Binghamton Press articles, batch 1

The Old Coot Goes to the Dogs

Published in the Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin on August 30, 2008

By the Old Coot, Merlin Lessler

My sister Madeline on the right holding Topper, Lassie is next to me on the left.

A young woman was walking her dog on the sidewalk in front of me as I did the old coot shuffle into town the other day. Her pooch wore a pair of shoes, though I guess with one on each paw I should refer to them as a “quartet” of shoes. The dog stopped and sniffed at a fence post, a tree stump or a signpost every few feet. They were going so slow that even at my gimpy pace I caught up and passed them. The woman didn't seem to mind her lack of progress. She held a cell phone to her ear with one hand, and clutched an empty “poop” bag and a leash in the other. She chatted while the dog gawked and sniffed; it was a match made in heaven. It made me think about the dog I had as a kid; His name was Topper. I was four when I brought his mother to the door and said, “Mom, I found a dog; Can I keep it?” I was a lucky kid, not many mothers would let a preschooler keep a stray dog. Especially one about to give birth to seven puppies.

The stray (Lassie) had the pups in our basement. “Topper” was the first to make it up the stairs, earning him a name and a place in our family. His siblings were dispersed throughout the area; he and his mother stayed with us. I was one happy cowboy. I roamed the driveway and back yard in my cowboy suit, a pistol on each hip and a pair of happy dogs by my side. Lassie chased cars, and no matter how many contraptions my father rigged up to stop her from running, she never failed to break free when a sedan came past the house. She was a relentless pursuer, a tire bitter. She eventually was exiled to a farm owned by a friend of the family, put out to pasture. From then on, Topper and I formed a duo that rivaled that of Batman and Robin. We went everywhere together.

It was a different era. Dogs were dogs; people were people. The confusion we have today about the people - dog pecking order didn't exist. Dogs were tougher, more self-reliant. My friends and I rode our bikes to the movies in downtown Binghamton. We' d park them in a heap in front of the Press building on Chenango Street. After a quick glance in the window at the evening paper that was speeding across a giant set of rollers, we’d head into the Strand Theater. (The Binghamton Press was an evening paper in those days. The morning paper, the Sun Bulletin, was produced at the other end of the block) Topper would plop down next to the bikes and stand guard. When we came out three hours later, rubbing our eyes and squinting into the bright sunlight, he'd be there, his tail wagging like crazy.

When my family left town for a few days, a rare event I must admit, he stayed home in the garage. We propped the door open with a cinderblock so he could come and go as the mood hit him. A neighbor kid would come by every day to give him a can of Rival dog food and a fresh bowl of water. On one occasion he apparently resented being left behind and wandered off on an adventure of his own. We came home. No Topper! We asked around the neighborhood but no one had seen him. A week went by, still no Topper. I was one sad kid. My best friend was gone. I was hanging out in the driveway two weeks later, throwing a tennis ball up onto the roof and catching it after it worked its way down a double set of valleys, when Topper came running down the street, turned into the driveway and stopped in his tracks. He stared at me. I stared back. We both were dumbfounded. Then he yelped and ran to me, his tail wagged a mile a minute. He licked and licked my face as we rolled around together on the ground. It was one of the happiest moments in my ten years of life. My parents thought he’d gotten impatient and went looking for us. I think he just needed a break. At any rate, it was the last vacation he took. He was always home waiting for us after that.

The relationship between dogs and people was different in those days. Kids played outside and dogs in the neighborhood played along with them. They provided a layer of security that gave our parents a high level of comfort when we wandered out of sight and beyond earshot. A stranger wouldn’t dare come after a kid with a dog or two around. We were free to spend our days in the woods and creeks that surrounded the south side of Binghamton. Every once in a while my sister Madeline and I put a dab of peanut butter on the roof of Topper's mouth. We’d laugh ourselves silly as he licked and licked to get it off. He'd do somersaults and twist across the floor in his effort to be free of the foreign substance. It was a blast, until our father caught us and explained how cruel we we’re being to a helpless critter. That’s when we switched to Jujy Fruit candies and watched as he furiously chewed in a vain attempt to get them unstuck from his teeth. We did this out of sight of Dad. We guessed he wouldn’t think it was any better than the peanut butter game. Leashes were seldom used back then. Pooper-scoopers didn’t exist at all. If a dog left his calling card on the lawn, you simply found a flat stone and covered it up. Nature went to work and took care of things. When you removed the stone a week later there was nothing there. The microbes had done their job. In another week the grass grew back. People who let the stones accumulate ended up with a nice rock garden. Which, I hear, is how the concept got started, just another positive contribution to the human condition from our canine friends. Where would we be without our dogs?

Merlin Lessler, is a freelance writer who lives in Owego.

We learned more than the ABC’s at old PS-13!

Published in the Binghmton Press and Sun Bulletin on December 13, 2008

By Merlin Lessler, AKA the old coot, Owego

PS #13 (Longfellow Elementary)

It’s tough for an old coot like me to take a trip down memory lane to my grade school days when the old building no longer exists. It was smashed to bits over thirty years ago. That’s the dilemma facing all the former students of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow School. It’s not just the place where we studied the three R’s and earned a sixth grade diploma; it’s the place we learned about life. Our old school is gone. It’s a parking lot next to the UHS medical building at 93 Pennsylvania Ave. It was torn down to make way for a Giant Market, which used the site for a quarter of a century and then moved down the street to bigger and better things. Now it’s in the hands of U.H.S. No longer can we gaze on the old school and longingly glance toward the side door where we lined up at the bell, that dreaded signal to go inside, to walk away from an unfinished game of batball.  

PS-13, as we referred to it on all our school papers, served kids on the south side of town, roughly westward from Mitchell Ave. to the Binghamton – Vestal border. It’s gone! We can’t stop by and kick the tires and stir up old memories. Like the lessons in we learned in “Bully” survival! I took two semesters. Butchy taught the first. It started in kindergarten. He decided who played with the toy fire truck, not the teacher. He ruled outside the building as well, roaming the area on his bicycle, a baseball bat resting on his shoulder. His demeanor radiated a warning, “Mess with me and I’ll bean you.” I chose to go for a passing grade. I conceded him the fire truck, the ball and the blackboard eraser. Kids who didn’t, ended up with lumps and bumps and an “F” in the course. He was one bully you couldn’t outrun. 

Denzel presided over my second “Bully” survival course at PS-13. . He wasn’t menacing like Butchy; he was gregarious, subtle, and as tough as they come, but the theme of his lesson plan was the same, “Do what I say or you’ll be sorry!” He lined us up on the playground for a weekly quiz every Friday before the bell. The test question was the same every week. “Do you want a sock in the arm or do you want to give me a dime?” It was a tough decision. You could buy a soda and a candy bar for a dime in those days, but a sock in the arm would ache through the first hour of the school day: through the Pledge of Allegiance, the Lords Prayer and half way into the arithmetic lesson. Most of us made the right choice, gave him the dime or accepted a punch in the arm. We got an “A” in Denzel’s class. Some kids learned the hard way. I watched them with a shrug. They followed the lame advice that parents have pawned off on their naïve offspring for generations, “Stand up to a bully and he’ll back down.” After discovering that the advice was bogus, they lined up with the rest of us chickens. But in addition to a sore arm and/or a reduction in their financial condition, they also nursed a black eye. They got an “F” in the course, but surprisingly few of them were dumb enough to repeat the class. 

I didn’t pass all the life lessons at PS-13. I failed a course called, “He dared me to do it.” It took place on the playground, though I remember it unfolding in the library on the third floor of the school. Billy Wilson pulled out a pack of matches in a “see what I’ve got” taunt. I saw, and was impressed, jealous too. I dared him to light one. He just smiled. I double dared him. His smile weakened. I triple dared him. He looked around and then pulled out a match and struck it. Then he blew it out. Here is where the story gets muddled. I remember him throwing it in the wastebasket in the library. He claims he tossed it in on the ground in the schoolyard. I remember the school filling with smoke and the janitor, Mr. Vanick, dousing the papers in the wastebasket. He says I ran to Mrs. White, our fifth grade teacher, and ratted him out. If his version is accurate it means I was involved in another fire incident with another kid in the library. It wouldn’t surprise me. One thing is clear to both of us. We were marched by the ear to the principal’s office. I wasn’t afraid. After all, it was Billy who started the fire, not me. But, would he tell the truth? Well, he did! He told Miss Lennox that he brought the matches to school and lit one. But, then he added, “Merlin dared me to do it!” I chuckled to my self. I knew he was in for it now. Anytime I’d ever used that excuse I got it thrown back in my face, with the standard adult rebuttal, “And, if he dared you to jump off the Empire State Building, would you do it?” That usually ended the discussion. I waited for Miss Lennox to bring the Empire State Building into the conversation. She didn’t. She reached over and gave be a swat on the back of the head. It still stings. Then she imposed our sentence. We spent the rest of the day copying every word on fire prevention from several encyclopedias. We spent the next day too. It wasn’t until the third day, after my mother came to school and had a long talk with Miss Lennox, that my sentence was commuted. I got an “F” in this life lesson. I still wonder to this day, “Would Billy jump off the Empire State Building if I dared him?”  

1/2 of my 6th grade class (me in the exact center)

The other 1/4,  Billy Wilson my arson partner

(top row, 4th from right)

 Ross Creek and the Tunnel to Hell!

(Published in the Binghamton press, June 21, 2009)

By Merlin Lessler (the old coot)

We were lucky, the kids that grew up on the south side of Binghamton. Nature provided us with an endless venue of places to play: woods, fields, ponds, swamps, ravines and best of all, the “Creek.” It’s officially known as Ross Creek, named after the doctor who donated land to the city for a zoo and a park. The creek runs under the zoo and then meanders between concrete walls topped by a page link fence to the Susquehanna River. The last leg of its journey is in a quarter mile, dark, forbidding tunnel. We were introduced to the creek and the abyss it descends into at the intersection of Park and Vestal Avenues by chasing fly balls that cleared the fence bordering the playground at PS-13 (Longfellow Grade School). We vaulted over the rails on the Morris Street Bridge and ran them down, sometimes all the way to the tunnel, where a giant mouth gobbled them up.   

The tunnel to hell!

I don't why, but caves and tunnels draw kids like a magnet. The lure of the dark and forbidding black hole at the end of Ross Creek turned from curiosity to obsession for us. Even in the dry season, when water runs in a narrow trickle, it transforms to white water as it slides down the steep pitch to the tunnel entrance. The slope is so severe we were forced to descend feet first, on our backs, in a crab-walk. My friend, Woody (Walls) and I scouted the mysterious cavern many times, walking down the creek with a cocky strut, even descending to the tunnel entrance with an eight-year-old swagger, only to look into its maw and quickly scamper back up the slope to safety. The two of us couldn’t muster enough courage to go through the tunnel. Maybe, with more guys we could? We recruited two “explorers” to join us, probably Buzzy (Spencer) and Warren (Brooks). I’m just never sure when I dig that far through the cobwebs into my memory banks.

We lingered at the top of the slope, some thirty feet from the entrance to the tunnel. We were stalling and we knew it. We did everything we could to delay the mission at hand. We practiced yoyo tricks, searched for crayfish and told “moron” and knock-knock jokes, anything that would keep us above ground and in the safety of daylight. We might have continued the stall for the rest of the day, if tough guy, Denzel Kelly hadn’t come along, leaned over the fence and yelled, "Boo!" In our agitated state, it was enough to get the response he wanted. We jumped! He liked that. One of his favorite utterances was, “I speak; you jump. He followed it up this time with, "What are you girls doing down there anyhow"?

"Getting ready to go through the tunnel,” We muttered in unison.

“Good, I'm going to stay right here and watch. I don't think you have the guts to do it."

He was right, but now we had no choice. If we didn't, he would make sure we never forgot it, and that the rest of the school never forgot it either. Buzzy went first, followed by Warren and Woody. I was the last to slide down to the tunnel, pretending to tie my shoes, a standard delaying tactic of the day. Years later, when I first heard the expression, "Caught between a rock and a hard place," I immediately understood what it meant - Denzel on one side, the horror of the tunnel to Hell on the other.

Our fate lay ahead. We entered the dark, forbidding cavern, a round concrete structure, fifteen-feet in diameter. There was an angled shoreline on each side. If the water got any higher the walkway would disappear. We went in far enough to block Denzel's view of us. We knew he was still there because he shouted down, "I'm waiting right here in case you chicken out.” We knew we had to give it a try, come hell or high water, two distinct possibilities for four chickens crouched on a narrow pathway at the edge of a rising stream.

Our eyes adjusted to the dark; we could see the route ahead. A dim circle of light in the distance beckoned. Buzzy led the way, something that normally would have been decided by a round of one-potato, two-potato, but today had been left to fate. The ledge we perched on was too narrow to change the order, something I took secret delight in from my safe spot at the back of the line. We moved ahead, slowly at first, then at a good clip, considering how dark it was and how scared we felt. After ten minutes we noticed that the circle of light in front of us was larger and brighter, testament to our progress. It appeared to be about the same size as the one at our backs, telling us we were about half way there. We would have “high-fived” each other, were there such a thing back in those days. Instead we settled for a "Whoopee,” from Woody, the most vocal of our foursome. Buzzy jolted us out of our revere, "Shut up! Something is moving up ahead!"  A normal group of ten year olds might envision the movement ahead as a snake, a muskrat, or a skunk. Not us; we’d completed our second year at "Horror Movie University." We visualized giant ants, radioactive rats or something worse, the creature from the Black Lagoon. 

A closer view

"What is it," I bravely asked from my secure position in the. Buzzy didn't know, but he reported that it was too big to be a rat, unless fallout from an Atomic test had caused it to mutate. It crossed over from the other side of the tunnel on a clump of branches that formed a crude bridge. We froze, listening intently for clues that might tell us where it was. When nothing happened, we forged ahead, a little slower and with nervous caution. We’d progressed about fifty feet when all of a sudden, Buzzy splashed past the rest of us with a yelp, and got behind me in line. His shoes, socks and pant legs were soaked, but he didn't care, the "thing" wasn't going to get him first. Warren led the way for the next few yards, but then it startled him and he fled to the back of the line. The "beast" was as big as a giant cat, and glittered and glowed as it crossed back and forth on one of the many haphazard clogs of twigs, dirt and rubbish that littered the tunnel. It must be radioactive! What else could explain the glittering glow?

With Woody in the lead, we pressed on, four terrified chickens. My position wasn’t as secure as it had been, but I still felt safe. Woody would never back down. Another hundred yards, and my biggest nightmare became reality; Woody freaked; now I was at the head of the line, facing a radioactive monster. I was trapped. I couldn't get my feet wet. I was wearing a brand new pair of P.F. Flyers. When I left home my mother told me to put on an old pair of sneakers so I wouldn’t ruin the new ones. Of course I hadn’t listened.

We inched on in absolute silence, posed to flee at the first sign of attack. All of a sudden, I could see what had frightened the other guys. The "monster" did glitter as it scurried back and forth across the tunnel, but there now was enough light coming in to make it out. It wasn't a radioactive rat. It was a black cat with white feet, sporting a gemstone collar that glittered. I accelerated the pace, my frightened companions anxiously asked, "Are you all right?" Their view of the cat was blocked. Only I could see it. I played out my "bravery," all the way to the river, hoping the cat would scamper away before they saw it. But it didn't. When we emerged from the tunnel, rubbing our eyes in reaction to the bright sunlight, it sat on the river bank licking its' paws. The Radioactive-Rabid-Vicious-Sharp Fanged-River-Rat was someone's house pet, probably with a name like "Boots." I must have gone through the tunnel a hundred times after that. My last visit was in 1962. Even then, when I was a nineteen-year-old college student, it was still an eerie place, but nowhere near as scary as my first trip into the tunnel to hell.

The Boys in Blue. (published in the Binghamton Press, October 11, 2009)

by Merlin Lessler

Me, ready for duty in 1953

“Wait there until a car comes!” That’s what I yelled over my shoulder to the three kindergarteners at my back. I was trying to hold them in place until a car came by and I could prevent them from stepping in front of it. I was just doing my job. I was a patrol boy at Longfellow Elementary School, assigned to the least active corner in the neighborhood. Other patrol boys could use this delaying tactic; cars actually came by their corners. Not by my assigned location. Not often enough to keep even the youngest kids from crossing without my help. Kids walked to school in those days. Longfellow Elementary (PS-13) was a neighborhood school. All the schools were neighborhood schools. Patrol boys were deployed to help kids cross the streets and get there safely. The crosswalk in front of the building on Pennsylvania was the busiest. Mister Terry, a friendly policeman with the same shape and demeanor as Santa Claus was stationed there and was assisted by a patrol boy. The squad came from the 4^th, 5^th and 6^th grades. We proudly wore the official uniform, a white belt that crossed from left shoulder to right hip and girded the waist. It was topped off with a silver badge. High-ranking squad members, lieutenants and captains, sported badges with a red or blue tint that designated their rank. We folded and hung the “uniform” from our belts when we were off duty. It was a way of lording it over civilians. I never figured out if it was the uniform or the authority that attracted me to this elite troupe of Special Forces; It must have been both because the job required you to be at your corner thirty minutes before school and then hustle to class before the final bell. It also meant that you got home late, both at lunchtime and at the end of the school day. Yet, there wasn't a boy in Longfellow that wasn’t eager to made the sacrifice. (Girls weren’t allowed on the force, not back in the 1950’s)

I didn’t make it the first time I applied for the squad. Maybe my involvement in the library fire had a bearing on the selection process. I eventually did get through a screening and become a candidate for the force but soon discovered there was a down side to the honor. You didn’t just get a uniform and an assigned to a corner. We had to attend training sessions every day for a week. That meant staying after school; the cruelest punishment there is for a school kid. Miss Wood, a stern and somber taskmaster with a high-strung personality similar to Barney Fife on the Andy Griffith Show was in charge of the squad. She conducted the training sessions in her fourth grade classroom. I suffered through the lessons and was assigned to the corner of Cross Street and Park Avenue, where a lot of kids passed by but only a few crossed over. Most of them crossed down the block at Morris Street. It was a boring job! I strutted around in my patrol boy belt and badge with nothing to do. The few kids that did cross at my corner didn’t need me to help them. Cars didn’t come down Cross Street, at least not during school hours.   

I frittered away my time that first week, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. On Friday, I discovered another reason to question my decision. Miss Wood told us we had to wash our “uniforms” over the weekend. They had to gleam when we handed them off to the squad on duty the following week. I explained this to my mother as I handed her the belt. She handed it right back, along with a bar of yellow soap and pointed me to the scrub board and stationary tub in the basement. So much for the glory of the uniform. 

My career ended in disgrace. A brother and sister crossed at my corner four times a day: on their way to school in the morning, home for lunch, back for the afternoon session and then home again at the end of the day. They constantly fought and pushed each other into the road. The brother was two years older and a bully. I weakly "ordered" them to stop fighting, warning that they could get hit by a car if they didn’t pay more attention to where they were walking. This stopped them long enough to gawk at me like I was from another planet, and to say, “You’re not the boss of us!” Then, they would cross the street and start up again. Finally, I put them on report and ordered them to appear in court. Judicial sessions were held once a month in Miss Wood’s classroom. She was both judge and jury.

Their case made it onto the court docket three weeks later. I had forgotten why I’d “arrested” them by then. When I was asked to explain the charges, I simply stated they always fought and pushed each other into the road. They jumped to their feet and shouted out that I was the one who should be on trial for picking on them and saying mean things when they passed by my corner. Miss Wood looked at me over the top of her glasses and asked if this was true. I was dumb founded, totally unprepared to deal with their well-told lies. I thought for sure the girl would speak up, to put an end to the constant taunting by her brother, but she didn’t. I managed a feeble, "They're lying!" But, it was two against one and I was a rookie cop. The charges were dismissed. I was scolded and told to shape up or I'd lose my slot on the squad. I left the room in shock, but with a conviction that I definitely would not “re-up” for a second tour of duty. The lure of the uniform wasn’t that strong.

Old Coots Gather for a Reunion

Published in the Binghamton Press, May 16, 2010

By Merlin Lessler

The front door to high society?

It’s my fiftieth high school reunion this year -the Binghamton Central High School class of 1960. My fellow old coots will be gathering in town to tell lies about the good old days. Some will brag about the unbeaten football team in 1957. Others will reminisce about the prom or the fraternity and sorority dances. My mind is stuck on the oddities we experienced. The ones not mentioned in the yearbook.

Like the great egg toss! A new principal was assigned to Central shortly after the start of my senior year, Mister Willard C. Hamlin. Or, as he called himself, Captain Hamlin. He summoned us to the auditorium for an assembly his first week on the job. “I’m the captain and the school is my ship,” he growled at us that chilly fall morning. “I’m going to steer us through rough educational waters; you are going to follow my orders and get us to our destination.” On and on he went, using nautical terms that had us groaning: “The teachers are my officers. You better get on board; the anchor is coming up.”

Finally, at lunchtime, we were allowed to leave. We scurried out of the building by the side entrance. He strutted out the front door, with a self confident, captain’s swagger. He was met by a barrage of missiles. Some said the eggs came from the grassy knoll. Others said, from a widow in the brick repository across the street. It’s a mystery that’s never been solved. All that is know for certain, is that they did come, dozens of well-aimed eggs. “Welcome to our world, Captain Hamlin.”

We were back in the auditorium that afternoon, getting our comeuppance in traditional school fashion, a stern lecture, a plea to the guilty parties to confess and punishment for the rest of us until they did. "A cowardly attack,” he proclaimed. It was not just an attack on him, but worse; it was an attack on his distinguished position. It was the best assembly I ever attended. To this day, I still picture him at the podium, looking out to a sea of grinning teeth, which must have appeared as white caps on a rough sea, in perfect synch with his nautical theme. It probably drove him a little batty. It was the last we heard of the incident. He wisely spent the rest of the week in the safety of his office.

What did he expect?  He’d invaded our turf. He came to us from our archrival, North High. And, who was he to saunter out the front door, an entrance we were forbidden to use. We were relegated to a door on the side of the building, at the end of a long passageway with a page link fence on one side and a cement wall on the other. I always felt that I was a sheep, marching down a chute to the slaughterhouse. He was the captain, strutting on the forbidden promenade. And now, he was a captain swept up in a mutiny, with egg on his face. 

We weren’t bussed to school back in those days. We had to provide our own transportation: our feet, a public bus at our own expense, or in a friend or parent’s car. Bicycles were not an option; they weren’t “cool” back then, and we were desperate to appear cool. I was lucky; I got into a car pool. The turtle! A green, 1953, four-door, Chevy sedan, owned by John Fish. It was misnomer to call it a car pool; there was only one car, John’s. The rest of us were pedestrians. John collected a buck from the five of us every Monday morning, a good deal for us, a good deal for him. His gas bill for the week never exceeded three dollars. Our journey from the Fish residence to school was a somber event; we were still trying to wake up, or we were groping with the prospects of a taking a test we hadn’t gotten around to study for.

Our commute changed from humdrum to exciting the day John decided to try to make the trip without using the brakes. It was quite a challenge. We faced a route that involved a dozen or more traffic lights, a lot of early morning traffic and several hills. Every day we tried; every day we failed, but we kept extending our progress; we got closer and closer to school, using a technique of slowing down a block from a traffic light or stop sign and jumping out of the car to slow it down with muscle power instead of brake power. The “Turtle” had a manual transmission, which helped a lot when John downshifted and slowed the car down. Finally, we made it to within a block of the school. As we coasted toward the last traffic light it unexpectedly turned red. We jumped out of the car, and this time John joined us as well. We slowed it to a crawl, long enough for the light to turn green. We did it! We finally made it without using the brakes. We only did it that one time but the memory has lasted 50 years.     

My class officiers (June)

Our January class.

Lunch hour was different in the 1950s. It was freedom. I felt like I was out on parole, early release from a day of imprisonment. I didn't spend a second in the school cafeteria in my three years at Central. I walked past it and glanced in to see what it was like once, but my crowd was too "cool" to eat there. We wanted to be on our own, maybe have a smoke if we could find someone with a pack of Marlboros to bum from. No supervised cafeteria for us. Instead, we squeezed into Baird's Bakery, a small shop a few doors down from the school with a soda cooler in the back. For reasons I’ll never fathom, they not only tolerated fifty or more kids hanging out on their for lunch hour, they encouraged it. Most of us never bought any baked good and we took up valuable space. It was as crowded as Times Square on New Years Eve. There was barely enough room to maneuver a sandwich from a brown paper bag to your mouth. I never understood the attraction, but everybody who was anybody ate there eventually. I remember feeling like a contortionist as I consumed my three sandwiches, two cupcakes, pint of milk and apple while being jostled around in a sea of surging teenagers.

If Baird's Bakery became too crowded, which rarely happened in this era when it was popular sport to see how many people could squeeze into things, usually a phone booth or a Volkswagen Bug, we went down the street to Lottis’s Pool Hall, another business that tolerated a mob of hungry teenagers. But no matter what, even if we had to eat out in the rain, cold or a northeaster, we never, ever, ate in the school cafeteria.

I’ll be going to the reunion to talk about the math class where we placed bets on how often the teacher would scratch the bald spot on the back of his head and the history teacher who blew up and stormed out of the room at least once a month. I won’t be in the group discussing the school play, graduation day or student council. I hope I’ll run into somebody who remembers the time I drove my father’s Edsel to Quaker lake with my knees. I hope to see you there, even if you were in the class ahead of or behind us you are welcome to join us at the Friday night mixer at Flashbacks on August 13.

Real Men Don’t Wear Jeans!

By the Old Coot (Merlin Lessler)

Me on bike, Woody on the back.

Note the folded up Levi's

Some men may wear jeans but not old coots like me. True, you might spot us walking around in denim pants, but they aren’t jeans. They’re dungarees. Girls wear jeans! We wear dungarees! We wear the same rugged, denim pants that prospectors wore during the California gold rush, that cowboys wore when they settled the old west, that James Dean wore in the movie, “Rebel Without a Cause.” They aren’t jeans, not to old coots who grew up in the 40’s and 50’s. Jeans are the denim slacks that girls wore. Jeans didn’t have pockets and they zipped up on the side.

Boys wore dungarees; girls wore jeans. That was the law.  A boy wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of jeans. Jeans were essentially skirts with legs. In the late 1950’s, the fashion industry started calling dungarees, jeans. But we didn’t. We knew the difference. We stuck to our guns, stuck to our dungarees. Sometimes we called them overalls, but never jeans. There were a lot of makers of dungarees but the Levi brand was king. I can still remember the thrill of getting my first pair. My parents bought the cheap ones but it didn’t stop me from coveting a pair of Levi’s. They were the rage! They set you apart from the crowd, with the distinctive double arch, stitched on each back pocket, the little red tag and a leather logo on the waistband. They also had a unique, dark blue stripe on the leg seam that was revealed when you folded up the cuff. And you had to fold up the cuff because Levi’s weren’t pre-shrunk in the fifties. You bought them big. They weren’t soft either. New Levi’s were as stiff as frozen canvas.

We bought them two sizes big and patiently waited for them to shrink, wash after wash, until they fit. We started out with a six-inch cuff. Every time they were washed the cuff got smaller. Eventually, a cuff wasn’t necessary. It was a little sad when that day came. The distinctive blue stripe on the seam could no longer be seen. We did everything we could to break in a new pair of Levi’s. We ran and somersaulted across the lawn; we slid on the ground; we took them off and dragged them through the dirt. It helped soften them up and it was the only way we could get our mothers to wash them. It was a survival thing. The stiffness made them hard to walk in and the bigness made us look like nerds, what with a six-inch cuff and a waistline that settled just below our armpits.

My first pair of Levi’s came from the Harris Army and Navy store on Washington Street, a few doors down from the YMCA. I don’t think regular stores even sold them in those days. They were expensive, around four dollars if I remember correctly. Regular dungarees were about half that. I didn’t think so at the time, but mine was a fashion conscious generation. The consciousness was limited to two items of fashion, at least for me: Levi dungarees and P.F. Flyer sneakers. Levi Strauss started making the dungarees in 1872. BF Goodrich started making the sneakers in 1937. P.F. stood for “posture foundation,” an innovative insert that was claimed to reduce leg strain. I got my first pair of Levi’s when I was nine. It took a year of begging. I didn’t get the PF Flyers until I was twelve. Begging didn’t work for shoes. We grew out of them too fast. Levi’s never wore out and because we had to buy them so big, it was a year or more before we outgrow them. It was a feature that helped convince our parents to lay out the big bucks. And when the bottoms of our Levi’s started to rise above our shoe tops, we simply pushed them lower down on our waists, making us look similar to the low waisted hip hoppers of today. I starting helping with a Binghamton Evening Press paper route when I was twelve so I could earn the money to complete my ensemble and buy a pair of P.F. Flyers. It was worth the sacrifice. It made me a full-fledged member of the “cool cat” crowd. I was a fashion pate (in my own mind) as I paraded around in a pair of Levi’s with a blue stripe on a five-inch cuff and pair of black, P.F. Flyer high tops. But make no mistake. I never wore jeans. My sister did.

Published in the Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin on May 10, 2008