Downtown Utica

[urbanhermit]

I have many fond memories of taking trips with my Mom to the Downtown area as a child. For quite a few years in NH, we didn't own a car. Mom was a single parent and she would always take the city bus. We never felt deprived and the bus was actually fun. The trips downtown were always a big deal. For me it would have been in the 70's, but even then, things were still bustling! From the escalator at the Boston Store, to Neisner's, the chirping birds and food counter at Woolworth's to a stop at Utica Sporting Goods. Many times we would stop at the Maxwell House for Lunch and my Mom would buy me some "prize"at one of the stores, that I was sworn to secrecy that I wouldn't tell my sister about, as she was in school. The minute I saw her, I would invariably "spill the beans" Later, the McDonald's was there and that was a big deal to visit as a kid. I have a lot of fond memories from trips to downtown Utica. What are some of yours???

[bobbbiez]

Always, Monday nights down-street when all stores were open till 9Pm and it seemed everyone in the city was there. Big community outing every Monday night. Nothing like it. Great memories! ;D

[virgilgal]

Utica was "the big city" for us growing up between Vernon Center and Knoxboro! We shopped in Oneida and only went to Utica to visit friends or to buy things available only there. It always felt a little intimidating and exciting to go there. I never really felt I knew my way around. In about 1973 a friend and I did a "Walk-athon" 10 or 12 miles through city streets. I loved being in the middle of a thousand people walking and I finally got a good chance to see some of the incredible old homes up close! The walk ended at the Armory, I think and they had bands that we had looked forward to hearing all day but we were so darn tired we couldn't even dance!

[chris]

Yup downtown Monday nights. We walked down from East Utica straight down Bleecker St. Always had to make a pit stop walking through the grotto of St. Johns. (or stop across the street at the Hotel to use the ladies room) Loved to smell the carmel corn from Bleecker and Genny. My favorite stores, the Boston store or hang at Woolworth's.

[Clipper]

Some of my favorite memories from my childhood are of going downtown on city buses with my grandma. We would make a whole day of it. She used to buy much of her groceries from Carrock's, Chanatry's and Hapanowicz. The grocery stores delivered back then and Haps was still on the point on Columbia Square. My grandparents had a car, but they only used it on weekends to come to Barneveld to visit us, or to go up into Floyd to a minister that raised chickens and sold eggs, to buy fresh killed chickens or brown eggs.

The rides on a bus for a 15 cent token were great. We always sat in the back seat so our stomachs would fly up when we flew over the top of the half-way bridge.

The "Busy Corner" that this forum is named after, was ALWAYS busy back then. It was not unusual at any given time of the day to see 30 or 40 people waiting for buses on Bleecker St and Genny, and the buses would line up 3 and 4 deep to load and unload. Whitesboro buses ran every 20 minutes back then and carried a reasonable load every trip. At one time in the 50's and before, there were two Whitesboro routes. One went up Main St and the other went up the "truck route" which is Rt 69.

I can relate to all the smells and sounds of downtown mentioned here. Karmel Korn, the Nut Shop, pizza in the department stores, popcorn, cotton candy, fresh produce on the sidewalks in front of the grocery stores, coffee brewing and burgers on the griddle at the Hunt's Point Diner on Charlotte, and the bakery smells at
Hemstrought's and the Red Cherry Pie Shop. It was a great time in our lives. Kids today don't know what they have missed.

[chris]

Clipper as kids we were to impatient to take the bus downtown. We always would say lets start walking till we see the bus coming. Before we knew it we were there. ;D Never even thought of the walk or that it was far. Today a block is too far to walk. Speaking of walking...I had to do that today. (dropped my car off so the A/C could be fixed and had to walk home in the rain. Thank God it was only drizzling. Came home looking like a little drowned rat. So why did I even bother fixing my hair. Should have just threw a cap on and went out the door. Now patiently waiting for them to call me when its ready.....and more walking...just like the good old days)

[bobbbiez]

Yep, our feet was the only vehicle we used when growing up. We walk from W. Utica to downtown every Monday, walked to UFA (school) everyday, walked to the parkway for ice skating in the winter and dances in the summer. We walked wherever we had to go, even to work when we were in our teens. I still do a lot of walking and I love it. ;D

Come to think of it, my father walked to work every day (two jobs.) My parents didn't have a car until I was in my teens. It didn't kill any of us. In fact, walking is very healthy.

[Clipper]

I don't know BZ. You wore those old dogs right out kiddo. Look at all the trouble you had with your foot. haha. Just like and old tire. It's worn out and needs recapping. Ya wore it down to the bone and then wore out the bone ! lol

We used to take the bus to Pin O Rama to bowl and walk back to Keyes Road late at night. Wouldn't do that anymore.

In high school I before I got a car, I used to take the school bus to Middleville with my girlfriend, and then walk back to Newport a couple times a week. Two or three miles was nothing when we were kids. We also used to take the bus to Whitesboro and walk from Whitesboro to Summit Park swimming pool in summer occasionally.

[bobbbiez]

Nah, my doc said my foot problem has nothing to do with walking. He still tells me to walk and I do. Probably will never find out what the damn thing is. At least, not till my body is donated after I'm gone, but I'm gonna make sure my daughter insist on them checking it just for the hell of it. ;D

[Deleted]

May 17, 2011 19:36:56 GMT -5 bobbbiez said:

Yep, our feet was the only vehicle we used when growing up. We walk from W. Utica to downtown every Monday, walked to UFA (school) everyday, walked to the parkway for ice skating in the winter and dances in the summer. We walked wherever we had to go, even to work when we were in our teens. I still do a lot of walking and I love it. ;D

Come to think of it, my father walked to work every day (two jobs.) My parents didn't have a car until I was in my teens. It didn't kill any of us. In fact, walking is very healthy.

In another 20 years when the current 15-18 year olds discover Clippers Corner then comment on this topic they will say: YOU PEOPLE WALKED TO SCHOOL!

[Deleted]

May 17, 2011 19:52:13 GMT -5 bobbbiez said:

Nah, my doc said my foot problem has nothing to do with walking. He still tells me to walk and I do. Probably will never find out what the damn thing is. At least, not till my body is donated after I'm gone, but I'm gonna make sure my daughter insist on them checking it just for the hell of it. ;D

I hope your Doctor is that same guy my Aunt had because he said the same thing to her. She needed a knee and hip replacement years later because of the extra strain on the knew and hip.

[bobbbiez]

Alan, I have a great foot doc, Dr. DeCarlo, who doesn't pretend to know all and has sent me to two specialist and they couldn't find out what is causing my problem either. Told ya....they won't find out till after I'm gone.

Seriously, I have much faith in him. He's done his best but there are some things in the medical field that they just can't figure out and I have one of them. In the mean time Dr. DeCarlo tries to keep me as comfortable as possible. Has to do for now.

Dr DeCarlo (Bob) is another band member from the 50 & 60's, but I can't talk him into joining in for the reunion. He's way too busy.

[dgriffin]

Downtown Utica. My mother told the story of walking through it early in the morning from Cornhill down to the Horricks-Ibbotson factory on Whitesboro Street. After quitting high school in her junior year and going to work at Woolworth's for $17.50 a week full time, including Monday nights and Saturdays, Mom landed a great factory job that paid her $25 a week at age 17, enough for make-up and the occasional purchase of a party blouse to supplement her meager wardrobe.

Across Eagle Street and on to Genesee and down the full length of the hill she walked through the Busy Corner at 6:30 in the morning. Twenty years later I sometimes unknowingly retraced her route when I was secretly pocketing the bus fare she gave me to get to school. I saved it up to take a girl out for a soda after classes. I was an early romantic, it seems, as clueless as I was penniless.

In all kinds of weather Mom walked to her job. You don't need WIBX to tell you the weather, let alone the Internet and an interactive radar map display. You just carry an umbrella if it looks like rain. An umbrella in the summer and maybe an extra scarf in the winter makes a mockery of an entire Fortune 500 Weather Prediction Industry and those not-quite-ready-for-prime-time weather announcers. And that was especially true when you walked everywhere.

As Mom passed the Kresge's on the ground floor of the bank building on the corner of Elizabeth and Genesee Streets, a person walking toward her would have seen her framed by the stone and iron fence surrounding Grace Church, its steeple sweeping upward toward the last winking star in the early morning sky. Neisners beckoned up the street behind her to anyone with a nickel or a dime. The young man passing Mom saw a young woman in a threadbare coat, a tinker's daughter with a pugged nose and a sweet smile. In only a few years she would turn his head a second time as their paths crossed one evening while he walked up Park Ave. on his way to his induction into the Knights of Columbus.

Mom ignored the young man, her mind on more important matters. She had spent the first week of the new job practicing her craft, tying the little eyelets called line guides on to long bamboo fly fishing rods at the factory. There was a certain technique to it and the method involved a good eye, steady hands and the use of two small machines. Anything but mechanically inclined, Mom had busted two rods and tied horribly all week, but her boss and instructor seemed unperturbed, remarking at least three times that "anyone can do this, even you." He had meant to be encouraging.

This morning the production line boss would inspect her work and decide if she was good enough to "go on the line." If not she would be given another few days and then let go if she didn't improve. She wanted this job more than anything. It wasn't just the money, it was her pride. And she had to admit, there was a boy involved, too. She remembered him from St. Francis de Sales Church and he now worked at the factory. She wanted to be near him. For the rest of her life. It wasn't to be. She would live to age 76, yet seldom forget the boy. But he didn't live to see his 20th birthday. Mom never said anything about that awful afternoon she found him.
I discovered it in the newspaper files at the public library when I was in high school. I never spoke to her about it.

Past Woolworth's she continued to walk, an icy feeling in her heart as she remembered the man who used to stalk her on the job as she stood behind the drapery fabrics counter in the upstairs remote back corner of the building. He was the store's floorwalker and she had always been unsure of his intentions as he hovered not far away, too often she thought. Whether he suspected her of stealing or just liked to be near her she didn't know, but in any case she didn't like the man. He had a sick kind of aura about him. As she stepped off the curb into Bleecker Street this morning she was glad to no longer have to worry about his presence.

Past the new Boston Store and then across the Boulevard made by filling in the old canal and then through the waning old business district of her father's era, the banks and businesses closing and moving up the street to be in the center of commerce. And finally the smoke stained dirt encrusted factory building now inhabited by The Horricks-Ibbotsen Fish Pole Factory, Inc. How lovely it seemed to her, how solid compared to the tinsel of Woolworth's. The workers and machines here inside H-I turned out thousands of fishing poles each week, certainly a noble and more useful endeavor than selling nickel and dime novelties. Why, without the fly fishing rods she was proud to help manufacture, how could anyone sit at the lunch counter in Kresge's and expect to order a tuna fish on rye?

an excerpt from a story I'm working on, "Jimmy B."

[Deleted]

All that happened to her when she left to go to work.

[Clipper]

My Father's aunt worked at Horrock and Ibbitson for years. I remember the buildings distinct architecture and the tall tower that was built as a drying area for fly lines that they manufactured.

I still have a split bamboo fly rod from H-I, as well as a 7 foot spinning 2 piece spinning rod that I purchased at the little Gravesville General Store in the 60's. I still love the feel and the balance of the spinning rod, and prefer it for bank fishing, although I have 30 plus fishing rods of assorted types and sizes left over from my serious fishing days and the years when I traveled to bass tournaments with the mililtary bass angler's association.

H-I also manufactured the Bradco spring loaded, auto winding, fly reels, but not in the Utica plant. I have one of those also, and it was made in the 40's.

It makes me sad to reflect back on the days when we could safely walk downtown or through Cornhill, unconcerned for our safety. In late years I lock my doors and drive AROUND Corn Hill and the inner city neighborhoods whenever possible.

Walking was taken for granted. Unless the weather was bad, I seldom wasted a bus token even when I had one. Like you Dave, I would hoard the bus money and spend it on something else most of the time. Coffee at the Hunts Point Diner and a nickel cigar from the news tand on Bagg's Square were often an investment. Myself an my friend would leisurely walk from downtown to Keyes Rd, puffing our cigars like big shots as we traversed Wurz Ave and Leland Ave.