Mandatory Fun, Part 2
November 22nd, 2015When I last left you, I was traveling through the twists and turns of upstate New York. I have been reminded that I forgot an element of the Monday trip, so I’ll mention that now. That day was the Canadian national election, and for the first time in recorded history someone was hoping that their hotel room had CSPAN2. Not only was that available, but the room in Utica also had a Canadian station as well. If you think your local station’s election coverage was bad, you have not seen the coverage that comes out of Kingston, Ontario.
Anyway, on to Wednesday. This was a visit to town of Locke for more relative hunting. Locke is conveniently located in the New York Meth Belt, and is the birthplace of Millard Fillmore, the 13th President of the United States. Apparently it is the custom of the citizens of the town to have at least one window in your house or trailer defective or missing. According to census data, the population of the town was greater in 1830 than it is now.
Unfortunately for me, the cemetery where my relatives are located was on someone’s private property. During my trip here I had seen more than a few signs protesting the NY Safe Act. If you don’t know, this would be the only successful gun regulation passed after the Sandy Hook massacre. Wanting to complete this trip, I decided to not risk it and instead visited the Millard Fillmore Park. While more prominent presidents get libraries, all Fillmore gets is a place for teens to get drunk.
 The park in all its glory |
 I know nothing about this trail |
 Well thank you Nucor corporation |
 I would love to see the Robert Scarry-illustrated story about Millard Fillmore |
Since the town of Locke did not have a library, I had to venture to the closest one in the area, which is Moravia. The sign upon entry into the town proudly proclaims that Moravia Schools are “a New York School District to Watch.” I don’t know what that means in New York but I know in Michigan this means you are very close to getting your very own emergency manager. Unfortunately, the library did not have a lot to offer than this interesting curio. I found a book listing all of the earmarks of the area farmers from the early 19th century, including my 4-great grandfather Hosea and ‘shares the same last name but unsure of relation’ Caleb Curtice:
 Square cut on the left ear, slope on the right |
 Um, click it and try to figure it out yourself |
At this point the genealogical point of the trip was over and it was time to transition to the sports portion. But before I do that, since I was so near to Seneca Falls, I thought I would take a trip here. For those who don’t know, in 1848 the first major Women’s Rights convention was held here. Sadly, by the time I got to town at 5 pm, all of the related attractions were closed. I assume they had to get home to make their husbands dinner.
I then moved to the transition from women’s rights to women’s hockey. Syracuse is rare duck of a school that has a women’s hockey team without a men’s team. Above is my seat from the third row of seats, which is also the back row of seats. The home team won 7-1 against RIT, avenging their OT loss to the Tigers in the conference tourney last season. The announcer had trouble understanding the signals from the referee, and would just call the penalty tripping if he couldn’t figure it out, and by the third period stopped saying what the penalties were altogether. These errors made it into the box score.
Thursday I visited the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. For those who don’t know the story, in the 1900s based off of faulty evidence it was decreed that baseball was invented in Cooperstown in 1839 out of whole cloth by one Abner Doubleday. This was based off of the recollection of one man who was five at the time and was later committed to an insane asylum. There is ample evidence of baseball being a British creation and merely refined in the United States during the 19th century. However, doubling (heh, get it) down on the myth an area man got a committee together and opened the museum in 1937.
When I first visited the museum when I was 17, my mom was shocked when I felt “I had seen everything that I wanted to see” in 2 1/2 hours. Well, at 45, “I had seen everything I wanted to see” in 2 1/2 hours. There just isn’t that much there. The first floor consists of all of the plaques (the most recent on the left), the second floor and third floor has some specialty displays (a particular decade, Hispanic, etc.) and that’s pretty much it. In the stats display on the third floor, there was this older couple that insisted on reading the displays they were seeing to each other, even if they were 50 feet apart. Quite lovely, and by lovely I mean felony-inducing annoying.
Of course, Cooperstown is not just baseball, it was also the hometown of James Fenimore Cooper, as the village was founded by his father. Not visiting anything even remotely related to that, I then went to see downtown. Pretty much 50% of the shops are baseball or otherwise sports memorabilia-related, and at least 25% of those were still in business. Nothing I really wanted to spend money on other than the three shirts to the right which amused me (click for the full joke). Oh, and I ran into that couple again, this time reading the names of stores to each other.
For Friday, I wanted to some hiking in Vermont, but I’ll be honest, I was running out of energy to do anything. Instead I settled for visiting Bennington, Vermont. I ate at Lil’ Britain, which truly just had British food. You could get some form of seafood and chips, or a meat pie, or bangers and mash. Even the soft drinks were pretty much just root beer and cream soda.
Finally to the hockey, Friday night was Michigan at Union. The Skating Dutchmen won the NCAA title in 2014, and play at an impressive arena, at least by Michigan high school standards. At least you couldn’t beat the parking (it was free on the street). Saturday at RPI was a little more Yost-like, albeit deeper on the sides and no discernible student section. However, what I will remember from this part of the trip is the bathroom hotel, which for a ‘Quality Inn’ missed the whole part of ‘give someone a place to stand while using the toilet.’
