The Red Light at the End of the Universe
May. 2nd, 2012 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogI promise- not a word in this entry about the C-thing I've been going on about. Rather, some bittersweet memories of the road that took me there.
My sister went off to college in Binghamton when I was eight, and at least once a year since then, often many more times, I've made the trek along the main route between there and my birthplace known as Route 17. In those early years, they were still converting much of it into expressway; I can remember long detours onto two-lane roads following the highway's original course (many of which still exist with variant route numbers), but by the time I was behind the wheel myself, there were only two major "at-grade" sections remaining. The further-west of them- which into the late 1980s still had many "downtowns" along it including Corning and Horseheads, plus a long-lasting signalled intersection at the town of Lowman (which, to this day, reminds me of Death of a Salesman)- is now entirely bypassed from those towns, with one final section, blocking off side-road intersections around the Newtown Battlefield, being laid in this summer.
Yet that stretch was never the one I wondered about, because I only started traveling it in law school days. Rather, the one outpost of nostalgia on the "Quickway" section between the northbound Thruway connection and Binghamton was the single remaining traffic light on the road, at the booming intersection for the towns of Cooley and Parksville.
This is dead center of the longlost Borscht Belt- just west of Liberty, the center of the old enclave of "upstate" summer camps and country clubs that downstaters would flock to in the summers, and a few exits from Roscoe, home of perhaps the most famous diner in the world not named "Mel's." You'd have passed the signs for all the formerly roadside attractions, now having to pimp themselves with billboards promising "EZ-On, EZ-Off!" of the new expressway; seen the signs for second-rate entertainers at Grossingers or Nevele; and there, in the middle of nowhere, you stopped.
I remember a heavily advertised tourist-trap restaurant from the early 1970s named Poppy's being at that corner. Billboarded as heavily as South of the Border, there hasn't been a trace of it for decades. More recently, there was the cruel placement of an eatery on the corner calling itself the "I-86 Diner"- cruel, because once the improvements took place and the road was upgraded to Interstate status, it would no longer exist, and indeed, for several years it has not. Across the intersecting road from it was the Last Chance Gas on the entire highway not involving getting off at an exit; its prices were always higher than anywhere for miles, and I remember it unfondly for having my engine overheat and stall, just as I came down that damned hill up to the light, in my still-new, first new car, Bessie the K-car. Fortunately, there was a pay phone, and AAA came and set me straight.
In the final years, just beyond the light, heading west, was a huge barn of an antique business calling itself Memories. "YOU HAVE TIME TO STOP!", the signs proclaimed. Ultimately, though, time didn't stop, and after a going-out-of-business sale that lasted for most of the George W. Bush presidency, it ultimately got covered with FOR SALE signs and, I suspect, is now rubble.
I couldn't even see where it was last week. As of my most recent previous trip down that way before last week, for the Dana Brand memorial in July, the bypass was being laid in, but it looked like it was on a typical DOT "we'll get to it someday" schedule. But this past week? It's not entirely done: eastbound traffic shares the bypass for now with the Binghamton-bound that are temporarily routed onto it just past Liberty, but all that remains of the memories (if not of Memories) is a solitary sign in each direction for "EXIT 98-PARKSVILLE." Cooley doesn't even officially exist anymore. There's a ramp and a sign just like every other one on the road. The last red light on the highway is gone.
Once they finish this section, and cut off the final stretches of unsignaled at-grade crossings, the whole thing will become I-86, and there will be nothing left of a route that was a distinct experience from any other long haul I've ever taken. It never had the cachet of Route 66; Stephen Fry never traveled on it as he discovered America; and although stubborn New Yorkers will still call it "17" long after the last of its signs with that number have come down, that trip will never be the same.
My sister went off to college in Binghamton when I was eight, and at least once a year since then, often many more times, I've made the trek along the main route between there and my birthplace known as Route 17. In those early years, they were still converting much of it into expressway; I can remember long detours onto two-lane roads following the highway's original course (many of which still exist with variant route numbers), but by the time I was behind the wheel myself, there were only two major "at-grade" sections remaining. The further-west of them- which into the late 1980s still had many "downtowns" along it including Corning and Horseheads, plus a long-lasting signalled intersection at the town of Lowman (which, to this day, reminds me of Death of a Salesman)- is now entirely bypassed from those towns, with one final section, blocking off side-road intersections around the Newtown Battlefield, being laid in this summer.
Yet that stretch was never the one I wondered about, because I only started traveling it in law school days. Rather, the one outpost of nostalgia on the "Quickway" section between the northbound Thruway connection and Binghamton was the single remaining traffic light on the road, at the booming intersection for the towns of Cooley and Parksville.
This is dead center of the longlost Borscht Belt- just west of Liberty, the center of the old enclave of "upstate" summer camps and country clubs that downstaters would flock to in the summers, and a few exits from Roscoe, home of perhaps the most famous diner in the world not named "Mel's." You'd have passed the signs for all the formerly roadside attractions, now having to pimp themselves with billboards promising "EZ-On, EZ-Off!" of the new expressway; seen the signs for second-rate entertainers at Grossingers or Nevele; and there, in the middle of nowhere, you stopped.
I remember a heavily advertised tourist-trap restaurant from the early 1970s named Poppy's being at that corner. Billboarded as heavily as South of the Border, there hasn't been a trace of it for decades. More recently, there was the cruel placement of an eatery on the corner calling itself the "I-86 Diner"- cruel, because once the improvements took place and the road was upgraded to Interstate status, it would no longer exist, and indeed, for several years it has not. Across the intersecting road from it was the Last Chance Gas on the entire highway not involving getting off at an exit; its prices were always higher than anywhere for miles, and I remember it unfondly for having my engine overheat and stall, just as I came down that damned hill up to the light, in my still-new, first new car, Bessie the K-car. Fortunately, there was a pay phone, and AAA came and set me straight.
In the final years, just beyond the light, heading west, was a huge barn of an antique business calling itself Memories. "YOU HAVE TIME TO STOP!", the signs proclaimed. Ultimately, though, time didn't stop, and after a going-out-of-business sale that lasted for most of the George W. Bush presidency, it ultimately got covered with FOR SALE signs and, I suspect, is now rubble.
I couldn't even see where it was last week. As of my most recent previous trip down that way before last week, for the Dana Brand memorial in July, the bypass was being laid in, but it looked like it was on a typical DOT "we'll get to it someday" schedule. But this past week? It's not entirely done: eastbound traffic shares the bypass for now with the Binghamton-bound that are temporarily routed onto it just past Liberty, but all that remains of the memories (if not of Memories) is a solitary sign in each direction for "EXIT 98-PARKSVILLE." Cooley doesn't even officially exist anymore. There's a ramp and a sign just like every other one on the road. The last red light on the highway is gone.
Once they finish this section, and cut off the final stretches of unsignaled at-grade crossings, the whole thing will become I-86, and there will be nothing left of a route that was a distinct experience from any other long haul I've ever taken. It never had the cachet of Route 66; Stephen Fry never traveled on it as he discovered America; and although stubborn New Yorkers will still call it "17" long after the last of its signs with that number have come down, that trip will never be the same.