Five a.m. arrived to push me out of bed, or maybe that was Peg.
Last night we decided that our routine of driving down the hill to the YMCA gym after work was a bust--I'd pour myself a cocktail when the day was done and it was time to sit down and log my billable hours for the day, and by the second sip any thought of pumping iron or bouncing along on the elliptical machine had melted away. Plus, who wants to eat supper at eight o'clock while wearing sweaty gym clothes? Not us. If we made it to the Y once a week, that was an achievement.
So this morning we crawled into gym clothes, poured our coffees into to-go cups, and made our way in the darkness to the gym. Once I shook off the predawn torpor it went fine, aided by the thundering '70s hard rock station I'd found on Spotify. My theory, as a history major talking about biochemistry, is that if I pound my eardrums with the sounds of life when I was 16 and had maybe twice the testosterone I have now, this saggy old body will remember its former self and rise to the occasion at the gym. So far the empirical evidence supporting this theory is inconclusive at best.
About 6:20 Peg swings past the military bench, pantomimes a smooch through her mask, and walks out the door for Guthrie. I spend a few more minutes completing my circuit, the same routine I've kept since I was a teenager (although the amount of weight has declined), then make my own way out into the chilly morning.
Standing in the parking lot, I'm faced with a decision: turn left and walk up Cedar Street to get home, or turn right to cross the Chemung River at Wegman's, then down Market Street to Pine and then home. Six of one, a half dozen the other. I turn left across the parking lot toward Bridge Street.
As I walk I pull a sip from my travel mug, and lukewarm coffee dribbles out the side and down my jacket. Our mugs reflect this season of life for us; they still look basically fine on the outside, but within the gaskets are shot and they've begun to fail in their primary function. I find myself thinking it won't be long until this mug goes in the trash, as happened with P's favorite mug a couple months back.
My reverie over the dribble mug is broken by the sound of singing, or perhaps chanting, as I pass the Hilton Garden. A young black man is standing at the curb, judging from his white collared shirt waiting for his ride after working a mid shift at the front desk of the hotel. I can hear music from his ear buds, and him singing along. Or I guess that's singing.
"Zuga zuga zuga zuga" he chants, now with palms skyward as he swirls like a dervish, backside gyrating.
"Zuga zuga zuga zuga".
As an old Los Angelino, I realize there's a thin line between this sort of ecstasy and paranoid schizophrenia, and give my friend a wide berth, assiduously avoiding eye contact. I pass and he seems not to notice, swaying and singing in his own creation.
The Chemung River flows past bright grassy banks, right to left. I never noticed it flowed in that direction while hidden under the winter's ice, past Corning and Big Flats and Horseheads and Elmira, before it finally disappears into the hills to the east and loses itself in the Susquehanna. Its surface is covered in swirls and eddies, but with no sign of fish. Too cold perhaps.
As I turn onto Market Street, a young man and woman jog by, lost in conversation. I've been a runner all my life, but have only once gone running with a woman, my cousin Beth, in Central Park so many years ago. Every group run over the years has exclusively been with men. Why is that?
The west end of Market Street is mostly a long, depressing stretch of storefronts for lease, bookended by a high-end butcher shop and a chain eyeglass store. On one wall I notice a face looking back at me, do a double take, and realize I'm not hallucinating.
All these months here, and I've never noticed him up there. The pandemic has limited our chances to enjoy Market Street, so I guess I can't be blamed for having missed my new acquaintance. They were selling wreaths out there on the grass in December. So long ago, it seems.
Spring in the form of chirping birds echoes along the brick walls framing Corning's main drag. The trees there haven't begun to leaf out, however, late arrivals to the festival of rebirth happening all around me on my walk.
To my left is the old gate to the Corning Glass Works, another landmark I never noticed until now.
Even as the whistle signals it has turned 7 o'clock (the same whistle I used to hear in my little house on Massalina Drive, lying in bed as shift change occurred at the paper mill), commuters line up to enter the parking structure for another day of office work.
I turn to my right up Pine Street toward home. The hills here explode with the variegated greens and soft reds and whites of spring, a visual feast we from the piney woods completely miss this time of year.
No wonder this longing for rebirth and renewal manifests in most human religions in the spring. Our hope for our own lives plays itself out in a natural world that seems always to renew itself, even as we despoil it and watch our own bodies decay on this one-way ride to dust. The miracle of resurrection is what we see all around us. Deep down, even as our rational minds recoil at the absurdity of the Easter message, our relationship with whatever created all this spring wonder gives us hope that perhaps it's so.
A pimply young man with a boom box blasting the sort of disco I remember hearing on skating rink Saturdays in about 1976 dashes across Denison Parkway and past me.
"Hey," I say, making eye contact as we meet.
He looks perplexed, nods, and keeps walking toward town.
A geriatric lady with pink earbuds approaches as I start up the hill. I say "hey" again. Nada.
I remember that our Southern greeting of "hey" is not a thing here, seems even a little confrontational and insulting to the Yankee ear. I'm in their home, so I don't take offense. I'll adapt.
Striding up Pine Street, I pass the cleaners where I dropped off bags of our clothes in freezing rain last October after our washing machine quit. I remember being embarrassed to have a stranger, even this friendly, matronly woman at the register, handling my underwear of many colors. I only went there once before discovering the washer and dryer in our haunted basement, so the nice lady only folded my undies once.
Across the street is the Presbyterian Church, the oldest church building in Corning.
I am fairly certain my Calvinist friends here are the source of the lovely hymns delivered by church bells that ring through the midday as I work in our apartment just up the hill. There's enough Charles Wesley in their songbook to make me feel at home.
I walk past the Steuben County Courthouse, behind which a hard-looking guy with a Marine haircut smokes a cigarette and stares off into Canfield Park next store.
"Good morning," I offer, with eye contact and a smile.
"Hi." He returns to his project of destroying his lungs. I feel I've made progress in these people's folkways.
The trees along Pine Street are exploding with color.
At this point I am puffing and gulping for air like a fat lady chasing a taco truck. These months of sitting in an armchair staring out the window with the cats have taken their toll.
I finally reach the apex of Southside Hill, or at least the Sinclaire House where I'll spend the day.
Across the street is the old Corning Free Academy, a public school built in the 1920s.
The location of the school has been a topic of conversation in the Solarium all winter (between me and P, not me and the cats). The Sinclaire House, our home, was built in 1890. Next door to the west is another mansion, now on the cusp of being converted to apartments. Before the CFA was built in 1925, these homes would have had spectacular views of Corning below and the Chemung Valley. Afterward, they awoke each morning to a four-story behemoth with a clock tower projecting like a giant middle finger toward the Sinclaires on the other side of the street.
Coincidence? Well, consider this. H. P. Sinclaire was a glassmaking entrepreneur, and by all accounts a pretty good one. He opened his own glassmaking facilities in Corning and nearby Bath in 1904, and was probably a competitor to the folks at Corning, Inc. One imagines he probably seemed like an interloper here, and his mansion, perhaps the finest on Southside Hill, a totem of his success.
So, with his company at its peak, an ugly brick school is erected to block his view. Did Corning, Inc. have a hand in that? It's hard to say, although I'll offer that the historical marker for Canfield Park, immediately to the north, states that it was created in that space at the direction of Corning, Inc. Is it a stretch to suggest they may also have influenced in the location of a school that blocked a competitor's view?
Sinclaire died "unexpectedly" two years after CFA was built, at the age of 63. His business died not long thereafter. Now this grand testament to his success, built at the height of his powers, is a sad, crumbling cluster of apartments. No spring for the Sinclaire House, either. We all fall apart.
But decrepit or not, I have bills to pay and deadlines to meet. It's time.
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