Classmates:
I published this column Friday and posted it on Facebook.
I thought it might be of interest to folks not on FB or the Finger Lakes Times email feed...
Stay safe. See you in 2021 - at a Class of '66 Reunion I hope.
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Finger Lake Times (Geneva, NY)
August 28 2020
Write On column
By Michael J. Fitzgerald, staff columnist
A cascade of memories about friendships and growing up in upstate New York washed over me like a tsunami this past week.
Fellow newspaper columnist and good friend Greg Awtry sent the wave my way via his recent column in Michigan’s Alpena News.
It was a poignant tale chronicling a visit with a childhood friend, talking about their decades of friendship, shared adventures and what it’s like today in the fourth quarter of their lives.
But he had me when he wrote about duck hunting.
As I was growing up at Lake Chautauqua, one of my uncles would reluctantly take me duck hunting in the fall, despite my lack of shooting prowess and my teenage unwillingness to listen to his advice.
Those supposed-to-be bonding expeditions ended abruptly one foggy morning when I broke a cardinal rule of duck hunting. I tried to blast a duck bobbing on the water, instead of shooting while it was airborne.
Duck hunters reading this already guessed what happened.
My normally lousy aim was straight and true that day. But instead of hitting a fat mallard, a 12-gauge shotgun blast turned a floating decoy into splinters. It was one of a dozen decoys my uncle had carefully hand-painted in his basement the winter previous.
Still sorry about that, Uncle Gordy. Still.
But that particular memory led to thoughts about boats and adventure-filled summers on Lake Chautauqua, the good and bad of high school and even striking out for California in 1970 in a VW van.
Most of all, memories of friends over the decades started popping up like dandelions.
Faces, experiences, triumphs and tragedies have been occupying my thoughts.
Names? They don’t come so easy.
But every so often there is a “Eureka!” moment.
Just now, Chester Anderson leaped into my mind, his amazingly freckled face and the 25 cents I lent him to buy milk one day in the high school cafeteria.
He never paid me back.
As his name sprung up, so did my college roommate’s — J. Douglas McDowell. I lost touch with him when I left Villanova University, as well as contact with another Villanova classmate, Mark Strodel, who introduced me to books by Norman Mailer.
Reading Mailer’s works and a biography of Jack London (given to me by my duck-hunting uncle) led me to a life of writing, journalism, and interest in what we call “social justice” today.
In recent decades, many of my Finger Lakes friends came together with common environmental concerns such as the threat that was posed by the now-defunct proposal by Crestwood Midstream to store liquid propane gas in unlined salt caverns near Watkins Glen.
Common cause forges strong friendship bonds.
Thinking about those Finger Lakes’ friends — too numerous to mention here — reminds me how much I have missed my annual summer travels around the Finger Lakes, completely thwarted by the pandemic. Emails, social media communiques, occasional Zoom calls and snail mail letters are no substitute for sitting with friends on a Seneca Lake dock, lunch at a lakeside restaurant or listening to music at Rasta Ranch Vineyards' Monday Night Blues in Hector.
Yet, that’s what we have right now. And I am thankful we live in an age where we can keep the friendships’ connected.
As this column has been written, the notebook on my desk has been filling with names of people to contact along with scribbled notes about just-remembered anecdotes to share with them.
Mercifully, the recalled anecdotes and memories lean toward stories that should generate smiles and a good laugh or two.
One of those notes will head to Greg Awtry and the Alpena News, to say “Thanks for the memories.”
Fitzgerald has worked at six newspapers as a writer and editor as well as a correspondent for two news services. He splits his time between Valois, NY and Pt. Richmond, CA. You can email him at Michael.
