Mother Nature, with the help of Father Time, has formed countless intersecting rivers on planet Earth, where creatures have lived and evolved beneath and above their waters. On their islands and shores, all manner of life has converged to make connections to survive. Along them, humans built camps, settlements, cities, and civilizations. Rivers are Creation’s living arteries, rain-fed and gravity-driven to contribute to the sea. Stories of living interactions with these vital forces, including people, plants, and animals are endless.
The Susquehanna River flows through my hometown of Binghamton, New York. Its source up north is the cold water of Otsego Lake in northern New York, at Cooperstown. I know that lake is cold because I swam in it. What starts out as a trickle winds its way south for 444 miles to empty into the Chesapeake Bay. This river is the longest American river east of the great Mississippi. I choose to add a tiny bit of history and imagery to this waterway by sharing my memories of the Susquehanna.
I want to thank Wendy Skinner, a fellow lover of the Susquehanna River, for encouraging me to tell my stories. I never kept a journal, but with the help of some dated photos, and a little help from my friends, I have attempted to share my experiences in chronological order.
My father was working in a photo shop above which he rented an apartment from his boss, who owned the business below. His friend, Al Cross, worked there, too. My father and his boss had a major conflict resulting in my father quitting his job and needing to move, but my parents, my older sister, and I had nowhere to go. I was not yet of school age. We moved in with the Cross family on River Road, along the Susquehanna River in Endwell, New York. Uncle Al, and Aunt Mary, as they came to be known, had four children: Al junior, Alison, Butch, and their third son, Terry.
My father was hired by IBM, and we moved into a second-floor apartment in Johnson City, but remained very close with the Cross family. Over a few years, we spent many weekends at River Road, where the adults could listen to records of Patsy Cline, the Everly Brothers, Johnny Cash, and Elvis, loudly. They could also drink, smoke, and laugh late into the night. We children ran wild, night and day, through the surrounding natural landscape. The Cross boys were like brothers to me.
Their house had no immediate neighbors and was directly across the road from where the plush, green river jungle crowded the summer blacktop. As one faced the river, to the right of the house, along the road, Uncle Al maintained a small flat lawn where a badminton net was in place parallel to the macadam. After summer sunsets, the pulsating firefly spectacle was spellbinding.
Occasionally, on summer nights, all six kids would climb out the back second-floor window, sit on the porch roof, look beyond the garage, archery-targeted haybales, and apple tree tire swing, to watch the drive-in movie screen not too far away. It was usually a black and white horror flick. There was no sound, but it was a good place to eat popcorn.
It rained unusually hard one spring, and the river got scary high. Water flooded the basement, three feet shy of the ceiling. Terry and I opened the outside doors to the basement and shoved an aluminum flat-bottomed boat down the stairs, slanted bow first. We crouched our little bodies onto the floor of it, between the seats, and grabbed the floor joists above to pull ourselves around the submerged octopus furnace a few times. We left the boat in the basement for Uncle Al to retrieve, but we weren’t scolded. I guess he was just happy we didn’t try to navigate the river.
At another time, the boys dug a pit across the road where the riverbank sloped towards the water, mounding the topsoil on the up and downhill sides of the hole to form ramps used for jumping bicycles. Junior went first. He made it look easy. Butch went next, landing without a problem. Terry wound up in the pit tangled up with the handlebars. Because I was the youngest, I didn’t receive any flack when I didn’t try.
A short walk from the house, a creek crossed under the road, on its way to the river. It formed a ravine with steep sides. Its water froze during winter cold spells, and on a snowy night, everyone from both families sat by a bonfire, kept brightly burning by Uncle Al. We roasted marshmallows and browned hot dogs on sticks; the dogs served with mustard on Italian bread. We kids enjoyed sliding on the ice, up to the river, sometimes hearing it crack beneath our feet; then it was time to turn around.
Junior woke me one winter night at 3:00 AM.
“Hey, Joey, I’m going to go check my traps. Do you want to come along?”
I got suited up and we headed for a trail along the river with Junior holding a lantern, leading the way. I knew he got money for muskrat pelts, but more for mink. The first few traps had not been sprung, and the apple bait was still in place. We came upon a trap that had been sprung by a regular rat, which offered no financial reward. It had chewed off one of its front paws and was working on the other in an effort to escape. Junior stomped it to death with a heavy booted stomp. “God damned rat, wasting my bait!”
He tossed it in the river, reset the trap, and we continued on. You have no idea how pleased I was that none of the other traps had been sprung. I never went trapping again, but that vivid memory remains lodged in my mind.
Another weekend found us at the Cross’s home, eager to escape our three-story apartment’s confinement. Uncle Al approached us boys and asked, “Who wants to go eeling?”
His three sons’ faces went blank and they said nothing. With my father’s approval, I went along. I was ten years old. Uncle Al’s old two-door Ford made it to the Delaware River. It was pitch black dark without the car lights, but he lit a lantern from the trunk and pulled out a long-handled frog spear with three barbed prongs on the end. It was devilish looking. He handed me a burlap sack, and I followed him as he walked slowly along the edge of the shore. His motion froze momentarily, then suddenly his arm moved with lightning speed and the next thing I realized, a squirming, coiling eel was hoisted in the air. He stuck his prize into the burlap sack I was holding and pulled it off the spear, dropping it into the bag. Then, it was just me and it, and it was mad as hell! I could feel that.
We moved further away from the car. He speared another, and into the sack it went. A third doomed animal was added before we made our long trek back to the car, and try as I could, I was unable to carry the weight without supporting the frantic bundle on my thigh. It felt absolutely creepy.
The following night, for dinner at River Road, a platter of eel chunks appeared on the table; a delicacy. I didn’t eat any, and also, never went eeling again.
The house on River Road, along with several others, was claimed by eminent domain, and demolished to make way for a highway project. It was also made into a dead-end street. As a youngster I thought, “How can they do that?”
The drive-in is gone, and the ramshackle cottages perched along the riverbank, one by one, disappeared, though some foundation remnants remain. The floods of 2006 and 2011 claimed most houses of that once vibrant little community. The large wooden inn, built in 1798, that once sheltered coach and river travelers, which has a blue and yellow New York State Historical Landmark sign out front, is one of only five buildings that remain.
I found myself confined to the neighborhood surrounding my apartment, although a few of us made it as far as the official dump by the river at the end of Grand Avenue in Johnson City. There we came upon a metal train trestle that connected the rail line to Vestal. Walking across it was a young boy’s rite of passage.
A friend of mine and I took the dare. We stepped cautiously from one wooden tie to another, looking down through the space between them at the river far below. A slow-moving train came up from behind and blasted its horn. We stepped off the track onto a stone support wall and the engineer yelled at us as its couple coal cars pulled past.
A bit unnerved, we scurried back, and were very much relieved to not get into any more trouble.
The old dump is now Greitzer Park; named after the man who lived next to it and lobbied Johnson City to more properly utilize the space.
My family moved from Johnson City to Binghamton in time for me to enter the fourth grade. We were nowhere near the river. When I was in eighth grade, my parents bought the house at 98 Helen Street on the West Side of Binghamton, one block away from West Junior High School. It didn’t take me long to find out that Helen Street ended seven blocks away, near the Unitarian Church, next to Lourdes Hospital on Riverside Drive. Riverside Drive runs along the Susquehanna River from downtown Binghamton to Main Street in Johnson City. I finally returned to the river in the summer of 1965.
Behind the Unitarian Church was a parking area for about twenty cars and beyond that an expansive open field of tall grass carpeted its way into a dense grove of huge trees that lined the river, hiding it from a roadside view. It was here that William Sharp Kilmer’s horse, Exterminator, winner of a Kentucky Derby, used to run. One of Kilmer’s mansions, painted white and well kept, still stands to the church’s right. The largest tree I ever saw, in person, eight feet thick, was on Kilmer’s land near the property line with the church. I think it was an Elm. Hogan called it the Dracula Tree. There was a huge branch that came out from one side that I was able to walk under without touching my head. To the left of the church was, at that time, a small hospital complex of yellow brick, Lourdes Hospital. Behind Lourdes was a lagoon, formed by a peninsula open to the right, the downstream side, though it became an island when the river got high. There, large Silver Maple trees were laden with heavy vines which we climbed, and like birds in a nest, perceive the world from a different perspective.
A “fisherman’s path” wound around the trees and through the thickets and tall grasses along the shoreline woods. Heading downstream, to the right, old stable paddocks made of white wooden rail fencing, possibly remnants of the Kilmer era, still defined the back yards of the newer upscale houses that are a fair distance from the river and nearer to Riverside Drive. The fences now stand, rotting in place. As one walks on, to the left, seen through the trees, is the gravel tip of an island I estimate to be four or five football fields long and sixty yards across at its widest point. In summer, it’s covered with lush vegetation, and separated from the Binghamton shore by a narrow channel of placid water. In the past, it was not unusual to encounter nuns from Lourdes, dressed in their black and white habits, out for a stroll. We’d nod pleasant, silent greetings. Wealthy property owners had land down to the water, but back then, they seemed to understand that the riverbank is nature’s primitive highway, and no one ever complained about our presence there.
Further downstream, past a few more mansions, the trail diverged down and left, onto a more rugged flood plain trail. There, trees and their roots along the shore were exposed by erosion, and their bark peeled away and trunks gouged by currents driving slabs of ice downstream during the spring thaw.
Halfway down the island’s length is a concrete spill-water dam connecting the mainland to the island. It is roughly sixty yards from shore to shore. In the summer, when the water is low, thick green, hairlike strands of weeds cover the dam, making it very slippery, so when walking across it, we’d proceed with caution. If the river was low, and no water was running over it, the slick plant life died off. We called it the pipe because it looks like a six-foot diameter round pipe laying on its side. At the base of the downstream curve, the cement drops vertically about a foot onto a cement slab about ten feet wide, before ending at a pool of stagnant dark water. Embedded in the vertical drop, about every ten feet, is a thick metal bracket about a foot wide with two sides connecting it back into the concrete. From the top of the pipe to the walkway-like slab below is an elevation change of about three feet.
Sometimes we could walk the top of the pipe without getting our feet wet. On the upstream side, the still water held in place by the dam is light green at the curved edge but quickly turns a darker shade where the water deepens. At the island we’d carefully climb a pile of big flat rocks, up eight feet to solid ground. A footpath led us through a variety of plants, including a thicket of red raspberry bushes, which we’d stop to pick and eat on our way to the other side of the island. The sunny south shore provides a view of the much longer pipe that connects to Vestal. I’ve never seen it dry, but in summer it’s usually walkable, and a great place to swim.
I started attending Binghamton Central High School in 1967. When classes were done for the day, I would take a five-minute walk, south on Front Street where it crosses Riverside drive, past the blighted and abandoned Rose mansion on the right-hand corner, then down a steep incline, one short block to the river. Years ago, this was called Lovers’ Lane. At the end of the road was a wooden house that was poorly maintained. It commonly had a bicycle or two on the front porch and was inhabited by “hippie”-looking young adults. Over the front door, painted in big letters was the title of an old Elvis tune, “Heartbreak Hotel.”
No one seemed to care when I cut through the unmowed backyard to reach the river’s north shore. From there, I’d take a right and head downstream; the long way home. My stroll took me along a trail that erratically wound around clusters of old trees, over their roots, random rocks, and through the wild floodplain terrain. I’d stay close to the river and keep my distance from the houses on the right, so the residents wouldn’t be tempted to say anything to me. It was a long, scenic investigative stroll home. Every time, there was something new to notice. When I reached the back fields of the Unitarian Church it was time to veer off to Riverside Drive, Helen Street and home. I walked it in winter, spring, and fall, unless it was flooded. I didn’t walk this path much in summer because there was much more to explore on the downstream islands.
A tree on the Binghamton shoreline caught my eye, not because it was overly large, but rather unique. It was split in half from top to bottom with one section laying on the ground. Both pieces resembled curled ribbons. I thought maybe it was hit by lightning, but I wasn’t sure.
I drew my impression of that tree in study hall with a ballpoint pen on a lined page of a small, metal-ringed binder. I took my sketch to art class and drew a better rendition of the subject on a larger piece of good paper using India ink. My art teacher liked it so much that she matted it and had it displayed in the glass case located in the school’s front hall.
I was in study hall when the teacher in charge asked me to come forward to her desk. I was a pretty low-profile student, and while walking from the back of the extra-large room, I was wondering, why?
She asked, “Are you the artist who did the drawing of the tree in the display case?”
“Yes.”
“Can I buy it?”
Long story short, I asked her for $4.00, with the understanding it remained in the hall till something else replaced it. In today’s money that’s about $15.00. I could have negotiated for more, but I was so flattered, and she was so nice, I would have given it to her. I wonder if she had it framed, and if it now hangs on a wall in a grandchild’s house. To this day, scenes from the river influence my drawings, paintings, and what I write. I still hobble there with my staff from time to time, taking pictures and sharing them on Facebook.
It was an uncommonly warm and sunny day in the spring of 1968, so much so that we dubbed it “Good Day Sunshine,” inspired by a Beatles tune off of their 1966 album “Revolver.” The two Owens brothers, John and Tim, Russ Baker, and I, with my camera, were walking around the downtown Binghamton area and entered a city park where the Chenango River feeds into the Susquehanna. We’d heard it referred to as the People’s Park or the Peace Park but had never ventured there before. It was a very natural area with big trees along its banks and a poorly maintained grassy area at its center. Remnants of small campfires were evident. Secluded by the shore, three teenagers were smoking pot, back when it was a criminal offense. In the center of the lawn was a cut boulder monument with a brass plaque commemorating Generals Sullivan and Clinton’s campaign that burnt the local indigenous tribes’ fields and villages, driving them out of the area. Tall Yew bushes wrapped around the sides and back of the monument, forming a thick horseshoe-shaped hedge, beneath which a narrow dirt path was worn. It was the entrance to a little hideout. I crawled inside, and on the back of the granite stone, chiseled neatly in big letters were the words, “Joe, I love you.”
As much as my name is Joe, I was stunned a bit. Knowing that Joe was a very common name at the time didn’t stop me from fantasizing that somewhere out there, I had a secret admirer.
Along the banks of the Susquehanna, a large limb of a majestic Silver Maple tree had broken off, suspended six feet up and parallel to the ground. It was split in such a way that I was able to lay down in the crack for a photo opportunity.
We returned in the fall to play tackle football on the lawn.
Several million dollars were later invested in The Peace Park which is now known as Confluence Point Park. It has stone walkways, walls, planters, a pier, and is well maintained, but it has lost its natural feel. People can now smoke pot there openly without the fear of getting busted, but no campfires.
It was another nighttime stroll along the Binghamton riverbanks. Large chunks of ice were floating downstream. From the island, an unseen dog, trapped, howled in frightened desperation. I felt bad because I was powerless to help.
There was a man who lived nearby who had two bird dogs, so I knocked on his door at 10:00 PM to ask him if his dogs were home safe. They barked at my arrival. I explained why I was there and he thanked me for thinking of him and his companions. He was saddened at the unfortunate canine’s plight, too. We could only hope that the poor animal, surrounded by that frigid water, somehow made it to the safety of the mainland. I never knew. From that time on, I called it, “Dog Island.”
March 1969
I wanted to become a forest ranger after high school, so I applied to Paul Smith College, located in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. Their brochure mentioned a lumberjack team that competed against other schools. I had already established some skill with an axe chopping stumps in our neighborhood and was looking forward to that challenge.
It was an overcast March morning with temperatures hovering around thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. Slushy snow covered everything. I walked to the river, sharpened axe in hand, and made my way to a large Silver Maple tree that was uprooted and had toppled over on its side. It was suspended off the ground, firmly held in place by its branches. I climbed up its root system and walked the trunk to its middle, and started chopping with the widest angled stance my legs would allow. I was determined to cut this three-foot, plus, diameter tree in half. I began sweating immediately, removed my jacket and hung it on the exposed roots.
Eventually, it was necessary to hop down to the ground and start chopping upwards. I succeeded in cutting the frozen log in half. I estimate that without taking a break, it took me three hours. Having run on our school cross country team that previous fall helped with my stamina. On went the jacket, and home I went to shower.
A week later, not far from my first workout, a smaller hardwood tree had snapped at its base and fallen over a trail. I hacked off several eight-inch branches, chopped the trunk in half, and cleared the path. I was looking forward to the lumberjack competition.
It was early May of 1969. The contours of the ground on the riverbanks and islands stood out, and were colored mud-brown with slight signs of plant life preparing to burst up into jungles of green. My friend, John Owens, who had an 8mm color video camera, with a zoom lens, but no sound, talked his brother, Tim, friends Kevin, Greg, and myself into staging a fight scene by the lagoon. Kevin staged getting punched to the ground on his back, then arched his spine, kicking upwards and springing to his feet. He was a natural born stunt man.
Kevin used to sit on his bicycle handlebars, facing backwards, and peddle his bike around the park. In the movie, “The Fight,” Greg survives but the other three get killed off. I got stabbed with a rubber knife and did a dead man’s float downstream in the frigid water, but one does what one must to make a classic film.
Our second film was also shot along the river and involved us fighting with staffs, like in the tales of Robin Hood. That required a degree of rehearsal.
Paul Smith accepted my mailed application, but they required the formality of a personal interview. I turned eighteen in May of 1969 and didn’t yet have a driver’s license, so my father drove me to Saranac Lake. We got lodging at a nice motel, and took a swim in their outdoor pool. My meeting was scheduled for the next day.
The interviewer was a tall, lanky man with a crew cut, who wore a plaid short-sleeve shirt. We set out my courses, and just when everything seemed locked in place, the guy addressed me.
“Of course, Joe, before you report back for classes, you’ll have to get a haircut and shave off your beard.”
I had a beard as a senior in high school and couldn’t believe my ears. My father mentioned that some guys in the yearbook we saw in the lobby had beards.
The man answered, “Oh, we let the guys grow their beards for the Paul Bunyan dance.”
He then went on to say, “We also have a hotel management school here, and representatives from the Hilton and Sheraton Hotels come here to interview prospective employees. What would they think if they saw someone like you on our campus?” Someone like me?
A copy of the school brochure they sent me when I applied was on his large desk. I stood up, reached over, picked it up, and opened to the exact page I wanted. I looked down at him and read from their booklet. “By allowing our students the maximum amount of personal freedoms, we hope to help them develop as individuals.”
I tossed the book back on his desk. It skidded to a stop in front of him. I looked him in the eye and said, “Next time you have the book printed, leave out the lies.”
I walked out the door on a career and a draft deferment and never looked back, leaving my father with an open checkbook for my tuition in his lap.
Dad took a picture of me in the hotel. I thought I looked good.
That night we went to the movies and saw 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The summer of ‘69 was winding down. On a Friday evening, I grabbed a thin, light-colored quilt, crossed the first dam, which was dry, and made my way to the leaning tree. At its soft grassy base, I curled up in my blanket like a mummy and entered a deep, deep sleep.
I woke in darkness to someone kicking the bottom of my feet and calling out my name. “Joe, is that you? Are you alright?” It was Bill Hogan.
I was groggy and slowly unraveled myself from my cocoon. I reached for my eyeglasses, which I’d placed on the ground next to my head. The lenses were frosted by the chilly night air, so I had to breathe on them and wipe them clear with my shirt.
Bill was a bit excited. “Man, we’ve been walking around the island for like an hour, calling your name. Then I looked down and saw what looked like a dead body. I wasn’t sure if it was you!”
Russ Baker and Tim Owens were there, too. All had become concerned for my safety.
I had a campfire set up in a sandy clearing, mid-island, ready to burn in the morning. I lit it using stick matches. It flared up. Everybody started looking for more wood to burn. It was unseasonably cold. We huddled around the flames. My friends had gone to my house to visit and to listen to my records with the volume cranked up on my dad’s killer stereo. My mother told them where I had gone.
It would not be easy making our way back through the island’s jungle on such a dark night, and scooting safely down the boulders to the pipe posed a hazard. We decided to wait till first light. Tim perched himself in the crotch of a big tree in an effort to get comfortable, the other two sat on the ground, backs to a tree, but we all spent time pacing around the illuminated area looking for sticks. The dancing fire was our TV.
That night, a seed of thought took root in my mind for a shelter for our new camp. When the day came to build, my three friends were there. I provided a shovel, sharp axe, pruning saw, heavy nylon cord, three-pound hammer, and spike nails. Hogan showed up with an old hatchet that resembled a medieval weapon. We converged on a huge Silver Maple shaped like a cartoon character’s hand with three fingers and an extended thumb that grew close to the ground. It was the limb that Tim rested on the first night. The tree was at the edge of a sandy clearing. First, I pounded the nails into the tree as high as I could reach and as far apart as possible. I eyed them for level. There was no shortage of building material; fallen branches, toppled trees, and driftwood were abundant, scattered everywhere. We selected a twelve-foot-long straight pole, four inches in diameter, and lashed it atop the spikes. It ran three feet wild on one side where we strapped it to a smaller tree. That opening became the entrance. The wide space between the three fingers and thumb acted as a window into the dense jungle.
We started building a twelve-foot-long, two-and-a-half foot-high knee wall parallel to the main beam, and twelve feet away from it. First, we leveled the ground using a shovel, then rolled a thick log in place for its base. That formed an outline for our twelve-foot square lean-to.
We then chose two thick logs to act as roofing rafters on the slanted outside edges that connected the main beam to the knee wall. Then it was a matter of finding long straight pieces to lay atop them, left to right. We were into it, so we made horizontal-stacked stick walls for the sides, too.
Lastly came the thatching for the roof. Nearby, there was a patch of alien-looking plant we called bamboo. Its rigid stalks were tall and leafy. Bill and I hacked it all down and handed everything to Tim and Russ, who were walking on the roof. The bases of the plants were woven in place by the ledger post, with the leaves pointing downwards towards the knee wall. Even in a heavy rain, it did not leak. It wasn’t work; it was two afternoons of fun.
We used up all the bamboo, aka Japanese Knot Weed, we found, and I was concerned we had killed it off, eliminating this strange plant from existence. How totally wrong I was.
Tim and I camped there in the autumn of that year. The fern edges browned and yellowed, as did the leaves on the island trees. Under a bright sun, it all looked golden.
It was New Year’s Eve, 1969-70. A frozen, snowy landscape greeted the New Year, and me, as I walked the riverbank alone at midnight. I planned it that way. Nature’s serene magic was in my heart, and a waking dream in my head. Peaceful is not an adequate word to describe how I felt.
I stopped at the Owens’ house on my way home to wish them a happy new year and continued home, in the best of moods. Five drunken guys, who I did not recognize, confronted me when I was a block away from my house. The drinking age at that time was eighteen. They were belligerent and threatened me with violence. I said nothing and kept on walking. Two of them followed close behind me, calling me a fairy, a faggot, an asshole, and coward; you know, all the classics. They told me to keep walking, that if I turned around, they’d kick my ass. Two doors before I reached my parent’s house, they laughed at me mockingly and rejoined their friends.
When I reached our white picket fence, I hung my black-rimmed Buddy Holly eyeglasses on the gate, and calmly walked back to face them. The river’s strength was in me, and I was not afraid. Me, returning alone, without my glasses, made them paranoid, and rightfully so. They grouped together and backed off the sidewalk into the street, then started apologizing, saying they were drunk and that they didn’t mean anything they said. “Hey, man, have a Happy New Year.”
I never spoke a word during the whole episode, just turned around and went home. One guy was bitching at his two buddies for being “stupid assholes.”
Mom and dad were in bed when I entered the house. I smiled. I would not greet this new year with an ember of angry remorse burning in my soul. I wasn’t a coward. I had proved it to myself. I was a free man. Thank you, my river friend; thank you for following me home.
Winter came, and I had to view Dog Island from a distance. Or did I? Water flowing over the first dam was shallow, about a foot deep; more than doable, except for the chunks of ice being carried downstream and spilling over it. I rolled the cuffs of my pants up to my knees, unzipped my fleece-lined boots, took them off and held them to my chest. Socks made the boots too hot, so I wore none. I stepped onto the pipe and headed towards the island, slowing down or moving faster to avoid a collision with the approaching ice. That distance never seemed so great, nor the time taken so long. While climbing up the rocks onto the island, I slipped, smashing the toes of my right foot on a stone. I saw it happen, but my feet were so cold I didn’t feel it. Hurriedly, I wiped the water from my feet with gloved hands, slid on my boots and rolled down my jeans. I was amazed how quickly my feet warmed up. My injured toes started to hurt a bit. The lean-to was my destination. It was intact, but the once bright green bamboo leaves had weathered brown. For that time on the island, I was only thinking about my trip back.
I sat on the boulders, preparing myself mentally and physically for my second crossing. Thin sheets of ice flowed from upstream, as far as the eye could see. I made it to the mainland in a much faster time, and I never did that again.
By midwinter, the river was covered by ice, with the section from Binghamton to the island being smooth, while the Vestal side was pushed up in mounds. Everything was blanketed with clean, white, new-fallen snow. From the Vestal shore, a line of sight through the island trees revealed a black speck, which was the entrance to the lean-to. It called to me.
It continued to be a bitter winter. I was walking the Binghamton shoreline at night, alone as usual, and decided to cross over to the island on the ice. Halfway there, the ice beneath my feet gave way and I felt myself drop down. My thought was, “This is the end!”
To my great relief, I only went down about two inches before landing on a second layer of thicker ice. I made it to the lean-to and stood inside on the brown sandy floor before walking around the island for a while. I followed my snowy footprints back to shore.
It was early summer of 1970. A bunch of us guys were playing basketball at Fourth Ward Park, behind the west end armory. It was hot! We decided to walk to the river and go for a swim. It had rained heavily the past few days, and we figured the river had been adequately “flushed.”
Indeed, the river was quite high. Along the banks above the first pipe, tree branches arched down, bobbing on the rushing water.
We went upstream from the first pipe, jumped in, and tried to maneuver the current in such a way as to allow us to grab hold of a branch and hold on. It was cool! Your head and shoulders were above water with the force of the river trying to pull you off the branch.
Some of us decided to see if we could climb up our branches far enough to get completely out of the water. The hardest part was that all the branches were pointing in your face. Three of us made it. I was one; Kevin and Zembeck, too. Time to jump back in to ride the current.
When the water started getting low on the first pipe, we’d cross it, climb up the rocks to the island, which was flat, then follow a dirt trail to its Vestal-facing shore. To the left of that path, which divided the island in half, there was a small section of tall ferns, pricker bushes, and mixed plant life with trees along its banks. A large dead tree stood there alone in a clearing covered in a tangle of vines that when leafed out looked like a castle. Beyond that, the rest was heavily forested with Silver Maples and Sycamores with their distinctive multicolored bark. I named this part of the island Asgard. To the dividing trail’s right was an expansive field of ferns as tall as my shoulders, and here again, there were large trees along the shoreline. I referred to this area as Cimmeria, both names of places taken from a Conan paperback.
The second pipe was in a straight line with the first, and with the connecting pathway, though at one hundred yards, it was slightly longer than the first. Here again, massive rocks had to be climbed down before stepping on the dam. It was also considerably deeper there, to the degree I never saw it go dry. Because water seeks its own level, I assumed that that concrete barrier was built lower for a reason.
One afternoon, Kevin and I went exploring the island. Halfway across the path to the second pipe, we veered off to the upstream side of the island, Asgard. We both had cut-off jeans, and commenced adventuring through a patch of plants about two feet high. Suddenly it happened: a painful stinging sensation on our exposed skin sent us to the second pipe, as we frantically tried to wash off whatever it was that had us in such distress. We found out they were stinging nettles. Never did that again.
On the Vestal side of the island, well above the second dam, near the lean-to, there was a clump of relatively young Silver Maple trees leaning out over the river. We’d climb up one trunk of the leaning tree while steadying ourselves on another’s branches overhead, then jump twelve feet into the deep water. We’d float downstream to exposed tree roots, use them as a ladder and climb to shore.
One time, a friend dove in and surfaced bleeding from a cut on the bridge of his nose. Moving waters, like rivers, are not crystal clear, they are murky, and one never knows for sure how deep the water is, or what the currents may have deposited there, unseen. It takes a leap of faith. I climbed out on it with a camera and took a photo looking back.
On the Vestal shore of the island, far downstream, near its end, stood a monstrous Silver Maple tree perched on a steep bank. It was hidden from a Vestal view by trees of two smaller islands that formed deep channels between them and Dog Island. Someone showed up with a long section of stout rope to make a tire swing. Fortunately, or unfortunately, old tires were easy to find there. A truck tire was chosen, but who would climb high up into the tree to tie the rope to a branch in just the right place? Kevin volunteered.
He scooted up the trunk like a monkey with the coiled rope over his neck, resting on a shoulder and secured beneath his opposing arm. He disappeared in the silver-green canopy and soon one end of the rope unfurled down, coming to rest in a perfect location. Everyone was looking up wondering how well he could climb down, but Kevin, true to form, jumped twenty feet into the uncharted opaque green waters of the deep channel. His head popped up with a broad smile.
Once tied on, the bottom of the tire was suspended about four feet off the ground and grabbable from shore. One could hold the tire, walk up the earthen bank, clasp the rope, leap onto the tire and get a good trajectory over the water before jumping free to splash down. Then we’d swim to shore and climb the bank.
What turned out to be funny about the whole experience was that the more wet people walked up the bank, the muddier it got, to the point we were using it as a mud slide.
Three of us went to the swing on a sunny Saturday afternoon, and to our pleasant surprise, two attractive teenaged women from Vestal were using it. They were athletic looking, wore cut-off jeans, bathing suit tops, and sneakers. The girls had crossed over the second pipe from the south shore and saw the tire just hanging there. They smiled and we started taking turns jumping into the river. Our imaginations of romantic intrigue ran wild.
Unfortunately, I had a drum lesson scheduled, downtown, with Tony Monfort, and I couldn’t stay and leave my mentor hanging. The joker of my friends told me later that they “made out” with the girls, but the other friend said that never happened. It was just wishful thinking. Still, I made my way there more often hoping for another encounter with “The River Women,” but no luck.
There is a cemetery along Riverside Drive on the Binghamton – Johnson City line. Its high elevation provides a panoramic view of the river islands below. There is a very steep trail that leads down to the flat yards behind the fine houses along the river. Whenever I’d descend that path, I’d take off my sneakers and wind sprint barefoot to the Unitarian Church. When my breath was restored, I’d jump up and grab a tree branch that was perfect for doing pull-ups. It became routine.
The backside of that graveyard drops off, almost cliff-like into the river. In the summer shallows at its base, I found two older dated tombstones with Irish names. Was it due to vandals, or were they buried too close to the edge?
Greg and I were crossing the first pipe on our way to jump from the leaning tree when we encountered a guy crossing from the island to Binghamton. It was unusual to come across someone that we did not know. He looked upset, and explained he was on his way to call the cops, because the friend he left behind had swam over to a tree that had fallen in the water to climb out on, and bumped into a dead guy snagged up in its branches. We passed each other on the pipe, and Greg and I were curious enough to check out his story.
We smelt the rancid decaying corpse long before we saw it. We just followed our noses. The young man who swam into the dead guy was in, I would say, mild shock, and glad to have company. The body was face down, pinned in place, its feet three feet from shore. Its pants and shoes were brown. A white T-shirt clung tightly to its bloated body. Flies covered its back. It was gross, but Greg and I both wondered what would follow, so we adjusted to the stench and waited.
About twenty minutes passed when a rescue squad showed up on the Vestal side of the river, saw us waving our arms, and motored their aluminum boat towards us. Once alongside the body, there was some discussion on how to proceed. A tarp with metal eyelets was set next to the body, and the guys in the boat gently used oars to submerge the tarp under the dead man, and used ropes, run through the eyelets, to secure the victim to the side of the boat. They did a clean, respectful job.
A crowd of people had gathered on the Vestal side of the river to see first-hand what was going on. The boat landed and the men grabbed the ropes and carried the body to shore. Everybody was bent over to get a better look, but when the tarp was opened, the corpse was face-up, and the head of every onlooker on shore snapped the opposite way as the crowd quickly dispersed.
The local paper said the deceased man had last been seen two weeks prior, fishing upstream at Rock Bottom Dam, and that because he was the third person to drown in the river that year, swimming in the river was now prohibited. My friends and I did not feel as though that applied to us.
One hot, humid day, Greg, Laskowski, Potter, and I were cooling off on the second pipe, at our usual spot, about midway across. In those days, there were no rows of shops on the Vestal shore, just a small picnic area maintained by the town, so our activities could be clearly observed by the traffic on RT 434.
From the top of the curved dam to the concrete slab below, which water spilled onto, was a drop of about three feet. There was a submerged vertical drop of about a foot at the base of the curve to that sidewalk-like feature. On that section, about every ten feet were metal brackets that one could wade up to, grab hold of with both hands, close their eyes, duck down and be straightened out by the current like a flag in a strong wind. It was important to always look upstream first for anything floating your way before doing this.
I managed to get a good grip on a bracket with my right hand, pull my butt down on it, and secure myself in place using both hands. I was facing downstream and the water flowing around my body formed a whirlpool in which my friends bobbed around in. I forced my elbows outwards, and the effect became more intense.
Potter was a lineman for our high school football team, and his back was broader than mine, so the whirlpool he formed was even better.
We were just having fun playing in the river when we noticed two Vestal police officers motioning for us to come to shore. Laskowski used a bracket to step up onto the dam, faced the cops and gave them the finger. They quickly decided that chasing four river rats around in their own domain would have been a fool’s errand, so they got in their cars and drove away.
The most common group of swimmers on the Vestal side were Kevin, Greg, Laskowski, and myself. When it was time to rest, we’d go to the big, flat rectangular stones that secured the bank where the pipe met the island. They were usually too hot to lay on, so with cupped hands we’d splash them with water first. We each had a favorite stone to sun ourselves and dry off on. Mine was six-feet-tall, four-feet-wide, three-feet-thick, and rested at a sixty-degree angle. A tilted flat stone at its base provided a comfortable place to set my feet and keep me from sliding down.
It was another hot day for a swim. It was just Greg and I on the second pipe. I was on the lower section holding on to a bracket and playing “flag.” I let loose and stood, facing downstream, whipping water from my brow. Greg called my name and as I turned slowly around to see what he wanted, a large decomposing fish, a sixteen-inch, big-lipped sucker, impacted the side of my head, breaking open, spilling its rotting guts on my hair and face. I smelt like the dead guy they pulled from the river.
I dove under the water trying to scrub out the stench, but to no avail. My friend was deeply apologetic. He imagined I’d respond more quickly and duck out of its way.
I marched home to shower, with Greg at my side saying he was sorry over and over. He and I were close friends, and I knew he was sincere. I scrubbed myself with shampoo a few times, rinsing often, but still smelt faintly of death. “Thanks, Greg!”
When the river was high, we’d swim on the Binghamton side of the island where it was more shallow going over the pipe. On one such sunny day, some friends brought inflated tire inner tubes to enter the river above the first pipe and ride the rapid current spilling over the curve. They bobbed atop the churning waters beneath the dam and continued downstream, navigating their way to shore. Walking back upstream, they handed me a flotation device, allowing me to take a turn.
It was a fun ride, but once over the dam, it hit the swirling water in such a way that I was flipped backwards and upside down in a flash. My head just scraped the concrete slab below. I stood quickly and got my bearings, realizing that if I’d gone down an inch deeper, I would have cracked my skull and been rendered unconscious, or dead. If that had happened, I’d be on my way to the Chesapeake Bay.
I warned my friends, and they heeded my warning and stopped. I never saw anyone else try to tube over the dam again.
On a beautiful, cold, midwinter night, Kevin, Johnny, and I took our skates to the frozen lagoon. Unlike parts of the river affected by currents, the backwater ice there was as smooth as glass. Branches of sprawling trees, from either shore, intersect overhead mimicking cathedral arches. Kevin skated backwards, jumped up, spun around and landed gracefully in motion. Snowflakes the size of quarters fell twirling from the sky, enhancing our Currier and Ives silent experience. This scene remains vivid in my memory.
Except for when we went skating, or saw someone fishing on the ice, winter on the river was total solitude, which I appreciated most at night. I was the only one there. After a long walk through the frozen scenery, I cut through the snow-covered field, on my way to the Unitarian Church. Clumps of tall brown grass brushed against my frozen-stiff jeans. I was almost there when two patrol cars sped into the back parking lot from Riverside Drive and out jumped the two officers with flashlights. They commenced poking around the trees and shrubs, frantically searching the grounds for something or someone. I stopped for a moment, and considered turning around, but rationalized with myself that I hadn’t done anything illegal, so I had nothing to fear, and kept walking. The cops were so engrossed following their beams of light in their search for whatever, somehow, they never noticed me pass right behind them by twenty feet. I felt no need to speak to them, and continued on to Riverside Drive. I paused to look at my hands and whispered, “No, I’m not invisible.”
Late winter ice formations on the floodplain drew me there for a closer look. They varied year to year. Sometimes when high water receded, remnants of ice were held suspended onto the trees, surrounding the trunks in what resembled cirrus clouds. Most notable was that they were all at the same level, and that created a sense of surrealism. Sometimes, as they melted, they formed globs of clear ice that looked as if made of glass, suspended like frozen ornaments. They were cool. Other times, great chunks of ice, a few feet thick, were deposited, stacked on the floodplain. There they would slowly shrink and melt away.
One sunny, warm day, I walked over thin sheets of smooth ice along the shore. I wasn’t worried about falling through because I knew there was only frozen or muddy earth beneath. There was a cracking sound, and I dropped down about eight inches, still standing, at the center of an angled bowl of ice. My low spot was at least eight feet away from the nearest solid ground rim. Every time I tried to walk out of this slippery trap, I slid back down, and I proved unable to break the ice by stomping on it.
In amused desperation, I laid on my belly and crawled up and out using my elbows and knees. Once on my feet, I looked around to make sure no one was there to get a laugh out of my predicament other than me.
Spring rains turned the water brown with silt, flooding over the islands and low-lying areas. The lean-to was not visible from shore, but I knew it was affected. I crossed over the first pipe once the river there was waist deep and made my way towards our camp. To my pleasant surprise the lean-to somehow remained, maybe because it was anchored to the tree and of all the lashing-together we did. But something looked different. What was it? Then it hit me. The big log we had rolled in place for the base of the knee wall was gone! Not just gone, but nowhere on the island. The roof was above flood stage, and intact, so still, our shelter was usable.
The river was high. A small group of us crossed over from Binghamton to look at the water flowing over the second pipe. It was a churning torrent. I was the first one to step onto it to see if I could make it to the Vestal side of the river. I was barefoot. One guy followed but readily returned to the island. It was just me and the river.
At first the water was over my waist, but I knew that the dam got lower because the water always was higher the closer one got to the other side. If I tried to walk right on top of the concrete curved pipe I would have been swept off and away, so I took baby steps on the curve of the upstream side, which provided me better footing. The water was over my nipples. I was no longer picking up my feet, but rather sliding them slowly forward, gripping as best as I could with my toes. I was determined to make it.
My arms were raised over my head as the white swells brushed my armpits and chin. I lost track of time as I moved along at a snail’s pace. There was no turning back. I was calm. If I got carried downstream, I’d improvise from there, but I didn’t give it a lot of thought, other than if I were swept downstream, go with the current, don’t try to fight it, just swim towards shore.
As I neared the Vestal shore, I noticed Harris and Garutto there, cheering me on. They had crossed back over the first pipe from the island, got in a car, and drove to the Vestal town park, in hopes of giving me a ride home.
The end of the dam near shore was higher, I knew that because the water always got increasingly shallow there. More of my body began to show, and Garutto yelled to Harris, over the crashing water,
“He made it!”
It was after that, some started calling me “Crazy Kirchner.”
Summertime arrived, and once again my friends and I were camping on the island. One beautiful night, I was there alone. I walked from the lean-to to the leaning tree, sat on the grass and looked out over the water. In those days, there were lights, atop poles, lighting the 434 highway that ran along the Vestal side of the river. Their mesmerizing line of reflections beamed across the water’s rippling surface, registering in my mind as a row of people on pogo sticks hopping in place. It was a spellbinding illusion.
I set my eyeglasses down in a safe spot where I could feel for them, then climbed the tree out over the water. I knew those branches by heart. Down I dropped, plunging into the dark, warm water below. I played the lazy current with my body to stay beneath the surface with my eyes wide open. Everything was pitch black, as I drifted untouched in total silence, embraced in nature’s womb. It was magical.
The river delivered me to that root system which we used as a ladder to climb back on to land. By the leaning tree, I found my glasses with my first reach.
It was summertime, too, when we four rolled two logs into the river on the Vestal side of the island, just below the second dam, and rode them downstream. There, we maneuvered our way through a chain of small islands, separated by narrow, shallow channels. Sadly, what I remember most about that day was all the half-submerged tires we saw.
I was alone when I jumped out of the leaning tree on a warm sunny afternoon, letting myself drift past the root ladder I’d normally use to get out of the water. I swam downstream hugging the shoreline, enjoying this new island perspective. A feature I never noticed before drew me in. It was a small, shallow-looking cove, open to the downstream side, its banks lined with vine-laden trees and dense with vegetation. I swam into it, but when I stood to walk to shore, cool mud oozed up between my toes, and I was a foot deep into it. Not liking the way it felt, I eyed the nearest solid ground and tried to walk in that direction. It was difficult overcoming the suction this goo had on me, but I took two steps forward, only to sink down over my knees. I was stuck!
Movies where people were trapped in quicksand flashed through my mind, but I realized I had just wandered into a pile of saturated river silt. Extricating my feet was the problem. There was nothing to grab hold of. I pondered my situation before finally rocking forward and back, side to side, then rotating clockwise and counterclockwise, hoping to displace some of the mud stuck to my legs with water. I’m not sure if it worked or if I tapped into some adrenaline through desperation, but I made it to land, and then to the leaning tree where I jumped into the river to get clean.
We noticed a path through some tall ferns that was made by folks who bent or broke the delicate tops and who randomly trampled their bases. It wasn’t us. When walking through the ferns, my friends and I would hold our arms up over our heads and sift through them causing little or no damage, basically leaving no evidence of our passing. Upon further inspection we discovered two tiger pits covered over with broken pieces of the plants. Tiger pits are camouflaged holes with sharpened wooden stakes buried in them with the points facing up. It was disheartening to find out such deranged people had made it to the island.
We later heard of a guy, whose name I recognized, spotted on the stony shoal at the upstream point of the next island down, using a BB rifle to shoot at the hundreds of frogs coming ashore to breed. I called it Frog Island. It was a favorite place for Blue Herons to feed, as long as people weren’t around.
A couple years later, I heard of the passing of the guy who used the frogs for target practice, and shed no tears.
One afternoon, I went to the lean-to and discovered such mindless people had been there, too. Someone had built a fire inside in an attempt to burn it down. The ceiling poles were charred but were still in place, but what upset me most was that someone used my axe, which I’d left for other campers to use, to cut down two nearby healthy trees. They were about six inches thick and hacked down four feet from the ground, where the wilting tops had fallen. Why?
I tore our shelter apart and dragged it in sections to the leaning tree, and tossed everything into the river. They were on their way somewhere downstream. I took my axe home with me.
One mild summer night, I found a new place to camp on the Vestal side of the island, down a ways from the second dam. There was a smaller island across from it that provided privacy from that town’s shore. A huge Silver Maple had toppled over, exposing an impressive root ball, twelve feet in diameter, and washed clean by water. It belonged in an art gallery; a piece of nature’s waterworn sculpture. Next to it was a small section of sandy beach, which was where I chose to sleep. I was alone.
I woke in the dark, unable to feel my left leg from the hip down. There must have been a stone or root in the sand, and I rolled on it. I was in a bit of a panic as I pushed off the ground with my hands, and struggled to stand on my right leg. Then came the intense rubbing of my leg as I worked to restore its circulation and feeling. It took a few minutes, and some hobbling about, but luckily, I succeeded. There was no way I could have called for help, and no one knew I was there.
More than summer was coming to an end, it was also the end of our group of friends exploring island jungles and swimming holes together. Our teenage years had passed and responsibilities railroaded us apart. As far as the river was concerned, I was the last holdout.
I got summer jobs at Riverside Gardens, located on Riverside Drive across from the cemetery. There, they sold all types of trees, shrubs, and bushes. Their five-bay truck garage was in Vestal next to the river. On the shores of the Susquehanna, we spent two weeks potting bareroot roses, bushes, and trees. They also had tree nurseries, also along the Susquehanna, one in Campville, and another in Apalachin. It was a labor intensive, low paying job, but I liked it because I was always outside. I was instructed not to come in on rainy days, so I walked down the river in the rain. Also, many of their customers were wealthy people who had mansions by or near the river.
My heart and spirits were in free fall. I was drafted, but refused to sign control over my body, mind, and soul, my consciousness, to others, then ignore responsibility for my actions. After having not slept for forty-eight hours, I wound up walking the winter river at night in an effort to come to terms with my dilemma. Ice covered the river, and where the lagoon’s eddy met the flowing current, there was a natural rift to the black water below. I stood there and stared into it as if in a trance. Problems flooded my mind. The water at my feet gurgled hypnotically as it rushed past the gaping hole. It’s hard to say how long I stood on the frozen river contemplating my end. At times I came close to taking that irreversible plunge, but eventually I backed away and headed towards home.
I walked the field behind the Unitarian Church and noticed there was a light on. The members of that congregation had a reputation as being anti-war, so I decided to see if I could find a sympathetic ear to talk to. I looked in the window of the lit room, the kitchen, but saw no one. I walked to the back door and reached for the knob, then hesitated. A voice in my head said, “It’s not locked.”
It wasn’t, so I stepped inside. I paced slowly up a long hallway, lit only by exit signs, to the front of the complex asking loudly, “Is anybody here?”
There was no answer. I was alone, standing in the kitchen. The clock on the wall said 3:00 AM. I was hungry, and decided that if any parishioner had been there, they would not have denied me food; so, with a clear conscience, I opened the refrigerator to see what was available. It was empty, except for a folded piece of cardboard that stood up, displaying the words:
This refrigerator is like life; you will get out of it only what you put into it.
I broke out in uncontrollable laughter, before restoring self-control and walking home, where I ate and slid into the shelter of unconsciousness.
When I was twenty-five, I moved in with my parents in order to save money to finance a move, with a friend, to San Francisco. He was going to open an Italian restaurant, and I was going to focus on my artwork. On December 30th, 1976, my fifty-year-old father went to work and died from a heart attack. Everyone was shocked, but Mom’s grief was so intense that she became almost catatonic. I would make her dinner, but she wouldn’t eat. For two weeks she did little more than sit in a chair, stare into space, or blankly watch TV.
I came home one afternoon and found our twenty-one-year-old cat, Patches, lying dead on a towel spread out on the kitchen counter. Her nose and ears looked as though they had been sanded off. Mom wasn’t home, she’d gone to a neighbor, Mary’s house. She came home shattered.
Mom had been motivated to do the laundry, and was in the basement unloading the top-loading washing machine into the front-loading dryer when the doorbell rang, drawing her upstairs. It was an insurance man bringing papers concerning my father’s death. Mom returned to the basement, tossed the rest of the wet clothes in the dryer and went upstairs. She heard a thumping sound in the machine, opened it up, and found our beloved cat Patches, dead. She was overwhelmed with guilt. How cruel could life get?
I had always said when Patches died, I would bury her down by the river, and Mom was going to hold me to it. The problem was it was the middle of January in upstate New York.
It was a dreary day. We drove my father’s new yellow Gran Torino to the parking lot behind the Unitarian Church, and got out. With mom on my left arm, the cat in a pillowcase, and a long-handled dirt shovel held in my right hand, we made our way through the snowy field. In a grove of small trees, I cleared snow from a spot, then started scraping and chiseling the frozen dirt and putting it in a mound. It took a while. Finally, it was deep enough to set Patches in her grave and cover her over. Mom was crying; saying she was sorry.
Mom held my arm on the way back. Life felt like an ongoing tragic dream, from which we could not wake.
The next day, Mary, the neighbor, who was well meaning but not very bright, stopped in and handed my mother the cheapest looking, ugly stuffed toy that somewhat resembled a cat. Its eyes were sewn on crooked. She addressed my mom,
“Here, Marty, here’s another cat, and this one you can even put in the dryer.”
Yes, she actually said that.
The giant Dracula Tree, by the Unitarian Church, was diseased and cut down. A guy named Bob Penfield, who had two sculptures on the grounds of Hinman College, at SUNY Binghamton, arranged to have it moved to the hilltop overlooking campus for the purpose of turning it into another work of public art. The mammoth trunk lay on its side waiting for Bob’s inspiration, which never came. It was there for years, and in a way, it served its purpose. Groups of students would climb on it to sit and enjoy the view of the campus below. It was removed, to somewhere, when that space was used to build Mountain View College.
I never made it to California, but instead stayed with my mother, who remained emotionally frail. She never learned to drive, and didn’t dare try. My depression crashed down on me again, when Greg was found alone, floating dead in a swimming pool. Greg, who used to swim in the river with me when no one else would, because the water was too high or too cold. Greg, who was a great swimmer. Greg, who set his drums up next to mine so we could challenge each other to play riffs. Greg, my dear friend.
He was not a druggy, or heavy drinker, and his autopsy found nothing suspicious, or no sign of foul play. He just drowned.
I read from the Bible at his church service, and afterwards attended a gathering at his parents’ house. Everyone was in disbelief that this dynamic individual was gone. I was sitting on the lawn, back to the fence, when Greg’s sister came over to me with some family members I had never met. “This is Joe,” she said. “He was Greg’s best friend.”
I needed to be alone, and made my way to the island, and the leaning tree where he and I had enjoyed so many summer adventures together. As I neared, I heard happy voices, and sounds of splashing. Hidden in the foliage, I watched as two young men reenacted our routine of climbing out on the leaning tree, jumping into the river, riding the current downstream to the ladder-like roots, and pulling themselves up to shore, ready to do it again.
At one point I approached them and shared my story, telling them not to take their friendship for granted, because we never know what the future holds.
They seemed genuinely touched and respectful. It was a way to say goodbye.
My young woman friend, Nancy, was living on the SUNY Binghamton campus in Vestal. I had recently moved back to town from the island of St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands and had yet to buy a car. One winter night I used my knowledge of the river to cross the ice safely to be with her. It was a shortcut.
In my early thirties, I did not haunt the river’s shores and islands as I once did, though from time to time I walked there to observe nature and take pictures. When I got married, my wife, Nancy, and I had wedding photos taken there.
We had three children, and each one walked the shallows to the island with us. Our son, Jake, and his friend Zak built a camping shelter on the same island as we had done, although further downstream. It pleased me.
Sinon O’Neil was a lanky, mild mannered, retired family court attorney who liked to fish. He had a tiny one-man rowboat named “Frumpy,” that he could shove on top of his small station wagon. He’d then drive to the river on a makeshift road, through the field and trees, behind the Unitarian Church. The road was rutted and difficult for him to navigate, so he hired me to take my pickup truck full of gravel and make repairs.
A winter afternoon walk led me to the lagoon’s frozen-over eddy. Next to a hole in the ice, left on top to die by a fisherman, was a large, dead carp. From behind a tree, I observed several crows pecking at it without much success. A bald eagle swooped down scattering the crows, momentarily, but they returned in force with their noisy squawking. A brief scuffle ensued, leading to the crows’ retreat.
The eagle grabbed the fish with both feet, flapped its great wings and attempted to fly away with the prize, but got up only about ten feet before dropping his meal back to the ice. The fish was too heavy. The eagle returned, held the dead fish in place with a mighty taloned claw and began shredding into the scaly flesh with its mighty beak.
Crows are said to be intelligent. They perched silently in the surrounding bare branches to watch the eagle eat its fill. Eventually it would fly away, leaving the torn open carcass for the crows to more easily feed upon.
On a sunny summer afternoon, when the water was low, I waded over the bed of slippery river rocks, from the peninsula behind the hospital to the tip of the island that I once knew so well. I did not walk far from shore before entering the bamboo jungle that arched together in a tangle, well over my head. At first there were a few clumps I could walk around, but soon it became one continuous obstacle. That year’s bright green shoots were intermingled with tall brown, brittle stalks from previous years. Using my arms to part an opening, and my feet to stomp down a path, I made my way down the island, constantly clearing debris from my face. Despite traveling a bit blinded by the invasive plant, I found my way to the huge Silver Maple tree shaped like a cartoon hand, and stood at its base. With upstretched arms, I touched the spike nails I had pounded into the tree decades earlier. Oh, to go back in time!
We were living on Leroy Street in Binghamton, near Recreation Park. I was fifty-five years old, and walked to the Memorial Bridge, crossed over the Chenango River, then took the South Washington Street Bridge over the Susquehanna River to Binghamton’s south side. From atop the floodwall I headed downstream till I reached its end and stood along the river, looking to the other side. The river was high. If I swam to the west side, I’d save myself a rather boring walk home.
I hesitated a few times before taking the plunge, and off I went, into the current, but something was wrong. I had never tried swimming wearing bib-overalls. They filled up with water like a heavy balloon, making me feel as if I weighed three hundred pounds. There was no turning back. Downstream I was carried, struggling to reach the safety of the nearest shore, but I was feeling as though I wasn’t going to make it. I started to panic as I fought to keep my head above water. If I didn’t calm down, I was destined to drown. That was understood. I rolled over on my back and tried to relax. I missed the island I was trying for, but knew that the downstream ends of each one had a tapered point made of dirt. I swam towards it with all I had, put my feet down and found what I was looking for. I was on my tiptoes, chin deep in water. Slowly, carefully, I walked sideways upstream with each step raising me higher from the water line till I was on solid ground.
Walking the island’s northern shore, I found the narrowest channel between me and the mainland, about thirty feet, took a deep breath and jumped in. Momentarily, my feet got tangled up with some tree roots, but I managed to pull myself free. Finally, I made it to dry land. What a relief!
Soaking wet, I passed a fisherman on my way towards the road, and said, “Never go swimming with your bib-overalls on.”
He gave me a funny look, but said nothing. I never did that again.
I was involved in an organized effort to help clean up part of the riverbank I haunted in my youth. If we stacked all the trash where a garbage truck could access it, the City of Binghamton would pick it up free of charge. The half-buried shopping cart was difficult to extricate, but I had a spade shovel which also came in handy freeing up some tires. There was carpet, a busted plastic Adirondack chair, broken buckets, ripped tarps, plastic bottles, part of a bicycle, and much more. I returned there the following spring after the high water receded and there was a new deposit of tires on the shore.
When I was a teenager, years earlier, my friends and I explored Dog Island to its most upstream point. We discovered an upright piano partially buried in the ground. It looked as if it had crashed to Earth from the sky and made an impact at a thirty-degree angle. Maybe someone’s house got majorly flooded, or maybe someone didn’t want it and just tossed it down the riverbank to get rid of it. Some view this beautiful river as a dumpster.
A couple years later, there was no sign of the piano.
In the summer of 2006, there was a great 500-year flood. Lourdes hospital was evacuated due to water rising up from the basement in the new additions. From what I heard, it was because they had no ball valves in the drains, but I don’t know how true that is, but it does make sense.
The Vestal nursing home was emptied out and has remained an abandoned red brick complex for twenty years.
There was not an available nursing home bed in town, then, which is why my aunt was sent to one in Waverly, New York, almost an hour’s drive away for me to visit.
I walked the river’s Binghamton banks once the water receded and found a piece of someone’s pressure treated dock deposited on the flood plain. It was ten feet long and four feet wide. With the back seats out of our van, my son, Jake, and his friend, Zak Landers, shoved it in the back, squatted on it near the front seats and wedged themselves against the ceiling. Once in my garage, I greatly reinforced its structure, fashioned bobsled runners on the side rails, and waited for winter.
When the ground froze, we were ready to reload the van, and drive to
Vestal to the back entrance to Binghamton University’s Nature Preserve. Once unloaded on the normally marshy Pipeline Trail, my son and two of his friends, Vince Kelly and Eugenio Alonso, stood inside the rope loop attached in two spots to the front of the sled, and off they went, over the frozen marsh. They took a left onto the Vernal Pool Trail and threaded their way through the woods to a steep gully on that trail. It was dragged into place, and set level. It fits like a glove, still, after twenty years. I call it “The 2006 Flood Memorial Bridge.”
Our second 500-year flood happened seven years later in 2013, and it was worse than the first. Chris Papastrat stood in his Park Diner, perched high on the river’s south shore, and stared in disbelief as the rising water spilled over the flood wall on the far shore, flooding sections of downtown Binghamton.
One of our daughters lived in Johnson City, nowhere near the river but by a creek that raged and had nowhere to go because the river was too full. There was four feet of water on her street and a foot in her house. In the middle of the night, a man with an airboat rescued her.
As a result of that extreme flood, many structures were torn down as the river reclaimed some of its domain. One architecturally unique house, across a narrow road from the river, was once owned by an older couple who were dear friends of mine. For years they had hired me to do the meticulous upkeep on their cherished property. I’m glad they weren’t around to see it demolished.
Now, Lourdes Hospital is Guthrie, with a parking garage along the lagoon and a sprawling parking lot that has covered much of the fields and woods I once knew. The well-worn nature paths along the river, behind the fine houses on Riverside Drive, are no more. Fences with no trespassing signs make one feel unwelcome. Some of the property owners use the riverbank like their private landfill, destroying its natural beauty.
The stretch of river from behind Home Depot in Endwell to River Road, which was a nice walk which we took with our kids, is plastered with new “No Trespassing” signs posted by the town of Union. Violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, whatever that means.
Japanese knotweed, aka bamboo, has taken over much of what I once knew. It’s everywhere, even on the country hills, miles away. In winter, the dying stalks turn red, making them easy to spot.
My concern is that as the old trees die, no new ones will be able to take root in the invasive plant forest. The river, its islands and shores, shall forever change as its waters flow to the sea. I am just happy that my friends and I grew up in the days of more natural surroundings and where free-range children played. I do wish, though, that I could have experienced this river valley five hundred years ago, before the Europeans arrived. It must have been awesome.
