Binghamton Archives - Page 2 of 13

Where would you be if you weren’t where you are?

that “third place”

Jeanne Beanne, who I know IRL, asked some Ask Roger Anything questions.

Where would you be if you weren’t where you are?

What a metaphysical query!

Several points in my life are, if not this, then that. One was made for me, as I’ve mentioned. If my mother didn’t work outside the home at McLean’s in downtown Binghamton, NY, I would have gone to Oak Street Elementary School. So I wouldn’t have met Karen, Carol, Bill, Lois, Bernie, and others, with whom I went to Daniel Dickinson, then Binghamton Central HS, until seventh grade. It would have totally changed the dynamics of our relationships.

I wouldn’t have met Ray at Dickinson until seventh grade and likely wouldn’t have been in Cub Scouts, with Ray’s mom as our den mother. Probably, I wouldn’t have met Dave at all.

If I wasn’t watching JEOPARDY with my great-aunt Deana every day at noontime, I might not have become obsessed with the program so much that I tried out for the show in 1998, made the cut, and won a game.

If I hadn’t attended New Paltz college, I wouldn’t have met Mark, who turned me onto comic books. So we wouldn’t have gone to the Crystal Cave comic book store, where I met Raoul and Tom, who I would later work with at FantaCo in Albany. Also, Mark introduced me to the Okie.

The Wanderer

1977 was pretty chaotic. Still, I met friends Deborah in NYC and Judy in New Paltz. Judy and her friend Jendy would be pivotal in my going to library school at UAlbany in 1990.

And if Mark and MK52 had not moved to Schenectady, I wouldn’t have crashed with them there from December 1977 to March 1978 and ended up working at the Schenectady Arts Council, whose offices were in the run-down Proctor’s Theatre.

If I didn’t know Nancy at SAC, I wouldn’t have met Shazrak, with whom I moved to Albany, in 1979. In May 1980, I worked at FantaCo.

I’ve mentioned this before, but FantaCo was that “third place” – not just a retail store, mail order place, publisher, and comic book convention purveyor, but a gathering place of people interested in art, music, and popular culture. Besides Raoul and Tom, there was Mitch, Hank, Rocco, Marky, Augustus, Sinisa, Mayor, Peter, and one other, who bears special mention.

I met artists and writers like Fred, Bill, Steve B, the Pinis, and members of the band Blotto. I’m still friends with at least one of the customers, ADD, and others still remember me from the place.

I met Debby through Mitch. She introduced me to lots of other people. Though she didn’t play, she was indirectly responsible for my playing racquetball from 1983 to 2010 at the YMCA, where I met even more folks.

Walter, a customer turned FantaCo employee, was even more of a person who interacted with many others, many of whom I know today. He was also the epicenter of the hearts game.

Worship

Being in Albany meant going to church in Albany and all the connections I made at church #1, then church #2. I wrote about the drama and trauma of leaving church #1 here.

I could write much more about other jobs and volunteer organizations and their impact.

Then there are the romantic relationships, which would take several book chapters. Suffice it to say that there were things said or left unsaid, things done or should have been done, that altered that trajectory in many ways.

Three things that manifested in your life that you did not expect.

Comic books, JEOPARDY, and being a librarian. Being a dad was a “well, maybe, if…” thing.

How have they changed your path? And purpose?

They’ve definitely changed my path. I don’t know that my purpose, which to be, for lack a better word, useful, has fundamentally changed, even when the circumstances did.

Coke or Pepsi? Lol

Diet cherry Pepsi.

Friend Karen, 46 hours my junior

music

If I remember correctly, my friend Karen was born c. 1 pm on March 9, and I was born c. 3 pm (actually 3:15) on March 7. So I’m SO much older than she is.

However, she was the youngest of four, and I was the eldest of three. She was often fearless.

I mentioned how I ratted her out on a local TV kiddie show because she used to snap my suspenders when we were in kindergarten. Her sister told me this story at their mother’s wake in 2012; I have no recollection.

What I do recall is that her musical interests were forged before mine were. She was buying the Kinks’ latest single at Philadelphia Sales, a store less than two blocks from our elementary/junior high school, Daniel Dickinson before I knew who the Kinks were.

We had a class newsletter in sixth grade, per our teacher Mr. Peca’s suggestion. Karen wrote a fantastical story about winning tickets to attend a Beatles concert.

Our seventh grade, Mr. Stone, our history teacher, was telling the class about a new band called The Cream. Karen said to him, “It’s not The Cream, it’s Cream.” Either way, I had never heard of them at that time.

She was part of that coterie of friends – Bill, Lois, Karen, Carol, and Ray, in that geographic order, I often walked home after school.

High School

When we were in tenth grade at Binghamton Central High School, she ran for secretary of the General Organization, the student government body. For some reason, the candidates couldn’t give their own speeches. I gave a barnburner of an address from all reports, and she won.

The next year, I ran for GO president, and they changed the rules so that I had to give my own speech. I’m told my talk for Karen was MUCH better than the one I shared on my behalf.

Karen was the one who initially made friends in high school with a group of like-minded kids from other junior high schools. We created a club in school called the Contemporary Issues Forum. Outside of school, we were Holiday Unlimited, with the motto, “A splendid time is guaranteed for all.”

More Music

Karen worked at a record store in nearby Johnson City before working at the first of four record labels over a four-decade career.

When John Lennon died in 1980, she was the first person I called. Her label was promoting the album, which thrilled her tremendously.

She tells great, detailed stories about being in the music business. When promoting Robbie Robertson’s eponymous first solo album in 1987, she had to deal with a 24-year-old program director who didn’t know who Robertson was. He also didn’t know The Last Waltz, the legendary concert film by Martin Scorsese and the album, which came out in 1978.

When she showed up at my annual hearts party in 2017, she regaled my friends with stories about singing Will The Circle Be Unbroken in an elevator with Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. Or looking all over Manhattan for marmite to give Paul McCartney.

At her retirement party in 2019, her co-workers shared her drive to get a radio station to play this record or a story to carry that album. “Unrelenting” was the most common description of her approach. She loved music and turned me on to more artists than any three other people.

World traveler

Friend Karen has been to so many countries I’ve lost track. She’s gone everywhere, from Cuba to Croatia, Morocco to Malaysia, Italy to India, and plenty of places in the US. She takes lots of photos and often writes remarkable narratives that she ought to put in a book. (I’ve told her this more than once.)

We often see each other in Binghamton when we both happen to be there. Lately, though, she’s occasionally visiting her friends, most recently this past October. She is fiercely loyal to her friends.

I can tell more, but that should suffice for the nonce.

How terribly strange to be 70

Psalm 90:10

RogerGreenBirthdayCartoon490 How terribly strange to be 70. I’ve used that title twice before in this blog, and you can probably guess when in 2011: on October 13 and November 5.

Now, I’M three score and ten, which is old. Or at least oldish.

Psalm 90:10 in the King James Version reads, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

In case you don’t recognize the artist, the work was created by my friend Fred Hembeck in 2007. Fred gave me the original black and white piece, on which he indicated, “54 ROCKS!” He’s a full five weeks older than I am. I believe I’ll use this illustration every five years, just because.

The home church

Sister Leslie took the photo on her phone. It was when we visited Trinity A.M.E. Zion Church at the corner of Oak and Lydia Streets in Binghamton, NY, on October 9, 2022.

The room used to be the Sunday School room when I was a kid. My paternal grandmother, Agatha Helen (Walker) Green (1902-1964), taught me. Now, the room is used as a memorial to the Departed Loved Ones of the church.

On the wall, along with photos of Mrs. Armstrong (left of center), and Mr. Woodward, is my Grandma Green, more or less hovering over my head. I don’t THINK that was the photographer’s intent, but it’s a rather cool effect.

Not incidentally, the church – specifically, my father’s cousin Ruth – requested a picture of my parents for the wall. My sisters and I ought to work on that.

Anyway, it’s my birthday, divisible by five (and seven and two), no less, so that’s enough for today.

Happy birthday, Bill!

Guillaume

When I was growing up in Binghamton, NY, I attended Daniel S. Dickinson School from K-9. For some arcane reason, school started both in September and in February. The February classes were smaller as they generally contained people whose birthdays were from December through March.

There were nine of us who went K-9 together and eight who graduated from Binghamton Central High School simultaneously. And I still remember all of their birth months, even though half of them I haven’t seen in decades. Diane in April, Karen and me in March. Bernie, Irene, and Lois in February. David (who stayed an extra semester to play basketball), Carol, and Bill in December.

So I’ve known Bill almost all of my life, which is a great thing. Sometimes I call him on his birthday, which is December 17 or at least send him an email. He lived right across the street from Ellis’ candy store on Mygatt Street, in the middle of the block between Dickinson and Clinton Streets, but he insists that he always went one of the corners and didn’t jaywalk, which sounds right.

In high school, he was that guy who could straddle the different cliques. He was a jock who the longhairs could trust. That’s probably how he got elected as class president.

Get-togethers

A group of us went to our 10th high school reunion. It was a rather meh event, to be honest. But the afterparty was fun. We thought we’d have a gathering of us Dickinson kids. Maybe a year later, Carol, Lois, Karen, and I converged on Bill’s house. We bought food and talked almost all night. It was a grand time. The second and third pictures above are from one of those occasions.

A year or so later, some of us went to his wedding to Brenda; it is a cliche to say she’s beautiful inside and out, but no less accurate for that.

I’d see Bill at random times, such as our 35th(?) reunion. The biggest surprise was when I was taking the Amtrak to NYC a couple of decades ago. I was walking through the train and ran into Bill, which was great.

The last time I saw him was at our last high school reunion in September of 1971 at Ross Park in my hometown.

Happy birthday, Bill! Or happy birthday, Guillaume. (He, like I, took French in high school, the odd stuff one remembers…)

Back to the Parlor City

The “new” Route 17

Binghamton, NY, was called the Parlor City. From here: The name “goes back to the 19th century. Binghamton had massive mansions with huge parlors where people would gather and spend time together. There were so many fancy parlors that people started calling Binghamton the ‘Parlor City.'” There was a Parlor City Shoe Store that I recall.

Thursday, October 5: Sister Leslie drove us from Albany. The last time she was in Albany, there were toll booths on the New York State Thruway. The tolls are still applied, but electronically.

There was a lot of road construction. In both directions, one exit was straight ahead while the road continued to the left, and though it was well-marked, the brain was slow to make the translation.

I was going to stay at the spare home of my friend C, while Leslie was going to stay with her friend MJ. However, when Leslie was flying, she got a text from MJ saying she had to go to the hospital. The day we arrived, MJ had surgery. So Leslie stayed at C’s place as well. More Plan B.

Friday, October 6: Leslie drove us all over downtown Binghamton, then to a part of Binghamton I hadn’t been to in over a half-century. Above is a map of the eastern portion of the First Ward in Binghamton. In the lower part of the faded portion, you may see Route 17. This was the “new” 17, which involved tearing down many houses on the north half of Prospect Street, the minor league baseball stadium Johnson Field in nearby Johnson City, and much more.

Lost Horizon

Intellectually, I knew houses were still north of Prospect, as Mygatt Street goes under Route 17. My maternal grandmother’s brother Ed lived up there, somewhere. I’m uncertain where, though he was less than a mile away. Grandma Williams forbade us, and even her adult daughter, my mom, from having anything to do with Ed because he was “living in sin” with a woman named Edna. Also, Leslie had a friend move up there. Though only a mile away, it was like a different world.

So, I haven’t gone up Mygatt and turned right since the walkway to Ely Park entryway came down in the late 1960s.In addition to a golf course, there were some nice houses. What’s most fascinating, though, is that a good chunk feels as though you’re in an undeveloped rural area.
Turning left at the top of Mygatt Street, I had only done once ever, attending a burial at a private cemetery in 2012.

Reunion

My sister’s reunion was in two parts. The Friday evening “Ice-Breaker” was at The American Legion on Robinson St. I spent a good deal of time talking to the younger siblings of the friends of mine. Though I didn’t know any of them well, I knew them for a very long time and was some connective tissue. Incidentally, the hors-d’oeuvres were great and plentiful; we were encouraged to take food home.

Saturday, October 7

The “Main Event” was at The Relief Pitcher, on Conklin Ave., Binghamton. I had a surprisingly good time at my sister’s reunion, arguably more than my own the year before. The 1972 class badges were much better than the 1971 ones.

Sunday, October 8

Leslie and I went to our old church, Trinity A.M.E. Zion on the corner of Oak and Lydia. I recognized the keyboardist as someone I grew up with. She recognized my sister but not me, probably because of my vitiligo. My father’s cousin Ruth was there too. The in-person congregation was small, fewer than 10. But there were 13 or 14 tuning in on ZOOM, and two of them participated, reading scripture and giving a prayer.

That evening, we took C and her husband out to dinner as thanks for providing us with accommodations plus plenty of food.

Monday, October 9

Leslie and I returned to Albany, and we had the pleasure of seeing my daughter, who had been taking good care of her mother.