August 2016

E E R F he wind

as t

Airplane Wars Finger Lakes Aviation Pioneer Glenn Curtiss Battled the Wright Brothers for Supremacy of the Skies

By Peter Joffre Nye

Williamsport Hosts the Drum Corps Invitational Hickory Fest Remembers Sue Cunningham Cool Summer Fare in Corning

AUGUST 2016 1

Volume 11 Issue 8

Airplane Wars

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Changing Course

By Peter Joffre Nye Finger Lakes aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss battled the Wright Brothers for supremacy of the skies.

By Maggie Barnes

Wellsboro’s Tyoga Country Club thinks foreward.

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To the Rhythm of Harch! Harch!

Harch!

By Linda Roller

Williamsport’s Marching Millionaires host the 2016 Drum Corps Invitational.

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A Smooth Flight

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By Linda Roller

“...More Than Anything, More Than Everything...”

Lock Haven’s Piper Aviation Museum is the legacy of a “can-do” spirit.

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Game On

By Gayle Morrow Celebrating Sue Cunningham and the love that is Hickory Fest.

By Maggie Barnes

Corning game designer Dan Hundycz plays Pop’s Culture Shoppe.

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Little Boomers’

By Maggie Barnes

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Dippity Do Dahs

By Teresa Banik Capuzzo

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36

Keuka Bakery

Houston, We Have a Problem

By Maggie Barnes Worth every penny.

By Maggie Barnes

Actually, we have several, but family calls...

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Cover by Tucker Worthington. This page (middle): courtesy Frank Serio Photography; (bottom) courtesy “Expressions” by Darlene.

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w w w. m o u n ta i n h o m e m ag . co m Editors & Publishers Teresa Banik Capuzzo Michael Capuzzo Associate Publishers George Bochetto, Esq. Maggie Barnes O pe r a t i o n s D i r e c t o r Gwen Plank-Button Advertising Director Ryan Oswald Advertising Assistant Amy Packard D e s i g n & P h o t o g r ap h y Tucker Worthington, Cover Design Contributing Writers Melissa Bravo, Patricia Brown Davis, Alison Fromme, Carrie Hagen, Holly Howell, Roger Kingsley, Don Knaus, Cindy Davis Meixel, Fred Metarko, David Milano, Gayle Morrow, Cornelius O’Donnell, Brendan O’Meara, Gregg Rinkus, Linda Roller, Diane Seymour, Kathleen Thompson, Joyce M. Tice, Melinda L. Wentzel C o n t r i b u t i n g P h o t o g r ap h e r s Mia Lisa Anderson, Melissa Bravo, Bernadette ChiaramonteBrown, Bill Crowell, Bruce Dart, James Fitzpatrick, Ann Kamzelski, Jan Keck, Nigel P. Kent, Roger Kingsley, Tim McBride, Heather Mee, Ken Meyer, Bridget Reed, Suzan Richar, Tina Tolins, Sarah Wagaman, Curt Weinhold, Terry Wild S a l e s R ep r e s e n t a t i v e s Alicia Blunk, Maia Stam, Linda Roller, Joe Route, Richard Trotta T h e B ea g l e Cosmo (1996-2014) Yogi (Assistant) ABOUT US: Mountain Home is the award-winning regional magazine of PA and NY with more than 100,000 readers. The magazine has been published monthly, since 2005, by Beagle Media, LLC, 25 Main St., 2nd Floor, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, 16901, and online at www.mountainhomemag.com. Copyright © 2016 Beagle Media, LLC. All rights reserved. E-mail story ideas to editorial@mountainhomemag. com, or call (570) 724-3838.

TO ADVERTISE: E-mail info@mountainhomemag.com, or call us at (570) 724-3838.

AWARDS: Mountain Home has won 85 international and statewide journalism awards from the International Regional Magazine Association and the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association for excellence in writing, photography, and design.

DISTRIBUTION: Mountain Home is available “Free as the Wind” at hundreds of locations in Tioga, Potter, Bradford, Lycoming, Union, and Clinton counties in PA and Steuben, Chemung, Schuyler, Yates, Seneca, Tioga, and Ontario counties in NY. SUBSCRIPTIONS: For a one-year subscription (12 issues), send $24.95, payable to Beagle Media LLC, 25 Main St., 2nd Floor, Wellsboro, PA 16901 or visit www.mountainhomemag.com.

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Letter From the Publisher

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Fast Times

y friend the author and journalist Peter Nye once took a bicycle ride with Lance Armstrong. Peter is a long lean fellow who was a competitive racer himself, but he’s also a renowned historian of bicycling, the author of Hearts of Lions: The History of American Bicycle Racing. His bike ride with the fallen champ was research for his book on Armstrong.

In a previous life, Peter was editor of Ralph Nader’s magazine in Washington, D.C. Peter has the lion heart of a champion himself, which led him to read five biographies and interview descendants of the Wright Brothers for Mountain Home’s exclusive report this month on Glenn Curtiss.

Speed hooked my friend but good. Following the evolutionary path of American transportation, he recently wrote an acclaimed biography, The Fast Times of Albert Champion, about the legendary French bicycle and motorcycle racer who founded the Albert Champion (AC) Spark Plug Company at the turn of the century, and helped launch the automobile revolution in Michigan with General Motors tycoon William Durant.

Champion’s spark plugs powered Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis in Lindy’s 1927 flight across the Atlantic.

Peter, obviously, was the perfect writer to take on this month’s cover story, about the legendary local bicycle and motorcycle racer and builder, Hammondsport’s favorite son, the “Fastest Man on Earth,” and the “Father of Naval Aviation” who has a permanent place in aviation history.

Curtiss, as every schoolchild knows (or ought to), took the big leap to aviation design and, taking advantage of the Wright Brothers’ secrecy about their earlier first flight, led a consortium including Alexander Graham Bell that launched the glorious twenty-second flight of Red Wing, “the first public flight in America of a heavier-than-air machine,” from the frozen surface of Keuka Lake on March 12, 1908. On July 4th of that year he followed up by piloting his flying machine, the June Bug for nearly a mile to win the coveted Scientific American trophy. That was just the beginning of this hero’s journey.

It was a beautiful story, but things got ugly with the Wright Brothers. Mountain Home is easy to carry, and you don’t have to turn it off when you enter a public place. Take Peter’s report along with you to the remarkable Glenn H. Curtiss Museum of aviation—and yes, of motorcycle and bicycle history to complete the holy trinity, as well as local history. It’s a half-mile south of the village of Hammondsport, where history was made.

The sparkling museum is taking wing with a new $1.2 million renovation, and August is a fine time to check out the flying replica of the June Bug. ~ Michael Capuzzo

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Airplane Wars Finger Lakes Aviation Pioneer Glenn Curtiss Battled the Wright Brothers for Supremacy of the Skies

By Peter Joffre Nye

I

ndependence Day, Saturday July 4, 1908. More than 1,000 spectators, a fulsome delegation of big-city newspaper reporters, photographers, even a motion-picture crew, the editor of the influential New York magazine Scientific American, and representatives of the Aero Club of New York, predecessor of the National Aeronautic Association, gathered near Hammondsport in upstate New York for a glimpse of the first aeroplane any of them ever saw.

The pilot, Glenn Curtiss, sat in front of the aeroplane, June Bug, his back to a boisterous eight-cylinder 40-horsepower engine of his own make. He gripped the steering wheel of the prototype bi-wing he had built with hand tools in his local shop and steered the newfangled contraption, rolling on a triangle of bicycle wheels, along a horse track—his runway to the sky.

See Curtiss on page 8

6

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Courtesy Glenn Curtiss Museum

Courtesy United States Marine Corps

Aviators in Hammondsport, New York, 1911. (Left to right) Lieutenant John McClaskey, USMC (Ret), Glenn Curtiss, Paul W. Beck, USA, Lieutenant John H. Towers, USN, and Lieutenant Theodore Ellyson, USN. They are testing a Curtiss A-1 airplane.

Curtiss continued from page 6

Scientific American had publicized the previous year in its pages that it was offering a handsome trophy to the first machine heavier than air that could fly a kilometer, about two-thirds of a mile, in front of judges. Four and a half years earlier, Orville and Wilbur Wright of Dayton, Ohio, had claimed they took turns on December 17, 1903, flying an aeroplane on the isolated North Carolina outer banks of Kitty Hawk. The brothers had yet to make a public demonstration. Their secrecy fueled doubts. The Wrights spurned the magazine’s invitation to try for the trophy.

Curtiss and cohorts, including Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, had realized opportunity with the aeroplane Bell christened June Bug, for the winged beetles swarming the village.

Curtiss sported a white shirt, starched collar, and tie as he bumped over the muddy turf.

He accelerated and aimed June Bug toward a red flag tied to the top of a fence post a kilometer away. His aircraft rose neatly twenty feet off the ground and kept going.

Less than two minutes later he flew over the red flag and landed in a tangle of grape vines.

A throng of onlookers, judges, and news hounds ran yelling and cheering to engulf him as he stood smiling and casually inspecting his aircraft. Judges dutifully made measurements. Finally, an official bellowed into a giant megaphone he was holding that Curtiss flew June Bug 5,090 8

feet, nearly a mile, and 1,810 feet farther than a kilometer.

For his feat, Curtiss’s name was engraved on the silver plate at the base of the sculpted Scientific American Trophy.

More significantly, for flying in front of the public, judges, and the Fourth Estate, leadership of the Aero Club ignored the Wright brothers’ previous claims of selfpowered flight and issued Curtiss America’s first-ever pilot license.

Coast-to-coast publicity in Sunday newspapers catapulted thirty-year-old Curtiss into a hero. He drew the ire, however, of the Wright brothers, who would launch one of America’s most bitter patent infringement disputes. It took a world war in Europe to bring the suit to a halt.

• The first decade of the twentieth century saw new technologies—telephones, typewriters, movies, bicycles, automobiles, and electricity—transform the way people lived, socialized, and did business. Bicycles and electric trolleys were replacing horses on city streets, ending millennia of four-legged transportation.

Curtiss and the Wright brothers had much in common. Journalists noted they could have passed for brothers: medium height, slim as marathon runners, early hair loss, sharp features, blue eyes, and reserved dispositions. They came from unassuming families. Only Orville graduated from high school. Curtiss was young when his

father, Frank, a harness maker, died; the Wrights also were growing up when they lost their mother, Susan. Photos show the men only tolerated cameras, often looking away, never smiling. Self-motivated and mechanically inclined, they opened bike shops and crafted their own bicycles for sale.

Yet their outlooks were poles apart.

The Wrights named the bicycles they produced after a great-great grandmother, Van Cleve, while Curtiss picked the valiant Greek god Hercules. Curtiss was far more passionate, even obsessive, about speed.

He raced bicycles as a teenager in the late 1890s and learned about wind resistance.

Competing in a pack of ambitious hopefuls bumping elbows for position taught him to draft in the protected sweet spot behind leaders. When the finish came in sight, he could whip around the side to surge ahead like he was flung from a slingshot to victory. He accelerated on banked board cycling tracks by swooping down from the upper rim to boost speed. Such strategies would pay off later.

Unlike the introverted bachelor Wrights, Curtiss was outgoing, and at age nineteen in 1898 he married Lena Neff, eighteen.

The advent of gas-combustion engines fascinated Curtiss. In his Hammondsport shop, smelling of grease and oil, he built one-cylinder engines. He mounted them on bicycles before fashioning a swayback frame for Hercules motorcycles. Their sales soon overtook bicycles. He hired staff to fill more orders. Curtiss raced motorcycles to test them as he lugged home a collection of trophies and gold medals.

Ever restless to go faster, he designed longer down-sweeping handlebars. They lowered his center of gravity as he leaned his chest flat along the top tube. Then he created a two-cylinder engine. On Labor Day around the Empire City Race Track, a dirt horse oval in Yonkers, New York, he won the inaugural National Cycling Association U.S. Championship.

His wife Lena suggested he change the name of his motorcycles to Curtiss.

He recoiled at such boasting. But she and close friends agreed the national champion needed a national name. After reflection he yielded, writing Curtiss in stylish schoolroom script—his logo.

Motorsport emerged years before anyone considered something like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. City speed limits were ten miles per hour, in deference

to horses, and country roads were dirt, ravaged by ruts and holes, and could rip fast-moving cars to pieces. Word spread about the long stretch of packed sand on Florida’s coast between Daytona and Ormond—a straight surface smooth as a pool table. Curtiss built a monster eight-cylinder, 40-hp engine for a Curtiss motorcycle. In January 1904 he hauled it on a train to Ormond for the Florida Speed Carnival, in its glory days as America’s premier motor-racing venue.

There among the latest automobiles and motorcycles from America, France, and Germany careening up and down the beach, wealthy and savvy motor-mad aficianados, and news scribes, Curtiss established a reputation for fearlessness and mechanical genius. Motorcyclists tearing around on gaudy two-wheelers with ear-splitting-loud engines were lionized as hell-riders. He draped himself over his throbbing machine and streaked along a lane of sand bordered by the Atlantic surf and a three-mile stretch of chichi dressed to the nines. He rocketed through the measured mile: 137 mph.

Newspapers bestowed him with the title, “The fastest man on earth.”

• Curtiss’s engines intrigued Alexander Graham Bell. In his sixties with a bushy snow-white beard, Bell focused on building a flying machine. Through the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., he recruited a handful of aeronautic engineers, including Thomas Selfridge, a West Point grad and Army Lieutenant piloting dirigibles. Bell saw that Curtiss’s small, lightweight engines exceeded anything available. The right engine was a game-changer to lifting an aerodynamic machine off the ground and thrusting it through the air.

The inventor invited Curtiss to join him, Selfridge, and cohorts in founding the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA) as a one-year private research and development group. Members were to pool patents and expertise, each to build his own aircraft, and offer one another constructive criticism.

Curtiss was conscious of his grammar school education and grease under his fingernails. Meeting Bell, Selfridge, and others impressed him with the sophisticated topics they discussed. He was proud of his self-taught mechanical capabilities. He could as easily fix a broken doorbell as devise a carburetor from an empty tomato can.

Traditional ways were rendered obsolete.

Knowledge opened opportunities.

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Orlando/ Sanford

See Curtiss on page 10

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Curtiss continued from page 9

Bell and his wife Mabel funded AEA, incorporated October 1907. Curtiss was appointed director of experiments with a salary of $5,000—today worth $130,000.

Months later Curtiss built June Bug. AEA had arranged for him to fly it in the Scientific American Trophy contest.

June’s Bug’s flight coincided with the Wright brothers practicing flights in a field outside Dayton, their first public demonstrations. Soon Wilbur shipped out to France. He impressed tens of thousands over six months in Le Mans, southwest of Paris, by flying his Wright Flyer in figure eights and soaring higher than 100 feet, followed by more exhibitions south in Pau. He secured a French government contract to supply a few Wright Flyers and train pilots.

Orville took a plane to Fort Meyer, an Army base in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. He impressed Army brass looking to buy planes and have him train pilots. Orville set seven new world records—including staying aloft for more than an hour, circling the base’s parade ground an impressive fifty-seven times.

On September 17, Orville was asked to take Lt. Thomas Selfridge on a flight, sitting next to him. Orville and Selfridge soared aloft 100 feet over some 3,000 spectators and reporters. The day’s quiet was shattered when a piece of propeller snapped off with a loud crack. The plane shuddered briefly before plunging like a rock.

Orville suffered a broken leg, fractured hip, and four cracked ribs. He was hospitalized for five weeks and spent months leaning on a cane.

Selfridge died of a fractured skull—the first fatality in aviation history.

His death came as a blow to Curtiss and other AEA members. The group’s high spirits turned somber. When their one-year contract expired, no one suggested renewing.

• The Aeronautical Society in New York contracted Curtiss in the spring of 1909 to build an aeroplane. He modified the design of June Bug, shortening the wings and inserting ailerons (small wing flaps that are instrumental for turning the aircraft) midwing rather than at the tips. The struts and other woodwork were brushed with yellow varnish to look better in photos.

Curtiss called it the Gold Bug. It was the first plane of his design. He sold it for $5,000 (worth $134,000 today)—America’s first commercial aeroplane sale.

See Curtiss on page 12

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Curtiss continued from page 10

Selling the Gold Bug angered the Wright brothers. They believed the U.S. Patent they had received in 1906 granted them a monopoly on all aircraft.

France led the world with ten manufacturers then producing dozens of aircraft, compared to about ten aircraft in the United States. The Aéro-Club de France secured French as the language for international aviation, including the distress call, M’Aidez, (French for “help me,” pronounced Mayday).

The Aéro-Club de France and premier champagne houses announced the first international flying extravaganza in late August 1909—a week of races near Rheims, east of Paris, deep in champagne country. A rococo wooden grandstand was constructed to seat 50,000 and another 200,000 could watch from the open airfield. Up for grabs was a purse of $35,000—almost $1 million today. New York expat newspaper mogul James Gordon Bennett in Paris donated a sculpted silver trophy and $5,000 cash—a combined value topping $200,000—for the main event, to the fastest pilot flying around the airfield.

Twenty-one of the greatest pilots from France and England entered. The

Wright brothers declined their invitation.

The president of the Aero Club of New York cabled Curtiss urging him to go and agreeing to pay his expenses as America’s entry. First, however, Curtiss had to design and build not only a new engine and aeroplane but also one he could take apart to pack for the 3,000-mile journey, all on short notice.

Assisted by two mechanics in his Hammondsport shop, he created a bi-wing plane modeled on Gold Bug but lighter, a propeller seven feet long instead of six, and a 50-hp Curtiss OX engine. He machined a second propeller as a spare, the only extra part he had time to fashion. He invented detachable wings, which came apart in sections. As soon as he finished the engine and plane, he packed them in wooden crates to take as personal luggage. He departed barely in time to climb aboard a train to New York, then stride up the gangway for a week-long steamship crossing. The crates of his aircraft fit into a train compartment and a ship’s cabin.

Curtiss had every reason to feel out of his league in Rheims. Frenchman Louis Blériot recently had gained fame for flying twenty-two miles across the Channel, from

Calais, France, to Dover, England, in the mono-wing plane he invented. Blériot arrived in Rheims with six planes. Blériot’s mono-wing plane reduced drag and inspired Curtiss. He looked forward to competing against the flamboyant celebrity and other entrants including Wilbur Wright’s three French protégés piloting Wright Flyers.

“In France, Curtiss saw good ideas on the newest planes, and he talked with foreign pilots about their flying experiences,” noted David Isby, a Washington, D.C.-based military consultant and author of twentysix books.

On opening day Curtiss was putting his plane, Rheims Flyer, together when news flashed around the airfield that the Wright brothers had sued the Aeronautic Society for buying Curtiss’s Gold Bug. The Wrights demanded financial damages and that the Gold Bug be destroyed.

French and English aviators rallied to support Curtiss. They knew that legal action would follow in their countries. Flyers were confident that the suit would fail because ailerons, French for little wings, were standard in the French and English aircraft industry, distinct from the Wrights’ system of bending wings tied to the rear rudder,

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Friends in high places: Members of the Aerial Experiment Association pose with Curtiss (center with hat) and his mentor (right of Curtiss), Alexander Graham Bell.

regarded as obsolete.

On August 28—the main event, the race for the Gordon Bennett Trophy and grand prize—flyers were to make a timed flight at their choosing between 10 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. The rules called for flying twice around a 10-kilometer (6.2 miles) rectangle over the airfield, and staying outside the corners designated by tall red and white wooden pylons.

Curtiss went up first. The mass of 250,000 spectators and journalists watched him circle higher and higher till he reached 500 feet. Then he dove down to build max speed and thundered over the start line where judges jammed thumbs on their hand-held stopwatches. The throng was dazzled by the way he banked his Rheims Flyer around the pylons—a maneuver nobody before had witnessed. He shaved the turns like he was driving his motorcycle, pushing his plane hard until he blew over the finish line and judges clicked their stopwatches.

As he jumped out of the cockpit, exultant Americans ran to mob him. An official gripping a megaphone announced a new world 20-kilometer (12.4 miles) record—inside sixteen minutes, an average of 46.5 mph. Curtiss had to wait the rest of the day to see if his time would last. After five o’clock, the final pilot, Blériot, took off. His larger aircraft had a bigger engine. The Frenchman, wearing goggles, completed a perfect flight but took the turns like squares. After landing, he strode to the judge’s booth where Curtiss and the others stood to hear the results.

A hush fell over the airfield. Then came a yell from the judges’ stand: Curtiss had won by six seconds. Before he could catch his breath, the band struck up the Star Spangled Banner and the Stars & Stripes were hoisted up a pole. He beamed a rare broad smile at a French film crew. Blériot rushed up, threw his arms around Curtiss, and kissed him on both cheeks.

Newspapers in two languages proclaimed Curtiss the fastest human on the ground and in the air. What mattered more to him was that the three Wright Flyers had finished last.

• In January 1910, a U.S. Circuit Judge granted the Wright brothers a temporary injunction blocking Curtiss from selling or exhibiting his planes. The Wrights demanded a 20 percent

royalty on the retail price of all planes he sold and prize money earned from exhibitions.

Moreover, attorneys in New York for the Wrights enjoined French pilot Louis Paulhan as he stepped onto a New York harbor pier. He had arrived with four French and English planes to compete in the Los Angeles international air meet organized by the Aero Club of California.

The Wrights ignited a firestorm of protests on both sides of the Atlantic. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill harrumphed about threatening legislation to end the “air trust.”

Curtiss, deprived of earning money from aviation, was forced to file for bankruptcy. His attorney prevailed on the Circuit Court to allow Curtiss to post $10,000 bond—$257,000 today—which allowed him to resume work while he appealed the injunction.

The bond posted in April 1910 served as an advance against future royalties if he were to lose the case.

Now desperate to raise money, Curtiss considered the daunting Hudson-Fulton Prize offered by the New York World, the city’s largest of fifteen dailies—$10,000 to the first pilot to fly a plane from Albany over the Hudson River to Manhattan, some 150 miles. The rules allowed two stops for refueling and stipulated the flight had to be completed within twenty-four hours. Nobody had flown from one American city to another.

Curtiss saw it as his best chance. When he mentioned the idea to wife Lena, she expressed fear about the dangers of flying over water.

To quell her anxieties, he assured her he would build a new plane with floatation gear—an inspiration that would change his career.

He spent weeks studying maps, U.S. Weather Bureau data, and took train and boat trips to check out the Hudson River valley. He designed a plane, the Albany Flyer, fitted with a waterproof metal pontoon below each wing and installed small inflated airbags from tough air-balloon cloth onto the fuselage undercarriage for an emergency water landing.

His Albany Flier was powered by the strongest engine he ever produced. To test the plane, he hauled it by train to perform exhibitions. In Memphis he took Lena up with him, her first flight, over the fairgrounds to show her the sights and win her confidence.

Once he informed the New York World on Thursday morning, May 26, that he would attempt a flight on Sunday morning, the editor engaged the New York Aero Club as official observer. New York dailies ran banner headlines hawking Curtiss’s flight. The New York Times squeezed into the action by hiring a special train to carry Mrs. Curtiss, his staff, and friends—and a journalist and photographer from the paper to chronicle their reactions.

Early Sunday morning Curtiss stuffed his arms through a cork life jacket, pulled on rubber fishing waders up to his armpits to ward off chilly air, and donned a pair of goggles like Blériot. He took off from a field outside south Albany and flew over the Hudson River.

Soon he spotted the train below carrying Lena. She leaned out a window waving a white handkerchief. He flew overhead and alongside, plane and train cruising about fifty miles per hour.

Halfway through his route, he landed as planned at 8:30 a.m. on a bumpy open grassland near Poughkeepsie to refuel the gas. Less than an hour later he took off again. He closed in on Manhattan around noon. He spotted crowds below waving at him from rooftops and along the riverbank. When he saw the Statute of Liberty, signaling the end of his trip, he circled her before steering to nearby Governors Island for a perfect landing on the parade ground.

Curtiss carried with him a letter from the Mayor of Albany to deliver to the Mayor of New York—the first airmail letter. The See Curtiss on page 40

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O U T D O O R S

© Tim McBride

Swinging for success: Dean Andrews, General Manager and Golf Superintendent, Matt Sternquist, Golf Professional, and Cat Rush, Director of Sales and Marketing (below, left to right) work together to ensure golfers not only experience a challenging course and enjoyable meals, but also the features of the surrounding community.

Changing Course

Wellsboro’s Tyoga Country Club Thinks Foreward

By Maggie Barnes

M

any sons follow in their father’s footsteps. But, few have done so as literally as Dean Andrews. As the general manager and golf course superintendent of the Tyoga Country Club (TCC) in Wellsboro, Dean holds the same position, on the same course, as his dad, Gary, did. When Dean says that he grew up at TCC, he means exactly that.

“We lived above the clubhouse. I remember being about seven years old, and the tennis courts had just been resurfaced. To my mind, it was the perfect place to try out my new skateboard. And I still remember one of our lady members yelling at me,” he says with a smile. (If you need proof that TCC has always been friendly to lady golfers, there you go.)

His Dad is retired now, but still comes onto the course a few times a year “to critique how I’m doing.” The smile appears again.

Dean spent his college years at Penn State in the turf

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management program and worked at golf courses across the country. But 1988 saw him return home to take the reins of the then sixty-five-year old course. A redesign by prominent golf course architect Edmund Ault in 1977 had expanded the course from nine to eighteen holes.

Doubling the size of the course also brought the need for more players, leading club officials to open both the golfing and the restaurant to the public. At that time, in the early 1980s, the concept of “vacation packages” was just catching on in parts of the country. Tyoga Country Club began partnerships with the Sherwood Motel and Penn Wells Hotel to bring golfers to the area. A couple nights’ stay, a couple rounds of golf, and a couple of meals make for easy planning for out-of-town duffers.

Cat Rush is the Sales and Marketing person for TCC. She says such pairings work out well for all involved. “It is the benefit

of the entire community that people come to the area for the golf course. Because, they also eat and shop in Wellsboro.” She ticked off a list of where their stay-and-play visitors hail from: “Rochester, Buffalo, Philadelphia, New Jersey, even Canada.

And they come back. We’ve had the same visitors over twenty, thirty, and forty years.”

They may be returning for the feeling of intimacy and warmth that TCC offers. The 200-acre course lies in the embrace of verdant hills just outside the borough of Wellsboro.

A large deck overlooks a graceful fountain near the first tee. The clubhouse retains the footprint of the original farm home, built in the 1890s and quite large for its time. The layout works well when Cat is hosting a bridal shower or anniversary dinner in one of the many rooms.

“We are expanding the event side of our capabilities.

We recently hosted 140 people by extending a tent from the clubhouse. And there is work underway to allow us to have larger groups on site,” Cat says.

That work includes a large concrete pad that has been laid adjacent to the clubhouse. A good-sized tent will fit easily, without tearing up any natural ground, a major no-no for golf courses. The folks at TCC are aiming to become a favorite event location, with room for larger weddings, class reunions, and other happy happenings.

Tyoga is a study in miniature of what has happened to the entire golf industry over the last fifty years. Gone are the days of men heading off to “the club” to dig divots and dine while the wife and children stay home. Parenting today includes both mothers and fathers, and loaded schedules have them looking for places the whole gang can enjoy together. TCC has made this transition, offering members a swimming pool and family-centric events like cookouts to encourage gathering on the course for those non-players.

But golf is still the main thing. Tyoga Country Club has its share of hillsides and tight corners, but Golf Pro Matt Sternquist says the course is challenging without being intimidating, a delicate balance that some tracks have difficulty striking. Ask him which is the toughest hole and he comes back faster than a hooked shot. “Number 10. It’s a par 3, 180 yards, but it goes straight up. You can’t see the green, only the top of the flag.”

The folks here are rightfully proud of their involvement with several good causes, hosting charity golf events every year. The Endless Mountain Music Festival has been holding an outing for the visiting musicians each of the last five years to raise funds to support the concert series, and will do it again on Monday, August 1. The Tioga County Youth Program, the local fire department, and others have realized impressive “green” with their day on the greens.

“You can feel the passion behind the tournaments when they are for an important cause,” Cat says.

Passion and dedication are constant themes at TCC; you can feel it in the warmth of every smile and greeting. Whether you are the next Tiger Woods, or just spend most of your golf day in the woods, the folks at Tyoga Country Club make it their mission to give you a pleasant day on the course.

Dropping that four-foot putt is still up to you.

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Gimme a beat: The Reading Buccaneers join six other corps in the quest for top bragging rights.

To the Rhythm of Harch! Harch! Harch!

Williamsport’s Marching Millionaires Host the 2016 Drum Corps Invitational

By Linda Roller

I

t’s all about the beat—the precision beat, and the marching feet. Add in creativity and theatrical flair and it makes for a toe-tapping feast for both ears and eyes. There’s no better place to see that than with a gifted drum corps, and no better place to experience it than here in Williamsport, at the Williamsport Marching Millionaires 2016 Drum Corps Invitational on Aug. 13.

According to John Shableski, president of the Marching Millionaires band association, it’s been over twenty-five years since there was a drum corps competition in the Williamsport area.

“They used to use Bowman Field for the event. The stadium wasn’t the right size, but it held enough people.”

With the $3 million upgrade to the Williamsport Area High School (WAHS) stadium, the event is at the perfect field, with everything marching musicians could need. Shableski noted that all the improvements have created a multi-use stadium, and where some people see a football stadium, he sees a marching band stadium, and a field of dreams for marching musicians.

The timing couldn’t be better for this event. The WAHS stadium replaces the Bucknell University stadium for drum corps events, so the marchers have a new, renovated location. And this competition is at the end of the season, when the corps are at their very best, when every move has been tested and perfected.

Seven corps will be here from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. But there is a special Williamsport connection, as the drum instructor for WAHS Marching Millionaires, Marc Garside, is also the instructor for the Hawthorne Caballeros in New Jersey. Several Williamsport students march with this corps, and the Caballeros are the host for the invite. They will compete against the Reading Buccaneers, the Connecticut

16

Hurricanes, the Skyliners, the Long Island Sunrisers, the White Sabers from Dansville, New York, and the Bushwackers from Princeton, New Jersey.

All of the groups are senior drum corps, meaning that these corps have people from thirteen to fifty years old involved in the love of music and precision movement. The competition for the slots is keen, with many players vying for a position in these elite groups. It’s a lifelong sport, which often grows from the high school marching band experience. And these seasoned performers have plenty to teach the kids in school about their craft. The intermission entertainment is the Cabs Alumni Corps, which is the showcase for performers from the Hawthorne Caballeros who are over fifty years old.

All the groups are in for the weekend, and will not only compete, but will also rehearse their routines at area high schools around the county, and do clinics for marching band students. The public is welcome to see the rehearsals at their local high school before coming to Williamsport for the competition. There will also be a tribute to the Williamsport Black Eagles drum and bugle corps, who won the championship sixty years ago.

The tickets are $10 for general admission and $15 for premium seating. The stadium area opens at 4 p.m., with opening ceremonies at 6 p.m. and competition beginning at 6:30. Plenty of parking and food will be available, and proceeds benefit the Williamsport Marching Millionaires.

Mountain Home contributor Linda Roller is a bookseller, appraiser, and writer in Avis, Pennsylvania.

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Faux flights: Guests at the museum can climb aboard the Piper Tomahawk II simulator and try their skills at take off, roaming the hills, and landing.

A Smooth Flight

Lock Haven’s Piper Aviation Museum is the Legacy of a “Can-Do” Spirit

By Linda Roller

T

he road up to the Piper Aviation Museum is a bittersweet one. It is, after all, the road to the Piper Aircraft plant, which closed in 1984 and moved to Lakeland, Florida. It is lonely and slightly eerie, as you pass the mostly empty fabrication plants and the empty parking lots. But the trip is worth it, as it leads to the old engineering building at One Piper Way and the entrance to the museum. It is modest in some respects, a fitting hallmark of many of the Piper stories, especially those from the early years. This full-line small aircraft manufacturer survived and thrived on seeing an opportunity or unmet need and nimbly manufacturing the solution. It’s that vision and “can-do” spirit that brought William T. Piper Sr. and Walter Jamouneau, his lead design engineer, to Lock Haven in the first place. That spirit is still at work here, in the heart of the old complex, as the museum (www.pipermuseum.com; [570] 748-8283) both tells the history of these remarkable planes and keeps the beacon burning bright for all those in love with personal planes.

In one form or another, the museum started its existence almost from the time that the Piper Company left Lock Haven.

According to John Bryerton, museum board president, the Clinton County Historical Society set up a committee to collect artifacts and information about the company that same year, and set up an office in Hangar #1. The response from the former workers at the plant and the community was strong—so strong that, with the donation of a semi truck trailer from the Pennsylvania Historical Commission, they were able to stage a permanent rolling exhibit

20

that traveled to air shows. The admission fee for the museum on wheels was, hopefully, enough to keep gas in the truck and get it to the next destination. The Piper Museum was a fixture at air shows until 1994-95.

Then, in 1996, the museum got the opportunity to purchase the old engineering building at the Piper plant in Lock Haven. The group moved swiftly to secure the building, and, by 1997, created a larger museum. There, on the second floor, unfolds the story of “The Henry Ford of Aviation,” and the company his team built.

There’s a special corner for the WASPs, the women who transported the military planes manufactured here during World War II, and another for Max Conrad, the record setting long-distance pilot who was on the Piper payroll in the 1950s and flew Pipers around the world.

The displays are just the surface. The archives are a rich and growing treasure trove of material that is still arriving over thirty years after the Clinton County Historical Society made their initial request. The documents, photos, and artifacts fill a large hall, and are well organized.

But the real reason for the museum lies below the displays, in a ground level airplane hangar. There, seven restored Piper airplanes weave the spell of flight for everyone—the idea that William Piper had in the 1930s. The J-2 Cub is there, along with the trademark J-3 Piper Cub, and the military application of the J-3, the Grasshopper, used extensively in World War II. There, too, is the plane that saved the plant right after the war. There was a glut of decommissioned

welcome to

Courtesy Piper Aviation Museum

M

small planes, but people wanted a plane where the passenger could sit beside the pilot, not behind. Piper provided and marketed the Vagabond, in lightning speed. The museum also has the PA-12 Supercruiser City of Angels that flew around the world, and a Tri-Pacer ready to exit the hangar and fly.

You can also see the PT-1 trainer prototype, originally built in 1943 for the military to use to train pilots. The Army didn’t choose Piper for the trainer, so only one was ever made.

Pennsylvania College of Technology aviation students have expertly restored this piece of aviation history over a period of a few years.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing in the museum is the operating flight simulator. If you make an appointment, you can climb into a Piper Tomahawk II cockpit and try your hand at flying. The computer program lets you take off at an airport, and you roam the hills, then land. It’s realistic enough to scare the pants off anyone not familiar with flying, and the museum staff not only runs the program, but gives you a beginning lesson in piloting the “aircraft.” When I asked Bryerton about it, he said that some people find it easy, others find it most difficult. And just for comparison, there is a 1940s simulator nearby that looks even more cramped, but did the job for new pilots in another era.

There’s a gift shop now, too. And the admission price is modest—$12 for a family, $6 for adults, $5 for seniors, $3 for children seven to sixteen, free for six and under. And if you want the thrill of flying in the simulator, it is an extra $5 a person and an appointment is required to ensure that the proper personnel are on hand, so call ahead.

WILLIAMSPORT

WILLIAMSPORT MILLIONAIRE ARCHING S

DRUM CORPS INVITATIONAL 2016

Saturday, August 13, 2016 • 6:00 pm STA Stadium • Williamsport Area High School Participating Corps:

HAWTHORNE CABALLEROS BUSHWACKERS READING BUCCANEERS WHITE SABERS NEW YORK SKYLINERS SUNRISERS CONNECTICUT HURRICANES

Special Performances by the Caballeros Alumni Corps, and the Epic Percussion All-Stars

Join us as we also celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Williamsport Black Eagles Drum Corps Championship!

Presented by the Williamsport Band Parent Association and the Hawthorne Caballeros For more information and ticket pricing visit us at:

www.WilliamsportDrumCorpsShow.com

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Mountain Home contributor Linda Roller is a bookseller, appraiser, and writer in Avis, Pennsylvania.

21

© Frank Serio Photography

“...More Than Anything, More Than Everything...”

Celebrating Sue Cunningham and the Love That Is Hickory Fest

By Gayle Morrow

I

t is not easy to be in charge of a large-scale annual event. Just ask the folks who make the Laurel Festival or the Coal Festival or the Barkpeelers’ Convention happen. When it came to Hickory Fest, that joyous musical happening at Stonyfork Creek Campground celebrating old-timey bluegrass, newgrass, and just-plain-excellent tunes and players, the go-to person was Sue Cunningham. Fiddle player extraordinaire, she was one of the festival’s founders and had been its producer for thirteen years.

Her exuberant, flawless mastery of the fiddle was a perpetual festival delight.

Sue died last fall after a three-year war with cancer, a war that she waged, for the most part, privately and without fanfare. So, too soon, when it was time to decide “will there be a festival without her?” her long-time life partner and musical collaborator, Frank Serio, took a deep breath and said, “Yes, there will.”

And it will be in her honor, because it was an event she loved, in a place she loved, surrounded by people she loved and who loved her.

“She was this angel genius who came down and hung out with us,” Frank says. The problem then, for him, has been how best to put aside his own grief and loss and honor a person who was never a self-promoter, who was humble and even a bit reserved but who, when she had that fiddle tucked under her chin, became something almost otherworldly.

And, oh yeah, she really was a rocket scientist.

22

Sue came from a dichotomous family of engineers and musicians. She was classically trained on the violin and piano; her music in those early days was structured—she, in fact, missed the whole rock and roll/pop era. But then there was that auspicious day, the day her older brother played her an album by the late, great Vassar Clements. Sue had her bluegrass awakening and, without any trouble at all, fell in love with the free-form style.

Her violin morphed into a fiddle.

Meanwhile, she earned her undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering from Cornell, her masters and doctorate in mechanical engineering from Carnegie Mellon, and her MBA in management (Sloan Fellows Program) from MIT. She specialized in jet engines (thus the endearing “Flying Sue Cunningham” name her brothers gave her when they played music together) and worked as an engineer, manager, and business developer for companies in Pennsylvania and Florida. Throughout those years, she and her brothers played music as The Flying Cunninghams; she collaborated with Peter Rowan, The Harris Brothers, and Verlon Thompson, to name just a few; and in 2000, she formed The Hickory Project, where her bow dipped and skimmed and raced over shimmering fiddle strings and her singing voice came into its own. Her last and most recent musical project, “Find Your Angel,” was a Civil War story of love and loss, conceived and brought to fruition by herself, Frank, and Verlon.

See HIckory Fest on page 25

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!

© Frank Serio Photography

Melodius mentor: Cunninham plays alongside Verlon Thompson (far left) with mentor, Vassar Clements looking on.

Hickory Fest continued from page 22

Sue lived in Florida but made a second home here in Tioga County, where today she is conspicuous by her absence from her own beautiful house, a house that is a tasteful and subdued testimony to the woman who designed it, where her grand piano gathers dust, and where her Caribbean-blue eyes and familiar smile peek out at you from the dozens of pictures Frank has taken of her over the years.

She’s there, but she’s not—much as she will be there, but not, at this year’s Hickory Fest. In the scramble of final festival preparations, Frank is envisioning an event that will be a testament to Sue, to what he calls “this beautiful, brilliant presence,” to her love of music and performing, and to her desire to mentor, to pass something meaningful on to someone who might not otherwise have opportunities as she did. To that end, he and Sue’s family established the Sue Cunningham Music Scholarship at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The first recipient, Matthew Barnes, a sixteen-year-old classically trained violinist, will be at the festival to accept his award and play some tunes.

And, as they have for the past two years, portions of the festival proceeds will benefit the Tioga Chapter of the American Cancer Society.

And the bands for this celebration? Festival-goers will be treated to performances by some of Sue’s musical colleagues: Donna the Buffalo (a local favorite at Trumansburg’s Grassroots Festival), the Claire Lynch Band, Verlon Thompson, Driftwood, Billy Gilmore and Friends, Dan Shipe, the Cherry Flats Ridge Pluckers, and Sue’s Brothers.

Not long after she died, Frank wrote a love song to Sue. “I love you more than anything, I love you more than everything…” goes part of the refrain. This Hickory Fest is, at its heart, about that love, Sue’s love for her music, her music family, and that family’s love for her.

“Sue would take all my crazy ideas and make them work,” says Frank. This one is not so crazy, but Sue is there, making it work, her love as palpable as the notes soaring from her fiddle into the ether.

So join us at Hickory Fest, August 19-21, to celebrate Sue Cunningham. For ticket and event information visit www. hickoryfest.com.

Keystone Press Award-winning columnist Gayle Morrow is the former editor of the Wellsboro Gazette.

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Hunt from home: Developed in Hundycz’s basement, the geocaching game, Cache Me If You Can, lets players hunt without leaving the house.

Game On

Corning Game Designer Dan Hundycz Plays Pop’s Culture Shoppe

By Maggie Barnes

“W

hat do you know about the evolution of games?”

On a damp morning in Corning, game designer Dan Hundycz offered an abbreviated history of board games. First generation games are the Monopoly and Chutes and Ladders of our collective memory. They largely depended on the fall of the dice or the draw of a card to determine action.

Second generation games had a little less luck and a little more strategy. Think Clue.

Then came the video game era. Lots of strategy and luck involved, but very little or no interaction with other people. Games could be played in solitude.

What Dan, through his corporate brand, DPH Games, brings to the gamer is a different experience, a marriage of the strategic and the communal. The games he builds are meant to be played at a table, surrounded by other participants. They are very cerebral in their approach and deal with subjects not usually associated with laughing with friends on a Friday night. For instance, Psychological Warfare is exactly what it sounds like—how to get into someone’s head to achieve your goals.

In Pandemic players assume the role of the Centers for Disease Control with the endgame of stopping an infectious outbreak. Dan has one in the works centered on the Salem witch trials, a venture that turned him into a quasi-expert on the subject. (How many witches were burned at the stake? Answer: Zero.)

Dan was inventing games when he was in elementary school,

26

a passion that grew throughout his life. “I wrote games about outer space and baseball. I went through the usual Dungeons and Dragons phase in college. I wrote some crime-scene stuff.” All during his career as a school counselor, board games were a part of his life. In recent years, the popularity of tabletop games “exploded,” as Dan puts it, partly in response to the video game craze. “People miss that interaction, that sense of being together.”

The first game he invented for retail sale stemmed from a friend needing a game for a geocaching-themed birthday party.

Geocaching is an activity game that gets players outside to seek out hidden items through the use of a GPS. Dan built the first version of Cache Me If You Can himself at his kitchen table, then assembled the 999 that followed.

“I learned as I went,” he said. That included things like how to get into the game conventions where reviewers and buyers testdrive the new stuff coming out. As an example, the New York Game Fair attracts 22,000 gaming insiders. “Then there is financing, production, storage, distribution, shipping, and such,” Dan said.

In the first days of this second career, Dan would store games in his basement and load up his car when a store agreed to carry them. The approach has gotten a bit more sophisticated for him now, with things like Kickstarter Funding campaigns, a sales rep on the road, and some fifty outlets for his games, plus online sales.

“I don’t require a minimum order for my games, so small shops can order just a few and see how they sell.” Dan said.

Relationships with toy and game stores are important to a designer, but it is the connection directly with the player that is most valuable, and rewarding, for a game maker. Dan will often visit a store, game in hand, to see who wants to play. From a devoted player’s perspective, there’s nothing like interacting with the game designer and giving instant feedback.

Such an event is scheduled for August 5 in Wellsboro. First Friday brings a myriad of happenings to the Borough’s Main Street, and that includes Dan and one of his inventions for an evening around the table at Pop’s Culture Shoppe, at the corner of Main Street and East Avenue.

Storeowner Julian Stam calls Dan’s games “clever, clear, and interactive.

And his sense of humor always comes through.”

Consider the game Dan is calling CATS. Not to be confused with the smash Broadway musical, the rest of the title is A Sad But Necessary Cycle of Violent Predatory Behavior. Players assume the persona of a feline and spend the game in pursuit of birds. The winged creatures are stalked, caught, and stolen between the cats before meeting the fate that nature usually has in mind.

There is another game brewing for later this year called Legacy At Sea, a theme of historical fiction, as Dan phrases it.

While expansion is usually a good thing for a business, Dan has to be mindful of his own limitations. “Every new game splits my attention,” he says. And those already in production will often need expansion packs to make them playable again for veterans of the board.

That’s a lot of nights at the dining room table.

But for now, a one-man band suits DPH Games. There is much strategy at work to ensure a bright future. And, maybe, a lucky roll or two of the dice.

Felines and feathered friends: Hundycz (left) decides which action to take to score some birds in CATS.

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Little Boomers’

I

sn’t it fun to make tacos at home? Cutting and chopping, using every single bowl you own, having all the ingredients slopped across the table? And they never taste the way you remember? Yes, good times.

Siblings Andrew and Nicole Cleary were raised in Corning restaurant royalty. Grandfather Charlie “Pudgie” Cleary opened the original Pudgies, and Mom and Dad, Karen and Fran Cleary, had Boomer’s, Boomer’s Bistro, and Boomer’s Catering for years. The next generation was looking for a way to combine that long tradition with a more modern offering that serves up “fast, good food.”

The product of that aspiration opened two years ago at 30 West Market Street with Little Boomers’ Burrito Bar, a burrito variety store of sorts. A blackboard spans the wall behind the long counter, urging you to check out “the goods” and “pick your own destiny.” That destiny is framed by these choices: burrito, rice bowl, salad, tacos, nachos, or quesadillas. The rest of the journey is up to you, as the counterman will customize any of the above with hefty helpings of meat and veggies and “goods” (pico de gallo and salsa and quacamole and queso among them).

Andrew smiles when he talks about his clientele. “Business people from Market Street, high school kids, visitors from around the world—you never know who will be in here.”

The genetic material that links families together carries the food DNA in strong numbers in Andrew, who handles the operational side of things while sister Nicole serves as Business Manager. Beyond the two of them, the family is still actively involved in the creative side of things, as evidenced by a recent late-night inspiration that took hold of Andrew.

“I wasn’t thrilled with our marinade, and that is such a critical part of the flavor with the beef and chicken. I couldn’t sleep one night and finally, at 1 a.m., it came to me what we needed to do. So there I was at Wegman’s, in the middle of the night, and calling the rest of the family to say, ‘get over here, we need to make this while the thought is still in my head!’”

Family is the theme of the colorful wall mural, based on the Mexican tradition of the Day of the Dead. Various members of the Cleary family are depicted, including Dad, the late Fran “Boomer” Cleary, manning the grill in the portrait’s center. Yes, they are skeletons, but they are cheerful skeletons! Even the iconic Corning Gaffer has been stripped to his bones.

Fast food is not supposed to be good for you, and good food is supposed to take a long time, so Little Boomers tilts both of those standards on their sides and offers food that can fit into a lunch timetable and a healthy diet.

Rejoice at another successful Cleary Family enterprise— bones and all. ~Maggie Barnes

COME FACE TO FACE WITH GLASS SEA CREATURES

THEMED HOT GLASS DEMOS

Fragile Legacy presents the spectacular work of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka: intricate glass models of undersea creatures that were made in the 1800s but continue to inspire scientists and artists.

INSPIRED BY BLASCHKA

CMOG.ORG/EXHIBITS

MAKE YOUR OWN GLASS SEA SLUGS CMOG.ORG/MYOG

CMOG.ORG/GLASSMAKING/DEMOS CMOG.ORG/COLLECTION/GALLERIES

See contemporary works inspired by the Blaschkas on display in our galleries.

Credit: Specimen of Blaschka Marine Life: Chryssora mediterranea, Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, Lent by Cornell University, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Blaschka Nr. 232.

29

Keuka Bakery Worth Every Penny

© “Expressions” by Darlene

© “Expressions” by Darlene Oven-baked gold: Lynn Sissan hopes customers not only enjoy the baked good, but also the intimate comfort of the shop.

The penny and nickel floor (right) is a glowing representation of Keuka Lake.

By Maggie Barnes

P

ennies may fall from heaven, but it’s a safe bet that the skies over Hammondsport have never rained down the copper coins as perfectly as have the owners of the new Keuka Bakery Company.

In the front of the new café at 49 Shethar Street, the floor is adorned with pennies, thousands of them. They float under a sheen of clear coat and, in the center, rests Keuka Lake, glimmering in a perfect depiction of silvery nickels. That eye-catching use of coins took two people a full week to inlay, coin by coin, and sealed forever the fate of some 22,000 pennies and 200 nickels.

Lynn Sissan and her significant other, Doug Nichols (hence the “nickels” that connote the lake), wanted to make a statement with that opening space in the new Keuka Bakery on Shethar Street in Hammondsport. They live on the lake and wanted to pay homage to the beauty of the area and the significance of that body of water.

Nearly everyone who comes in the door comes to a halt to admire the monetary masterpiece. It is just one of the conversation-starting aspects of the bakery’s look. Doug operates Nichols Marina and Restoration, so much of the nautical creativity is his. But it is Lynn

30

who has found herself saying, “Don’t throw that out. I can use that.”

Though only open since Memorial Day weekend, the Keuka Bakery Company, open seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., already has the welcoming feel of an established restaurant. The marriage of food and decoration is everywhere, from the lights made of cheese graters and funnels to the section of an Old Towne canoe holding wine bottles. (For décor only. No wine with the donuts!)

Wringer washing machines act as table bases.

“We saw some interesting things that other people were doing in their shops,” Lynn said. “We borrowed from some, changed others, and really let our imagination wander about what was possible and would look right in our space.”

Lynn’s resume includes baking, as she worked for Dunkin’ Donuts for a time, but she has never before owned a bakery. “The former owners retired and there was a sudden opportunity.” Her goal was to create an atmosphere for intimacy. “I was looking for a feeling of comfort. A true ‘catching up over coffee’ sort of place.”

The seating is varied and offers different angles depending on customer mood. If talking is a primary purpose, tables in the See Keuka Bakery on page 33

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Arts continued from 30 ©Keuka “Expressions” bypage Darlene

Pastry prevails: Muffins and elephant ears are among the many pastries baked in house.

Keuka Bakery continued from page 30

center provide face-to-face seating to hash out the problems of the world. If people watching is in order, the tables near the windows bathe you in sunshine and allow for spectating onto the street and the verdant Hammondsport Square.

But the visual feast is only the palate cleanser. Baking begins at 5 a.m. under the watchful eye of Alfred University graduate Heaven Krieger. Muffins, elephant ears, and Danish fill the air with an aroma that makes you think of laid-back Sunday mornings. Customers have dubbed the iced croissants “ingenious” and “insanely good.”

Fresh bread is a daily happening. Coffee lovers will find a brew for every taste, from fancy flavors to a classic cup of good Joe. While bakeries and breakfast go together like toast and butter, missing out on the lunch and early dinner offerings would be a mistake. Recent sandwich specials include roast beef on olive oil rosemary bread with lettuce, tomato, and

white truffle mayo. It’s enough to make peanut butter and jelly crawl back into the brown bag. Abundant seasonal strawberries inspired fresh baked Angel Food Cake with a mound of perfect berries and whipped cream. With grilling season in full swing, a bag of fresh hamburger and hot dog rolls is the perfect grab on the way home.

Lynn is grateful for the reception her new business has received. “It’s been excellent.” She said. “Both residents and visitors have been very complimentary and supportive. We already have repeat customers!”

Go back to the cascade of coins on the floor for a moment. About halfway up the west coast of the lake, do you see the gold coin? For all her love of Hammondsport, that circle of glitter represents Lynn’s favorite place in all of the world—home.

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B

en Calkins, the owner of Dippity Do Dahs, spent the first twelve years of his life on his grandfather’s dairy farm in Woodhull, New York. One of his fondest memories is of his grandfather cranking up the old ice cream maker. “My earliest memories are of the old hand crank one,” says Ben. “We made ice cream in the winter all the time. Not as much in the summer, because there was so much to do on the farm. But we always had ice cream.”

It was a memory Ben couldn’t let lie. A certified art teacher by degree, Ben ended up as a pharmaceutical rep for twelve years. But as the industry started going through big changes, Ben started envisioning a different future. And he started thinking seriously about ice cream. On vacation, he and his wife, Anna, had always visited mom-and-pop ice cream stores. But, with a new objective in mind, they started sitting down for a cup of coffee if Mom or Pop had a minute to spare, asking about the business end of things. All along, Ben was disappointed that many towns—including Corning—had lost their homemade ice cream stores. A few years and many ice cream courses, seminars, and conventions followed. Then Anna met Jeff Kostick, owner of the Cayuga Lake Creamery, at a farmers market. He invited the Calkinses into his creamery, mentoring them in the world of real life ice cream making.

Ready to take the plunge, they started brainstorming a name.

“We just tossed it out, a play on the song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” from the Disney movie Song of the South. And my grandfather used to call them dips of ice cream. So it’s a play on that, too.” He adds, chuckling, “My generation calls them scoops. And I think the new generation just calls them small, medium, and large.”

And so Dippity Do Dahs opened at 58 East Market Street on Memorial Day, 2013. Twenty-eight to thirty-three flavors are available, made from antibiotic- and hormone-free 14 percent butterfat cream from Upstate Farms, a western New York dairy co-op (and that includes all the specialty products made in house: ice cream cakes, ice cream pizzas, holiday ice cream pies, and ice cream cookie sandwiches made with specially-baked cookies by Poppleton Bakery). Salted caramel is the most popular ice cream flavor, with cake batter a close second. “For as many adults as like salted caramel there are as many kids who like cake batter.

There aren’t a lot of fifty-year-olds getting the cake batter, and there aren’t a lot of twelve-year-olds getting the salted caramel,” Ben grins.

Dippity Do Dahs baked 18,000 waffle cones last year. The scent of all that baking drifts sweetly down Market Street. You won’t regret following your nose. ~ Teresa Banik Capuzzo

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Houston, We Have a Problem Actually, We Have Several, But Family Calls...

By Maggie Barnes

“W

e have to get to C-17!”

I searched the cavernous innards of O’Hare International Airport for a gate number and came up with C-2. Oh, my achin’ head.

The flight from Elmira had been grounded by fog so thick you could have stood on it. Now we were racing to our connecting flight.

It was a Friday in August and every man, woman, child, and tiny dog in America had tracked our online reservations and decided, “Let’s go, too!” It was a madhouse.

The situation at our intended gate was the worst scenario possible. The plane was still nestled against the jet-way, tantalizingly near the window from which we peered out. But the aircraft door was closed and, as the beleaguered agent explained to our panting faces, “Once that door is closed, the plane is gone.”

Robert’s logical mind rebels against regulatory restrictions that run counter to reality. “But, it’s right there!” he argued, to no avail.

We were as cranky as old ladies whose lucky bingo cards got snatched up by that new woman, the one who always wears eye shadow that matches her shoes.

The rebooking of our tickets on a later flight resulted in two boarding passes in the name of Robert Barnes. So, we set the alarm off at the gate. Further complicating the situation was the fact that Robert was already on the plane. Yep, another man with my husband’s exact name happened to be on the same flight. For

36

just a moment, I fondly thought of a past beau with the last name Vallelunga. Go ahead Delta, try to find another one of those on your plane! Ha! Anyway, we touched down in Texas nine sweaty hours after we left the breezes of our Waverly home. As we stood in the line for our rental car, I reminded myself why we were doing this.

Few people travel to Houston in August without extradition papers and an escort from the U.S. Marshalls, but our first grandchild was being formally welcomed into the family of God. Nothing was keeping us from her christening, not even the need for oven mitts on the steering wheel of our rental. We hit another hiccup when we got to the security gate at the car center. “I’m sorry,” the attendant said, “but Robert is not listed as the primary driver. It has to be the person who paid for the reservation.” Note to self: get Bobby’s name on the darn Amex. So, we bailed out of the car right at the gate and scrambled ourselves into the approved positions. I got us off airport property, but the specter of Friday afternoon traffic in Houston loomed, and we reversed the seating back at the first wide spot in the road I could find.

We brought our GPS, but it seemed to be suffering from mechanical heatstroke.

“Do you recognize that shopping plaza?” On one of our forays, I pointed, and Bob shrugged. “This place is nothing but shopping plazas. They all look alike.” Trying to make ourselves useful, we had

offered to pick up the food for the after-baptism gathering. “When you make that turn, Costco will be on the left.” Yes, it was—on the left hand side of a six-lane highway, on which we were traveling in the opposite direction. “Turning left” meant getting off at the next exit, turning left under the overpass, and getting back on the left side, which is now the right side.

Frustration mounting, Bob and I admitted to each other that what city driving skills we possessed had been whitewashed clean in five years of living in a place that defines “traffic” as the ability to see another car on the same road. Might be a mile off and doing a steady twenty-five miles per hour, but, “Look at the traffic today!”

And the heat. Houston in August is brutally hot and humid, a feeling that permeates your every pore. I never seemed to get dry and my eyeballs were swimming in circles, producing a headache I could have put out to bid to major pharmaceutical companies.

As Bob quipped, “I prefer to live somewhere I can shovel my way out of my problems.”

During the ceremony, Annabelle wailed appropriately, thinking her parents had lost their minds in handing her over to a robed stranger who was trying to drown her. We beamed.

The night before our departure, we schemed to swing back to the house early on Monday and snatch up David and Kristina, Son #2 and his wife, as their flight was leaving within minutes of ours. The purpose was to avoid dragging Son #1 back out of the house needlessly for a long drive into the city.

In the predawn light, I kissed the chubby cheeks of the still-drowsy Annabelle and whispered, “Grandma and Grandpa love you very much. But we are never coming to see you in August again!”

We were fifteen minutes into an expected hour and a half ride when David’s voice popped up over the backseat and into my ear. “You guys are flying out of Hobby, right?”

“The airport. The one we always fly into.”

“Let me see your ticket.”

Wherever you are right now, point to the farthest spot in the room on your left. That’s Bush Intercontinental Airport, from which Robert and I were flying. Now, turn and point to the right, as far away as you can get. That’s Hobby Airport, where the kids needed to be.

Sigh.

Several options were considered and discarded to deal with this travel tragedy. We ended up summoning Son #1 out of his home anyway, to retrieve his brother and sister-in-law and take them, at a high rate of fuel consumption, to the correct airport.

As we watched our kids walk back down the ramp of the parking garage, their rolling luggage flashing behind them in the Texas heat, my heart sank. They would have to cover a good chunk of ground on foot to get to a corner where Eric could reach them. I turned to find my husband’s face just as pained as mine.

“There goes ‘Parents of the Year,’” I said, “right down the crapper.”

Everyone made it where they needed to be and I really don’t want to know how. Nothing made the local news, so I’m happy.

• The next day, I was unwinding the garden hose from the side of the house, calculating how much I would need to reach the flower box on our lower deck. The large oak outside the dining room had been pelting us with acorns all summer. Quiet

evenings were punctuated by the BONG of tiny brown missiles ricocheting off the stainless steel grill. I stepped on to the side hill and it was like trying to walk on ball bearings. A carpet of acorns grabbed my feet, rolled me ten feet straight down like a high-speed assembly line, and plopped me on my butt for the final few feet. My hands had constricted in a failed attempt to hold on to something, resulting in the hose nozzle locking in the “on” position. I slid to a dusty, muddy stop with the garden hose spewing water like a crazed snake and acorns crammed into parts of my body that should have required a formal introduction.

I laid there and had one thought.

“It’s good to be home.”

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Curtiss continued from page 13 Fourth Estate treated him as a national hero, including six pages of copy and photos in The New York Times.

Weeks later a federal appeals court overturned the injunction against Curtiss.

He founded two companies—the Curtiss Aeroplane Company and the Curtiss Motor Company. He also received a patent for his design for ailerons.

• As Curtiss had flown over the Hudson River, he realized the boats below were defenseless targets against planes. He also thought about building a plane that would take off from water and land in water. He wrote to the Secretary of the Navy offering to teach officers to fly at no cost. Navy leadership, oriented around battleships, wasn’t interested. Curtiss produced a seaplane and tested it on Keuka Lake near Hammondsport, taking off then landing.

“Curtiss was a showman, which was important to get attention,” said David Isby. “He landed a seaplane next to an anchored Navy war ship, which hoisted the seaplane aboard for inspection, then lowered it back down to the sea and he took off.”

One of Curtiss’s disciples was Eugene Ely, a civilian from Williamsburg, Iowa, who enjoyed flying stunts. On November 13, 1910 he flew a Curtiss plane from the deck of the Navy cruiser Birmingham off the Virginia coastline. Ely’s flight persuaded Navy officials to order two lieutenants to report to Curtiss and learn to fly. The threesome bonded as Curtiss gave lessons.

Navy higher-ups remained indifferent to aviation. Curtiss created history on January 18, 1911, when Ely flew onto the deck of another Navy cruiser, Pennsylvania, in San Francisco Bay, then flew back to shore. That marked the birth of U.S. Naval aviation.

• For eight years the case of Wright v. Curtiss roiled in the courts, turning into a trust fund for lawyers. Henry Ford put his crackerjack legal team at Curtiss’s disposal. Then politics intervened. In April 1917 President Wilson declared war on Germany “to save democracy” and ordered one million U.S. troops to reinforce French and English soldiers.

According to historian John B. Rae, the United States had about seventy-five airplanes, none combat ready. The fledgling Army Air Corps borrowed French Nieuports and English Sopwith Camels to fly missions, explains Bill (Willie) Driscoll, a Navy Ace and TOPGUN instructor.

Curtis Wright III, a descendant of the Wright brothers, describes a family story handed down about the “shotgun marriage” that ended the litigation. “The War Department [predecessor to the Defense Department] summoned Glenn Curtiss and Orville Wright to Washington D.C. and sat them down at opposite ends of a conference table. The gist was that the United States had a war to fight, Wright had the patent, and Curtiss had materials and manufacturing know-how.”

William F. Trimble in Hero of the Air: Glenn Curtiss and the Birth of Naval Aviation, cites a brokered settlement, which “took over the Wright and Curtiss patents and administered a cross-licensing agreement that applied to all members of the association.” The Wright and Curtiss interests each received $2 million in royalties, today worth $37 million.

By then Curtiss had more than 500 U.S. Patents, most for aircraft design, and a much bigger business. His name has first billing in the global Curtis-Wright Corporation, • The Glenn H. Curtiss Museum (www.glennhcurtissmuseum.org; [607] 5692160) on State Road 54 in Hammondsport recently reopened after $1.2 million in renovations to remember its native son and his critical roles in motorcycles and aviation. Author Seth Shulman in Unlocking the Sky: Glenn Hammond Curtiss and the Race to Invent the Airplane, praised the museum as a gem.

Peter Joffre Nye is author of eight nonfiction books, most recently The Fast Times of Albert Champion: From Record-Setting Racer to Dashing Tycoon, An Untold Story of Speed, Success, and Betrayal. He is updating his 1988 Hearts of Lions for release in 2017.

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B A C K O F T H E M O U N TA I N

The Light Fantastic

By Bernadette Chiaramonte-Brown

T

here is nothing that stops my car faster than seeing luminous light play across a beautiful landscape.

On this day, the sun’s light was radiant, and the clouds were playing along. Ives Run, in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, is so full of beautiful light any time of the day, but this evening was exceptional. My only hope was that others were seeing what I was seeing!

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