Where I’m Coming From


 

After ten years, I can call New York my “home town.” Those are the rules. Read ’em & weep, suckers.

 

But the place where I lived for most of my life — the town I grew up in — will always have a special place in my heart. I may have left Vestal, New York in the fall, but every autumn, I miss it more than any other time of the year.

 

Arnold Park in Vestal, NY via Wikimedia Commons

 

When I think of Vestal, I think of the tree-covered hills in autumn. I think of driving or riding along the back roads into town, or climbing up higher and higher into those hills to where my old middle and high schools sat. Tell me you can look at this picture of Arnold Park, just up the road from Vestal Middle School, and not feel ALL THE FALL FEELS. I can actually SMELL this photograph, it smells like dry, dead leaves and a sharp chill in the air.

 

Downtown Binghamton, via Wikimedia Commons

 

When people ask me where I come from, I usually tell them, “The Twilight Zone.” Vestal is close enough to get lumped into the Binghamton metropolitan area, and BINGHAMTON — follow me here — was the hometown of Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling! Viewing my home town through that lens just makes a lot of sense to me. Binghamton has always been a little… eerie. Spooky. With all due respect to Binghamton, it’s been in a state of shall we say “arrested decay” for many years. I’ve seen the bustling downtown become a ghost town. Stores and businesses leave. Neighborhoods become abandoned. Binghamton, to me, is a lot like the Twilight Zone: its quaint charming exterior belies the darker side underneath. But you all know how I feel about a dark side.

 

Boscov’s department store in downtown Binghamton, via Wikimedia Commons

 

In 2009, Binghamton was the site of a horrific mass shooting which claimed 13 lives (not including the perpetrator), a death toll on par with the Columbine shooting. Yes, my home town is one of “those” home towns whose very name is shorthand for the mass shooting that happened there.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, two years later the town was struck by a terrible flood when the Susquehanna River overflowed and destroyed countless homes and businesses. The town is still recovering, and there are whole neighborhoods just abandoned, full of condemned houses I used to drive past on the school bus or visit friends nearby.

A ghost town marred by tragedy… all of this happened after I left. This isn’t the home town I remember. But it’s the home town I claim as mine.

 

2011 flood in Endicott from Round Top Park, via Chris Waits on flickr

 

Another name I like to drop when people ask about my home town is AMY SEDARIS! She grew up across the river from me (haha sort of) in Endicott, New York — a sprawling suburb that I could actually see from the top of the hill my house was on. It was the “Home of the Square Deal,” named after one of the founders of Endicott-Johnson shoe company and later home to IBM. I spent so much of my childhood and early adolescence in the Endicott Public Library. I took acting classes at the Cider Mill Playhouse. As soon as I learned how to drive, I’d take every available chance to head over the river and to the Salvation Army thrift store in Endicott, where I fell in love with thrifting. Yep, that’s where it all began.

 

Guess where? Wikimedia Commons!

 

Summers growing up in Broome County meant visiting the historic zoo, the carousels in the local parks, and watching the balloons fly overhead during the Speidie Fest & Balloon Rally.

But the thing to do in autumn is drive out into the countryside to a pumpkin farm.

 

Iron Kettle Farm, 2007

 

Iron Kettle Farm is an institution. Hay rides, corn maze, haunted house, candy apples, and OH THE PUMPKIN DISPLAYS! Year after year, it was tradition to drive out through Owego, New York (another place I’m often nostalgic for, that’s where my acting career began!), park your car in a mud pit (HA HA) and walk around Iron Kettle until your legs got sore. I can’t even begin to explain how intensely I yearn just for one day to spend at Iron Kettle, one sunny weekend day to wander around the grass, laughing at the pumpkin displays, fondling the crafts for sale in the craft tents, breathing in the cool fall air. I haven’t been there in over a decade (look at the little girl I once was!) but I’m sure it hasn’t changed. They say you can’t go home again, but if it were possible, I would absolutely go back to Iron Kettle Farm for the ultimate fall Upstate New York experience.

 

Fall in my home town just makes sense. Fall is the season of slow decay and death, that gives way to winter’s dormancy and Spring’s rebirth. The season of Fall is necessary to life, and my time in my home town was necessary to my life. Growing up in Vestal, Binghamton, Endicott, Appalachin, Owego, Johnson City… shaped who I am today. Made me appreciative of where I am now. I doubt I would be the colorful adult I am now had I not grown up in my “colorful” home town.

 

 

lead image by Chris Waits on flickr


9 responses to “Where I’m Coming From”

  1. We also had, at the time, the deadliest mass shooting at the American Civic Center on Front St in Bingaling. That was in 2009. 14 dead, including the shooter. But it has been surpassed, of course.

    • Was it the deadliest? Not counting the perpetrator, it had an equal death toll to Columbine, which had two dead shooters, which would have been worse by some counts (counting the shooter) and tied by others (shooter doesn’t count).

  2. “I can actually SMELL this photograph, it smells like dry, dead leaves and a sharp chill in the air.” A-fucking-men! I’m headed home in 2 weeks and I’m looking forward to it. October is the optimal time for the trip. I will absolutely be making a stop at the Cider Mill and as much as I’d love to get to Iron Kettle it’s just not happening this year. The displays are a constant and that’s what i love. Though they did add the Minions and Harry Potter when I was there in 2014.

    Vestal, and the Southern Tier in general, gets a bad rap. And I get it, as a 20+ childless adult it can be incredibly boring. But it was a great place to grow up.

    • UGHHHHHH I’m so jealous! Promise me you’ll drink loads of cider and buy one of every donut and get sticky-faced on candy apples!!! I BET there’s been Frozen displays at Iron Kettle for YEARS now, huh? 😉

      My characterization of the Southern Tier as a place of decay wasn’t intended to be negative. I was really trying to draw the analogy between autumn and the area. I personally find that sort of thing very charming: I live in a largely industrial area in a refurbished warehouse and love my neighborhood even though it might be intimidating to live among warehouses and abandoned buildings! I loved growing up where I did. I wouldn’t change it for the world.

  3. You’d be surprised by the growth in Binghamton and Johnson City lately, thanks to BU’s expansion. The internationally-renowned LUMA celebration was packed! There are new restaurants and brew pubs, lofts and galleries. And you are welcome to come enjoy the Fall ambiance any time, you know!!!

    • Oh, and you were born in Amherst, lived in Mansfield, Ohio, and then in the Southern Tier….so what do you remember of that??

      • I barely remember Ohio, to be honest! Only little snippets. I was so young! And my affinity for Amherst was reinforced by visiting family there, so I definitely do feel strong ties, but again… I hadn’t lived there since I was 2!

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