Everyone comes from somewhere. This is where I am from. Mount Morris, New York. Our claim to fame is that Francis Bellamy was born in Mt. Morris and authored or co-authored The Pledge of Allegiance. Our other claim to fame is the flood control dam. The town's motto, if you will, is "Best town by a dam site." A motto which has not been without controversy for its play on words. Puritans are alive and well and living in Western NY.
I attended Mt. Morris Central School which encompasses grades K-12, with a school population of approximately 280 students. My three children attended my alma mater. In a small town it is very possible to know each student in the school. Not only would you know which street they lived on, which house they lived in, but where their parents worked and which church they attended. When I was young our other claim to fame was that the largest epileptic colony in the country was three miles up the road. Most of the town's people worked there or at the TB hospital which was on a hill overlooking the village. The buildings are still there but now the epileptic colony is a prison and the TB hospital was taken over by the county and houses numerous county offices, including the one that I worked in for several years.
Mt. Morris nestles in the Genesee Valley with the Finger Lakes to the east, Lake Ontario to the north, Niagara Falls to the west and the Allegheny Mountains to the south. It was predominantly Italian Catholic in the old days. The Italian people settled there because of its resemblance to their homeland. Grapes are grown all around the Finger Lakes. There were also Irish Catholics and a few Baptists et al thrown in for good measure. The town at one time supported two Catholic churches but they eventually combined and the Italian Catholic church was made into apartments by my uncle who also built the Mt. Morris Lanes. In a small village there are reminders of family all over the town. My uncle and my dad were carpenters. For a short time my parents owned a "Happy Days" type diner when I was fifteen. That was a real coming of age experience for me. The one funeral parlor featured on that sign, Martin's, is where all of my family has been laid out. Eight of them including my mom died way before one ought to die.
The connection to the bowling alley goes further than the fact that my uncle built it. Before the original building burned, my dad played in a band there some Saturday nights. Both my mom and dad bowled in leagues there. When the new alley was built my mom worked there and eventually I did too for a short time. My one uncle owned the Atlantic gas station in town back when they would pump your gas, check your oil, wash your windshield and change your tire if need be.
We walked everywhere. For the first nine years of school, before the new school was built, we walked to school, home for lunch, back to school and home again. We walked that half mile in all kinds of terrible weather but never gave it much thought. Just bundled up and went. For most of my life in Mt. Morris I lived in a house on a tree shaded street where you could roller skate down the hill in the summer and sled down it in the winter. There was a playhouse in the back yard where the neighbor girls and I would sleep on hot summer nights.
The memories are so thick you couldn't cut them with a knife.
