Tag: Binghamton

30-Day Challenge: Day 17- A Childhood Picture

The elementary school I went to was the one closest to my grandmother’s house, rather than the one closest to our house.

Here’s a picture of (L-R) me, my sister Leslie (16.5 months younger), sister Marcia (5 years, 2 months younger).

My recollection is that we were 10, 9, and 5. One of my sisters thinks 8, 7, and 3. My mother doesn’t remember.

Regardless, it is our very favorite picture of us, especially compared with the next picture of the three of us (NOT SHOWN, thank you very much, which we call the “year of the bad glasses.” Mine were oversized horn-rimmed, and the girls were wearing cats-eyes.

The picture above, I THINK, was taken at McLean’s department store in downtown Binghamton, NY, where my mother worked in the bookkeeping department. For all the time I can remember, my mom worked outside of the home, at McLean’s, then at Columbia Gas & Electric. When she moved to Charlotte, NC, she worked at First Union Bank as a teller.

And because she was working, the elementary school I went to was the one closest to my grandmother’s house (Daniel S. Dickinson) rather than the one closest to our house (Oak Street), which had a HUGE effect on my life. There are seven kids I knew from K-9 from Dickinson, then grades 10-12 at Binghamton Central HS, at least four of whom I’m still in touch with.

30-Day Challenge: Day 12- Where Your Family Is From

Greater Binghamton, ironically, has been getting smaller.


My sisters and I were born in Binghamton, NY. My parents were apparently born in Binghamton, NY; my father, I’m not positive about, but certainly by the 1930 Census, when he was 3.5, he was in Binghamton, NY. My maternal grandmother and her mother and HER mother grew up in Binghamton, NY.

The vast majority of the relatives I can find were born in New York State. Some were from Pennsylvania, probably in an area not that far from Binghamton, NY.

I wrote about Binghamton, NY extensively HERE.

I was in Binghamton proper this past weekend, though only in passing, for the aforementioned family reunion. A lot of my wife’s family are from the Binghamton area, though I was unfamiliar with them when I was growing up.

Strange change to the nomenclature about the Binghamton metro. It is now called Greater Binghamton. The airport is called the Greater Binghamton Airport. When I was growing up, it was called the Triple Cities, which included the villages, not cities, of Johnson City and Endicott. Greater Binghamton, ironically, has been getting smaller. There used to be two public high schools, and now there is only one, pictured above; that’s the building, now augmented, that my mother, my sister Leslie and I used to go to, once Binghamton Central HS (the blue and white of the Bulldogs), now Binghamton High (the red, white and blue Patriots).

Several interstates run through the city. I-81, which runs north/south (fastest way to get from Syracuse, NY to Scranton, PA is through Binghamton); I-88, which the late state Senate Majority Leader Warren Anderson got built from Binghamton to Schenectady, near Albany, even though it pretty much parallels NY Route 7. A new Route 17, which will eventually become I-86, was started when I was in high school, which involved tearing down some perfectly decent housing just a block north of my late grandmother’s old house. I used to ride my bicycle on the completed, but not yet opened highway. I’ve successfully had to relearn how to get from one part of the area to another via highway, rather than the local roads.

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