Binghamton Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Senior Year in high school

blame ADD

I saw a quiz on Mark Evanier’s page. It’s one of those online questionnaires that make the rounds. This one’s about one’s Senior Year in high school… I was vaguely considering it. But then ADD wrote of Facebook, “Who will play along? Unlike Mark Evanier, I understand this question, and my money’s on Roger.” So there it is.

Class of:

1971

Did you know your current love?

No, we didn’t meet until the early ’90s.

Type of car?

Not only did I not have a car, I don’t even remember what car my parents were driving. As I’ve said before, I’m totally car blind.

What kind of work did you do?

From March to early September 1971, I worked at IBM, which I described here.

Where did you live?

The First Ward of Binghamton, NY

Were you popular?

I suppose so. I was elected student government president in my junior year of high school. Also, I was involved with the drama club, mostly on stage crew. There was one time I had more than one line in a play: The Bald Soprano by Eugenie Ionesco. I played the Fire Chief and had a very long recitation that I could not memorize, so somebody made a scroll, and I read the piece, and then I flung it across the stage. Additionally, I was president of the Red Cross club.

Of course, I was in the choir.

Were you in band or choir?

I was in choir all three years at Binghamton Central, and at least for two of them, I was in something called the Male Glee Club, which sang a lot of TTBB Barbershop-type harmony.

Ever get suspended?

No, although I thought there was a possibility. A friend of my then-high school girlfriend had forged the name of one of our teachers, Helen Foley, on a couple of passes. GF and I each had a study hall and wanted to hang out in the auditorium, but we got caught and had to talk to the principal. Then I talked to Helen Foley, which was much worse because I disappointed her.

If you could, would you go back?

Oh, goodness, no.

Still talk to the person that you went to prom with?

Yes, we’re good friends. I wished her a happy birthday a couple of months ago because I remember it.

Did you skip school?

I know I attended a rally when Julian Bond was in downtown Binghamton, but I don’t remember if that was during or after school. I did leave a walkout of our school once. The school had enforced draconian rules about walking on the grass, and people were getting suspended. So, as student government president, I convened a meeting on the sidewalk and voted to walk on the grass, which ticked off the principal, but he didn’t do anything about it.

Pigskin

Go to all the Football games?

It was probably half the home games the year I was student government president, but never the away games.

Favorite subject?

American history, although I did like algebra and trigonometry.

Do you still have your yearbook?

Yes, although I never got my class photo out of this sense of strange rebellion. My picture shows up about eight times in the book.

Did you follow your career path?

I don’t even know what my career path was. I was thinking about becoming a lawyer or going into politics, but I didn’t do that. Having been a page at the Binghamton Public Library, I should’ve known that it should have been my career path. It took me until I was in my late 30s to figure that out.

Do you still have your high school ring?

I never had a high school ring and never wanted one.

Who was your favorite teacher?

The aforementioned Helen Foley was the public speaking teacher and the drama club director. She wrote my too-long speech when I was supposed to introduce Rod Serling, the one he walked out during.

Gimme a head with hair

What was your hairstyle?

I could never pull off a really good Afro, and even then, my hairline was starting to recede.

Favorite shoes?

Red Chuck Taylors

Favorite food?

I don’t have a strong sense of this. It’s probably something my grandmother made: pork chops or chicken, maybe the spaghetti my father made.

Favorite band?

This was a transitional time, late 1970. The Beatles (Because) had just broken up. Simon and Garfunkel (Song For The Asking) seemed to be defunct. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (Carry On)? Santana (Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen)? Led Zeppelin (Immigrant Song)? The Band (The Shape I’m In)? Possibly Sly and The Family Stone (Thank You).

What cologne/perfume?

For a minute, I did have some eau de something, but I don’t remember the name.

How old were you when you graduated?

I was about six weeks shy of my 18th birthday. In Binghamton, in those years, you could start school in either September or February, and I was a February starter. So, we graduated in January 1971, which is weird. They don’t do that anymore.

Who will play along?

I don’t know. I recommended it to my baby sister because her experience differs somewhat from mine. She moved to Charlotte, NC, with our parents in the early 1970s, so she didn’t graduate from the same high school that our other sister and I graduated from. That’s kind of interesting to me.

What high school did you attend?

I went to ninth grade at Daniel S. Dickinson, where I attended K-9. I attended Binghamton (NY) Central for grades 10-12. BCHS merged with Binghamton North c. 1982, located at the site of BCHS.

Shopping carts

newspapers

In mid-October, I went to the Price Chopper/Market 32 grocery store nearest my home on Madison Avenue, but I couldn’t find any shopping carts. I used a basket they had in the store that I hadn’t seen for a while.

I did my shopping. When I checked out, I asked the cashier. They told me the store had done some work on its entrances and exits. Someone had turned off the mechanism that locked the shopping cart wheels when the carts reached the parking lot’s perimeter.

As a result, many shopping carts disappeared. When I went shopping the next week, I found a single cart outdoors. As I finished my shopping, I passed along my cart to a customer seeking one. It took about a month, but they have been replenished,

Evening Press

I thought about this a lot because shopping carts always hung out on the street when I was a kid. When I had a newspaper route when I was 12 and 13, I often used the shopping cart. I never took it from the store, but they would always be available, like a community resource. That was probably the delusion of a tween.

One day, as usual, I was taking a cart to the pick-up point for the Evening and Sunday Press in my section of Binghamton, NY. Some guy stopped his car and said, “Oh, that cart belongs to our store. Do you wanna get arrested?” I said no, and I let him take the cart. In retrospect, I don’t know that he worked for the supermarket since there was nothing on the car indicating that. But by the time I reached the pick-up point, I had found another cart.

Cities now have abandoned cart regulations, which I reckon is a good thing. Albany has such legislation, but it’s been not as successful as hoped.

Speaking of crime, my Price Chopper store has had an armed security guard at the entranceway for about the last year. It startled me initially, but now I see the person and shrug. It does not make me feel any more secure—in fact, it is probably the opposite—but I know many other stores in the area have hired armed personnel.

“Get Your Passport, Kid”

global warming became climate change

Get Your Passport, Kid is a paper my daughter wrote about me for a class during the autumn 2023 semester. I am using it with her permission. I have changed nothing substantial. I added a couple of commas, and I did create some subheads. Oh, and subsequently, she HAS applied for her passport, and received it less than a month later!

I recently had a conversation with Mr. Roger Green, my father. I chose him because he has lived a long life (70 years!), he is my eldest living family member who still has a reliable memory, and because he has a blog(!), so if there’s anything he’s a bit foggy on, he can look back at his own ramblings and re-enlighten himself. Both of us, plus my mother, also tend to agree that my father and I are very similar. I hope to channel his long-time blogger energy into my writings.

We had planned an hour-and-a-half Zoom meeting one afternoon, but he ended up accidentally pocket-dialing me a few minutes early on Facebook Messenger while he walked home from the bus stop. When he finally heard me, he took out his phone and showed me his walk past my elementary school in the neighborhood I grew up in, back to the house I lived in my whole life until coming to college here. It was a nice reminder of the place I call home, and I got to talk to my cats.

Hometown

My father was born in Binghamton, New York, which, like most upstate New York cities, has fairly temperate weather with hot summers and cold winters. Roger went to SUNY New Paltz for his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, having him relocated to another upstate city, New Paltz, New York with the same subtle climate. And later he moved to Albany, New York, his third upstate city and final destination, where he settled down and lived for the past 40 years since attending SUNY Albany for his Master of Library Science degree. Having lived in three similar cities his whole life, none of which had much extreme weather -hot or cold- I asked him to focus on the landscape, architecture, and his environment.

Starting off my uber-professional interview with Roger I ask him about where it all began: Binghamton’s First Ward, 1953. Roger lived with his mother and father and two younger sisters in a two-family house with his paternal grandparents living on the top floor, in a home owned by his maternal grandmother. His maternal grandmother lived a few blocks away on Prospect Hill, the home he and his sisters would walk to for lunch break during school since their mother was out working. Their neighborhood was filled with big, old, multi-family houses near the banks of both the Chenango and the Susquehanna Rivers. Roger and his sisters would often walk by the Spring Forest Cemetery, where many of their relatives were buried. The Trinity AME Zion church my father’s family attended was located on Lydia St., a name that would come up again when it was time to name his first and only child.

Being black in the hometown

I wanted to know if being a black family affected how they experienced their landscape as well. Surprisingly to me, Roger seemed to feel that even though they grew up in a predominantly white area, he and his siblings didn’t encounter significant interpersonal racist interactions, as it was a somewhat progressive neighborhood. However, their race, or more specifically, perceived race, made their family unable to buy or rent their own house. Roger’s mother, while black, was very fair-skinned and was often unintentionally white-passing, while his father was dark-skinned and unambiguously black. This reality caused Roger’s parents to be viewed as an interracial couple, and in the 1950s and ‘60s, this meant no one wanted to sell or rent to them. Homeownership is, in my opinion, one of the first steps in building generational wealth, and if they did want to move, making that happen was unattainable at the time. Knowing Roger’s family wasn’t well off, it’s fair to assume that that affected how they went about their business. He tells me their vacations were never very far away. Sometimes, he, his sister, and their father would sing as their family group at the campsites they frequented rather than having to pay.

Climate

I did want to swing back around to the weather topic, and as I predicted, he didn’t have immediate terrible weather memories, but here are some unusual weather moments he could think of:

Albany’s worst snowstorm (in Roger’s lifetime), October 4th, 1987 – not heavy but early in the season, and with leaves still on the trees, many branches were brought down, and thousands were without power for days.
Bad snowstorm, March 1993 – 20+ inches of snow
May snow, May 18th, 2002 – my mother’s college graduation ceremony was moved to an indoor venue because of the unexpected spring snow
Hot, hot, hot, early 2000s – sent home from work because of the heat, and the company didn’t want to pay for all that air conditioning.
Valentine’s Day snowstorm, February 14th, 2007 – The buses stopped running early, and Roger barely made it home. The Albany area got 1-3 feet of snow, which froze over the next day.

The bus

Next, I asked Roger what changes he has made due to climate change. Roger is a Capital District Transit Authority (CDTA) bus rider, which of course I knew since I lived with him for 18 years, and the man can’t drive, what else would he do? But I didn’t know how much of a CDTA advocate he was. He attended CDTA town halls and responded to their surveys. He is always willing to help people figure out what route or bus stop they need, how to secure their bike to the front bike rack on the bus, how to get a Navigator (refillable bus pass), and whatever people need to feel comfortable using the CDTA. Roger has also signed petitions to create safer bike lanes in Albany.

I was somewhat excited to get to our interview’s climate change talk section. I knew some of my dad’s fundamental beliefs and that he’s left-leaning, but since I haven’t lived at home in a bit, we hadn’t had the random world/political conversations I was used to in middle and high school.

Q&A

Question: What are the causes and effects of climate change?

Answer: “Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes hot things hotter and leads to biodiversity loss; sea animals move differently because of warmer water, and islands will disappear due to rising waters.”

Question: Who do you usually talk to about climate change?

Answer: Like-minded people, friends, political allies, liberals.

Question: Do you follow climate news?

Answer: “Yes, liberal and conservative.”

Question: Are you involved in community groups that deal with climate change?

Answer: “No, not really. (What about the church and the library?) “Well, yes, I am part of groups that support climate action but not part of groups that specifically address climate change.”

Question: When did you start hearing about climate change or global warming?

Answer: “I heard about global warming in the ‘70s. It became climate change into the ‘80s because that was ‘less offensive.’ You’d have one colder-than-usual day, and all the global warming deniers would come out. So they changed it to ‘climate change.’ But overall, if you look at the data, “the globe is getting warmer; climate change is a wussy term!”

The librarian questions

Question: You worked with SBDC and SUNY Research Foundation. People would call you, and you’d answer their questions. Did you get any global warming questions?

Answer: “Later on. I was there for 26 years (1992 – 2019). In the first 15, absolutely not. In probably the last 10 or 12 years, yes. It’d be like, ‘What are the best fuels we should use to do what we want to do?’ Or finding the energy that would have the least ecological impact. Or taking a substance, like cooking oil, and using it as fuel. I think people’s awareness of it had grown so that people realized that maybe they could do something about it. ‘We can start a business to be more carbon neutral.'”

Question: What do you think about the climate and the planet’s health?

Answer: “I think we are in desperate straits.”

Question: What are you most worried about in relation to climate change?

Answer: “Mostly denial; it makes me terribly worried. You can’t fix it if you don’t think it’s a problem.” He was the most unnerved and ranty during this section. Climate change and global warming denial is worrying and anti-Christian.

Ending

At the end of our interview, I was reading off the post-conversation questions meant for me to answer on my own. “Did anything surprise you?” I asked myself out loud to get down any notations before they slipped my mind. Roger started to respond, “Well, what did surprise me…” I cut him off, “That’s a question for me, not you,” I responded. “Well, I want to answer it.” Okay, my bad.

“What surprised me was I hadn’t really thought about how limited my geographic parameters had been when I was growing up. Growing up in Binghamton, I think my world experience was encompassed by New York and Pennsylvania. I don’t think we ever even went to New England or Ohio.” This turned into a lecture about me getting my passport renewed (again). “That’s why I really want you to get your passport and travel when you can. It’s a very enriching experience.”

Roger and I grew up in and currently live in a small region of the world with his life path is Binghamton, New Paltz, and Albany, and mine is Albany and Amherst. In a later call, I mentioned that my friend and I wanted to study abroad. He was very supportive of that, and he restated his wish for me to get my passport so that I could see more of the world than he did. This aspect has been the most meaningful part of the conversation for me.

Straw hat out of season

the Riot of 1922

In the Binghamton (NY) Press on May 1, 1923, page 5, was a story titled Wears A Straw Hat Despite Closed Season. The subtitle: Bold young man braves chilly weather by parading in summer regalia, anticipating official date by 14 days.

“Although the roll call at the State [mental] hospital last night shows no one was absent, persons on Chenango street who were trying to keep warm by slapping their hands to their sides and turning up their coat collars, doubted the sanity of the man who appeared among them…

“Two young men of an inquisitive nature trailed the young man wearing that thatched covering…

“He was wearing clothing of light material, a white shirt and collar, silk socks, and Oxford shoes.”

I wonder if he used Elkay’s Straw Hat Cleaner, which “makes the old straw hat look like new.” Back in 1914, a season’s supply went for 19 cents.

Michael J. Leo at 79 Court Street had a “clearaway” of its silk and straw hats, regularly $4.95 to $6.95, selling for only $3.95 in 1925.

Riot?

Walter Ayres provided the graphic and pointed to a Wikipedia story about the Straw Hat Riot.

“The Straw Hat Riot of 1922 was a riot that occurred in New York City at the end of the summer as a result of unwritten rules in men’s fashions at the time, and a tradition of taunting people who had failed to stop wearing straw hats after autumn began. Originating as a series of minor riots, it spread due to men wearing straw hats past the unofficial date that was deemed socially acceptable, September 15. It lasted eight days, leading to many arrests and some injuries.

Ripley’s Believe It Or Not also noted the event. “Men who continued wearing straw hats after September 15 were mocked for their fashion faux pas. It was so common for a young passerby to forcibly remove a hat from someone’s head and crush it with his foot that newspapers cautioned people when September 15 was approaching.”

This hurts my non-straw-hatted head.

One of my Civil War ancestors

Freedom Has No Color

I’ve discovered I have at least TWO great-great-grandfathers who fought in the Civil War, one each on each of my parents’ lines. In honor of the beginning and end of the war (April 12, 1861-spring 1865), I will revisit one of my Civil War ancestors, James Archer, with a greater understanding.

In 2018, I ordered the book African American Freedom Journey in New York and Related Sites, 1823-1870: Freedom Knows No Color by Harry Bradshaw Matthews, Associate Dean and Director, Office of Intercultural Affairs at Hartwick College in Oneonta, NY. At some point before COVID, I spoke briefly with the professor on the telephone, who clarified a genealogical question for me.

The book has 143 pages of a narrative about the struggle for freedom, including that of his ancestor Isaac Killingsworth of Barnwell, SC. Then it contains over 200 pages of appendices that were particularly useful to my research.

When slavery was finally abolished in 1827 in New York State, there was a public celebration in Cooperstown on July 5 of that year. Frederick Douglass’ famous speech What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? was given on July 5, 1852.

There were many other efforts to end disenfranchisement, discrimination, and oppression in the Empire State. The black press, such as The Colored American, often fueled these endeavors.

Black people had no organized opportunity to fight when the Civil War broke out in 1861. By 1863, however, entities were able to recruit black soldiers. New York was one of the slower states to take action because of Governor Horatio Seymour’s resistance. Finally, by November 1863, “enlisting colored troops in New York” began, purportedly with black soldiers receiving the same bounties as white volunteers.

Changing attitudes

This occurred not long after the New York Draft Riots of July 1863, when black people were often the target of violence. This showed a remarkable turnaround in attitude.

Professor Matthews quotes from the Tribune of December 5, 1863. “New York City, so recently the theatre of mob violence, in which hatred of the Negro seemed to be the uppermost idea – this city, so long considered free from the intrusion of colored troops, and the only place in the loyal States where it was possible to raise a spirit of opposition to them, has exceeded its hospitality to the 2d Regiment of United States Colored Troops.” [NY 20th was the first, the NY 26th, the second.]

Great-great-grandad

At this point, my great-great-grandfather, James Archer, joined the NY 26th (Colored) Regiment. He enlisted on December 29, 1863, in Binghamton, NY, at the age of 29. The troops were first quartered at Riker’s Island. The 26th included soldiers from the West Indies.

The regiment fought several important battles in South Carolina in 1864, including at John’s Island, James Island, Honey Hill, and Beaufort.

But James was not the only member of his extended family in the NY 26th. His brother-in-law, William Bell, who was about 30, also signed up. James had two small children, Morgan and James Edward. I believe William also had a young son, Martin.

Because New York was so slow in accepting black recruits, some folks joined regiments in other states, such as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Indeed, Henry Bell, William’s 22-year-old brother, joined the Massachusetts 54th in March 1863. This group was presented in the movie Glory; about 42% of that regiment was killed or wounded.

James was made a corporal in April 1864. He was sick in a hospital starting September 16 in Beaufort; I don’t know the cause, but I suspect it involved mosquitos. Indeed, more people died from disease than gunfire in the NY 26th.

Coming home

Still, James, William, and Henry all made it home safely. The 1865 New York State Census shows that their household in Binghamton usually consisted of the patriarch Edward Bell, whose wife Phillis Wagner had died that year; his sons William and Henry; his daughters Francelia, 19, and Harriet (Archer); Edward’s son-in-law James Archer, and the three grandchildren.

But James and probably William were still in South Carolina until they were mustered out in August 1865. This was likely true of Henry as well.

I don’t know the identities of the three men pictured, which was in possession of one of my sisters and my mom before that. I believe the guy on the left is James Archer, who had hazel eyes. Could the other guys be William on the right and Henry in the middle?

James and his wife Harriet, whom he married in 1856, had two more children, Lillian (b. 1866) and Frederick (b. 1869), after the war. He worked as a potter, a worker in a tin shop, and a general laborer.

An act in 1890 finally allowed black soldiers to receive the same benefits as their white counterparts. James Archer was listed as an “invalid ex-Union soldier,” though it did not specify his ailment.

James in the 1910 Census

In 1910, James Archie, a name variant that also shows up in other records, was a black male, 74 (though actually 76), living at 13 Maple Street, Binghamton, NY. This house was purchased in 1882 and owned free and clear, without a mortgage. He was married to Harriet Archie for 53 years at that point. James still could not read or write.

James Archer died in March 1912. He was buried at Binghamton’s Spring Forest Cemetery. His gravestone is about 250 meters from the house where he passed away. As noted previously, the only daughter of James Archer and Harriet Bell was Lillian Archer. She married Edward Yates (b. 1851) in 1893, and they had at least five children, four of whom survived to adulthood.

Edward Yates died in March 1911. Lillian (d. 1938) then married Maurice Holland (1856-1943) in July of that year. Lillian’s oldest surviving daughter, Gertrude Yates (1897-1982), married Clarence Williams (1886-1958) and had a daughter, also named Gertrude (1927-2011).

The younger Gertrude, who would eventually go by Trudy, married Leslie H. Green (1926-2000) in March 1950. They had three children, of which I am the oldest.