life and travels in Upstate New York
Hmmm. I think I can say I speak for multitudes or people right now about this. Isn’t is a sad state of affairs. 
We are stuck right now because gasoline is just too durn expensive. 
Oh man. This is an amazing thing. If you like wild and different things to do, you have got to check out this website, the Xperience Days. I think it’s amazing that you can actually do some of these things! You’ll have to see the website to soak everything in, but these things would make terrific and unqiue gifts for an adventuresome dad for Father’s Day, a crazy mom for Mother’s Day, or even for yourself! There’s a ton of stuff for the New York tri-state area, but there are locations all over the United States. Cool!
Basically, this company offers once-in-a-lifetime experiences. For example, take a helicopter ride over the Manhattan skyline (and affordable $110), be a virtual combat fighter pilot (more expensive at $1,900) complete with lessons and video of your exploits, or get a chef for a day in a wine and cheese tasting meal ($400). Those are the things that jumped out at me– there’s a ton more things! Surfing, hot air balloon rides, culinary classes, hang gliding, and culinary experiences are some other things available. Some things are rather pricey, but some things are very affordable! And if you’ve got a group of siblings all willing to pitch in for a Mom and Dad anniversary gift or something- WOW! It could be amazing.
Check out the website! It’s an amazing experience in of itself!
The snow is sticking around to the bitter end, isn’t it?
The kids are I have been studying ancient history together and read the account in history where Titus and his Roman minions attacked the city of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Some legends and historians say that the siege and slaughter were so severe that streets flowed with blood. Ick.
It may be hard to believe such a fantastic account as streets filling with blood. Yet, I told the kids of another fantastic story of streets being filled in a modern-day catastrophe: the Great Boston Molasses Massacre of 1919. On the Internet, it is regaled with “urban legend” status, but it did indeed happen. The New York Times has an old archived story of the event. The story is almost impossible to believe. (I am also thinking of the event because I am making my own brown sugar with molasses today– more on that later).
Almost exactly 89 years ago, on January 15, 1919, a torrid wave of molasses swept a portion of Boston, Massachusetts. The story actually begins in 1915, with the hasty construction of a tank 58 feet high and 90 feet in diameter by United States Industrial Alcohol Company. The tank was used as a holding tank for 2.5 million gallons of molasses. Molasses was used to make rum, and also used to make industrial alcohol for ammunition. Demand was high, and there’s money to be made.
We all know what’s going to happen.
There’s an archived duplicate of the story from Yankee magazine, which tells of the tragedy in a pre-National Enquirer/ambulance-chaser style.
There were accounts of leaks showing up around the tank. Of course these early warnings were disregarded. Actually, not only were they disregarded, they were hidden. As soon as the company caught wind of complaints of leaks, they painted the tank brown to hide the leaks.
No one really knows what exactly caused the tank to burst that warm January day. Some say the sudden and severe temperature change from below zero the day before to near 40 degrees on January 15 made the molasses batch unstable. Others say the new shipment addition of a cool batch of molasses to the warm molasses already in the tank caused a fermentation process and the explosion.
The ground started to quake, and the tank’s bolts popped out. Suddenly the tank ruptured. Huge sheets of metal flew down the street into buildings. A fountain of gooey molasses spurt up 30 feet high, rolled down the streets in waves, and buried everything and everyone in its path. Imagine a wave of molasses blurping its way through houses’ windows up the the chandeliers. Ever see “The Blob”?
CNN.com tells it:
A one-ton piece of steel from the vat flew into a trestle of elevated railroad tracks, causing the tracks to buckle. Two children collecting firewood and dripping molasses near the tank [sic] disappeared under the fast-spreading liquid.
The force of the molasses ripped a firehouse from its foundation, sending the second floor crashing into the first and trapping a stonecutter and several firefighters underneath. One drowned.
The property damage, including a leveled commercial warehouse yard, was easily more than $1 million.
More than 20 people died and 150 were injured in a suffocating tragedy similar to that of Vesivius. Hours after the explosion, the company’s lawyers were on the scene, preparing their defense by falsely accusing negligent workers. Creeps.
Firefighters (those who survived) tried to blast the molasses away with cold salt water. The molasses just frothed and foamed in angry waves. Cleanup took over a year. For decades, some said that on hot summers the pungent odor of molasses seeped up from the streets.
A massive court case ensued. The United States Industrial Alcohol Company was found guilty and paid almost a million dollars to settle the claims. The city of Boston tightened their standards to require certified inspections and approvals.
Image of the aftermath is at Wikipedia. It’s truly one of those “believe it or not” stories. But it did actually happen– death by molasses. Yuk.
It’s called the “Old Main” and I did a huge post on it’s history, it’s most famous patient, and some stunning interior photos, in January. Today, the kids and I were visiting the Children’s Museum in downtown Utica (more on that later), and took a drive to York Street to see the Old Main.
The columns to the building are utterly tremendous. Who needs to see the Parthenon when you’ve got this? Their size is awesome. This building is famous for being the finest example of Greek Revival architecture in the world. >>> Read more of ‘Utica Lunatic Asylum’
As a relative newbie to Wordpress, I have (finally) discovered the elations of Akismet. I logged in to see over 130 spam-labeled comments. Most of them are mish-mashed paragraphs of URL gobbledegook, but others are marvelous in their deception. Check out some of these!
John Smith | Nice, but I think it is sometimes not enough to get it complete.
Max |ton College Cemetery, Clinton, NY at New York Traveler.net thanks for this post!
Daniel |I couldn’t understand some parts of this article tone Fort in Schoharie, NY at New York Traveler.net, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
Karan |I found your blog via Google while searching for new york travel guide and your post regarding py at New York Traveler.net looks very interesting to me. I have seen many sites before and most of them do not look this good. I cannot wait to let my friends know about this site. Thanks for the excellent content.
Those make me laugh, because they are “imposter” comments. They are taken from actual comments by actual non-spam readers. The spammer perverts the content, adds an email address that is very similar to the real URL of the real friend who made a real comment; but the URL is usually about insurance or loans; and thus tries to get it past the discerning Akismet eye. LOL. Spammers, go get your own blogs.
I had been through the Mansion House years ago. This time I took my kids to see it’s grand architecture and give them first-hand history of this area. It was quite the lesson in architecture, religion, and history.
The Oneida Community, established in 1848 by Vermont-native John Humphrey Noyes, was a religious commune. It was a highly controversial commune for its time. In a nutshell, Noyes believed in complete communalism, to such extreme that the family unit (marriages and parent-child relationships) was broken down and “shared.” The group was banned from many Upstate cities– members were even run out of the city of Utica in a near-riot– for “corrupting public morals.”
I had become greatly interested in the history of the Oneida Community after discovering and reading A Yankee Saint: John Humphrey Noyes and the Oneida Community by Robert A. Parker, years ago. Still curious, I had read Pierrepont Noyes’ My Father’s House: an Oneida Boyhood. The two books presented two vastly different views of this so-called utopian society. The book on John Noyes, founder the Community and father of Pierrepont, cast a glowing light on the Oneida Community. Pierrepont’s book was quite the opposite. It was written from the viewpoint of the child, forcibly bereft of maternal love and raised as cattle in an experiment hailed by leaders around the world (and socialists like H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle).
Pierrepont’s is quite the book about the dark side of socialism, particularly hard for the more vulnerable members of the group (i.e., young women and children). Needless to say, when John Noyes died, the Community fell apart. The children of “stirpiculture” had no desire to continue the eugenic socialist experiment of their fathers.
Pierrepont, the “black sheep” of the community, grew up to rescue the family’s business and made it into the world-renowned Oneida flatware company that we know today. I understand that Pierrepont Noyes was a generous CEO, giving his employees fair pay for fair work (compared to the other misers of that era), offering no-interest loans for employees to buy houses, and hosting company picnics and outings. The area of Sherrill and Oneida are quite prosperous to this day. Streets are clean and houses are beautiful. There remains a sense of community and cleanliness in these small towns.
Although the Community was a bit nutty when it came to Biblical doctrine, there is something to be said for their Yankee ingenuity and work ethic. They built an entire culture upon these acres of former Indian land. I was especially awed by the grand style of architecture.
The house is Empire style, which was popular in the mid-1800’s. The French mansard roof sets it off nicely. The slate shingles, if you can see them in the picture below (or click the picture for a larger photo), are different colors and set in pleasing patterns. The detail of the work is most admirable. Apparently, the Community members did all the work themselves. John Noyes routinely sent out his young men to places like Italy, to learn the art of fresco and sculpting for example, and the young men would return to apply what they had learned at the Community.
A lovely courtyard is at the back of the complex. The cafeteria-like dining hall and kitchen are back here, separate from the living quarters.
Each member of the Community had his or her own small room, similar to a dormitory room like colleges have today. A large shared living room, dining room, and a two-story theatre-room (where they often held recitals and plays for their entertainment) are in the main complex. Pierrepont Noyes recalled in his book that as a child, he never noticed the uniqueness of a kitchen built separately from the living quarters of a house. (Although, this is common in the south and southwest of the country, where the problem of cold weather doesn’t affect it as much). It was only as an adult, when he began visiting with others in the town (the “Gentiles” as the Community called the townsfolk), that he entered a house and was bombarded with the stale smells of cooking from the kitchen off the parlor room. I don’t know why I so particularly remember this part of the book. Perhaps it is because I don’t like kitchen smells in any room besides the kitchen.
At any rate, the kids and I wandered the grounds around the house, and I continued to give them some brief history of the Community.
Here’s a door into the lower part of the house. I love doors like this (under a porch). It looks so adventurous and secretive!
Here’s the front door, the front hall, and a snapshot of the interior.
The Mansion House offers tours of the complex (I had been through once before so I didn’t do it this time). Visitors can see the Jesse Kinsley Braiding Room for free, though, so we went into that.
Jesse Kinsley was raised in the Community. She was a gifted craftswoman, and created beautiful rugs, wall coverings, and linens. Some of these creations and some of her furniture is on display.
The Mansion House is now a high-end apartment building. It is nice to see that the place is being kept up and still has the lovely herb garden in the front yard.
If you’d like to learn more, check out AroundCNY. They have some good information.
I have two trips to put together and blog about, but I am sitting here at my desk, procrastinating. A day-long car trip always tuckers us out. I’m sitting like a lump, sipping my old coffee (I woke up late this morning), and staring at the screen, hoping I get the energy and ambition to start compiling the photos and writing the posts. I love writing, but some mornings it takes me longer to get started.
I still haven’t heard from the guys at BlogRush– I’m not listed in their links and not included in their new TrafficJam site, even though I am a registered member and have the widget in my sidebar. I browsed around the travel blogs a little. Here’s a title that caught my interest: Five Great Gifts for Travellers. The list was for travelers travelers– you know, full-time Tibet-climbing travelers (video camera, high-tech digital camera, airline tickets). I love travel supplies just as much as anyone, but I doubt I’d need airline tickets for my limited travel itinerary. But the list was interesting, and blog had some punch to it. And the title to this blog I’m a Seoul Man in Tokyo made me laugh. The blog isn’t as entertaining as the title, however.
As far as our car trip yesterday, it did not go as planned. We had planned to attend the Rubinstein Museum of Science and Technology (the MOST, as it is called). As I drove through downtown Syracuse (which was packed), down toward the Armory on Franklin Street, there wasn’t a parking space to be found anywhere. It was a N-I-G-H-T-M-A-R-E. And when we passed the entrance to the MOST, we saw a crowded line of people from the inside ticket office to the exterior doors, down the long stairs, onto the sidewalk, and into the curb a litte. The line was moving slowly and the temperature was 15 degrees. No way were we going to park five blocks away, walk to the MOST and wait half an hour to get inside. I was very disappointed, because I knew the kids would love the place.
We weighed our options, and decided on visiting the Erie Canal Museum nearby. I hadn’t brought my paper of addresses, so I drove up and down Erie Boulevard (and around and around the endless stream of one-way side streets), looking for the familiar weighlock building. As I tackled the traffic, I overheard one of the kids saying to another, “Hey, look at that mule statue.” I screeched to a halt! That was the landmark! I remember reading it at Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree. I wish I had remembered her parking tip. I found it today.
A tip if you plan to go. Look for this statue across the street from the museum. There are a few free parking spots in the lot behind and under the highway. The entrance to the lot is off of James St. There is also metered parking available on the streets surrounding the museum.
I wish I’d remembered that tip. No, instead I drove ’round and ’round downtown Syracuse, looking for a place to park, again. Finally, frustrated, I parked in front of the museum and walked in. I asked the gentleman at the desk if I might park there. He smiled and said “no” (with that smile that makes you wonder how many millions of times visitors have asked him about parking there). He directed me to pull in to the Senator Hughes State Office Building parking lot, across the street. “Ignore all the warning signs about towing and permits only,” he said, “just drive to the back of that parking lot, toward the short brick walls, and parking for the museum is allowed there.” He said that he has asked the State numerous times to get some better signs to inform visitors about the available parking, but “they haven’t gotten around to it.” If I was from another state, perhaps I would have been startled; but I am a New Yorker, and I just nodded my head in understanding, lol.
Well, we did park and we did make it into the building and we had a terrific time! But I haven’t compiled the photos nor have I done the research into the historical aspect; all that is forthcoming. I have to put up a story about our trip to the local newspaper building, too. But first I must finish my coffee!
Update: I blogged about our trip to the Erie Canal Museum. It was a wonderful visit. Part One is here, and Part Two is here.
You are currently browsing the New York Traveler.net weblog archives for the crazy category.
