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Genesee Vignettes
Personal Reflections on the Genesee River
A series of eighteen essays by
I. Introduction
II. The Mouth of the Genesee
III. The High Falls
I. Introduction
Although I lived in several places during my youth, I did most of my
growing up in Starkville, Mississippi, a small town that was, nevertheless,
the largest in Oktibbeha County—making it the county's main business
and entertainment center. Starkville was also the county seat, and just
down the hill from the courthouse was the jail that Johnny Cash sang about
on his San Quentin album. Another distinctive feature was the presence
a couple miles away of Mississippi State University, which had a student
population nearly as big as the town's. Football games—especially
with arch rival "Ole Miss"—were important campus activities, and
I well remember the clangorous din of students ringing their cowbells
each time MSU scored a touchdown.
It was Mississippi State that brought us to Starkville. In 1961 Dad accepted
an appointment as a full professor in the Chemical Engineering Department,
and for nearly a decade thereafter campus experiences came to me without
my giving them much thought: Sunday dinners in the cafeteria, movies at
the student union, occasional visits to Dad's office, even a summer course
after my junior year of high school. But when I matriculated, I chose
to go elsewhere.
I didn't realize that in leaving home for college I'd be leaving home
for good. Nor did I realize that I'd be exchanging small-town life for
life in one city after another. With each move, I'd have new schoolwork
uppermost on my mind. In Memphis I was an undergraduate, and in Atlanta
I worked on a master's degree. I went to Baltimore for my Ph.D. And I
began my career as a college teacher in Rochester. Yet I wasn't oblivious
to my surroundings. In Memphis, for example, I remember joining some of
my friends for a spur-of-the-moment drive downtown to watch the sun set—with
the bluff above the Mississippi giving us a panoramic view of the Arkansas
delta. In Atlanta, I remember riding my bicycle each morning to the Georgia
Tech campus: for several blocks I'd labor uphill; then after crossing
Peachtree Street I'd coast most of the rest of the way. As for Baltimore,
I remember my first visit, when the view from the train showed me the
rise and fall of the land in the rise and fall of block after block of
two-story row houses.
More than I realized, I soaked up the ambience of city life—so
that each time I returned home, I'd find the contrast quite striking.
In a city I could spend an entire day downtown without seeing anyone I
knew—and if I did, the occasion was noteworthy. Back in Starkville,
however, I could scarcely enter a store or walk half a block along Main
Street without seeing several familiar faces. Throughout my college years
I found myself uncomfortable with both situations—the massive anonymity
of each city versus the unrelenting familiarity of my hometown. But as
long as I kept moving, the issue never got resolved—because I never
stayed in one place long enough to feel like I truly belonged.
What changed all that was living in Rochester far longer than anywhere
else. I hadn't intended to stay. The original idea was to acquire some
teaching experience while finishing my dissertation and then to move on—probably
to a university in some other city. As a result, my earliest Rochester
experiences were just as fragmentary as my experiences in Memphis, Atlanta,
and Baltimore.
But because I've lived in Rochester so long, I've gradually realized
that my city memories from all these places are like the fossils I happen
to find in creek beds or road cuts. Although I keep my eyes out for them,
I don't collect them systematically. Instead, they come to me as isolated
events or unplanned experiences. But the fact that they appear where they
do turns out not to be accidental. Different layers of rock contain different
fossils—or none at all. Thus the presence of particular fossils
testifies to the presence of particular strata.
Similarly, my memorable city experiences—however fragmentary—testify
to the presence of vast layers of collective experience. I suspect that
more than the built structures (the houses, the office buildings, the
roads, and so forth), it's the presence of these distinctive layers of
collective experience that gives any city its overall character.
Just as no one type of fossil—or no one layer of rock—serves
to define fully an entire geological region, so any city's identity is
necessarily complex. But rather than dealing with Rochester's full complexity,
all at once, my approach was to start with a particular theme. Upon reflection,
what most struck me about my earliest Rochester experiences was how many
of them involved the Genesee River. Thus the central premise for the essays
emerged: I'd attach each memory to its appropriate place along the river
and then proceed in topographical order, upstream, from one vignette to
the next.
Meanwhile I planned to keep in mind a pair of questions: why had I come
to Rochester and why had I stayed? By tracing my memories along the Genesee
I hoped to discover what it was about the place that had attracted and
kept me here. Initially I expected to write just a handful of essays,
focusing on my recent experiences in or near Rochester. But for deeper
answers to the questions I had raised, I found myself writing more and
more, going further and further upstream each time, until I had reached
not only the headwater of the river but also the headwaters of my intellectual
identity.
II. The Mouth of the Genesee
Although I can't remember the first time I visited the mouth of the Genesee,
fairly early after moving to Rochester I'm sure I followed Lake Avenue
northward, to Lake Ontario. I have no recollection of the public beach,
which is located just west of where the river flows into the lake. Nevertheless,
the trip stands out because of the Kodak buildings I passed along the
way. I had always linked Rochester with Kodak. But only after seeing for
myself the colossal scale of the facilities at Kodak Park did the company's
status as a global giant really sink in.
In preparing to write about my earliest Rochester experiences, I was
able to draw on more than just my memories. Also helpful were my files.
For example, my "Rochester" folder included a clipping from the Democrat
and Chronicle for Friday 13 July, 1984, and my daily notes reminded
me that I was at the time immersed in the work on my dissertation—and
very much in need of a break. The newspaper account of some twenty tall
ships arriving to celebrate the city's 150th anniversary fascinated me—so
much so that I took Saturday off: I got a ticket to the Harbor Festival
and rode there on one of the special shuttle buses. Exploring the ships
turned out not to be possible. The crowds were so large that the tours
had to be canceled. But I do recall walking to the old stone lighthouse,
located on high ground, well inland from the lake shore.
In June 1993 I finally did get a chance to tour a tall ship, when Dad
came to Rochester on his way to his annual high-school alumni dinner in
Campbell, New York. As an afternoon excursion, we decided to drive to
the mouth of the Genesee and attend the Harbor Festival—where one
of the main attractions was a full-scale replica of the Niña,
which had been built to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Columbus's
first voyage to the New World.
It wasn't Columbus who had developed sailing ships capable of navigating
unfamiliar waters, over great distances, and then returning home safely.
Instead, that honor belongs to the Portuguese. In the early fifteenth
century they had begun exploring the west coast of Africa, and as their
voyages extended further and further from home, they found it necessary
to make changes in their ship designs and sailing practices—so that
by the end of the century they had developed a new technological system,
as well as an overseas route to India.
What Columbus did was to adopt the Portuguese system (the Niña
was a Portuguese-style caravel) but then apply it toward a different aim:
reaching the Far East by sailing west. As a result, his first voyage revealed
not so much the existence of a new continent—for he went to his
grave still believing that he had reached the Far East. Instead, his voyage
revealed how Europeans had by then created a highly effective oceanic
means for achieving their larger ends. Using sailing ships they were able
to extend the power of their nation-states, gain wealth through global
trade, convert foreigners to Christianity, and learn far more about the
world than had been known by the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Now I had an opportunity to see for myself a replica of one of the early
discovery ships. On board, I could feel how solid the construction was.
The thick planks under my feet represented a huge amount of wood, and
everywhere I went I could smell the pitch used to make the joints watertight.
Also striking was the absence of straight lines. Curved upper surfaces
kept water from collecting, while curved sides provided the overall shape
needed for smooth forward motion and for balancing the wood's internal
strength against the pressure of the water.
We stayed that evening until the Niña departed. How eerie
it was to watch her glide toward the lake, escorted by a modern fireboat
and illuminated on one side by the carnival lights. Despite her importance
in world history, she seemed so small. On the tour I hadn't been able
to take more than a few steps in any one direction, and the whole vessel
had bobbed in the wake of each passing pleasure boat. Now as I watched
her recede into the fading twilight, I wasn't sure I'd want to be aboard
her during a storm on the lake—much less one on the high seas.
III. The High Falls
If memory serves me, I first visited the High Falls downtown in March
1983, toward the end of my first year at RIT. My history colleague, Richard
Lunt, had invited me to lunch at the Lost and Found Tavern (later the
Phoenix Mill Publick House and, most recently, Jimmy Mac's Bar & Grill)—in
an old brick building near the edge of the gorge. I have no recollection
of the falls themselves. Instead, what I remember is our mealtime conversation
about Dick's latest research project.
Dick always had a project he was working on—if not a research project,
then something related to his courses. When I interviewed for the RIT
job, he was the one who asked me what new courses I wanted to teach. Although
I designed only one completely new course before he retired, during that
same time span, he designed two and also redesigned a third. As a result,
he succeeded far better than I at keeping his research in synch with his
course work—so that, for him, research and teaching were never wholly
separate activities.
At any rate, after lunch we must have walked on the pedestrian bridge
that spans the gorge, because when my parents came a year later (in May
1984), I knew it would be a good place to take them.
Since then, I've been back to the High Falls many times—with Thanksgiving
1986 being one especially notable example. That year Mom and Dad joined
me for Thanksgiving dinner. The next day my brother Bill, his wife Linda,
and their daughter Anna came for an overnight stay, and as an outing we
all went to the High Falls. Finally, on Saturday we drove to the Holiday
Inn in Gang Mills, New York (near Painted Post), where we met other family
members to celebrate the 90th birthday of my grandmother, Marie B. Cornell.
More recently my visits to the High Falls have included the museum in
the Browns Race historic district. Those exhibits, when coupled with the
views from the pedestrian bridge, offer an excellent way of showing out-of-town
visitors why Rochester is located where it is—namely, to utilize
the power of the falls. Many of the early mills were grist mills that
ground locally-grown wheat into flour. But all along, Rochester's water
power was used for a variety of industrial operations—often on a
massive scale, as attested by the reconstructed waterwheel at the Triphammer
Forge site.
Also at the museum is a short video showing how the falls were formed
as the ice retreated at the end of the last Ice Age. When I first moved
to Rochester, I was surprised by the flatness of the terrain. Since then
I've learned that the explanation has several facets. The region is flat
because vast quantities of relatively soft rock have been removed through
erosion. The ice sheets of the Ice Ages also left their mark, scouring
the terrain in some places and leaving massive deposits elsewhere. Finally,
as the ice retreated the region became the bed for a sequence of lakes,
each at a lower level.
Generally speaking, the ground around Rochester rises slowly but steadily,
north to south. Lakes formed because water got caught between the ice
to the north and the high ground to the south. As the ice retreated, new
outlets for these lakes were uncovered, allowing them to fall to lower
and lower levels. In the process the Genesee also had to fall further
and further. Whenever it flowed across crumbling shale, it quickly cut
a deep channel for itself. From time to time, however, it hit resistant
limestone or sandstone—which is what produced the waterfalls. Thus
the High Falls turn out to be just one in a series. Further downstream
are two others. The video at the museum showed how these falls first emerged,
close to the lake, and then how they moved steadily inland, due to on-going
river erosion.
Of course, only after the full retreat of the ice and the lowering of
the lake to its current level could the terrain become tree-covered. The
resulting woodlands were actively managed by the Iroquois—notably,
through their hunting and agricultural practices, through their network
of trails, and through the periodic relocation of their villages. But
their approach left intact the overall contours of the forest. Not until
the arrival of European-American settlers was the appearance of the region
transformed wholesale.
So completely has the High Falls area been transformed by modern development,
that when I first came across a mid-eighteenth-century sketch—made
by a British officer during the French and Indian War—I was dumbstruck.
As viewed from the pedestrian bridge today, the falls are surrounded by
buildings. But in Thomas Davies's sketch the horizon is defined by treetops,
uninterrupted except by the river itself:
The engraving is one of a set of six from the region—see Edward
R. Forman, "Casconchiagon: The Genesee River," Rochester Historical Society,
Publication Fund Series, Vol. 5, (1926), pp. 141-145.
Illustration supplied by author.
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