Geneva NY – Chasing Phantoms

When I awoke in Geneva NY this morning I was relieved to discover that yesterday’s rain had stopped. It was going to be a good day.

After my morning ablutions I eased the Altima back onto US 20, which at this point was feeling like an old friend. Those iconic white-and-black shield signs, with the reassuring “West” designation, appear every few miles, or even more frequently when encountering some complicated twists and turns through the towns. For it’s worth remembering this 3,365-mile road was largely assembled from preexisting roadways which didn’t always line up perfectly. I have to admit, though, the USDOT has done a great job of making the route clear. I have hardly used a map or nav at all, instead relying almost exclusively on the road signs.

I encountered today’s first sight of note in the town of LeRoy NY (pop: 7,700). Do you recognize this?

Doesn’t it reminds you a lot of this?

Surely you remember Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel. The rusty hulk I saw in LeRoy this morning was made by the Marion Steam Shovel Company in 1906. (Notably, the name of Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel was Mary Anne-almost certainly a nod to the Marion company.) For decades the LeRoy shovel worked in a quarry across the street from where it now stands. It was retired to that spot in 1949…just a few years after Mike Mulligan’s Mary Anne was converted into a boiler for a building’s heating system. I’m just impressed with the scale of this beast. It took a crew of four men just to operate the thing!

Next up was the town of East Aurora, NY, where I saw the first of several giant sculptures. This first one is affectionately known as Vidler on the Roof:

Vidler’s is an old-timey five and dime store founded by Robert Vidler in 1930. This East Aurora location was established 65 years ago by Robert’s son, Ed. The inside of the store still looks very much like the old five and dimes…except the prices are much higher. The statue of Ed was placed on top of the building in 2009; Ed died ten years later, at age 90.

*And yet I still couldn’t find a perpetual-motion bird!*

It seems that this part of the country really likes to place giant objects on their buildings. A few other examples from today:

*In East Aurora. Is that a phone number on the sign or is it the Klingon word for “gum recession”?*

*Giant coffee cup in the town of North East, PA.*

*In front of a pizzeria in Erie, PA. The handle is 8 feet long, and the stainless steel wheel is 5 feet in diameter.*

My main objective of the day was to see some lighthouses on Lake Erie. Alert readers will recall that I’ve had a passing interest in lighthouses as interesting pieces of history, architecture, and (possibly) ghost lore. More to the point, though, last time I visited a light house I bought one of those souvenir “passports” that can be stamped at all the lighthouses in the US. I’ve already got five stamps. I only have 772 more to go…

Anyway, today I climbed to the top of the Dunkirk Lighthouse and the Barcelona Lighthouse. Both had docent-led tours, but I had to fake an emergency to escape the endless, meandering stories and dad jokes from one of the docents. I’m not making this up. Anyway, both lighthouses date from the 19th century, and the Dunkirk Lighthouse is still active. The Barcelona Lighthouse had the world’s first natural-gas powered lighthouse light. It hasn’t been active for well over a century, and is now run by the NY Parks Department. It was recently renovated and re-opened just this week!

*Dunkirk Light’s Fresnel lens (from 1857) is still in use.*

*View of Lake Erie from Dunkirk’s light tower.*

*Barcelona, NY Lighthouse, freshly restored.*

It was now getting close to dinnertime, so I went to a pizzeria in Ashtabula, PA that’s situated entirely within a covered bridge. Seriously. The 1862 town truss bridge was originally located about 11 miles south of its current location until it was slated for replacement in 1972. It was auctioned off, and the highest bidder was Gary Hewitt. His bid was five bucks. Gary had the bridge disassembled and then reassembled on its current site. He named the place Covered Bridge Pizza Parlour, which is kind of on the nose.

Sitting in the dining room of Gary’s restaurant you’re surrounded entirely by the bridge. It’s a neat and well-executed concept. I wish I could say the same for the pizza.

Now here’s where things start to get a little weird. Just minutes after leaving the covered bridge restaurant, I encountered this monster of a covered bridge:

I stopped to get a better view, but couldn’t find a decent angle.

*From here it looks like an elevated BART trackbed.*

A nearby kiosk explains that this is the longest covered bridge in the entire country, at 613 feet long. It was built in 2008. Come with me as I drive over it!

Now, a few minutes after crossing the country’s longest covered bridge, I enter the next town and decide to get a motel for the night. During my search I encounter another covered bridge. This time it’s the shortest covered bridge in the US!

*I’ve seen Eagle Scout projects more ambitious than this…*

What are the odds of the country’s shortest and longest covered bridges being within a few miles of each other along Route 20?? Of course, this is easily explained: Shortly after Ashtabula got all the attention for building the longest covered bridge in 2008, the folks in this neighboring town decided to replace an old cement culvert with an 8-foot-long covered bridge. It’s not a joke, exactly, but it’s certainly a lighthearted statement piece.

And what’s the name of this town where I’m ending my day’s travels? Geneva, Ohio. Which is fitting, since I started the day in Geneva, New York. There’s been a lot of doppelgangers today…

BOTD

I got my Beer of the Day here in Geneva, OH, close to the banks of Lake Erie. It’s a brewery called The Darkroom Brewing Company, for the space it occupies used to be a commercial photography darkroom. (Note to you young ones: In the old days, before pics were digital, you had to develop your photographs on paper with chemicals in the dark.)

I had something called “Nachthexen” Russian Imperial Stout. The name–which translated from German means something like “Night Witches”–was a term the Germans used to describe a special all-female bombing unit in the Soviet air force during the Second World War. So that’s cool.

The Nachthexen is very approachable for an imperial stout. It’s not as sweet or as heavy as some renditions of this style can be. It has decent carbonation, and it has 10% alcohol by volume..which may sound like a lot, but I typically encounter imperial stouts that have ABVs of 12, 13, even 15 percent.

This is an interesting beer. The nose is very malty, and a bit like unfermented wort. On the tongue it’s roasty almost to the point of burned. It starts out like dark coffee, but midpalate you get hints of burned popcorn, cork, and pencil lead. The finish has some bitterness and astringency, somewhat reminiscent of the volatile organic compounds in PVC pipe glue. Somehow, when you put it all together, it’s pleasantly interesting and strangely balanced. I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

This morning I awoke in Great Barrington to pouring rain. It lasted all day, which, to say the least, put a damper on the day. Har.

Because of the weather I didn’t get out of the car as much as I’d have liked. So allow me to finish up my story of yesterday’s travels:

Around 4 pm I was passing the town of Chester, Mass. (pop: 1,300). A sign advertised a historic railroad depot and museum just a few blocks away, so I figured I’d make a quick stop. Alas, the station–which is beautifully restored–was closed for the day. Disappointed, I sat on a bench on the station’s front porch and began to consult my map to figure out where I’d get dinner.

*Chester Depot, which dates back over 150 years.*

Then a man approached me from a house directly across the street. Dave (for that was his name) turns out to be a long-time volunteer at the station who frequently gives tours. Since he lives across the street, he’s able to come out and greet visitors even when the place is supposedly closed. And so, for the next hour or so, I got a private tour of the depot.

The depot has been lovingly restored since it was acquired from the railroad in quite rough condition. After the railroad stopped running passenger service, the station was used as a maintenance and storage facility, which means the walls and hardwood floor literally took a beating. But look at it today:

The railroad and depot are notable for a number of reasons (believe me, I heard them all!) but most notable is that the station is situated at the bottom of a mountain. The rail line had a steep grade, so trains would stop here while “helper” engines were added to push or pull the train over the mountain. Another notable aspect of the railroad is a series of 10 stunning keystone arch bridges, built in the 1840s, that still carry trains over the Westfield River. Oh, and the railroad was surveyed and/or engineered by George Washington Whistler…that is, the painter Whistler’s father. (Everyone only knows Whister’s mother.)

At Dave’s urging I visited one of these keystone arch bridges, only a few miles from the depot. It’s picturesque and impressive from an engineering perspective.

Finally, I got back onto Route 20 and headed up that self-same mountain that necessitated the helper engines years ago. An automobile road over the mountain was added in 1910, though it was a primitive, difficult drive. Modern Route 20 parallels that original road, and arrives at the same 1,775-foot summit. And so, when I arrived at the summit, I encountered a stone cairn monument that was originally placed there in 1910. It was made from stones collected from roadway infrastructure from all over the world.

So much for yesterday. Today, as I mentioned, I spent the day driving through rain. But I did manage to make a couple of worthwhile stops. One was The Tepee–a classic roadside attraction from the Golden Age of road trips.

The Tepee is a souvenir shop that dates back to 1950. It’s the kind of place that my brother and I always begged our parents to stop at, so we could get Big Hunk candy bars, “perpetual motion” drinking birds, paperweights with the name of the state we were visiting, and suchlike.

The Tepee is owned by sisters Dale and Donna, who bought it from their father over a decade ago. So it’s definitely a family operation. Dale is the friendliest person you’d ever want to meet, and exudes a love for her business and her customers. She also really knows her Route 20 trivia, which kept me entertained for quite awhile. This place embodies the reasons that I value these road trips.

At Dale’s urging I took the US 20 “scenic bypass” that was the original route 20 alignment. It’s a little narrower and hillier than the new alignment, but it’s also greener and it passes through the village of Cherry Valley (pop: 2,300).

Cherry Valley is a cozy little town, nestled amid trees and hills. I stopped in at a used bookstore that, to me, looks like it came out of a Dickens novel It was built in 1840, and the current owner told me Samuel Morse (inventor of the eponymous Morse Code) developed his telegraph here in the late 1840s.

The bookstore owner (whose name I failed to get) told me that Cherry Valley used to be a thriving community until US 20 was re-routed, taking all the drive-through traffic with it. He told me the highway was moved in order to satisfy a powerful state legislator whose own property would benefit from the change. I have been unable to corroborate this.

Before long I crossed the state line into New York. Driving through this part of the country feels like going back in time.

*Old farrier/blacksmith along the roadside, dating back before automobiles. The owner gave me an affogato, God bless her!*

*1893 Burrow Chapel in Lake View Cemetery, Skaneateles, NY.*

Finally, I arrived in Seneca Falls, NY (pop: 7,000). It’s a pleasant town situated on the shore of Seneca Lake (the largest of the Finger Lakes). Seneca Falls was the site of the first women’s rights convention (in 1848), and it continues to play up that role with a major Women’s Rights Museum. It also claims to be the inspiration for the fictional town of Bedford Falls from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Among other things, the bridge where Jimmy Stewart’s character tried to kill himself was supposedly modeled on Seneca Fall’s Bridge Street Bridge (I’m not making up that name). I visited the bridge today, and I do see the resemblance…but I could say that about many other bridges as well.

*In the 1946 movie, George Bailey jumps off the bridge to save someone in the water. In 1917, real-life Antonio Varacalli jumped off the Seneca Falls bridge to save someone in the water.*

*“Bridge Street Bridge” in Seneca Falls.*

Finally, I stopped for the night in Geneva, NY (pop: 13,000). It is here I had my….

Brew of the Day

I got my BOTD Geneva’s Lake Drum Brewing. It’s one of the friendliest, most laid-back breweries I’ve been to. I ended up spending two hours chatting with the bartender(s) and a couple of regulars, while I worked my way through a flight of beers and the BOTD…which we’ll get to in a moment.

*Steve, Laura, Sam, and Aaron–my new friends at Lake Drum Brewing.*

But first let me describe this place. They brew their own beer (with about eight beers currently on tap), plus they brew their own cider, plus they even make a couple of wines. They have an extensive (and I mean massive) collection of vinyl records that they play on a turntable that resides in an old wine barrel.

They have patio seating for when it’s not raining, and endless free popcorn. But what’s most important is that they made me feel welcome, including me in a meandering conversation that touched on fishing, equine care, cross-breeding of cats, the best burger places in the region, music, foreign travel, and funding of the arts. Anyone in the food/drink business should take note: what gets people coming back is not what you’re serving, but how you treat your customers.

Anyway, speaking of serving drinks: today’s Brew of the Day was not a beer, but a kombucha. Now, I know kombucha has been popular for some years now, but I’d never tasted one until now. For those few of you (like me) that missed the kombucha train, it’s essentially fermented tea. Which maybe doesn’t sound that great, but this was refreshing and delicious. It was flavored with ginger and mint, and it’s just as refreshing as it sounds it would be. It’s got light carbonation, but almost no alcohol, so you could throw it back like iced tea on a hot day. I feel I have no standing to actually rate this drink, since it’s the only one I’ve ever had. But I enjoyed it immensely. I do worry, however, the Marianne’s Phenomenon could be at play. (I describe the Marianne’s Phenomenon in my memoir…but essentially it refers to one’s enthusiastic experience with a new food resulting in large part from being hungry or otherwise affected by the setting.)

Tomorrow’s BOTD will return to actual beer.

Tag: Geneva NY

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