Westfield stays with me. It's inside me, a part of my conscience that will always be there. It is who I am and I am at ease with who I am because I love Westfield. It is an amalgamation of the land, the lake, the people, the time, and the things I was taught. Things that are true and things that are false. I am Westfield and it will always be that way.
Westfield is a township with a village at the center. The township is the country. Along the lake it is a flat coastal plain about a mile wide. That is where most of the grapes were, and grapes were where the money was; money for the farmers who grew the grapes and money for the people who worked at Welch's Grape Juice Company. Welch's made Westfield special. It gave Westfield a notch up on the economic scale. It gave Westfield a library to be proud of and a good school.
Coming inland off the lake about a mile the land gives way to an escarpment that rises probably 500 feet or more. It isn't a mountain but a distinct line of hills that forms the primitive boundary of the lake as it was before the glaciers melted when it receded to its current level. The township lies within this landscape and it is here where all the farms and wooded land are. Grape farms and dairy farms and fruit orchards and vegetable farms. Cows and cattle and pigs and corn and hay and silage and manure and tractors and mud and dirt and streams and creeks and waterfalls and woods and rolling hills and railroad tracks and ponds and lakes and old dirt roads and the Chatauqua Gorge which is almost like its own secret Grand Canyon. And not very many people. And that made Westfield special. Not many people. Just enough to know. No extra people to clutter up the landscape, the social scape, the mindscape. Just a cast of characters that inhabited the hills and farms of the Township of Wetfield that surrounded the Village of Westfiled.
The Village was the center of the world. It was small but had everything you needed. It had a business district about three blocks long and it was surrounded by a grid of tree lined streets and mostly wood framed houses. Some were made of stone and some were made of brick. The houses are old now. They were old then. But they were nice neat houses. Some little and some not too big. A couple of them were grand. They were built by craftsman who paid attention to detail in a time when even an average family could afford some real style and design. "Ginger-bread," "built-ins," a real display of the artisans' expertise.
If the township gave a kid room to explore the wild world on his bike or by foot, the village gave a kid a place to explore commerce and relationships and social life. The village had Joe Ricket's butcher shop and Shorty's shoe repair, and the bus station with the Western Union Office and hardware stores and pharmacies and churches and doctor's offices and the Town Hall and the Greystone Hotel and even a hospital. It had W.T. Grants, a department store, a Loblaws grocery store and a Quality Market, a police station with a jail and its own newspaper, the Westfield Republican. And it had its bars and taverns; Lambs, Anthony's, Larry's Cantina. It had clothing stores and a bakery and a soda fountain and a movie theatre that played movies every day of the week. It had the Westfield Diner, and Calarco's Venetian Room and the Bark Grill. The village was rich with life and with people engaged in trading goods and money.
And always their was Welchs, with its big brick office building at the intersection of U.S. Highway 20 and New York State Route 17; the location of one of the two traffic lights in town. Welchs put Westfield on the map, so to speak. It made Westfield the self-procalimed "Grape Juice Capital of the World," which was advertised on a sign as you entered the village, and if you were a kid you believed in that mantle and you were proud of it. Most towns aren't the capital of anything but Westfield was the capital of something ... Grape Juice. Westfield made you feel good about yourself.
I never realized how small Westfield was until I moved away from it. My mom and dad divorced and our family just sort of disippated out into America. My mother went one way and my father went another way. My two brothers and I each went our own way. That was 37 years ago. But I found out that noone else in America knew anything about Westfield or where it was. Noone knew that it was the Grape Juice Capital of the World. Noone knew about the little girl Grace Bedell from Westfield who told Abraham Lincoln to grow a beard and how William Seward, the man responsible for the United States purchasing Alaska from the Russians in the 19th century, spent his summers in Westfield. Noone knew about Lou Dimuro, the American League umpire who used to live in Westfield and who became momentarily reknowned when he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated during the 1970 World Series between the "Amazin' Mets and the Baltimore Orioles and the famous shoe polish call. Noone knew about an infinitesmally small town on the shores of Lake Erie in western New York. Noone knew there was a "western" New York or even a Lake Erie. And that's fine, because I know where it is and the people there know where it is, and it is still the center of the world and the beacon of my life that shines its light to let me know where I am from and what I know.
I stop in Westfield at least twice a year on my way to visit my mother in Youngstown, N.Y., on Lake Ontario below Niagara Falls, when I make an 11 hour drive from where I live in southwest Virginia. I usually call on Connie Strozzi at her florist shop on Main Street. She is my best childhood friend's aunt, and between my friend Greg and Connie we vicariously share and enjoy the stories of each others' lives and families. Sometimes I pay a visit to Rosie Thompson, on West 2nd St., who gave me a home in my late teen years when I was still trying to hang on in Westfield. I almost always call on my close friend Bob Olindo, who grew up in Westfield, but who now lives in Fredonia. Noone recognizes me anymore so I can be anonymous. I walk along Main St. in the center of town and look for familiar faces but don't recognize anyone. Time blurs all of our features. I drive around town and get out and walk. Almost every step I take, anywhere in town, conjures up a memory, a person, a story from the past. It is powerful in its own quiet way. It's good. It is my home.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Monday, February 4, 2008
When Did Greg and I Meet?
When did Greg and I meet? I can't remember a specific time or incident. I believe we first became friends in the 4th grade when we both had Miss Aldrich for a teacher in 1962. We had to be aware of each other before that time. We both went to St. James Catholic Church in Westfield, and we both would have gone to catechism together on Mondays at the church. For that matter, we made our 1st Communion together in the second grade. We also both played little league baseball at the Fireman's Field under the viaduct and at the base of the wooded hillside below the Welch's plant. But although I can almost force my brain to conjure up images of Greg in those situations I can't remember any interaction with him. Even tracing my memories back to the 4th grade I can't come up with any specific event where Greg and I did anything together, but I do remember a few things about Greg that I know I became aware of during that 4th grade year: he liked baseball a lot; he was into Civil War history; and he liked to read.
In fifth grade we had different teachers. That was 1963. But in 1964 we were both in Mrs. Carr's class and from that point on we formed a friendship that has grown stronger and older with time.
Westfield Academy & Central School consisted of kindergarten through 12th grade, all in one building. There were roughly 90 to 100 students in each class, so there were about 1300 hundred students in the building at any one time. Mrs. Carr was in her last year of teaching. I think she was 65 years old and looking forward to retirement. She had a reputation as being a strict disciplinarian. She was especially known, as rumour had it, for cracking a ruler over the knuckles of your hand for misbehaving. Little did I realize as I started my 6th grade year that a small group of us in the class, including myself, would end up bringing Mrs. Carr to tears and totally destroying the myth that she was a strict disciplinarian. She never once attempted to hit any of us with a ruler, and I am not proud to say now that we might possibly have made her final year of teaching the most difficult year in her long and admirable career.
I won't use last names as Westfield is a small town and to this day there is a good chance that everyone in Westfield knows everyone else. But I will say that myself (Doug), Greg, and Bob, created a triumvirate that basically held court throughout our 6th grade year in Mrs. Carr's class. We did have two female co-conspirators, Sue and Donna, who, if not as openly contemptuous of authority as we were, certainly provided us with plenty of moral support and encouragement. Actually, we weren't really contemptuous of authority, but Mrs. Carr had such a formidable reputation that when we found out it was all built on a deck of cards we just couldn't help taking further advantage of her. It was just too much fun and we were unable to show any restraint once we realized we had the upper hand.
None of us had ever experienced a classroom where the students could rule before. This was Westfield, a small rural town in the farthest western reaches of New York state in 1964. I have always thought that Westfield in the 60’s was probably not much different than Westfield in the immediate post WWII years. It was off the beaten path, far from the suburban growth and culture that was happening in the country’s metropolitan areas where probably 85% of the nation’s population was then living. Change came slowly to a place like Westfield. It was still o.k. and standard for teachers to paddle students, crack a ruler on their knuckles, or smack them on the top of their head with their class ring. I know of these things "firsthand." And if you got disciplined at school, you were apt to get it even worse from your father when you got home, and your parents would find out if you had misbehaved at school. Westfield was small and “news” spread quickly.
I would not be fair to myself, or to Greg and Bob either, if I make it sound as though we were a bunch of bratty little piss ants who had no respect for our elders or our public school institution. And Mrs. Carr was an excellent teacher and a very warm and giving person. In her 6th grade class that year we were heading into adolescence as she was heading towards retirement. When we discovered that we had the ability to control her classroom on a fairly regular basis, it brought the three of us together in a series of year long adventures and episodes that cemented our friendship and a relationship that lasted through high school and continues to this day, some 40 years later. There were simply times when we "pushed the envelope" further than we should have due to the sheer exhiliration of escaping the tedium of another elementary class day by creating our own distraction that actually made school fun ... at least for us. It never occurred to me until now that there might have been serious students in that class who actually enjoyed recitations, written assignments, and listening to other students read lessons from the social studies text. Well, I hope it's not too late to apologize 43 years later. Sorry. (But I do remember some of you laughing at our antics, and that was our main goal. Laughter made the day go faster!)
So yes, I guess I could say that I really met Greg in 1964, in Mrs. Carr’s 6th grade classroom, and from that point on we revelled in the simple beauty, freedom, pleasure, and even excitement, of growing up in the village of Westfield, N.Y., in the 1960s. With its incredible cast of characters, and during a tumultuous period in our nation’s history, Greg and I started our journey towards adulthood in this small rural town which to this day serves as an anchor for our friendship and a sanctuary for so many wonderful memories that provided us with an incredibly positive start to our lives. And if you don’t believe me, read on, because you are about to find out what it was like to live your chilhood, adolescence, and teenage years in the “Grape Juice Capital” of the World ... Westfield, N.Y.!!!
In fifth grade we had different teachers. That was 1963. But in 1964 we were both in Mrs. Carr's class and from that point on we formed a friendship that has grown stronger and older with time.
Westfield Academy & Central School consisted of kindergarten through 12th grade, all in one building. There were roughly 90 to 100 students in each class, so there were about 1300 hundred students in the building at any one time. Mrs. Carr was in her last year of teaching. I think she was 65 years old and looking forward to retirement. She had a reputation as being a strict disciplinarian. She was especially known, as rumour had it, for cracking a ruler over the knuckles of your hand for misbehaving. Little did I realize as I started my 6th grade year that a small group of us in the class, including myself, would end up bringing Mrs. Carr to tears and totally destroying the myth that she was a strict disciplinarian. She never once attempted to hit any of us with a ruler, and I am not proud to say now that we might possibly have made her final year of teaching the most difficult year in her long and admirable career.
I won't use last names as Westfield is a small town and to this day there is a good chance that everyone in Westfield knows everyone else. But I will say that myself (Doug), Greg, and Bob, created a triumvirate that basically held court throughout our 6th grade year in Mrs. Carr's class. We did have two female co-conspirators, Sue and Donna, who, if not as openly contemptuous of authority as we were, certainly provided us with plenty of moral support and encouragement. Actually, we weren't really contemptuous of authority, but Mrs. Carr had such a formidable reputation that when we found out it was all built on a deck of cards we just couldn't help taking further advantage of her. It was just too much fun and we were unable to show any restraint once we realized we had the upper hand.
None of us had ever experienced a classroom where the students could rule before. This was Westfield, a small rural town in the farthest western reaches of New York state in 1964. I have always thought that Westfield in the 60’s was probably not much different than Westfield in the immediate post WWII years. It was off the beaten path, far from the suburban growth and culture that was happening in the country’s metropolitan areas where probably 85% of the nation’s population was then living. Change came slowly to a place like Westfield. It was still o.k. and standard for teachers to paddle students, crack a ruler on their knuckles, or smack them on the top of their head with their class ring. I know of these things "firsthand." And if you got disciplined at school, you were apt to get it even worse from your father when you got home, and your parents would find out if you had misbehaved at school. Westfield was small and “news” spread quickly.
I would not be fair to myself, or to Greg and Bob either, if I make it sound as though we were a bunch of bratty little piss ants who had no respect for our elders or our public school institution. And Mrs. Carr was an excellent teacher and a very warm and giving person. In her 6th grade class that year we were heading into adolescence as she was heading towards retirement. When we discovered that we had the ability to control her classroom on a fairly regular basis, it brought the three of us together in a series of year long adventures and episodes that cemented our friendship and a relationship that lasted through high school and continues to this day, some 40 years later. There were simply times when we "pushed the envelope" further than we should have due to the sheer exhiliration of escaping the tedium of another elementary class day by creating our own distraction that actually made school fun ... at least for us. It never occurred to me until now that there might have been serious students in that class who actually enjoyed recitations, written assignments, and listening to other students read lessons from the social studies text. Well, I hope it's not too late to apologize 43 years later. Sorry. (But I do remember some of you laughing at our antics, and that was our main goal. Laughter made the day go faster!)
So yes, I guess I could say that I really met Greg in 1964, in Mrs. Carr’s 6th grade classroom, and from that point on we revelled in the simple beauty, freedom, pleasure, and even excitement, of growing up in the village of Westfield, N.Y., in the 1960s. With its incredible cast of characters, and during a tumultuous period in our nation’s history, Greg and I started our journey towards adulthood in this small rural town which to this day serves as an anchor for our friendship and a sanctuary for so many wonderful memories that provided us with an incredibly positive start to our lives. And if you don’t believe me, read on, because you are about to find out what it was like to live your chilhood, adolescence, and teenage years in the “Grape Juice Capital” of the World ... Westfield, N.Y.!!!
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