Life (With Strings Attached)

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Sitting in the balcony at the First Presbyterian Church on North Main Street in Honeoye Falls, I couldn’t help but wonder. It was Ray Milne’s funeral service. He was an amazing man. Long ago, during my term of public service, he offered sound and wise advice. He was a man many could look to as a community role model. I only wish I could accomplish half of what he did.

But that’s not what I was wondering about. The setting itself took me back. When I first moved back to Mendon in the late 1980s, I joined many civic groups, hoping to discover what I could offer my adopted hometown. Several of those groups convened in the meeting rooms of the church.

That was a time long ago. I started thinking about all the people I knew back then. Some of them were in that church celebrating Ray’s life. Most of them were celebrating with Ray.

The solemn but sweet music coming from the organ helped place me in the mood to Continue Reading “Life (With Strings Attached)”

Solar Eclipse, 1970 – A True Story

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Saturday, March 7, 1970 – Leisure Lanes, Camp Road, Hamburg, New York. I’ll never forget that day. It was the first time I remember having to make a very difficult choice. It was a wrenching choice. It was an agonizing choice. It was the kind of choice no one ever expects a nine-year old boy to have to face.

Yet I did. And I can blame no one for it except for myself, the expectations I had placed on myself, and the subsequent expectations I had encouraged others to, well, expect of me. Nonetheless, the way I approached the decision appears, in retrospect, to have become the template I have since used for all such future conundrums.

By that point in the latter half of fourth grade, I had become the de facto astronomer of the class. Yes, there was actually a competition of this exalted position, and I was determined Continue Reading “Solar Eclipse, 1970 – A True Story”

Ode to Curt’s Stop-In: An Era Ends

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Like a scene from The Wonder Years, I remember the feeling of youthful exuberance when, in the dark of evening, we crossed the six lanes of hectic highway as only Buffalo, NYreckless eight-year olds could. The thrice daily shift change left Route 5 abuzz with a cornucopia of cars – from speeding muscular sportsters to equally vigorous family sedans. I wasn’t looking at the traffic, though. Instead, my eyes fixed on the heavens above as I followed the path of a faintly glowing satellite arc through the starry sky blanketing us. I pointed it out to my friend, who also had a thing for astronomy. It was the early summer of 1968 and I was about to experience something I would never forget.

We survived the treacherous crossing and made a bee-line to a place I had never Continue Reading “Ode to Curt’s Stop-In: An Era Ends”

Earth Day and Kodak Bashing

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This Commentary originally appeared in the April 19, 1990 issue of The Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel.]

 

CarosaCommentaryNewLogo_259Miss Powell possessed an unusual amount of progressiveness for a fourth grade teacher planning to retire in two years. One of three sisters, she had the kind of rugged individualism we, as Americans, have come to admire. She taught at Woodlawn Intermediate, located in the Bethlehem Steel industrial complex.

Teaching blue collar children, most of whom had been brought up in households full of ethnic ritual, must have been quite a Continue Reading “Earth Day and Kodak Bashing”

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