Old Views

[dgriffin]

My first commercial flight was in a Convair, just like the one above. Larger and better outfitted than the DC-3, below. The nicest thing about a tricycle-wheeled Convair ... I came to know ... was you never felt the tail drop down on the tarmac on take off (unless you were about to crash) as you might on the DC-3 as it tried to get up to speed and get off the runway. A wind gust from behind would sometimes drop the plane back down on its tail wheel. Your whole body would be straining along with the plane to get off the ground, and it was unnerving to fall backwards and hit the runway with a jolt.

The Convair took me from Utica to New York City. Gee, did I ever feel like a big shot at 20 years old! I had on a new suit (probably the second I ever owned) and was headed for a job interview. If you think it's crowded in planes today, you never flew in a Convair, much less a DC-3. As the flight attendant (called a Stewardess in those days) passed the coffee to the fellow in the neighboring seat, she spilled the cup on my white shirt cuff.
I spent the entire day in Manhattan in meetings and interviews constantly pulling my shirt sleeve up so the cuff wouldn't show. On top of that, I got caught in the rain walking from the Port Authority (bus from Newark Airport) to Madison Ave. and my shirt collar (starched in those days) began to look almost Elizabethan.

But the plane ride was fun. On the trip back upstate that evening, I sat next to a friendly guy who as we talked discovered I had been his paper boy. That was a little embarrassing. Here I was, assuming the role of a suave Cary Grant character, a seasoned man of the world, albeit in a damp suit with a brown stained shirt cuff, only to be found out an overgrown paperboy incapable of coming in out of the rain.

It was August and it took a while before I recognized the small green jewels below were swimming pools. We weren't much higher in altitude than in the photo immediately below. I'm not a pilot and don't know why, but flights of even a couple of hundred miles flew lower back then. It really felt like you were flying, as opposed to the later jets where you were hurled up into the stratosphere and then dropped down only fifty miles from where you started, as was the case when airlines used to run like trains and make multiple stops on the way to a large city like Chicago.

[Clipper]

The picture from 100 years ago is main street in Remsen.

Boy, the pictures of the mohawk airlines aircraft sure bring back memories. I flew in and out of Oneida County on both the DC 3 such as in the foreground, as well as on the convair 440's such as shown in the right side of the photo. Taking off in a "tail dragger" such as the DC3 was always a real thrill, LOL.

I flew from there to LaGuardia once on the DC3 and connected for Miami on an old TWA Constellation. That was a huge aircraft for it's time, and a really luxurious ride for the era. Actually Mohawk's convair 440's were a pretty luxurious aircraft and comfortable. You actually had legroom and a good meal in flight back then.

[dgriffin]

Oct 24, 2009 22:43:45 GMT -5 Clipper said:

The picture from 100 years ago is main street in Remsen.

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According to the caption I found underneath it, you need to go a little farther north!

What happens at the end of August every year, say like the 29th, and where does it happen?

[dgriffin]

Oct 24, 2009 22:43:45 GMT -5 Clipper said:

TActually Mohawk's convair 440's were a pretty luxurious aircraft and comfortable.

Haha! That's because you were comparing the Convair to a DC-3, while I was comparing it to a Greyhound Bus!

Did you fly the Mohawk "Gaslight" DC-3's? Free beer and pretzels, and instead of the stewardesses dressed up like they were in a Woody Allen futuristic movie, they wore low cut gowns like dance hall girls. (So I'm told.) The Gaslight idea was an innovative way for Mohawk to keep running their DC-3's and attract customers away from competitive airlines flying jets. While you were wasting an extra 20 minutes or less in the air, at least you were getting "free beer and cheap cigars." Mohawk got to run the less expensive prop driven aircraft as they saved their money up to buy jets.

[dgriffin]

Hey, isn't that a Constellation way in the background of the Convair photo, above? Triple stabilizer and fuselage that sloped down to the front?

Here's one landing.

[dgriffin]

Dick, did I get this from you? (Or did I steal it from eBay?)

[jon hynes]

North East Corner of Genesee and Bleecker Streets - Busy Corner 195?

Notice the clock on the Bank Building.

[Clipper]

I always used that clock and the one on the Old City Hall to determine when my bus was due.

Do ya think this picture was in the 50's Dave? Most of the cars look to be late 30's or early 40's vintage. The light colored car in front of the bank looks alot like and old Nash, and the car facing the camera on Bleecker looks like it might be a late 30's general motors car.

A farmer in Newport had a 39 Buick in a barn that i was always trying to buy. It looked much like the car on Bleecker. He would never sell it, and eventually it was lost when the barn burned.

No matter the era, pictures of the old downtown and the busy corner still bring back SOOoo many pleasant memories. Very sad to drive through downtown today and see very few people and very little activity. I am sure you also remember the time when pedestrian traffic was so heavy that one simply moved with the flow like you might in NYC. If you wanted to stop, you had to work your way to the curb or to the doorway of a building to get out of the moving mass of people.

[stoney]

That area looked the same in the 70s! I remember that clock then.

[Clipper]

I wonder what ever happened to the clock. Does anyone know? When did they take it down?

[dgriffin]

The cars look to me like war time or right after, when many cars from the 30's were still on the road, then coming off blocks in the garage because owners couldn't buy tires or were off to war. There seem to be some mid-1940's cars in the photo, too. The last two cars to the left in front of the Boston Store (one is the Nash, or maybe it's a Plymouth?) are mid-forties, I believe. So, photo probably taken a a few years after the war, or very early 1950's.

And going east on Bleecker just past Daws is a marquee over the sidewalk. My personal memory of the Busy corner dates from possibly 1955, but I don't remember the marquee. Was it for the Arcade that ran from Genesee to Bleecker? The arcade must have closed before my memory begins, because I don't remember it, Just pix of it. And it's on the 1893 City Map of Utica.

[Clipper]

You are probably correct Dave. I hadn't factored in the fact that cars had been stored or used little during the war due to rationing and such. Also in those days people didn't trade for the new model every other year as we have in our lifetimes.

Somewhere near where that marquee is, was there not a hotel, and the hotel's arcade that ran through from Bleecker to Jay St? I could be wrong but I seem to recall cutting through there and seeing a coffee shop, a barbershop and shoe shine stand among other things before going down a short flight of steps and out the North doors of the arcade.

You may be just enough older than me to remember this stuff a little better. I remember a lot about the old downtown district, but I also lived through it's demise and urban renewal when it all started to disappear. I lose my visions of some of it with later visions of the Boston Store annex, and the destruction of the businesses on the south side of Columbia St. and the blocks between there and Pearl St. Looking back, it was not true "renewal". It was but an attempt to demolish and hope for renewal. Renewal never came to downtown. Urban renewal in my view simply was a surgical procedure that never healed. The wounds are still open when you look at the vacant lots and empty buildings.

[dgriffin]

Don't know if this will help, but you can see the Arcade in the bottom left corner of the 1883 map. That's Bleecker running horizontal along the bottom border. And the canal, of course, replaces Oriskany Blvd. Jay Street runs along the south side of the canal.






And here's a post card shot, date unknown, of the Busy Corner. It's the only one I've found ... not that I've done an extensive search ... of that particular corner, the northeast, where we all remember Daw's.

[Clipper]

Wow Dave. I simply don't remember any thing like the arcade running from Bleecker to Genny. That is interesting. Had you actually seen that arcade, or was it before you time also? By "arcade" do you mean a walk through with shops lining both sides, or simply a enclosed walkway from one street to the other?

What hotel is it that I am thinking of? Was it the Hotel Hamilton, or Pershing maybe? I simply remember cutting through the lobby or arcade and out the other side. I think it was between Bleecker and the next street north. It may have been closer to John St, than the marquee that you show though.

We are going back to the time when the large Texaco gas station was on the corner of Genessee St and Oriskany.

[dgriffin]

You're asking the wrong person, Clip, what with my fuddled mind and memory! Well, I can say I don't remember an arcade in my time, but one of our colleagues here on the forum mentioned their memory of it, although I can't remember who. In the post card photo, that certainly looks like a hotel building on the north side of Bleecker just past Daws. Was that the Halmilton in our time, previously the Martin? Where was the Pershing, formerly the Hamilton/Martin? I don't remember how far down the block the Hamilton sat.