Pipe memories. Article ran in Binghamton Press on March 22, 2020

The Old Coot misses the whiff of pipe tobacco.

By Merlin Lessler

It is an era long gone, and for good reason, yet I miss it. Hadn’t thought about it for years but the other day I spotted a picture of Sylvester Stallone in an old news photo lighting a pipe. Oh my, how politically incorrect! A pipe? Not in this day and age!  Not a common sight. It hit me how much I miss being in a world with pipe smokers, letting that sweet, mellow aroma tickle my senses. And, hearing the tap, tap, tap as an indulger empties the ashes and unburned stubs of tobacco to rest the bowl until the next time it’s called into service.

Just seeing a pipe smoker with a briar protruding from the side of his mouth, a contented man, at peace with the world, would make my day. It was a male vice for the most part, yet women did puff on them as well. Not very many and rarely in public, though I recall a picture of Katharine Hepburn puffing on a briar back in the 1950’s.

I was fifteen when I bought my first pipe. It was attached to two tins of Raleigh Tobacco on display at a neighborhood grocery store on Vestal Avenue near Lincoln Elementary School.  The south side was peppered with little “mom & pop” stores. There were more than half a dozen on Vestal Avenue alone, between Rush Avenue and Mill Street. Even after Loblaws opened a “super” market at the intersection with Mitchell Avenue the neighborhood stores managed to stay solvent. It was an era of prosperity. The pipe & tobacco combo was a one-dollar holiday special. I bought it to give to my father for Christmas; he’d recently sworn off cigarette smoking, along with his five minutes of coughing every morning. I thought it would help him stay with the program. My mother said it would only get him started again, so I kept the pipe for myself. And, with a couple of like-minded knuckle-headed friends, walked around town puffing away, thinking how adult like we must look. A pipe was a nerdy thing to smoke, long before nerdy became a word, so we switched to cigarettes. Winston’s to be specific, probably because of their catchy advertising jingle, “Winston’s taste good like a cigarette should!”

Not the worst mistake I ever made, but right up there near the top. I took up the pipe again in my twenties, to get off the cancer sticks, as we called them, well before the Surgeon General got around to alerting the public to the dangers of cigarette smoking. The pipe did the job: I quit cigarettes, at least for a while, and eventually forever but I still remember how nice it felt to have a pipe protruding from the side of my mouth and to be enclosed in an aromatic cloud. I wasn’t alone; a lot of famous people were pipe smokers – Bing Crosby, Clark Gable, Darwin, Gerald Ford, Walter Cronkite, FDR, Einstein, Stalin, and Mark Twain to name a few.

Now, no one smokes them in public, not that I ever see. I miss it. But even more, I miss the sweet aroma of pipe tobacco. Almost as much as the scent of burning leaves on a crisp fall afternoon. When I turn eighty, which isn’t that far off, especially now that years slip past me at the speed of light, I’m going to buy a pipe and go in my back yard and put a match to it and to a small pile of leaves. If the authorities come charging in to stop me, they’ll have to pry, both the leaf rake and the briar pipe from my cold dead hands. Come join me at my house on November 15, 2022. We’ll light up the world together. Ha, Ha!

Too many grocery options for this old coot! (August 11, 2019)

The Old Coot is a hotdog connoisseur.

By Merlin Lessler

I went to the supermarket the other day to buy some hotdogs. I like hotdogs; they were a food staple when I was a kid growing up on Binghamton’s south side. My friend Woody (Walls) and I would hike into the woods outside our neighborhood with WW-II Army surplus knapsacks on our backs, metal canteens hanging from our belts, high-cut boots on our feet, decked out in jeans (which we called dungarees in those days) and white T-shirts, the only color available. They were undershirts after all, and back then, white was the mandated color for under clothes. There weren’t any supermarkets in that postwar era of the 1950’s except for the downtown A&P store.  Neighborhood grocery stores provided our food supply. My family shopped at Bill Scales’ Market on Pennsylvania Ave. It was only a short walk from our house on Chadwick Road. Two blocks further on were three more “mom & pop” grocery stores, clustered near the creek on Park Avenue.   

Quite often, Woody and I would hike to the top of South Mountain. It loomed over our two-block neighborhood (Denton and Chadwick Roads) and beckoned to us whenever we stepped outside. It was a steep climb on a deer trail through the woods; we were usually tuckered out by the time we made it to a level spot on the first of three unpaved roads that crossed the face of the hill. This stopping point was only one-quarter of the way to the top, and even if it was 9 o’clock in the morning, we often decided that it was a good time for lunch. We gathered leaves into a pile and set them ablaze. We were too impatient to gather twigs and start a proper fire. We’d slip a hotdog on a stick and roast it in the smoky flame. The dogs quickly turned from ruby red to sooty black. A slice of bread served as a hotdog bun and mustard from a jar we’d smuggled from one of our houses combined to craft a gourmet meal. We were always accompanied by my dog, Topper, and sometimes by a neighborhood Irish Setter named Meg. Dogs roamed free in those days and followed kids around, offering a level of protection that most mothers rated sufficient to allow their offspring to explore the neighborhood world on their own.

It was with that memory in mind that I strolled over to the packaged meat cooler in a modern supermarket, to grab some hotdogs to take home and blacken. That’s where my trip down nostalgia lane screeched to a sudden halt. I couldn’t figure out what to buy, what might taste like those hotdogs of my youth. There were too many choices: all-beef franks, skinless franks, chicken, pork, turkey dogs. Every combination thereof. Plus: long dogs, plumping dogs, short dogs, skinny dogs, bun size dogs. Dogs, dogs, dogs!

It’s like that in every aisle. Too many choices! Talk about complicating shopper’s lives. Even staples, like milk, eggs and cereal are complicated. A quart of milk was all we had back when Woody and I climbed South Mountain, swigging down metallic tasting, lukewarm swallows of milk from our metal canteens. There was no consternation at the milk cooler back then. But not today: Quarts, gallons and half gallons are the first layer of choices. Then comes the fat content: whole milk, 1%, 2%, no fat, skim. Does it really make that much difference? Probably not. Egg choices are just as bad: medium eggs (which is another way of saying small eggs), large eggs, extra large and jumbo. Eggs from hen house chickens, free range chickens and cage free chickens. White eggs, brown eggs, green eggs (though not at the supermarket) along with eggbeaters, egg whites, egg mates and smart egg cups. Which is best? I have no idea. It makes my head spin. Want a box of regular Cheerios? Good luck finding them. The cereal aisle is 80 feet long and 6 feet high. More variations of cereal grains than an old coot can comprehend.

We’ve become food paranoid, and quite finicky too. But, in spite of the challenge I did finally make a hotdog buying decision. I used the old coot method and bought the cheapest ones. It really doesn’t matter when you burn them to a crisp.

The Old Coot has fond high school car pool memories!

When I attended Binghamton Central High School, getting there on a school bus was not an option. The small fleet of yellow busses operated by the district were primarily used to transport kids to junior high, from their neighborhood elementary school (In my case, from Longfellow on the south side to West Junior). We could walk, bike, hitch hike or find a car pool to get to high school, but not ride on a school bus.  I walked and hitched a few times but wouldn't be caught dead on a bicycle. It would forever label me as a geek, something I strived to avoid through all my high school years. Thankfully, I was able to join two car pools during my high school tenure.

The first car pool was operated by John Fish. He was the older brother of Steve (who was one of the two 13-year old adventurers who rode with me to Gettysburg Pa. the day I “borrowed” my father’s car and went for a joy ride (a story for another day). Car pool is a misnomer in this case; we didn't use a pool of cars, just John's 1952 - four-door, green Chevrolet sedan, affectionately known as "The Turtle". None of us riders owned a car, nor would our parents allow us to use theirs for such a mundane task as getting to school. John charged us $1.00 a week. There were five paid riders; his cost of gas was less than two bucks, netting him a $3 profit, not bad when you consider a soda only cost ten cents, a pizza was a dollar and gas was twenty-six cents a gallon. Our journey from the Fish residence (he didn’t pick us up) was generally a somber event; we were still trying to wake up or groping with the prospects of a taking a test we hadn’t studied for.

The ride changed, actually got exciting, the day John decided we should try to make the commute without using the brakes. It was a considerable challenge. The route involved five traffic signals and roads that were busy with commuter traffic. Day after day we tried; day after day we failed. But every so often we reached a new milestone: making it across the South Washington Bridge, making it over the Memorial Bridge, getting to the light at the corner of Oak and Riverside Drive. We got closer and closer as he perfected a technique of using the clutch and downshifting to slow down when a “red” light loomed ahead, hoping it would turn green before we reached it.

Finally, we did it! Made it all the way! We were coasting toward the last traffic light, at the corner of Oak and Leroy Streets, when it unexpectedly turned red. We jumped out of the car, even John, ran to the front and brought the “Turtle” to a stop, just as it nosed into the cross walk. The light turned green, and while whooping and hollering, we completed the trip to a parking space on Oak Street, a block from the school. Even though we achieved our goal, we kept trying, hoping to repeat it. The effort left me invigorated every morning instead of half asleep when I dragged myself to the “prison” door.

I joined my second car pool after John graduated, this time in a 1956? bland looking Ford sedan that spent its early life as an unmarked State Police vehicle. It was owned by John O'Neil, a classmate and friend who lived on Kendal Ave. The beast was equipped with a 400 something horse power Thunderbird engine. We loved it when John, with his grinning brother Jim riding shotgun, pulled up to a high school hot shot in a souped up car. John would gun the engine and glance over at the greaser to get his attention. The guy’s face always had a look that said, “What? Are you crazy? Challenging me in that old lady car?" The light would change, and the hot shot dragster would eat our dust as that “old lady” tore down the street. The shocked look on his face was more than worth the weekly price of the car pool. I bet John and especially Jim, still sport wide grins whenever they think about the “good-old” car pool days. I know I do.

Trouble here in River City - POOL (published February 17, 2019)

An old coot got in trouble in “River City.”

by the Old Coot, Merlin Lessler

Pool replaced baseball as my favorite pastime when I left West Junior High and entered Central High School. My friend, Woody, and I first discovered the game when we joined the YMCA as first graders. We waited for our ride home in the Y’s poolroom every Saturday after swim class. We thought the objective of the game was to hit the balls as hard as possible. Some ended up in the leather pockets at the corners of the table, but most flew over the rail and landed on the floor. Our favorite game found us at opposite ends of the table, rolling balls toward each other as fast as we could. We strived to get all sixteen balls moving at the same time and at great speed. In my first year of high school I discovered the real game of pool: eight ball, six ball, nine ball, rotation and straight pool. My appetite was whetted at the Lottis Pool Hall on Main Street by the bridge. It was a teen hangout located just a short hop from Binghamton Central High. It was a place I stumbled upon by following the lunch crowd after I was turned away from the overcrowded, Baird’s Bakery, which served as a secondary school cafeteria and let students crowd in and eat their bag lunches if they purchased a beverage or a bakery product. It was so crowded, if someone fainted, they’d never hit the floor.

The pool hall soon became a second home. It cost a penny-a-minute to shoot straight pool, but most of us played eight ball or rotation for ten cents a game. That gave the owners a better rate of return since a typical match lasted less than five minutes. The Lottis brothers racked balls, collected dimes and gave pointers on the game. They tried to teach us to shoot softer, so the cue ball would go where we aimed it and to put spin on it to avoid a scratch (knocking it into a pocket). They did it to rid us of the techniques we’d developed on the tables at the YMCA and to prevent us from ripping the felt covering or wrecking the side cushions. I only regretted using the pool hall as a lunch room the day a classmate was struck with a grand mall seizure in the middle of an eight-ball game. He dropped to the floor, spasms racking his body. It scared the hell out of us. One kid threw up. Then another. Soon, the floor was awash in vomit and kids were slipping and sliding as they raced for the door, tossing their sack lunches into the trash barrel by the door.  

I eventually stopped by the pool hall every day on the way home from school too. Then, I started going there instead of religious instructions at Saint Patrick’s, on Wednesday afternoons, when the school let us leave early for that purpose. The pool hall was deserted at that time in the day, so the Lottis brothers, with time to kill, taught us the fine points of “six ball” and “nine ball,” the two primary "money games" of the day. Eventually, I was caught skipping religious class. The school principal, Mister Hamlin, was upset that I skipped the class, but downright incensed that I spent my "release time" in a pool hall. I swear he was going to break out in a song from the hit musical, The Music Man - "Ya got trouble - right here in River City, it rhymes with "T" and starts with "P" ..... and stands for POOL." He sentenced me to after school suspension and then let me choose how I would settle things with the "Church." I could continue to be released from school every Wednesday for religious instruction if I confessed my truancy to the nun running the program, or I could discontinue the sessions by bringing him a note from my parents. The choice was clear. I'd rather face my mother with my crime than a surly nun with a well-worn, knuckle-rapping ruler so I dropped out of religious instruction. It turned out to be another stupid decision on my part. I chocked too often when shooting at the “money” ball. Minnesota Fats would have loved to play me.

Memory Lane road trip. Published October 28, 2018

An Old Coot takes a road trip down memory lane.

By Merlin Lessler

When I was growing up on Binghamton’s south side in the 1950’s, there were four gas stations at the intersection of Vestal and Pennsylvania Avenues: Richfield&Atlanticwere two;my mind is blank on the others, probably Texaco and ESSO. They sold gas, fixed cars, provided free air and that’s it. No groceries, no lottery tickets, no coffee (for public consumption). They had a shop pot, but no customer in their right mind would drink it,not that black, oily swill the mechanics consumed after it sat stewing for hours. They did,however, sell soda, cigarettes and candy from vending machines, though I think they were their own best customers. Cigarettes were 25 cents a pack, matches a penny extra.

It was still that way when I became “married with children” in the 1960’s. We had three daughters, a used 1958 Volkswagen Beetle and not much money, yet we traveled around quite a bit. We rarely drove more than an hour at a stretch, having to stop for one thing or another. If the Bug wasn’t low on gas, then a diaper needed changing, my wife and I needed coffee or the oldest two, camped out in the window well behind the back seat, were having an “I hate you” war with each other and begging for a bag of chips in between volleys. A multipurpose stop of this sort took over half-an-hour. We’d go to the gas station first, since we religiously waited until to the very last minute before conceding that the car couldn’t goany farther on fumes alone. The fill-up task took a lot longer than it does today. Most places wouldn’t let you pump your own,so you waited your turn, oftenbehind a young male townie, driving a souped upChevy with dual, purring “Hollywood” mufflers. We would patiently watch while an attendant with awell-deserved nickname like “Turtle,” pumped a dollar’s worth of gas into Billy-Bob’s tank, as Billy-Bob leaned back and lit a “Lucky” having pulled a pack from the rolled-upsleeve of his T-shirt. After the four gallons (26 cents a gallon back then) were pumped in,Turtle checked the oil level, washed the front and back windows, the side view mirror and ended the ritual on his knees, checking the air pressure in all four tires. Of course, Billy-Bob never had cash. He’d whip out aTexaco charge card, kicking off a new routine that sent Turtle ambling to the office and back to process the transaction. Finally, it would be our turn; we got the works too, except we paid cash and our threadbare tires were left untouched, lest they spring a leak from the attendant’s rough hands.

A block from the station was where our eldest, Wendy, usually announced that she had to go to the bathroom, “Real bad!” This happened, even though her mother had grilled her while the tank was being filled as to the status of her bladder. No matter, we had no choice but to hang a “Ueee” and go back to the station, get the key to the restroom, that invariably was chained to a wooden paddle the size of a tennis racquet, and enter the abyss referred to on Texaco billboards as “clean restrooms.” That distasteful chore accomplished, we moved on to the next stop, a restaurant, the only place you could get a cup of coffee in those days. The routine was always the same. I’d walk in and stand by the cash register at the end of a long counter with spinning red leather stools occupied by a mismatched collection of locals who turned in unison to eyeball the “stranger” in town. Turtle’s sister, Pokey, would amble down the counter to take my order, “What’ll it be Honey?” “Two coffees to go, please.” I always seemed to get the bottom swill, with a generous helping of grounds.

Finally, back in the car, I’d sigh, “We’re on our way,” but my reverie was immediately brought to a halt by an ear-splitting screech from the back, “You forgot our potato chips”! One more stop, this time at a grocery store. Getting the chips was the easy part. The hard part was standing in line behind a “long talker” in pink rollers pushing an overflowing cart while Turtle and Pokey’s sister, Gabby, searched each item for a price tag and related every minute of last night’s movie to a surprisingly interested customer. Smart, organized adults avoided most of this by packing a lunch and snacks in a cooler and filling a thermos with coffee. We weren’t that smart or that organized, and even the people who were had to go through the long stop ordeal on their return trip back home.

That agonizing, time consuming travel scenario is long gone. It’s now accomplished in a few short minutes at the one of the thousands of combination mini-mart - gas station – restaurantsacross the country. A truly marvelous American creation. Life is good! Except for the traffic. When we took our road trips back then, there were 54 million cars on the road. Today there are close to 270 million. Not surprising when you consider the US population has grown from under 200 million to 328 million. Quicker stops for sure, but slower movement on the road whenever you enter an urban region. Life is trade off, we get the bad with the good.

Ps, if someone hopped off Route 17, which went right through the center of the city back then, and moseyed past the soldier standing on one leg at the Memorial Circle and across the South Washington bridge to the south side for a travel stop, they not only had the four gas stations at the intersection of Pennsylvania and Vestal to choose from, they could get coffee at the Park Dinner, at the soda fountain in Armand Emma’s drug store kiddy corner from the Grand Theater or the little restaurant on South Washington across from the Busy Bee 5 & 10 cent store. The potato chips could be purchased at any number of mom & pop, neighborhood grocery stores, like the Baby Bear Market, or at the brand spanking new, Loblaws Super Market on Vestal Ave, just down and across the street from the Barron’s Fish Market. They’re all gone now, except for the Park Dinner. It’s eternal. Thankfully. I make sure to stop in there at least once or twice a year. But, they don’t have “Mule Train” on the jukebox, which my sister, Madeline, and I played for a nickel when we went there for a Saturday family dinner out. 

Published June 10, 2018 (No you-yo champ blues)

Almost a yo-yo Champion!

By Merlin Lessler

I was nervous! As I stood there on the sidewalk in 1952, in front of Mayberry’s, Park Avenue store on Binghamton’s south side. I’d made it to the finals in a neighborhood yo-yo contest. Two yo-yo virtuosos from the Philippines were conducting the event. They’d spent the previous several weeks putting on yo-yo demonstrations at school assemblies and running neighborhood contests all around town. So, there I was, on a chilly Saturday morning, showing my stuff, along with a group of 25 anxious contestants.

The location was an ideal gathering spot – in front of our favorite penny-candy store, one block from Longfellow Elementary School (PS-13), at the intersection of Cross and Park, next to the creek. The very corner I was assigned as a patrol boy, one of the perks of being male, and in the fourth grade. The kid friendly store had the longest penny candy counter around and the owners (Mr. and Mrs., Mayberry) never rushed us as we carefully picked out a nickel or dime’s worth of spearmint leaves, orange slices, licorice babies, fireballs and the like. It also had a Coca Cola cooler where the bottles were suspended in ice cold water, a must on a hot, muggy, August afternoon. Heaven, for 5 cents (plus a 2-cent bottle deposit).   

The contest started with simple yo-yo maneuvers: You had to sleep your yo-yo for five seconds (spin it at the end of the string before jerking it back into your hand), walk the dog (skid a sleeping yo-yo along the ground as you took a step or two, as though with a dog on a leash), then came “Around the World” (cast the yo-yo out in front of you and around in circle over your head and  back into your hand). These preliminary feats whittled the field down to ten. Then, came the hard stuff; rock the baby, thread the needle and bite the dog, where the dog (yo-yo) bites and sticks to your pants as you swing in between your legs and pull it up behind you. A simple maneuver, but one that was totally unpredictable.  

Five of us made it through that stage. I’d only been this far once. The dog bite trick always did me in.  The championship would be determined by how many loop-de-loops we could do. We all got busy preparing our yo-yos for this event, winding the string tighter so the yo-yo wouldn’t spin. If we didn’t get it right, and it started spinning when we threw it out in front of us, it would be almost impossible to get it to come back to cast out for another loop. Each time the yo-yo made a loop, it loosened the string. Eventually, it would sleep, and knock you out of the contest. I hoped I mine was tight enough to avoid that disaster.

The first two kids bombed out after six and eleven loops respectively. The third made it to 23 loops. The next kid’s yo-yo spun on his first cast and he didn’t finish a single loop. Now it was my turn. I was nervous, but confident. I had my favorite “Diamond” Dunkin yo-yo, the Cadillac of yo-yos, and I’d exceeded 23 loops many times when I practiced in my driveway at home. My first loop was a little shaky; the yo-yo turned sideways and I just barely got it under control. But I did, and was on my way: five, ten, fifteen, twenty. Then came the disaster, on my 21 cast, it spun! I jerked hard, but it stayed out in front of me, spinning and heading toward the ground. One last jerk got it back into my hand, but it was encased in a wad of string. I was finished. Second place earned me a new yo-yo, but I didn’t get the highly coveted yo-yo championship, sleeveless sweater, that would show the world I was a champion. After the contest, the yo-yo virtuosos from the Philippines stuck around and carved palm trees and birds into the sides of our yo-yos. I still have that Diamond Dunkin, and every time I get it out to see if I can still do rock-the baby, walk the dog and enough loop-de-loops to beat the guy wearing “my” championship sweater, I get that same pit in my stomach I got when I messed up those sixty odd years ago.

 

Old Coot Today - doing rock-the-baby with diamond yo-yo 

Championship Sweater (ALMOST)

Why the Old Coot can't dance the box step.

Why an old coot can’t dance the box step.

Published March 25, 2018

The invitation came in the mail on a snowy December afternoon in 1955. It offered seventeen weeks of dancing classes, conducted by Mrs. Charles Quillman at the Monday Afternoon Club. I scribbled an acceptance note. This was my entry into “dignified” society, 13 and 14-year-old girls and boys learning social manners and the box step. A rite of passage.

Unfortunately, my mother caught me trying to stick the note in the mailbox and let me know in no uncertain terms, I would not be donning a pair of white gloves once a week for four months and box stepping around a dance floor to the snap of castanets. Not at a cost of $30!

I was devastated. A Southsider trying to break into the high social circles of Westsiders, whose frequent chant in the halls of West Junior High was, “The west side is the best side!”   So, I pouted; I stewed; I grumbled, “Life isn’t fair,” like a typical self-focused, teenage brat, and penned the following letter of non-acceptance to Mrs., Quillman (she apparently returned it to my mother, because years later I found it in a scrapbook between my Junior Lifesaver ID card and a picture of me in the West Junior Band, holding a French horn that I often played off key.   

Here is what it said, warts and all: Dear Mrs. Charles Quillman, I can’t except your offer because my mother doesn’t led me do anything on my own. I try to do things without concerning her and she gets all riled up. The other day I wanted a paper route. She said okay. Then I wanted to get working papers. “you can’t get excused from school,” she said. “Remember your record (perfect attendance).” Well I lost the job. It’s awful hard to live with such a person. She always wants to check my homework or something. Well there isn’t enough paper to write what I want. So I have to end.  Merlin Lessler

I recently caught up with some of the dance class students in Florida, where all things old eventually gravitate: Dave Niles, Janet Multer, Stu Williams, Dave Robinson and Woody Walls. I wanted the inside scoop on what I’d missed those sixty some years ago. I learned of the mad scramble in the hall outside the dance floor to pick a partner and avoid a disastrous pairing, the agonizing stroll across the ballroom floor to “present” your partner to Mrs. Quillman, the swish of skirts sweeping across the polished, hardwood floor to master the box step with sweaty hands held at bay, in white cotton gloves. The skirts hovered above three layers of sugar starched crinolines that legend had it, attracted sugar loving ants. No jitterbug, no East Coast Swing, no The Twist – just the “socially proper” box step. They chuckled at the memory of snowball fights initiated by Robert Ridings on the front lawn before class, resulting in 20 male pairs of soggy white gloves that the poor girls had to clasp for the next hour while gazing at a dance partner with a wet-head, the result of a humiliating face wash in the snowball fight. I missed it all. I never did learn the box step. Just ask the women whose feet I stepped on over the years.