Sentimental Journey, Part 2 (Electric Boogaloo)

When last we met, we were in Milford, Pennsylvania, basking in the glow of the early morning neon while on our way to my wife’s ancestral home in the Catskills. Still traveling the back roads into the town of Matamoras, we crossed the Delaware in to New York. The bridge to the town of Port Jervis is one of those steel grate jobs, the older kind that makes you change lanes against your will. By the time we landed in New York we both needed dramamines but we soldiered on, undeterred.

I could have continued on US 209, which would have been longer, but decided to get on NY 42, which was more direct. I was convinced we wouldn’t see anything along this section, but I comforted myself with the knowledge that I had gotten some good stuff in Milford. And almost immediately as I started to think that, something came into view that made my poor heart beat.

“Oh, my…” Laura said.

A beat-up motel. One of those places that seems to only exist for long-term clients. But a nice old sign at the top, rusting at the edges:

alexander-motel-wide

Laura gets excited as she stares it down, but I see something else as I look around for some place to pull over: the motel is not alone. Up on the hill sits another building, a large, three-story faded beauty that looks more like an old plantation than something you’d see in upstate New York. And topping it, another neon sign, which has the matching Alexander name:

alexander-hotel alexander-hotel-close

From the little I can gather on the interwebs, this was originally called the Raymar Hotel, and it opened in the late 1800’s. It’s in the town of Sparrowbush, and it was an antique shop for a time, but it has since closed and remains vacant.

The motel, however, is still going, and really looks like the motels of yesteryear:

alexander-motel-close

office-at-room-1

We moved on, and here’s the good news: we made it up to the house where Laura was born. We took some shots outside (pardon me for not sharing, but we wanted to keep this part private) and saw that no one seemed to be home. Laura was quietly devastated. She wanted to go inside the old house in the worst way. So we decided to go next door to see if anyone there knew anything about who lived there now and if they would be back. As we did, a couple with a baby came walking down the old country road. Laura asked them about the house, showed them the yellowing pictures she had.

“You mean, this house?” the woman said, and pointed at it. We nodded. “That’s the house we’re renting this weekend!”

So the upshot is this: not only did we get to go inside, but we discovered that we can rent the house for a weekend if we want to. Laura was shaking her head in disbelief the whole weekend.

The bad news: there was some festival going on in the town of Liberty on July 4th (go figure) and the sign shots I planned to take didn’t materialize. But, I’ve added those signs to my new section: Scott’s Online To-Do List. If you see anything on there, or better yet, if you don’t see anything on there that you think I should get, please leave a comment!

More signs to come from this trip, when I crossed off my first sign from the to-do list…

Busted

Driving along the Southern Tier. I still had the bad taste of Bath in my mouth, and as we passed Corning and Elmira I didn’t want to even think of stopping to go through and do some sign-spotting. Instead, as we skimmed along the Pennsylvania border, the sign-spotting came to us.

Somehow, I had completely forgotten about O’Briens Inn. From the eastbound side of NY 17 (or future I-86, or whatever it’s being called on a Tuesday), you can see some lettering high up on a hill for at least five miles. OBRIENS. We both gazed up at it. I reminded myself every moment that the road needed more attention than the sign. (Here’s a good collection of pictures on TripAdvisor, to give you an idea of the location).

obriens-angle-signsandstories.com

“Can we get to it?” Laura asked me.

“Oh, I’m going to try,” I said.

We got off the US 220 exit and headed slightly toward the town of Waverly, then made a turn left up the hill. Up ahead, the sign was right in front of us, and as we got closer, I mapped out what I had to do to get the shot I wanted. I was going to get as close as I possibly could to those old beauties, letters 15 feet high with the full weight of the afternoon sun beating down on them! It’s Christmas!

I saw a dirt road off to the side and I swung the car into it. All I had to do was climb the hill and I would be on top of it. It was a bit steep but not bad, and when I got to the top, I knew I had found the mother lode:

obriens-2

What can I say? I’m a sucker for big letters.

These were two of the best, but I probably snapped off about fifty all tolled between my iPhone and my K-5. I had just finished getting some shots from the left side and I was halfway down to the car, when I turned and thought about getting a few more. I raised the eye-piece to me eye and was just about to hit the shutter when…

“You’re on private property. Get off!”

I turned. There was a guy on the second floor of the hotel. He wasn’t actually shaking his fist at me, but there was every chance he might. “Okay,” I said, and slid back down the hill, my heart thumping from being startled in the midst of my reverie.

The first time I’ve ever been told to leave. Oh, well. It was bound to happen sometime.

Climbing-down

A rare photograph of the Sanders in the wild.

Mixed Blessings

Our trip through the north end of the Finger Lakes had been glorious, as it almost always is. The lakes themselves are, of course, spectacular, but even the spaces in between are bucolic, full of meadows and farms and wide-open spaces. The normal routine for us has been to go to Geneva and cut south along NY 14 and skirt along Seneca to Watkins Glen. But we took a detour this time.

While we were driving, it occurred to me: Penn Yan, which was only a few miles away, sits atop Keuka Lake, which we had never visited. Well, why not? I thought.

And off to Penn Yan we went. And midway through town, I spot a sign. Not the best, mind you, but decently old. More importantly, it was connected to a diner, and the diner was simply amazing. Practically imbedded in the Earth, the Penn Yan Diner is a tremendous time capsule, small enough that you couldn’t fit 10 people in it without someone calling the fire brigade:

penn-yan-diner

Keuka itself is a little different. It is Y-shaped, although it is commonly referred to as “The Crooked Lake”. We traveled along the east side of the lake to Hammondsport, a town which looked like a good candidate for sign-spotting. Alas, as lovely as Hammondsport is (see below), I didn’t find much of anything in the way of signs. Oh, well.

ford-hammondsport

It’s always a good day when a classic Ford crosses your path…hammondsport

Keuka Lake at Hammpondsport

 

And then came the mixed blessings.

The next town along NY 54 is Bath, which I had passed through a few times on NY 17, but had never really visited. We drove through the center of town, which was rather dusty and nigh unto abandoned. Economics of the last twenty-five years have hit these kinds of large town/small city places especially hard; you recognize what it was, but only with a little imagination, because what it is is decay. No worries on my part; usually the best signs are in the rusty, dusty parts of towns just like this.

The decay of Bath was seen very clearly in the Steuben Bowl, which I found down one of the main streets:

steuben-bowl

I spun back through an alley, and saw a bearded man stumbling through a nearby parking lot. There were several parking lots back behind the main buildings, but all were empty, giving the impression that the town may have been abandoned, or at least, that they people were still here, but didn’t dare to go out.

bake-shop

The Betty Kay Bake Shop, Bath, NY

When we had passed through the main street I had seen something down an alley, and when we came back out again, I could see what it was: a Wrigley’s Doublemint ghost sign. I had never seen one, and this one looked in good shape. There was also a bakery, the Betty Kay Bake Shop, that had some interesting type sitting atop its overhang. I parked in front of it, got one shot, and had ever intention of getting another, when two guys strolled along beside me. They were scruffy and had paper bags that could only contain one thing.

“Take a picture of me and Donny,” said one of them.

I laughed. Usual reaction I get when I’m holding a camera. People don’t usually mean it, they’re just being funny, or trying to be.

“No, take a picture of me and Donny,” he says, more definitively this time.

“Uh, OK,” I say.

I point the K-5 in their direction and fire off the shutter. I had the camera in manual mode, so it was at the same setting I had it in when I got the Bakery sign. The shot was just a silhouette. They didn’t ask to see it. They moved on. I went to take another shot of the Betty Kay, when I spot the two of them out of the corner of my eye, standing in the lot of an old gas station, about twenty feet away, staring, talking to each other.

Behind me, Laura opens the passenger’s side door. She’s seen them, too, and she’s getting the same uneasy feeling that I’m getting. “Get in,” she says.

Yes, I do believe I will, I thought. The Wrigley’s Spearmint can perhaps wait.

Perhaps I’m giving Bath, NY a bad rep. But I’ve taken shots in some bad neighborhoods in Easton and Allentown, in Harrisburg, in Baltimore, and in the heart of Shamokin, PA (those of you who have visited that fascinating coal town probably just shuddered a little at the thought), and this is the creepiest feeling I’ve ever gotten while shooting. We got out of the Bath, post-haste.

Atop the Finger Lakes

In the last post, I stated without reservation that Skaneateles, New York, for my money, is the best small town in the United States, and even taunted Lititz, Pennsylvania in the process. In fact, I even had to tone down my taunting in the final draft of that post. As for the positive aspects of Skaneateles, one that cannot be ignored is its proximity to the other Finger Lakes. This trip is worth the price of admission by itself. U.S. 20 is the main thoroughfare here, and it was the main artery through the central part of New York prior to the New York Thruway, so there are many relics to be found along it.

Just five miles down the road is the city of Auburn. Like most places in upstate New York, it has undergone its share of hardships and loss of industry, but it does have my favorite overall sign-spotting location, the Hunter Dinerant, which has a ghost sign behind it and the Genesee Beer sign in the close distance. This is my shot from last October:

Genesee-Fays-Hunter

During this shoot, which coincided with an engagement photo shoot I had with my sister-in-law and brother-in-law-to-be, we spotted a sign on the way out of town that I had not seen in any of my research, right on the corner of US 20. Curley’s Pizzeria has been on the corner of State Street and NY5/US20 since 1933 (as the painting on the brick side proudly states. We had planned to go to Seneca Lake to get some more pictures of the happy couple, so I took a few distant shots with my phone that were too blown out to post to Instagram, but good enough to be a mental note. I would return.

And so, in April, I did. And got these:

curleys-wide curleys

A good start to the day, but hardly the last roadside attraction along US 20. The sections between the lakes are decidedly rural, with extremely gentle hills and farmland, but past Auburn is one my favorite sights along any road: a drive-in movie theater. New York has very few left, but the Fingerlakes Drive-In still stands. It was still closed for the season in April, but they left us something behind to remind us of summer and a bygone era:

 fingerlakes-dodge

We seem to have good luck finding old Dodges. See my diner page for a good one outside the Red Robin in Johnson City.

fingerlakes

It had been a hard winter…

We kept along US 20, past Seneca Falls and on our way to Geneva, where we’d eventually make the turn down to Penn Yan and Keuka Lake. “There’s something else here,” I said.

“What is?” Laura asked.

“Don’t remember,” I replied. “Something we passed in October.” I had made a mental note but I had forgotten to pass it to myself after gym class. But I knew there was…something.

And then, there it was. In fact, it was two things. I pulled off the road to the right to make life simpler for the crowd of cars behind me and got out. An old motel, and an old motel sign, barely readable from the wear, ugly/beautiful:

cape-cod

But this wasn’t what I had spotted. Across the road was a Drive-In restaurant, with a long, tall sign that I think I had put aside because I knew its dimensions would be difficult to capture:

macs-sign

But the prize was the building itself, a living testament to good times before or after a trip to the lake. This is what summer is all about:

macs-building

I don’t know about you, but I just look at these places and whatever cares and worries I may be pulling along behind me just drop off, and I feel like a kid again.

There was more to come this day: some of the greatest combinations of good and bad I’ve ever seen. More in the next post!

New York State of Mind

Not the most original title, huh? But this is the song I would play every time I came home from college: I had the exact moment timed on my audio cassette version of Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits so “New York State of Mind” would play as soon as I crossed the border. That kind of stupidity takes dedication.

Anyway.

Although most of what you see on this site takes place in Pennsylvania, the more you read the more you will see that my heart belongs in Upstate New York. Both me and my wife were born there, my parents still live there, and any time we talk about getting away from it all, it always ends up with us going Upstate, whether it be to the Finger Lakes or Cooperstown or the dear old hometown of Binghamton. So I guess it comes as no surprise that we’ve spent our last two anniversaries in Skaneateles, a town which defines idyllic.

Every year, Lititz, PA gets named one of (if not the) coolest small town in America. I’ve been to Lititz. Nah. Give me Skaneateles any old day.

skaneateles

But do you have a lake, Lititz? Thought not.

But I kid the Lititz.

Now you’ll be amazed to know that Skaneateles has precisely zero vintage or neon signs, but despite this tremendous flaw, I would live there happily and perhaps skip for joy on occasions when I thought people weren’t looking. However, there are still good signs about within easy driving distance, including my favorite sign location in the state.

On the way up, we slid through Cortland. Cortland is one of these places that has some great history, as it was home to Smith-Corona and quite a bit of industry, but the last 30 years have been pretty lean. One thing I’ve noticed about the signs in towns like Cortland: either all the old signs come down, or businesses hang on to their signs for dear life. Fortunately, Cortland seems to fall in the latter category.

skyliner motel-cortland

The Cortland Motel and the Skyliner are off the McGraw exit of I-81. The Skyliner, alas, is no more, but the sign is still up, and points to a vacant lot. The Motel sign was kind of an afterthought. We pulled in and I took a couple of shots from the car, but this turned out to be one of the better finds.

To be quite honest, we were lost. Quite frankly, it’s easy to do in downtown Cortland. They basically toss you on to one way streets until you find yourself in Homer, or Dryden, or Groton. But as I righted the ship and turned back toward the center of town, I found the Melody Land:

melodyland

This place dates back to before the 40s, is only open Wednesday to Saturday during dinner hours, and is family-owned. According to all accounts, you must get reservations to get in. It was a pity: we got there a good six hours too early…

A few one-way streets later and I was speeding toward Homer (which in this case, was the direction I had hoped) because I remembered a sign along the way that I had missed the previous year. If you take shots of signs as I do, you’ll know this feeling: you spot the sign right at the moment where it would be dangerous to pull over, so you continue on in hopes that you’ll be back again. Even though I had fallen into this trap, I was rewarded:

northend-wide

It was just after noon, and midway through my indulgence the neon of the sign suddenly came alive. I hadn’t gone in and asked. It made me smile.

north-end-color

The fact of the matter was, when I went inside afterward, the woman working there had no idea I was there. Apparently, they have the sign turned on all the time, and she had just forgotten when she had come in. But we had a great talk and gave me the owner’s card. When I got back in the car, I was just so thankful that someone recognized the underlying thing of what I do with these shots: the preservation and appreciation of these great pieces of history.

But not everybody sees it this way. More later…