RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,254
(man at the center of things)
Back when I lived in
Columbia Crossroads,
March was my favorite
month. Mostly, yes, it
was still Winter and
Wintry too, but in spite
of that 'calendar' fact
the general tenor of
things eased up - snow
usually lessened, days
got longer, sun-angles
changed and everything
generally took on a cheerier
aspect. Travel too eased up,
and we always started our
forays in March, to Ithaca.
Once later when we lived
in Elmira, the same thing
occurred. Elmira was about
20 miles north from Columbia
Crossroads, across the state
line from PA into NY; and
Ithaca, without any crossing
of a border, was another 20
miles north into NYState.
It was all mostly a pleasantly
odd ride through farm country
and neglected lands and places.
But, with that new time of year,
it seemed as if the world itself
became more open and more
welcoming. Whoever came
to visit - and we had a few,
regular NJ visitors who'd come,
we always took them there.
-
The thing about Ithaca, with
Cornell University being there,
was that it had a 'cosmopolitan'
feel, almost international. Elmira
had a college, yes, but it was
small beans and quite parochial
by comparison. Ithaca had other
cultures, Asian whiz-kids, Euro
types, and the rest, and all of
that added a distinctly different
flavor to the hills there. The
landscape itself was of a quite
different nature : rolling, lakes,
and real hills and hikes up streets
and roadways in an almost San
Francisco fashion. The university
is atop everything, a type of
college-town of its on (along with
Ithaca College), and down below
is the regular, commercial, town.
Shops, Main Street, restaurants,
and the rest. A world apart, the
university and the college rise
above it all - in its own sort of
easy/lazy (1970's anyway) form
of ratty, leftover, hippie-ness.
-
It sounds strange, but out there,
in 1972, a lot of that stuff still
floated around - there were,
nearby, communes still in their last,
struggling days of disintegration:
wild-looking young children
born of hippie-commune-love
with fragmenting and usually
dissolute parents still trying to
hang on. That meant, in turn,
weird shops and things along
the outlying roads and streets
- sandal and leather shops,
incense places, one or two, I
well remember, Buddhist places
in which were 're-habing' any
of various sorts of overdone
hippies, addicts, or purveyors.
They sold used clothing, their
own baked goods, and pottery.
It was everywhere.
-
We'd stop there occasionally, buy
some new bread, cupcakes, any
sort of stuff to move their equation
along. It was pleasant and warming.
Some of the people there were, in
truth, fascinating. Garments and
personas both fantastic and yet
sincere. Other-wordly in respect to
spiritualism and personal beliefs.
It was hard to pin down, but I felt
a better world somehow, there.
-
Between Elmira and Ithaca was a
sort of no-man's land of the typical
and rural stuff I see now, here. Old
and tipping barns, silos, feed and
machinery sheds, etc. BUT, the big
difference between then and now,
(remember I'm talking March, 1972),
is that as bad as these places may
have looked, they were still working
farms, with tilled fields, tractors, and
people, living in the houses, no matter
how ramshackle. Those same places
I see today - mostly because the days
of small, American, agriculture are
behind us - are abandoned hulks,
leaning, vacant, tipping over, ruins.
All around me here - a sort of old
agriculture-ethos has slipped away and
what's left are the tilting remnants
of, maybe, a grandad's day.
-
That no man's land between Elmira
and Ithaca carried us through places
like Watkins Glen, and Montour Falls,
each exemplary small towns based
on lake or water endeavors. They were
quiet enclaves, strangely dosed with
people. Year-rounders who were quite
different from the Summer crowds of
vacationers, campers, and erstwhile
boaters. One street long, each, really;
strewn with the usual: hardware,
supplies, crafts, ice cream, and
eateries, all vaguely themeless
except in that small and very
local-town way.
-
To me it was all very enjoyable,
and it answered an ache I'd always
had - an ache for the real historicism
of all the old-American bullshit I'd
been taught through school and Scouts
and the rest. One extreme was the
Ithaca intensity of concentrated and
intellectualized learning and looseness,
and - on the other extreme - the sort
of free and unaware 'tightness' of the
small-town local folk still situating
the goals and parameters of their
lives around small commerce, small
profit, and small commercial ways.
A vivifying companionship, to
be sure.
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