Social-gathering of the ”Transients”

Retired road-supervisor Gary Coleman (“COAL-min”) walks down toward Maple-Tree.

The other day (Tuesday, March 19th, 2013) was the annual all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast at Cartwright’s Maple-Tree Inn in faraway Allegany County south of Rochester, N.Y.
And that’s “gany,” not “gheny,” as it’s usually spelled.
My friend who daycares my dog calls us “the Transients,” retirees of Regional Transit Service in Rochester, N.Y.
Regional Transit (RTS), a public employer, is the supplier of transit bus-service for the Rochester-area. For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for RTS. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that. I retired on medical-disability.
It was an okay job, except I was tiring of it. It paid fairly well, but the thought of another 14 years was depressing.
Transit was difficult. Not only was the clientele dangerous, but my employer seemed rife with mismanagement.
We hourly Transit employees, bus-drivers and mechanics, were unionized (Gasp), always at loggerheads with Transit management.
Both parties seemed involved. Management could be jerks, but so too could our union.
The acrimony was deep and never-ending.
Union employees seemed to be always trying to pull a fast-one, plus management was always obtuse. —Like their whole idea seemed just to collect another bloated paycheck.
The relationship was always adversarial, as if bus-passengers were lucky to get any service at all.
Having used bus-transit once myself, I was always looking out for my passengers. That is, nothing was gonna get in the way of transporting them from Point-A to Point-B, neither union or management.
But this had to balance against the reality of bus-service; that just because a bus appeared it wasn’t gonna magically take you home. Try to tell some angry vagrant you had others waiting along the route you were supposed to follow.
I have thousands of bus-stories I could relate, and many of them include bus-passengers demanding the moon.
We Transients are “ad hoc,” not an official organization.
We include both union and management employees, both retired bus-drivers and retired operating managers.
Our group seems to be getting smaller. One has died, but we had nine this time, four more than last time, I think.
But two of those nine weren’t Transit retirees. (They were relatives, which is fine. It’s a social gathering, not official.)
This was my fourth or fifth pancake-breakfast, my first since my wife died.
The first I attended had 20 or more, and my second had about that.
At least one has since died, and those attending were from all over Western New York.
Of the seven retirees, only a few are from Rochester. Many of us live in the rural outback. I live in West Bloomfield, about 20 miles south of Rochester, and two others live about 25-30 miles east of Rochester.
Dave Brown, a retired manager, lives in Webster, about 10-15 miles east of Rochester. For him, Maple-Tree was about 80 miles south. For me it’s 50 miles. For those in Rochester it’s 70-75 miles.
Maple-Tree Inn is hardly a franchise restaurant. It’s not a steakhouse or pasta emporium, or a fast-food joint.
In fact, it looks like it was built by the owners. Fittings are kind of spartan.
Maple-Tree is only open during the maple-sugaring season.
It sits amidst a giant sugar-bush. Most of the trees are tapped with plumbing for sap running to a central collection-tank.
I remember a few years ago watching a large four-wheel-drive tanker-truck driving out of the bush.
The sap collected gets boiled down into 100% pure maple-syrup.
That’s Maple-Tree’s selling-point. All-you-can-eat buckwheat pancakes served with fresh 100% pure maple-syrup.
The Transients pig out. I ate six, a record for me. I’ve seen others eat 14.
Maple-Tree is world-famous, despite its being out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere.
People from Europe have patronized. Luxury tour-buses of creaky oldsters are in the parking lot. Inside you have to dodge wheelchairs and walkers.
Maple-Tree is just south of Short-Tract. Does Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, know where Short-Tract is?
Short-Tract is hardly anything. Many of what few houses remain are abandoned and falling apart. Blink and you’ll miss it!
Maple-Tree and Short-Tract are up on the east side of the vast Genesee Valley.
The Genesee Valley was the first breadbasket of the nation. Wheat would get grown therein, then shipped up to Rochester — there was a canal — for milling and/or transshipment east on the Erie Canal.
After Maple-Tree I had to go down into the small rural village of Fillmore, down the hill from Short-Tract, to buy gasoline.
Fillmore is next to the Genesee river.
Fillmore is the next village north of Houghton (“HO-tin;” not “how” or “who”) home of Houghton College, where my wife and I attended college in the middle ‘60s.
I used to hitchhike up to Fillmore.
I left Fillmore north on State Route 19A, the road to Portageville and Letchworth Park. We hung out at Letchworth often as Houghton students.
Traveling north I passed the road to Wiscoy Creek; it’s signed.
It started me crying.
My wife-to-be (at that time) was the one that introduced me to Wiscoy Creek; I never knew it existed.
At that time the creek was dammed, probably an old electric power dam. An eight-foot wooden aqueduct-tube ran all the way from the dam down alongside the creek.
The creekbed was wooded, and the pipe leaked. Towering geysers of water sprayed out of the tube.
What a place that was; and my wife-to-be can take credit for pointing me to it.
We’d walk atop the leaking pipe all the way up to the dam, which was maybe 20 feet high.
I tried to find Wiscoy Creek again not too long ago, with my wife along — she was alive then — but no sign of it. No dam, no pipe, nothing. I don’t even know if I took the right road in.

• A “road-supervisor” was an official of the company that rode around in a supervisor-car, supervised bus-drivers, and settled arguments with bus-passengers. They also attended bus accidents.
• The “Genesee Valley” (“jen-uh-SEE”) contains the Genesee River, a fairly large river that runs south-to-north across Western New York, runs through Rochester, including over falls, and empties into Lake Ontario. The valley is fertile and broad.
• “Houghton College,” in western New York, 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. (My wife also graduated there, same class as me.)