Binghamton Archives - Page 12 of 13

Free Comic Book Day is like visiting my hometown

Binghamton and comic books, parts of “my ever present past.”

I always go to Free Comic Book Day, sometimes with my daughter, sometimes alone. This year, it will be on Saturday, May 5 at a comic book store near you (I hope). I go because I like seeing a busy comic book store, and I’m always treated like visiting royalty at a local proprietor’s shop. For those of you who don’t know, I worked a FantaCo, Albany’s first direct market comic book shop; the store was open from 1978-1998, and I worked there from 1980-1988. And I like getting something for free, although I ALWAYS buy something as well.

But it’s also a little sad. While there are good books out there, so much of it is…not. Even a comic nerd such as Alan David Doane recently noted: “My trouble with comics right now is that so very few appeal to me.”

This reminded me of my treks to my hometown of Binghamton, NY, some 150 miles away from Albany. When I was growing up, I rather loved it. It was a decent place to grow up. The population was about 75,000, with a vibrant downtown. Now it has about 47,000 people, with a downtown that seems to be hanging by a thread. I WANT it to do well, a lot, but it’s just not, for the most part.

When I went to college, they tore down a bunch of houses near my grandmother’s home to build “new” Route 17, which will eventually become Interstate 86. The road has made it easier to get THROUGH the city, but has hardly been a boon for having people stay IN the city. I go there for a family reunion, on my mother-in-law’s side, and I’ll see little signs of life, but it’s mostly moribund.

Binghamton and comic books, parts of, to quote Paul McCartney, “my ever-present past.”

N is for Normal

My biology/homeroom teacher told me straight out that my father was “CRAZY” for leaving his job at IBM.

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, it was NORMAL for the mom to be home with the kids. My family wasn’t normal. My mother worked outside the home for as long as I can remember until she retired a decade and a half ago.

First, she was in the bookkeeping department at McLean’s department store in downtown Binghamton. Then she moved less than a block to Columbia Gas, where she was reportedly the first black person to work as a customer service rep. When she moved to Charlotte, NC, she was a bank teller for First Union bank.

No one has ever suggested that my father was anything like “normal.” In fact, my biology/homeroom teacher told me straight out that my father was “CRAZY” for leaving his job at IBM of six years (that he hated), especially for a position with Opportunities for Broome, an OEO government job (where he thought he was making a difference). Government jobs come and go, but once you’re in the IBM family, you were set for life. (IBM decided it actually DID start having to lay off people in the 1990s.)

So, normalcy isn’t always that appealing. It’s been used as a cudgel to block all sorts of individual and collective rights.

Conversely, I AM sympathetic, as I watch the trauma over the worldwide economic crisis when I hear people ask, “When will things get back to NORMAL?” Likewise, the “crazy” weather generates a similar response. People are desperately looking for a sense of stability/sanity.

I have to wonder if “normal” is coming, or, as I suspect, we’ve come to a “new normal” of stormy weather, fiscally and meteorologically.

As Bruce Cockburn sang: The trouble with normal is it always gets worse – LISTEN.

Maybe Normal is just a town in Illinois.

ABC Wednesday – Round 9

Reunions

Karen made it known to the waitress that I had been on JEOPARDY! in 1998 and that she had been in the audience. But except for that, and one obscure mention of a milk truck, it wasn’t a trip down memory lane.

Last weekend (July 8-10), we went down to my hometown of Binghamton, NY. The initial motivation was The Olin reunion, my mother-in-law’s people, who can trace their lineage back over 300 years.

But there turned out that there was another event. My friend Carol, who I have known since kindergarten, was in town from Austin, TX, where it has been over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius) for at least 23 days this summer. She was in town visiting her mom and her other relatives for a couple of weeks. At the same time, my friend Karen in NYC, who I have also known since K, was in town visiting HER mother and other folks.

Karen picked me up where my family was staying, and then to Carol’s mom’s house. Carol’s mom was one of the parents I knew and loved best growing up.

The three of us ended up in a Greek restaurant in nearby Endwell and talked for hours about religion and faith, politics (those things you’re not supposed to talk about unless you’ve known people for five decades), death, media, and other fun subjects. Somehow Karen made it known to the waitress that I had been on JEOPARDY! in 1998 and that she had been in the audience. But except for that, and one obscure mention of a milk truck, it wasn’t a trip down memory lane.

Interesting, though, that, based on Carol’s recommendation, Karen went to a local bookstore and bought a book When All the Men Were Gone: World War II and the Home Front, One Boy’s Journey by Ron Capalaces who grew up in the First Ward of Binghamton, NY, a working-class neighborhood anchored by Clinton Street…attended the Daniel S. Dickinson School, just as we had, only a decade or so earlier. A lot of specific references to places we all knew.

I’m the VP of the local Olin group, an honor for an in-law; apparently, I’m only the second in-law in 75 years to so serve. When I got back from dinner, my friend DeeDee informed me that I had to get to the Olin reunion venue at 10 a.m. the next day, rather than 11 because the president, Ken, had major car trouble. So, with transportation by my friend Jason, I got to the site to hold it. We had a great time at our gathering. In the genealogy report, we discovered that the Olins are related distantly to both Barack Obama and Dick Cheney.

Busy reunion weekend.

The new Mother’s Day reality

The running joke when I’d call or send a card is that I’d say or write that it was from her favorite son.

Someone sent me this picture some months ago. I thought it was rather funny. Specifically, it reminded me of the Paul Simon song Mother and Child Reunion, which is based on a chicken and egg dish that Simon had at a Chinese restaurant.

Then my mom died, and it’s my first Mother’s Day without her. The visual is still funny but in a more melancholy way. Melancholy humor.

I’ve discovered that Mother’s Day ads REALLY irritate me lately, more than Father’s Day ads did 10 years ago. Maybe it was because it was longer between when my father died until the next holiday (August to June) than it is for my mom (February to May). But probably it’s because I get more e-mail solicitations than I did a decade ago, and they are more difficult to ignore.

The picture above is of my mother with her favorite son many years ago in front of 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY USA; the house and the trim, BTW, were green. The running joke when I’d call or send a card is that I’d say or write that it was from her favorite son. She was generally polite enough not to mention that I was her ONLY son.

Last Sunday, there was a Mass for Mom at the Mission San Diego Basilica de Alcala in San Diego. As my sister Leslie reported, it was “beautiful. It was the regular Noon Mass, but it was announced at the beginning that this Mass was for Trudy Green, mother of Leslie Green, who is a member of the Mission Choir.” I will be getting a copy of the event. “It was a packed house on a beautiful day.”

The bottom picture is of my daughter with her favorite mother. Carol is, among other things, a good mom.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you mothers, and all of you who have or had mothers.

30-Day Challenge: Day 27-A Picture Of Where You’re From

This was an arcane piece of information my late father once noted that I found inexplicably interesting.

A picture? I did a whole blogpost about my hometown of Binghamton, NY last year, and much more recently, a partial blogpost about Albany, NY, where I’ve been the last 30 years.

Well, all right:

When I was growing up, this was the post office in Binghamton. Now it’s the federal building.

Perhaps slightly before my time: it’s the house of the first Dutch governors, who resided in Albany.

This was an arcane piece of information my late father once noted that I found inexplicably interesting. Binghamton, NY is about in the middle of the state, east to west, but lies very close to the northern border of another state, Pennsylvania. To get to the state capital, Albany, you have to travel about 150 miles to the northeast (more like 140, but whatever).

Charlotte, NC, where my parents moved in 1974, and where I lived briefly in 1977, is about in the middle of the state, east to west, but lies very close to the northern border of another state, South Carolina. To get to the state capital, Raleigh, you have to travel about 150 miles to the northeast (more like 175, but close enough).