VACATION—AS MUCH A REMINDER AS A REST

BY EDWIN COONEY

My recent vacation began smoothly and pleasantly on the morning of Monday, May 28th largely due to the considerate and most helpful efforts of four men named Chris, Don, Peter and Dennis.

Wearing new clothes, carrying a new cane, toting a new cell phone along with a full suitcase, I arrived shortly after eight thirty a.m. at the Emeryville, California train station on Monday, May 28th to begin a three-and-a-half day venture across America. The following Thursday, the Lakeshore Limited out of Chicago would deposit me in Depew, New York, a suburb of Buffalo.

Between Sacramento, California and Denver, Colorado, I had the pleasant company of a lady named Nancy. Nancy has a son living in Seattle, Washington, a daughter and
granddaughter living north of Denver, Colorado and family residing all over the West. Her experience riding the roads and rails is extensive and her adventures are varied in the moods their memories invoke. Thus, as train Number Six, the California Zephyr, worked its way - ponderously at times - across the western mountains, deserts and the great salt flats, Nancy shared some of her stories with me.

She told of the time recently when a passenger aboard the Greyhound bus she was riding reported to the driver that another passenger was carrying a gun. The bus was held up for two hours while authorities thoroughly searched the bus. She shivered in the cold and waited with her fellow travelers only to discover that the gun was merely a beebe gun intended as no threat to anyone. Yes, indeed, travel does have its travails--especially on Amtrak.

While waiting in Chicago for the Lakeshore Limited to Buffalo, I encountered one of the most resourceful and purposeful ladies I’ve met in some time. Her name is Charlene and she and her daughter Eva were traveling back to their home near New York from a family reunion in Minnesota. The Amtrak station in Chicago is underground and thus makes it hard for passengers waiting between trains to use radios to listen to local baseball games or other broadcasts. Even worse, the television in the station wasn’t showing the Cubs game then in progress. Charlene, a lady possessed of both charm and persistence, sought assistance from the technical staff and made the request to let us hear the Cubs rather than the boring movie being broadcast. Although we didn’t get to hear the Cubs, I like to think that the reason for that was simply because we ran out of time between trains. The daughter of a Canadian father and an Icelandic mother, Charlene was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and has traveled widely. For many years, Charlene has been involved in caring for and supporting people with disabilities as well as people who suffer from the depravities of a low income existence. Charlene and her remarkable daughter Eva, who has sufficiently mastered disability to become the Program Director at the Westchester, New York Independent Living Center, were the kind of traveling companions who made me want to know them even when I wasn’t traveling.

Then, too, there was Jerry, a Learning Consultant at the Center for Advanced Learning in Concord, Ohio. Jerry is the kind of person who makes his companion feel like he or she is the center of his attention — even in the most crowded room.

The train was a mere twenty-five minutes late getting into Buffalo and I was met there by my friend Bob. For the last thirty-two years, Bob has been most considerate and kind to me as both a friend and even a landlord. Bob, who constantly reminds me that he “tumbled out of the hills of Pennsylvania,” and therefore is “just a country boy,” insists on being not only helpful, but even generous. He makes it easy for me to minimize our political differences.

Attica, New York has been known to the world primarily as a prison town since the Attica Prison Riot in September 1971. Tiny in size, its other-worldliness is emphasized for me by three distinct sounds. The first sounds are the hymns which are heard throughout the village twice daily -- at noon and at 6 p.m. -- from the chimes of St. Vincent’s Roman Catholic Church. The second is the sound of the crunch of automobile tires on a gravel driveway instead of the usual concrete driveway found in most other places. That sound takes me back as far as I can remember. The third sound is more subtle but ultimately more significant: in the village of Attica, the sound of traffic is present, but it doesn’t dominate one’s senses. The most constant sound in Attica is that of barking dogs, the chirping of birds, and the wind in the trees. That sound, powerful and even primitive, leaves one with the impression that Attica could very easily be swallowed up by Mother Nature—-prison and all.

Attica always will mean the most to me as the home of a woman who has nurtured me since she was a “house mother” and I was a student at the New York State School for the Blind in nearby Batavia, New York. Edith has meant more to my values (spiritual and otherwise) than any other single person. She was born in Buffalo back in 1910 when children were mostly born at home and were expected to be “seen and not heard”. Now, at age ninety-seven, Edith, with considerable dignity, lives in a very different world from the one into which she was born. She doesn’t quarrel with today’s world, different as it is from the world she once knew, for she has always championed young people. Now she spends her time in her home from which she offers love and gentle wisdom in support of those she cherishes—including this observer.

Her daughter Sharon, who came to Attica from her Watertown home approximately 150 miles to the northeast of Attica to be with us, although somewhat different from Edith in style and manner, nevertheless possesses a sweet and generous nature. Marvelously feminine, Sharon’s personality is such that sunny laughter inevitably bubbles just below the surface of her daily existence and thus seems to fuel her ongoing thoughtfulness of other people.

While staying in Attica, I had lunch at the Attica Hotel with Dr. Wayne Mahood, a retired professor but still an actively prolific author of history texts. Between 1969 and 1994, Wayne was an instructor of education at the State University College at Geneseo. A professor and friend of mine since 1971, Wayne has grown gracefully senior encouraging and advising me as well as far more successful students. My shortcomings in these pages are not of his doing: Wayne really does encourage me to do better.

Batavia, which sits well established atop the flatland of Western New York, thirty-five miles northeast of Buffalo and thirty miles almost due west of Rochester, is a pretty thriving place for such a small city of approximately 18,000 citizens. It is the home of the New York State School for the Blind which opened in 1868 and which I attended from the fall of 1950 until June of 1966. These days the school serves a different and more severely disabled group of those who live with blindness. Its future as an institution is uncertain, but its past was celebrated by its Alumni Association early in June at its annual alumni reunion which was held at the Batavia Holiday Inn.

For nearly three days, I shared a cascade of school memories with approximately fifty others ranging in age from their early forties to the upper eighties. Many at the reunion attended that little school as early as 1924 and as recently as the late 1970s. Their common bond is their love for the school. Their common discomfort is coping with what their alma mater has become. I knew most of those who attended the reunion although I was not really a contemporary of many of them.

For hours and hours we exchanged stories. One man named Michael remembered my having protected him from a dog when he was about ten years old. To him I still am a hero although he realizes that all the dog was doing was barking, but he was deathly afraid of dogs. Then there is Nick who still blames me for an accident he had once while we were both in the school infirmary. “It wasn’t my fault,” Nick insists, “you had me laughing so hard that I couldn’t help it.” I thought the nurse understood the situation pretty well, but Nick isn’t so sure she did.

Between Sunday, June 10th and Friday, June 15th, I went home. I was born in Binghamton, New York and lived in what they still call “The Triple Cities” -- Binghamton, Johnson City and Endicott -- during school vacations throughout most of my childhood. My friends Barb and Dick were not only wonderfully generous and kind to me this year, but have been so since I was a teenager. They have lived in the same house since 1961 and are the proud parents of two children and two grandchildren. Steve is a new and somewhat struggling businessman who lives by his principles no matter how difficult for him they may be. He believes in hard work and conscientious behavior. His sister Kathy works contentedly as a secretary and computer whiz and raises their granddaughter Jenny. Sweet and petite, Barbara is intensely passionate about people and the principles that matter to her. Dick is quiet and easy-going but very passionate about Bobbie—as he usually refers to his wife. Their grandson Nick, Steve’s son, is very precious to them.

Barb and her sister Joanie treated me to a night of baseball at Nyseg Stadium where the Binghamton B-Mets lost to the Redding Phillies 7 to 1. When I was growing up, the team was called the Binghamton Triplets and they were a Yankee farm team. Yes, Binghamton really does possess a most glorious past.

Okay, it’s true. I won’t deny it. My best friend is a woman. Her name is Rhoda but I always call her Roe. We were in graduate school together and have been friends ever since. While I was majoring in history, Roe was a Library Science major. Second only to Edith, Roe has watched over me since August 29th, 1973 when we first talked at SUNY Geneseo.

Small, round-faced, and curly-haired, Roe believes in living by rules and standards, but she has a considerable amount of understanding and respect for the “underdog”. Intensely proud of her Jewish heritage, she is also intensely interested in helping other people learn about their own heritage. Her strongest characteristics are loyalty and thoughtfulness especially for those she cares about most, which of course include her husband and two daughters.

Mark, her husband of twenty-five years, is an imposing looking but very generous man. Primarily because he has a strong sense of his own worth, Mark extends himself to be kind and helpful to others. I was permitted to share his Father’s Day weekend. How much more generous than that can one possibly be?

Yes, this vacation was indeed a reminder of the past and the present, the happy, the sad and the uncertain. It was a reminder of the vastness of America, of the variety of its people’s experiences and perceptions. Even more, near its close, I got a reminder I didn’t realize I needed. I’ll share it with you next week.

Meanwhile, please accept this as…

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY