Country Roads of Massachusetts : Drives, Day Trips, and Weekend Excursions

Rating:
Summary: a sage introduction to the sights and psyches of Upstate
Review: What other state can claim as many notable small towns as does the Empire State? Cooperstown, Lake Placid, Sleepy Hollow, Woodstock, Watkins Glen, Chautauqua, Corning, Saratoga Springs, West Point, Oyster Bay, several Hamptons, Ticonderoga, Seneca Falls-- Norman Rockwell (who lived a short walk across the state line) might just have been a tad jealous. Only the first and last make it into this book, and just as well. When Country Roads Press sends America's top small-town journalist through America's top small-town state, you don't want to waste him on places you already know.

Bill Kauffman (of Batavia and Elba) has milked a career out of keeping the leaders of the land's great Lost Causes from, as he puts it, "going down the memory hole", in books such as America First! and With Good Intentions, and in frequent pieces in The Wall Street Journal, American Enterprise, Chronicles, Liberty and other magazines. Here he applies the same special talent to a "second tier" of New York villages, and one wonders if he chose these particular communities for an unusual richness in odd stories and characters, or whether he'd have dug these up anywhere he went.

Kauffman's at his best at home in the western snout of the state, where he unlocks the somewhat feudal nature of Geneseo, LeRoy and Angelica. (The obscurer the town, the more fun he has with it.) The pump industry of Seneca Falls, a quarter of the world's total, gets as much of his attention as the distaff business there. And why not? Sanitation has saved more lives than medicine. Hundreds of millions owe their lives to this important town, celebrated for the all the wrong reasons.

His subjects have given us three presidents, Mormonism, women's suffrage and colored gelatin, but if there's something else of note in town, Bill'l let us know. (And if it's in the next town over, he'll cheat and go there.)

Further afield Kauffman's more the tourist, especially across the "soda/pop" line, which is not as close to the city as he imagines. Cooperstown is not quite as cute as he paints it-- indeed, one of its charms is the relative lack of the boutique pollution that has ruined many similar places. And couldn't he find a "country town" left on Long Island? That in itself is sad. However, his analysis of the Burned-Over District is so sharp it will inspire the reader to try his hand at the built-over districs as well.

Finally, some things to look for which aren't in the book (and may no longer exist):

Westfield-- the weird, wing-shaped Theatre Motel and Drive-In on the lake;

Bath (in the Hammondsport chapter)-- the Chat-a-Wyle Café and its grape pie;

Palmyra-- where Winston Churchill's grandparents married, perhaps not in one of the four churches at the intersection;

Oneonta (in the Cooperstown chapter)-- the book mentions the NY-P League team there, but check out their Depression-era ballpark in the Susquehanna valley, one of the handsomest settings in all the sport. (And in "Soccertown, USA", no less.)

Rating:
Summary: a sage introduction to the sights and psyches of Upstate
Review: What other state can claim as many notable small towns as does the Empire State? Cooperstown, Lake Placid, Sleepy Hollow, Woodstock, Watkins Glen, Chautauqua, Corning, Saratoga Springs, West Point, Oyster Bay, several Hamptons, Ticonderoga, Seneca Falls-- Norman Rockwell (who lived a short walk across the state line) might just have been a tad jealous. Only the first and last make it into this book, and just as well. When Country Roads Press sends America's top small-town journalist through America's top small-town state, you don't want to waste him on places you already know.

Bill Kauffman (of Batavia and Elba) has milked a career out of keeping the leaders of the land's great Lost Causes from, as he puts it, "going down the memory hole", in books such as America First! and With Good Intentions, and in frequent pieces in The Wall Street Journal, American Enterprise, Chronicles, Liberty and other magazines. Here he applies the same special talent to a "second tier" of New York villages, and one wonders if he chose these particular communities for an unusual richness in odd stories and characters, or whether he'd have dug these up anywhere he went.

Kauffman's at his best at home in the western snout of the state, where he unlocks the somewhat feudal nature of Geneseo, LeRoy and Angelica. (The obscurer the town, the more fun he has with it.) The pump industry of Seneca Falls, a quarter of the world's total, gets as much of his attention as the distaff business there. And why not? Sanitation has saved more lives than medicine. Hundreds of millions owe their lives to this important town, celebrated for the all the wrong reasons.

His subjects have given us three presidents, Mormonism, women's suffrage and colored gelatin, but if there's something else of note in town, Bill'l let us know. (And if it's in the next town over, he'll cheat and go there.)

Further afield Kauffman's more the tourist, especially across the "soda/pop" line, which is not as close to the city as he imagines. Cooperstown is not quite as cute as he paints it-- indeed, one of its charms is the relative lack of the boutique pollution that has ruined many similar places. And couldn't he find a "country town" left on Long Island? That in itself is sad. However, his analysis of the Burned-Over District is so sharp it will inspire the reader to try his hand at the built-over districs as well.

Finally, some things to look for which aren't in the book (and may no longer exist):

Westfield-- the weird, wing-shaped Theatre Motel and Drive-In on the lake;

Bath (in the Hammondsport chapter)-- the Chat-a-Wyle Café and its grape pie;

Palmyra-- where Winston Churchill's grandparents married, perhaps not in one of the four churches at the intersection;

Oneonta (in the Cooperstown chapter)-- the book mentions the NY-P League team there, but check out their Depression-era ballpark in the Susquehanna valley, one of the handsomest settings in all the sport. (And in "Soccertown, USA", no less.)