GUEST COLUMN: A hometown lost

Cross-country road trip begins with a stop in the author's hometown of Cortland

By Greg Brownell

CORTLAND, N.Y. – The four of us were standing between two houses, well back from the street. We couldn’t see the cars until the last moment.

We listened for the engine and watched for the headlights on the street. The snowballs went arching up into the air like mortars, meant for the roofs of passing cars. Mostly they missed, leaving splotches of snow all over the street.

Until the police car came along. Every snowball hit. We ran.

Flashing red lights reflected off the treeline as we fled toward the creek. It was terrifying. The thought of a Goody Two-shoes fifth-grader like me being sent to Juvenile Hall — or “juvey hall,” as we always called it — made my legs move in a way they haven’t before or since.

Two of our party took a left behind the Wickman garage. Along with another kid, I went right behind the Dorset property, then cut across the creek. We huddled behind a stone wall on the other side.

I stole a look from behind the wall as the officers walked up to the creek bank. They seemed unhurried. Maybe they were debating whether these snowball-throwers were stupid or brazen … or both. The beams of their flashlights licked the tree limbs above us. Then, to my great relief, they followed the footprints in the snow that went to their left.

I can smile about that now as I sit in my car on Madison Street, across from the house I grew up in. I can smile about a lot of things that happened in this house, this neighborhood and this city.

It was a neighborhood of sandboxes and swing sets, of tree climbing and kick the can. We pretty much ran wild. This was the 60s and 70s, before we got all risk-averse about bringing up children.

The house I grew up in was distinctive, with its red-brick walls and flat-ish roof. There used to be a faded spot out back where a young boy threw his ball up against the wall. I wonder if it’s still there.

Madison Street in Cortland, looking east. My old home is on the left.

My sisters and I sold the house in 2020 after the last of our parents died. It’s changed hands at least once since then. I don’t know who lives in my house anymore.

I never thought much of Cortland when I was growing up. It was just kind of there. I took it for granted.

In fact, I groused about being stuck there, probably called it a “hick town,” told friends I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Only later did I come to see Cortland in a romantic sort of way. It’s a pretty little town, nestled in a valley among several hills in Central New York.

Cortland has a few minor claims to fame. It’s the home of Alton B. Parker, who got creamed by Teddy Roosevelt in the 1904 Presidential election. The New York Jets held training camp here for a few years. It has a SUNY college. It was mentioned in a Twilight Zone episode.

The city has some beautiful parks, including Suggett Park, just down the street from my old house. I played youth baseball at that park during the summer, swam at Wickwire Pool, skated on the frozen-over basketball court during the winter.

Around the corner from our house is St. Mary’s church, which has to be the biggest church you will ever find in a small town. I wonder if kids still use its many nooks and crannies for hide and seek.

St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church on North Main Street in Cortland.

Beyond St. Mary’s is downtown. Main Street features banks, restaurants, the Post Office and some bars. Some of the storefronts are empty, including, alarmingly, that of The Cortland Standard, which shut down earlier this year.

They’re getting ready to convert Main Street to two-way traffic. That’s big news. I remember people debating the issue when I was growing up.

Hang a left on Court Street and you’ll find Cortland Free Library. The children’s reading room is downstairs, just as it was when I was young. They’re spruced up the building in recent years, but it still has a yesteryear kind of feel. You could film a 1920s movie in there.

The interior of Cortland Free Library.

Cortland County’s stately courthouse, complete with a rotunda, is on the other side of Church Street. I don’t know if there’s a juvey hall inside the place.

Across from the courthouse is a county office building that used to be the junior high school. Not a lot of happy memories there. Not a place where a scrawny, geeky adolescent could thrive.

The entrance to the gym at the old junior high school.

I once got the ridiculous idea of running for student council president, a popularity contest that would have been unwinnable for a kid like me under the best of circumstances. There was a school assembly where each of us gave a speech. One of the other four candidates got up and unleashed a tear-jerker of a spiel that fell somewhere between the Gettysburg Address and the Cross of Gold speech.

It was not close. I joined Alton B. Parker on the scrapheap of electoral losers.

The high school was, and still is, located on a hilltop south of town. It was run back then by a principal named John Gee. You might recognize the name if you really know your baseball history. Until Randy Johnson came along, he was the tallest player ever to play in the major leagues.

I sat at the faculty table during lunch as a sophomore, hoping to hear stories from his baseball-playing days in the 1940s. I wish I’d written down some of those stories.

Mr. Gee was generally beloved, if quietly feared, by the students of Cortland High School. At 6-foot-9, he could shut down trouble with a stare. There was order in the hallways.

He’s the kind of principal that couldn’t exist today. I once watched a junior high kid make the mistake of sassing Gee in the parking lot. The kid’s bike crashed to the pavement as he was pulled back into school by the scruff of his shirt.

A lot of the Cortland of my youth is still there to see. Pudgies Pizza, where I worked summers while I was in college, looks much the same at the corner of North Main and Grant. Cort-Lanes hosts bowlers out on Tompkins Street. The Water Works building remains a rock on Broadway. Churches still line Church Street.

But Parker Elementary School stands empty across from Suggett Park, having been closed several years ago. Something about that feels wrong.

The houses on Madison Street mostly look the same, but of course, the neighborhood I knew no longer exists. The childhood memories are ghosts of the mind. I guess it’s that way for all of us.

I used to be happy that I had left Cortland behind and started a new life somewhere else. I remembered all the bad things that happened and not much of the good. The world looks different to me now.

I feel a strange sense of emptiness driving these streets. Now that I have all these warm, fuzzy feelings for the city, I no longer have a reason to be here. My only remaining connection is a sister who runs a shop in nearby Homer.

Many of us have a soft spot for the place they grew up. For me, that place is Cortland. A hometown, lost.

Greg Brownell spent his entire career in the sports department of The Post-Star including his last 24 years as sports editor before retiring in 2023. To continue to follow his trip across America, sign up for his Substack column below. It is completely free.