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Mother Nature, Father Time, and their son Self-Loathing Disappointment
PART 1 of 2: Western New York and its Charms
7/22/05
by Shaw

I spent last week in a cabin in the Finger Lakes with my parents.

To some, this might sound either a. awful, b. boring, c. creepy, or d. dullsville. I, however, have planned this for several months, and was really looking forward to going to the North Country and to getting back with Mother Nature again, having spent the past few months in the extremely hot and crime-ridden suburbs of Washington DC. This was my chance to see my family, who I have not seen for several months, and to lay back, relax, and go fishing in the cooler temperatures of Western New York.

The "Shaws" (faces changed to protect the innocent)

If you have never been to a Western New York State town, here is how to picture it. First of all, when you think of New York you probably think of Times Square, Broadway, the Empire State Building, the Brooklyn Bridge, Trump Towers, and maybe Coney Island, Brooklyn, mobsters. Remember the game Sim City? Let's build a Sim-Western New York town. Start with a typical New York City block, with the bodega, the liquor store, the cramped and dirty grocery store, the Duane Read pharmacy, a bar or two, some apartments on top, and office building in there somewhere. Oh, and about 100,000 people.

Okay, now delete 99,000 people, change the Duane Read to an Eckerd, rename the grocery store IGA but keep it cramped and dirty, break all of the apartments into separate buildings (called "houses), do the same to the office building (call the little pieces "offices"), attach the liquor store to the grocery store, and then take everything else and scatter it. Just pick up a map of a 5 square mile area, and take everything on that city block and roll it like dice and drop it on the map. If there are any roads on the map just move those too so there is no direct route anywhere, so things can be a mile apart and you have to drive 10 miles to go between them. Add a train track and an old historic canal (but no trains). Name your town, either after a geographical feature of the area or something Native American. Samples: Cobleskill (a stream), Stone Ridge (not a Western NY town, but follows the pattern), Split Rock, Oswego, Owego, Oneonta, Cayuga. Sometimes you may name the town after a Native American person, as in the case of Big Indian, New York (there really was a guy they called "Big Indian" and this town really exists, I've been there), or combine the rules, like Seneca Falls, where I was staying, in which case a geographical feature is first named after a Native Americn tribe and then the town is named after the geographical feature. Then add, to the "center" of the town, a college, and call it "SUNY + name of town." Samples: SUNY Oneonta, SUNY Oswego, SUNY Geneseo. Then take the town's population, and add four times that many people to the college. Then add one bar and a vintage clothing shop right next to the college. Finally, find the nearest body of water, and put in a bait shop near it. No matter how many people work in the bait shop, you are only allowed 20 teeth between them. That means if you have 5 people, each should have 4 teeth (or one has 20 and the other three have none--your discretion).

Special Rule: if your town is less than 5 miles away from another town, you are allowed to add a Wal-Mart. If there are three towns within 5 miles, you may add a hospital. If there is a large enough Native American population you may add a casino. Under no circumstances may you add a record store, new clothing store, or video rental chain.

What's so great about this? The smell of the outdoors, the cool air, the complete quiet, and the proximity to Lake Cayuga were tops on my list. I could sit outside and read in the solitude, have a beer on the lake with my line in the water, and catch a few fish. Cayuga is teeming with Black Bass, Yellow Perch, Northern Pike, Chain Pickerel, Lake Trout, Landlocked Salmon, and various Sunfish. I had honestly been looking forward to this trip for months. I brought my fishing gear, my running shoes, and 5 books.

When we arrived, I immediately knew something was wrong. For starters, the temperature was 99 and 85% humidity. This is absurd. The last time I was in Ithaca (40 miles south of my vacation spot in Seneca Falls), it was snowing in October. Because the house we were in was built to withstand a Western New York summer, the air conditioning consists of a window unit in one of the bedrooms. There is a huge sliding glass door with no curtain overlooking the lake, and the biggest room in the house is a screened in porch. The house is meant to breathe in and out with the seasons, and the woodstove keeps the whole house warm in winter.

So holy schist, it was fulcrum hot.

Here is the total amount of time I spent doing things over 5 days:

And the food. Oh my, the food. Did you know that you can batter and deep-fry anything? I kind of knew--I mean, if you had named some foods and said, "Hey Shaw, can you fry this?" I would have said "Yes" to most things. Like cheese, dough, potatoes, Mars bars. But how about broccoli? How about mushrooms? How about cauliflower? Yes, I would have still responded in the affirmative but in so doing I would have sparked the very question in my head that is likely coming to you now: what's the point of deep-frying something like that?

Well now I know the answer: here is the recipe for making a Western New Yorker:

Ingredients:

  1. sperm
  2. egg
  3. batter
  4. lard
  5. other stuff

Instructions:

  1. Hatch baby using Ingredients 1 and 2; deliver from mother.
  2. Dip Ingredient 5 in Ingredients 3 and 4; deep fry for 10 minutes. Feed to baby.
  3. When baby is not hungry anymore, wait five minutes and repeat Instruction 2. Continue until fully grown.

To Be Continued...

_______________________________________

...Coming Next Week, PART 2 of 2: Disappointment, Departure, and Spelunking (and spiders)
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