Even the Crystal City Has Its Flaws

Starting to get used to this view off the front porch. I'd still prefer the hills to Canfield Park, but it's lovely in its own way. That is the Steuben County Courthouse Annex down there behind the trees. It'd be awfully convenient if I ever wanted to practice a little law up here, but it doesn't seem that there's enough rapacious development or Southern reckless mayhem to keep a practice like mine busy.

Mornings at the new house aren't that much different from before. I roll out of bed, make coffee, and feed Peg before she leaves for work at 6:15. Then I scan the paper, go through emails to see who was looking for me after hours yesterday, and write this blog. Sometimes I admit to getting a little distracted, in an unproductive way. This morning, for instance, I wandered off online looking for stuff to hang on the empty walls here at Tara--I'm thinking 19th century portraits, but they're awfully expensive and you never know what bad karma you're bringing into your home with these strangers staring down at you with a look of Victorian disdain.

Plus, it would confuse the ghosts. "Who the hell are those people?" they'd ask, maybe writing their question in blood on the wall. Or, "That's Herman and Abigail from down the street. They were a******s. Who thought it was a good idea to hang their portraits on our walls?"

I'll have to give this a little thought, but not too much. We'll eventually hang a picture or two, I'm sure.

I've written here about Corning in idyllic terms, a picturesque American postcard of a town, everything developers promise when they build some planned community, but can't possibly deliver because a place like this develops organically, over decades. But over the last few days we've found a couple flaws.

First, there are screens on the windows here for a reason. As we make our way into our third (and maybe final) warm month this year, the bugs have sprung to life. Last Saturday we were at a cookout hosted by one of Peg's work colleagues over in Painted Post, lounging on the deck in a beautiful yard that backed up to a heavily wooded hillside. We soon figured out that exposed skin was a bad thing as the sun set and the mosquitoes descended on us; big, hungry ones that left everyone slapping and scratching until we finally decided to call it a night before we ran completely out of blood to offer.

The brisket and the company were really, really awesome, however. You have to take the good with the bad.

Then yesterday afternoon as temperatures warmed into the 70s and I worked in the sunshine on the front porch, I noticed a sharp sting on my exposed ankle and looked down to see a huge fly chewing on me. If you're a denizen of the Florida Gulf coast you know these critters, or at least their country cousins the yellow and dog flies who descend on the coast whenever the coastal breeze dies down and they fly south out of the piney woods. Not only do they bite, but they also artfully engage in BFM that would make any fighter pilot envious, avoiding a swatting hand to come back over and over, inflicting a sting wherever they alight.

So yeah, we have those up here too. I had two or three taking runs at my exposed skin until I finally found a can of Raid in the basement and took to shooting streams of poison at them until they moved on in search of another victim.

After P got home we walked across the park to the Elks Lodge for Taco Tuesday, barely arriving before they shut down for the night and taking the last two plates of tacos. The Elks have a tradition of members serving as kitchen and wait staff, cooking the food and serving it to keep costs down. P and I wolfed down six tacos total, at a cost of $10. Given the furniture buying spree, this is right in our price range these days.

Last night's servers were two very nice acquaintances we met when we first arrived here last October. I've written about them before--their daughter was the nice young lady on her way to a job as a museum curator after graduating from college a few weeks ago.

Once they closed the taco fixings line and put away the lettuce, onion, tomato, and such, the two of them took their own taco supper and sat next to us in the bar. Soon the conversation turned, as it so often has over the last year, to the pandemic. I bemoaned the situation in Florida, where this last wave has kept me out of the office in Panama City after even my vaccinated friends started falling ill with the delta variant.

"If people would have just gone and gotten the vaccine, we wouldn't be here. It's ridiculous," I bemoaned, figuring I was dealing with kindred spirits.

The two of them looked at each other and scowled, then turned sheepishly back at P and me.

"We're waiting for the FDA to approve the vaccine. How do you know it's safe?"

Oh yeah. Steuben County is only 40% vaccinated, basically the same as Bay County. Also like our southern coastal home, it voted over 70% for Trump. Those people walk among us.

I made some comment about getting experimental vaccinations against things like anthrax in the days before Desert Storm, and somehow not growing a third eye. No one laughed.

Their almost embarrassed response tells me they realize this is silly, a pretextual explanation for what amounts to a cultural or political decision. But I bet most of the folks in that Lodge aren't vaccinated, aren't going to get vaccinated, and would die of shame if they snuck off to get the jab and one of their drinking buddies there at the bar found out about it. Southside Hill is probably almost entirely vaccinated, and the folks filling the headquarters building at Corning, Inc. as well.

But cross the Chemung River, or go to Elmira or Painted Post or Hornell, and it's a different story.

So this place is not immune from bugs, or tribalism, or epidemiological ignorance. I note these things back home in Panama City, but can't give this place a pass as we dig a little deeper and venture beyond the Main Street Disney that is downtown Corning.

Time to get ready for my first conference call this morning in about six minutes, and the furniture mover just called to let me know he's an hour out, carrying in his truck Peg's family room and master bedroom furniture. Onward.