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captainsblogOnce again, we're taking a turn in the TARDIS- this time to probably right before Emily was born in the very early 1990s. The impetus for these memories came from a friend who's reliving some from the same era. Steve Cichon is a teacher, a radio geek, a far better county clerk who never got the job compared to the guy who did, but above all he's a storyteller. He and his beloved are traveling around New England this month, and he prefaced those tales of today to remembering a time when he, and his parents and sibs and Buckshot the dog, moved from their generational Buffalo home to Massachusetts for a few years. They'd return frequently for visits, and his story, with photos, is public on his Facebook page, well, right here.
His story wasn't about the destination, either way, but the journey, and the places on the road that each became a talisman for a time and a place on a way to another place:
If there was a highlight for kids us along the route, it had to be the twin eastbound and westbound rest stops at Iroquois and Indian Castle— which were connected with a pedestrian bridge over the Thruway.
The spot was close to the exits that are identified as heading toward Dolgeville on all the signage approaching the exit and the rest stops.
“The stop for Doggieville is coming up,” Dad would say, adding this is where Buckshot should take a break.
Fate put this amazing monument at the halfway point of our journey, and gave everyone, Buckshot included, a definitive benchmark to look forward to for a bathroom break and a leg stretch.
The fun of stopping there included, of course, watching cars passing underneath us while walking across that bridge.
The Doggieville signs and the two rest stops survive— but the bridge that brought us such joy and anticipation was torn down in 2001, after the Thruway Authority decided it cost too much to maintain.
His post includes photos of those spots, not likely on any tourist map or Michelin guide, and while I know exactly where each is located from my own years of travel along that road, those memories are his.
These are some of ours.
----
Growing up, we weren't much Thruway people. It ran more north of where my sister Donna lived and even where I wound up in my undergraduate years, so the midpoints for me were instead along Route 17, on the way to Binghamton and, later, Ithaca. The aptly named Middletown was just about at the halfway point on the road to Bingo, and we knew every McDonalds and Mobil off the exit. (Mobils were key when I was driving my first old beater on my own, for that was the only credit card I held at the time.) In earlier years, there was a HoJos there, a remnant of when those orange-roofed beacons were kings of the road. As my journeys have gotten longer from New York since moving further west, the midpoint has moved as well, with Binghamton now being the stop rather than the destination and the Roscoe Diner being the place for food along the way.
We'd get north to the 90 on the occasional family trip. Like Steve, I remember the B E E C H - N U T factory near the Canajoharie exit, which still sits as an abandoned hulk visible from the highway with the letters long removed. My parents had longtime friends who lived in Albany, probably from a brief time after my oldest sister Sandy was born when they lived in a little town called Fort Plain. We actually stopped in the house they once lived in on one visit, and probably on the same one we took the tour of the Beech-Nut factory. They passed out lengthy handouts of the histories of the various Life Savers and gums that came from this magical place, but of course I was more interested in the free samples at the end of the tour. (I suspect my dentist appreciated them, too;)
No photos survive from any of those eras, but we got pretty snap-happy around the time we were married and for many years after Emily was born. We both got some shots of places that had meaning in terms of place or, more likely, just plain tackiness.
----
The first thing I thought of when Steve talked about the Albany-to-Buffalo stretch of the Thruway was not any of his memory spots, not the preserved original Canal lock, not the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge just off the southern shoulder of the road, but the Tacky Yard:
Those don't begin to do justice to it. My best guess is we were coming back from a visit to Massachusetts to see either my best friends from college or Eleanor's (sadly now-ghosted) from after college. This was on the shoulder of the westbound Thruway; I think it was just west of where Interstate 81 intersected north of Syracuse proper. The yard was large and backed right up to the shoulder with no fence, and went on for hundreds of feet of various birdfeeders, statuary and flags. I'm pretty sure there was a larger than the average bear standing up in there somewhere, as well.
In my final years in Rochester before we moved, and then again for a few years in the early oughts, I had a bunch of cases that took me east of Syracuse- to Albany and, more often, the somewhat closer Utica. Coming home, I'd always look for the Tacky Yard to give me a sense of distance and tradition. In those later years, the Thruway Authority planted a bunch of NO STOPPING signs along the shoulder, so they must've known it had become something of an unintended tourist attraction.
Other than a horrific late-night ride with Emily on a Megabus coming back from a concert where we missed our train, my last foray along that road from Albany was probably close to seven years ago- coming back from seeing my Massachusetts friends, making one final and failed effort to track down Eleanor's ghost (in Salem, fittingly enough) and running a 5K in Boston propah. I remember looking for any sign of the Tacky Yard, if only by the NO STOPPING signs. But they, along with what to stop for, were long gone by then.
----
Eleanor had her own travels of tacky around the same time. Her last job before we moved was doing customer service for a security company that included quite a bit of territory to the south of Rochester. On one of these service calls, she got a bunch of photos of the surrounding landscape:
The Mount Morris Dam, over the Genesee River. It remains, but Big Bird apparently no longer stands guard.
That's in Avon (as with many local shibboleths, it's pronounced AAAH-von, not AY-von). We never did figure out what Humpty had to do with highway supplies, unless he was in charge of clearing the road for all the king's horses. Jerry appears to also have left the building; that number, which would be 585 today, now belongs to the Mental Health Association.
And then there's this guy:
Also in Avon when she took that picture, he has been reclaimed by the First Nations and relocated to the even tackier Big Indian Smoke Shop, where he now aims at traffic right off the westbound 90 south of Buffalo.
----
None of these were particularly intended to be famous for marking spaces in our memories. None approaches the uber-tackiness of South of the Border as you drive down I-95, or Carhenge, or the Roswell Alien Attraction Autopsy that tops the page at Roadside America this week. What are the places of this kind that are important to you, and maybe only you? Because they're just as important as the Tacky Yard and Doggieville, plus admission is likely to be forever free:)
His story wasn't about the destination, either way, but the journey, and the places on the road that each became a talisman for a time and a place on a way to another place:
If there was a highlight for kids us along the route, it had to be the twin eastbound and westbound rest stops at Iroquois and Indian Castle— which were connected with a pedestrian bridge over the Thruway.
The spot was close to the exits that are identified as heading toward Dolgeville on all the signage approaching the exit and the rest stops.
“The stop for Doggieville is coming up,” Dad would say, adding this is where Buckshot should take a break.
Fate put this amazing monument at the halfway point of our journey, and gave everyone, Buckshot included, a definitive benchmark to look forward to for a bathroom break and a leg stretch.
The fun of stopping there included, of course, watching cars passing underneath us while walking across that bridge.
The Doggieville signs and the two rest stops survive— but the bridge that brought us such joy and anticipation was torn down in 2001, after the Thruway Authority decided it cost too much to maintain.
His post includes photos of those spots, not likely on any tourist map or Michelin guide, and while I know exactly where each is located from my own years of travel along that road, those memories are his.
These are some of ours.
----
Growing up, we weren't much Thruway people. It ran more north of where my sister Donna lived and even where I wound up in my undergraduate years, so the midpoints for me were instead along Route 17, on the way to Binghamton and, later, Ithaca. The aptly named Middletown was just about at the halfway point on the road to Bingo, and we knew every McDonalds and Mobil off the exit. (Mobils were key when I was driving my first old beater on my own, for that was the only credit card I held at the time.) In earlier years, there was a HoJos there, a remnant of when those orange-roofed beacons were kings of the road. As my journeys have gotten longer from New York since moving further west, the midpoint has moved as well, with Binghamton now being the stop rather than the destination and the Roscoe Diner being the place for food along the way.
We'd get north to the 90 on the occasional family trip. Like Steve, I remember the B E E C H - N U T factory near the Canajoharie exit, which still sits as an abandoned hulk visible from the highway with the letters long removed. My parents had longtime friends who lived in Albany, probably from a brief time after my oldest sister Sandy was born when they lived in a little town called Fort Plain. We actually stopped in the house they once lived in on one visit, and probably on the same one we took the tour of the Beech-Nut factory. They passed out lengthy handouts of the histories of the various Life Savers and gums that came from this magical place, but of course I was more interested in the free samples at the end of the tour. (I suspect my dentist appreciated them, too;)
No photos survive from any of those eras, but we got pretty snap-happy around the time we were married and for many years after Emily was born. We both got some shots of places that had meaning in terms of place or, more likely, just plain tackiness.
----
The first thing I thought of when Steve talked about the Albany-to-Buffalo stretch of the Thruway was not any of his memory spots, not the preserved original Canal lock, not the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge just off the southern shoulder of the road, but the Tacky Yard:
Those don't begin to do justice to it. My best guess is we were coming back from a visit to Massachusetts to see either my best friends from college or Eleanor's (sadly now-ghosted) from after college. This was on the shoulder of the westbound Thruway; I think it was just west of where Interstate 81 intersected north of Syracuse proper. The yard was large and backed right up to the shoulder with no fence, and went on for hundreds of feet of various birdfeeders, statuary and flags. I'm pretty sure there was a larger than the average bear standing up in there somewhere, as well.
In my final years in Rochester before we moved, and then again for a few years in the early oughts, I had a bunch of cases that took me east of Syracuse- to Albany and, more often, the somewhat closer Utica. Coming home, I'd always look for the Tacky Yard to give me a sense of distance and tradition. In those later years, the Thruway Authority planted a bunch of NO STOPPING signs along the shoulder, so they must've known it had become something of an unintended tourist attraction.
Other than a horrific late-night ride with Emily on a Megabus coming back from a concert where we missed our train, my last foray along that road from Albany was probably close to seven years ago- coming back from seeing my Massachusetts friends, making one final and failed effort to track down Eleanor's ghost (in Salem, fittingly enough) and running a 5K in Boston propah. I remember looking for any sign of the Tacky Yard, if only by the NO STOPPING signs. But they, along with what to stop for, were long gone by then.
----
Eleanor had her own travels of tacky around the same time. Her last job before we moved was doing customer service for a security company that included quite a bit of territory to the south of Rochester. On one of these service calls, she got a bunch of photos of the surrounding landscape:
The Mount Morris Dam, over the Genesee River. It remains, but Big Bird apparently no longer stands guard.
That's in Avon (as with many local shibboleths, it's pronounced AAAH-von, not AY-von). We never did figure out what Humpty had to do with highway supplies, unless he was in charge of clearing the road for all the king's horses. Jerry appears to also have left the building; that number, which would be 585 today, now belongs to the Mental Health Association.
And then there's this guy:
Also in Avon when she took that picture, he has been reclaimed by the First Nations and relocated to the even tackier Big Indian Smoke Shop, where he now aims at traffic right off the westbound 90 south of Buffalo.
----
None of these were particularly intended to be famous for marking spaces in our memories. None approaches the uber-tackiness of South of the Border as you drive down I-95, or Carhenge, or the Roswell Alien Attraction Autopsy that tops the page at Roadside America this week. What are the places of this kind that are important to you, and maybe only you? Because they're just as important as the Tacky Yard and Doggieville, plus admission is likely to be forever free:)
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Date: 2021-06-27 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-28 10:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-06-28 12:25 pm (UTC)Form you post, it seemed like you enjoyed raconteurs, which is basically what his radio show was.