Pilgrimage to Cartwright’s

Gathering of Eagles. (Photo by Gary Coleman.)

The other day (Thursday, March 29, 2012) was the annual foray of a group of Regional Transit operations retirees to Cartwright’s Maple Tree Inn out in the middle of nowhere in the eastern hills of the Genesee valley (“jen-uh-SEE”).
Maple Tree Inn is only open during maple-syrup season; that is, when sap is running in their giant stand of sugar-maples, middle February through April.
Cartwright’s is a maple sugaring operation.
They boil the sap down into maple-syrup, and then serve it with all-you-can-eat buckwheat pancakes they make in their restaurant-kitchen.
That’s all they serve, all-you-can-eat buckwheat pancakes with maple-syrup, plus ham and/or sausage. Plus coffee of course. They’re not a normal restaurant.
The vast Genesee valley in western New York was the first breadbasket of the nation.
Wheat was grown in the valley and then shipped north on the long-abandoned Genesee Valley Canal to Rochester, NY, where it was -a) milled into wheat-flour, and/or -b) shipped east on the Erie Canal.
The Genesee valley has the Genesee River flowing through it, running south-to-north across Western New York, and it empties into Lake Ontario just north of Rochester.
The river flowed over falls in Rochester that could be harnessed for water-power. Rochester was first known as the ”flour city,” water-powered wheat milling. (Now it’s called the “Flower City,” since it became a rose-cultivation center.)
The Erie Canal also went through, so wheat and/or milled flour could be shipped east.
For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and its environs. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability.
It was an interesting job at first, mastering the safe operation of large vehicles.
But I was tiring of it, especially our clientele, who could be abusive.
Most weren’t, but the job was becoming boring. I had tried just about everything.
I dreaded I had about 14 more years to go, but my stroke ended it suddenly.
My stroke was a godsend of sorts, since it directed me to the Messenger newspaper in nearby Canandaigua, the best job I ever had.
And it seemed upper management at Transit wanted no connection whatsoever with what we bus-drivers were doing.
It seemed all they wanted was to collect their bloated paychecks for driving a desk.
Often we’d get buses with failed air-conditioning, but the air-conditioning always worked in the Administration-Building.
If it wasn’t, it was fixed right away.
Plus we bus-drivers were a pack of ne’er-do-wells, unionized (gasp).
There were cheats and liars among us, but management acted like we all were.
Our relationship was always adversarial.
There was a pecking-order at the Messenger too, but the relationship with upper-management was not adversarial.
The Messenger was a happy ship. We low-line employees were valued.
Then too perhaps it was what we were doing.
At the Messenger mental input was required to put out a newspaper, whereas at Transit we were just driving buses and parrying the clientele.
Then too it might have been our pay-rate.
My income at Transit was fairly substantial, due mainly to our bus-union.
At the Messenger my pay was peanuts, perhaps partly because I was stroke disabled.
But mainly we weren’t unionized.
Stories were bandied about among us Transit retirees about some of the insanity rained down upon us by Transit management.
Like the time a bus-driver got off his bus to use the restroom in a nearby supermarket.
His bus was shut down and safely secured in the plaza parking-lot, at the layover-point where it was supposed to be. —He had called in his departure to bus-radio.
While he was in the store, some granny lost it and slid her car into the parked bus.
Management, in its infinite wisdom, decided this was his fault, and fired him.
(It was his bus, so he was obviously responsible.)
The bus-union had to jump through hoops to get his job back.
The driver was put on probation.
Um, the bus was shut down and safely secured where it was supposed to be, and he was inside the store.
Yet some granny lost it, so that’s his fault.
But it was his bus, and he had rocked the boat. So fire him!
A second story was my own recounting involving a schoolbus.
The schoolbus stopped and then restarted, clipping a car on the crossroad, which was through.
Probably due to a blind spot.
“It that had been a Transit bus,” I said; “that driver would have been fired right there!”
“If that schoolbus had been on the through road,” another driver commented; “and tee-boned the miscreant car, even though the schoolbus had the right-of-way, Transit would have fired the bus-driver.”
“That’s true,” I thought to myself.
You always had to allow for the NASCAR wannabees and ignorant grannies to avoid accidents.
“Oh look, Dora. A bus! Pull out; pull out! Heaven forbid we get caught behind a smelly old slowpoke.”
It seemed Transit management immediately assumed bus-drivers were at fault, no matter what.
If anything happened it was rocking their boat, which apparently was just to collect their bloated pay, and glom free donuts jawing at the water-cooler.
Rocking the boat equals blame the bus-driver.
I got called on the carpet myself for various insanities.
And I was one of their favorites; I always showed up on time, and rarely took time off.
They even fired a driver for not showing up while he was on vacation.
Our union was always parrying madness.
So we gathered the other morning after 9 a.m. in a plaza parking-lot, south of Rochester.
We then set out on the long 40-50 mile journey to Maple Tree Inn, about an hour.
I did not make the drive myself, unlike last year and perhaps the year before.
It seems I’ve been to this shindig at least four times, the first time driven to it.
But the roads are familiar to me.
Maple Tree Inn is just southeast of the tiny rural town of Short Tract, and I know the way to Short Tract.
It’s up the side of the Genesee valley from Houghton (“HO-tin;” not “who” or “how”), where I attended college.
Houghton College is also out in the middle of nowhere — a tiny island of suburbia out in the outback. Houghton used to be called Jockey Street, and was along the Genesee Valley Canal.
It was a den of iniquity, drinking and fighting and prostitution.
People used to race their horses up the main drag; hence the name “Jockey Street.”
Christian zealot Willard Houghton arrived and set out to clean up the town.
A seminary was founded therein, which later became a college.
I would make the drive with Vinny Arena (“uh-REE-nuh”), a retired bus-driver who started shortly after me, and drove bus 27 years before being disqualified due to a medical problem.
This was because I knew the way, and Vinny didn’t; so Vinny could drive there in his own car (he had to go somewhere else after the shindig).
Vinny recounted his failure of his first bus-driving test with the state, a story I’ve heard before.
He also explained his massive weight-loss. Vinny was once 20 pounds shy of 300 pounds.
Like me, Vinny works out at the YMCA, but not the same YMCA as me.
Vinny is now down to 189, and looks skinny.
Like me, he’s 68; but if he keeps pumping that treadmill he’ll last a while.
There were 12 of us at this shindig, two of whom were lower management; not high-and-mighty.
The rest were mostly retired bus-drivers.
One of the managers was Gary Coleman (“COAL-min”), who once was a road-supervisor and also worked bus-radio.
A road-supervisor supervised bus-drivers from a company car, and settled arguments with passengers.
The other was Dave Brown, who had also been a road-supervisor. He also worked the radio, and dispatched bus-drivers from the Dispatch Office.
Both Brownie and Coleman started as bus-drivers.
I rode back with Ron Palermo (“puh-LAIR-mo;” as in “Moe”), the retired bus-driver who organizes these shindigs.
Three were missing, Norb Dynski, a retired bus-driver who has been to these shindigs before.
Also Gary Colvin (“COAL-vin”) and Tony Coia (“KOY-yuh”). They always battled each other to see who could eat the most all-you-can-eat pancakes.
The only number I remember is Colvin eating 14.
I ate four, my limit, with two sausage-patties.
I also took pictures, but Coleman did better.
Also missing was Art Dana (“DAY-nuh”), a retired bus-driver who died a while ago at age-69.

• “Gary Coleman” is a Transit retiree. He’s not in the picture because he was the photographer.
• “Canandaigua” (“cannan-DAY-gwuh”) is a small city nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” It’s about 14 miles away. —We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield, southeast of Rochester.
• RE: “Unionized (gasp)......” —All my siblings are flagrantly anti-union.
• “Houghton College” is from where I graduated with a BA in 1966. I’ve never regretted it, although I graduated a Ne’er-do-Well, without their blessing. Houghton is an evangelical liberal-arts college.
• I work out in the Canandaigua YMCA Exercise-Gym, appropriately named the “Wellness-Center,” usually three days per week, about two-three hours per visit.