that I found myself swearing at vociferously -- though to no real effect, of course, as they would never hear me.
I am of the mind that one should be courteous, as much as possible, to one's fellow driver. I'm not asking for perfection; rather, to strive to be a decent traveler. Everyone will make mistakes but one must "start somewhere" as the saying goes. I know I've had my moments when I've told myself I had just been a complete jerk, but still, I do my best to avoid that.
The minivan's driver seemed either fearful of driving these hills, or uncaring for others on this road. As US 20A is nearly all up or downhill for many many miles through here, this minivan driver was riding the breaks downhill and overly cautious driving back up the other side. All together, the speed of the van -- and the other dozen vehicles that had made an inadvertent train -- was about 40 miles per hour.
The opportunities in this hilly country to pass were, naturally, very limited.
My comments about being a courteous driver are for this: if one is blocking traffic because one is unable, or unwilling, to maintain the posted speed on a well-traveled road, I believe one should "get the hell off!" and let the rest of the traffic get on with it. Farmers are usually so considerate!
Such are some of the thoughts that occupy my mind at times.
East Aurora came and went. Honestly, there was no thought of trying to find the Roycroft campus -- which I've seen elsewhere as having been restored and reopened for visitors. It was getting on in the evening, so I abandoned 20A for the decidedly newer NY 400, an Expressway that bends North and West toward Buffalo. My thought was to get the night's lodging nearer to Buffalo, so that I might make something of the location on Sunday. I thought that my chances would be greater in the vicinity of NY 400 and the I-90/I-290 area.
Alas, when I stopped I was informed that rooms around Buffalo were sold out.
I made my way through Lackawanna to NY 5 for points South along the Erie Lakeshore. I hoped that the "sold out" would not extend as far as the Dunkirk/Fredonia area, as it was some 45 miles away.
The cathedral in Lackawanna.
Even though I had scarce thought of it in the intervening year, I found I was able to drive with little question from the highway to the motor hotel at Fredonia, where I had stayed in 2014. Here, too, nearly all the rooms were let, but I took their highway robbery rates and a room for two nights. I had considered as I made the approach that it would be nice to relax a bit of a Sunday morning, and then back-track to Buffalo, knowing that a room already waited at the end of the day's doings. I might even go up to Niagara Falls!
Sunset in Fredonia, New York.
I was told, by different desk clerks, that this weekend had several things going on that had tied up the rooms along Lake Erie: the Eagles were playing in Buffalo, and there was an Italian Festival being hosted in that city. Erie, Pennsylvania was hosting a large Harley-Davidson Riders event, plus there were multiple weddings. I also had seen a roadside-sign announcing a craft fair, but I didn't know if that was the same weekend. The net result was a serious lack of availability to the driver just "passing through."
Still, high prices or no, I had secured a decent room with a bed, and it was with some satisfaction that I made use of it.
Tomorrow: a Sunday's drive to see the great Niagara Falls area, and some time spent along Buffalo's Inner and Outer Harbor.