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.