scene from Utica

Here is my favorite personal story about Utica which I think about sometimes. We walk our dogs every day on city sidewalks past a light pole. One day as we are walking toward this particular pole, we notice a pair of pants wrapped around the base of the pole. There's lots of discarded clothes and shoes and purses on the streets and sidewalks of Utica, why I don't know. The purses are easy as they are clearly the discards of a robbery but the clothing and shoes I just don't get.

Anyway, as we get closer to the pole there is a smell. An awesome, monumental, physical impediment of a smell. We walk faster but it just gets stronger until its clear that the smell is coming from the pants. They are completely covered in shit. Human shit. Encrusting the pants all over. The pants which are wrapped around the pole. This is a part of the sidewalk where there are overgrown trees and bushes on the left of the sidewalk and the shitpants pole on the right so there is no way to give it a wide berth. We hustle the dogs past the shitpants and even they seem grossed out. The next day we forget about the shitpants wrapped around the pole and so are unpleasantly reminded at dog walk time. This goes on for a week. Sometimes we remember to walk a different block and sometimes sheer curiosity demands that we check in on the shitpants. And the pole. One day we walk up the block and we don't see the pole. The entire pole is gone like it was never there, and with it the shitpants. Sometimes I try to picture the scene of the shitpants pole removal. Were there five or six Utica City workers standing around while some poor new hire tonged the shitpants away from the pole, or did the whole pole come out with the shitpants attached. Is there a special procedure for this? Did they get hazard pay? Was the pole due to come out anyway and when they got there there was an unfortunate surprise?

Now that I have written this out it seems less amusing to me and more a sad allegory of Utica but there you go. The shitpants pole story.

The more you know

Utica fun fact #1
The city's name, which was said to have been picked out of a hat, is
In honor of Utica, Tunisia, destroyed by the Arabs in 700 A.D.
BUT WHAT KIND OF HAT?

Utica fun fact #2

http://www.city-data.com/city/Utica-New-York.html

Utica fun fact #4
The arrival of a large number of Bosnian immigrants over the past
several years has stanched a population loss that had been steady for
more than three decades. Bosnian immigrants now constitute about 10% of
the total population of Utica

Utica Fun Fact #5
There are at least 12 reported UFO sightings for Utica, NY on the National UFO Reporting Center State Report Index For NY
http://www.nuforc.org/webreports/ndxlNY.html

Utica Fun Fact #6
The "Union Suit"- a type of red-colored long underwear jumpsuit with a
buttoned flap on the backside was invented in Utica.

Utica Fun Fact #7
Average Season Snowfall : 98.9"
2004-05 Final Snowfall Total: 93.4" 2005-06 Final Snowfall Total: 106.8"
This is probably the reasoning behind Fun Fact #6

Utica fun fact #8
F. W. Woolworth opened his first store in Utica in 1878, but the store failed within a year

Utica Fun Fact #9
The Utica Zoo is home to the world's largest watering can. The 2,000 pound
can is 15 feet 6 inches in height and 12 feet in diameter.

SPECIAL BONUS!!!
verification photo of giant watering can attached. Not my photo so if this is your work let me know and I will credit.


Utica Fun Fact #10
Because of the decline of industry and employment in the post-World War II era, Utica became known as "The City that God Forgot." In the 1980s and early 1990s, some of Utica's residents could be seen driving cars with bumper stickers that read "Last One Out of Utica, Please Turn Out The Lights,"

Last week in Utica

The Mancuso brothers asbestos fraud saga finally comes to a conclusion in federal court when a judge handed out sentences like party favors. Party's over! Everyone out of the pool! There's asbestos in there!
From the local paper, emphasis mine.
"Paul Mancuso, 45, was sentenced to 6 ½ years in federal prison as the mastermind behind an asbestos removal operation that he was prohibited from being involved in.

His father, Lester Mancuso, 71, was given 3 years in prison.

Paul Mancuso's brother, Steven Mancuso, was sentenced to 3-2/3 years in prison, or 44 months, for using his legal expertise as an attorney to conceal his brother's involvement in the operations.

Additionally, Paul Mancuso was ordered to pay a $20,000 fine for violating federal regulations by allowing asbestos to be dumped in a field and washed down a drain at a Utica school, and once again he is prohibited from engaging in any asbestos abatement business.

This is the fourth time Paul Mancuso has faced serious federal charges related to asbestos abatement"
Apparently, the sentencing was colorful with crying Italian nanas, attempted running away by defendants, and metaphorical backstabbing. I have to say metaphorical because actual backstabbing is a possibility. Both Paul and Steven tried to roll over on the third brother, Ronald, who masterminded stealing nearly $1 million in quarters from parking meters in downtown Syracuse from 2000 to 2005. Which he laundered in local businesses all over town. Including a local laundromat owned by the previous Mayor's father. “Their brother Ronnie was the rat, and he’s out,” says Joette Mancuso, wife of Paul and owner of Joettes Gifts in New Hartford, which was busted by the state police for selling counterfit designer womens accessories in 2007. Thanksgiving is gonna be kind of awkward at Casa Mancuso this year.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, the Utica police make an arrest for last year's Thanksgiving murder. Turns out the murderers were right here in the city the whole time!

The recently renovated local showcase Stanley Performing Arts Center which had over $20 million dollars of federal funds poured into it is failing to support itself by presenting programs that people want to see. Executive director exit stage left and the search is on for a new one who can convince people to spend money to come downtown after dark. Give out free cans of mace, and a police escort. Problem solved.

The Utica police bought an old armored Brinks truck for $10 and have been working with the welding department of the local community college to vandal proof it and fit it out with surveillance cameras. Then it will be parked in high crime areas. "The goal is not necessarily to make an arrest, but to alert the suspects that police are onto them." Police Chief Williams says. You hear that crims? The popo are on to your shenanigans.

ok, I'm done. For now.

I am fooled twice

Getting into the car this morning I was momentarily stumped to see the contents of the glove compartment all over the front seat and floor. The little flip top compartment where we keep the cd cases was open too, as was the slide that covers the change and cup holder. Then it dawned on me that my car had been ransacked again. It's not like we haven't been robbed before, but it has been awhile. Long enough for me to get complacent. Last night while I was sleeping not thirty feet away, some thug was searching my car for valuables. Well ha on you douchbag because I don't have any. After I got through the 'what happened here' phase and the relief that they didn't make a disgusting body fluids mess, I got a little angry with myself because despite past plundering, I forgot to lock the car, thus inviting scum to help themselves. This is reasonable but infuriating. Fool me once, shame you. Fool me twice, you are a giant f*cking a**hole.

Ten years ago when we bought our house we had hoped that the neighborhood would improve and overall it has maintained. I wouldn't walk around the block after dark but I feel pretty safe during the day and we have two big dogs. Go two or three block in nearly any direction though and you are in the ghetto. Two murders and three armed bank robberies since last year. All unsolved and most 3 blocks from my home. The police never catch anyone. It has been suggested by the local newspaper that since all the robberies are similar, and no one has been caught, perhaps they are the same person? Hmmm, possibly, it is admitted. There was another armed bank robbery this morning with shots fired. This one was across town. All the banks near my house must be out of money.

I cast my nets

This weekend was lovely and called for some semi serious book hunting. Pictured is my haul. I did alright for my first time out this spring. There were a few advertised sales here and there around the region to choose from but none of the ads gave me that lucky feeling so I decide to take the shotgun approach and hit a neighborhood sale in a not wealthy, but middle/lower class area with tiny one story starter homes on small plots. Not old Utica. No sidewalks. Detached garages. Decade built circa 1970.
Very generally, the kinds of people in these neighborhoods are not readers. Reading is for children and old women so what is mostly on offer are scruffy kid's books, ratty paperback romances and James Patterson in hardback.
The big draw for most shoppers here is 'kids clothing'. Nearly every house had two or three folding tables set up with eight metric tons of clothing. Under the tables were boxes full of plastic toys and cheap junk. Every garage was packed to the ceiling with stuff which was not for sale. In fact, while browsing along line of plastic kitchen implements in tubs, I got to close to the open garage door of one gentleman who sternly ordered me away. Glancing inside I could see a wall of cardboard boxes marked 'kids clothes-storage'. Who knows what kind of Wallmart dragon's horde of treasures lie within! I shiver to think.

I come to these when I have limited time because I can hit ten to fifteen houses in quick succession. I am hoping that someone will decide to finally get rid of granddad's old worthless civil war reference books or train books or Aunt Mabel's crazy alternative medicine manuals. I'm just sayin, its happened before. However, the books on offer were mostly as described above and no antiquarian gold mines were struck.
I did hit one house that had a box full of recently printed text books and culled out the keepers. These are fairly advanced biology text books indicating that someone was doing some serious book learnin. I probably should have asked after more. Once I talked my way into a house of a nurse who was selling medical books and emerged with several hundred dollars worth of texts. It helps that I don't look like an ax murder. Also I impulse bought two vintage magazine ads which are both seductive and irresistible so clearly I had no choice. OH! and the book on knitting your own farmyard. Not just the animals, not just the farmer, but the houses and landscape too. That one is going to be hard to part with even though I have no intention of knitting, not ever.

In May, as the weather creeps up to above 60 degrees and it edges past likelihood of snow,(although it still might), we enter my favorite season. Summer.

In the Mohawk Valley, the months of June, July and August are liking waking up from a horrible collective nightmare. All the rest of the long year is slogging through snow and frost and sleet and waking up in the dark and heading home from work in the dark. Everyone burrows into their homes. I only go out to go to work or walk the dogs and absolutely no one shovels, not even businesses. A blanket depression settles over the city. There is one thing that keeps me from going totally Donner Party, Hunting For Books.

I spend the winter scouring the internet for books to buy and hoard until I can part with them for hopefully a small profit. It gives me a wild satisfaction and its usually just enough money to support my craving to buy more books. There is no such thing as a garage sale in Utica in the wintertime. Very few estate/moving sales too, but in spring and summer they pop up like crocus ripe with promise. Maybe crocus isn't the right metaphor, because I have seen some weird stuff here. Some creepy stuff, that I now wish I had taken pictures of. Utica isn't like anywhere else I have ever lived.
This immediate area has been culturally and genetically isolated for decades. The '80s and '90s saw a huge population drop and anyone without connection to the area fled. The remaining Utica natives, and by that I mostly refer to the second and third generation Italian and Polish families, have entrenched themselves as an unofficial higher cast. There is a distinct Utica accent, special Utica only foods, easily identifiable Utica facial traits, a fond remembrance of the Italian mafia, supposedly not active here anymore, and a 'friends and family' system of government which I believe is a direct result of the former.
As an outsider but with an Italian last name I can get by, although sometimes I get weird looks and asked if I'm really Italian. Technically neither are they. I don't mention that.
All that was a long way of saying that sometimes I go to a house sale and its like stepping back in time and into another country/dimension. Sometimes I remember to take a photo and I'll be putting them here, in this blog. Also, sometimes I find some really cool stuff and I feel like sharing. I'm also going to be documenting how to speak Utican, eat Utican, and stuff that generally fascinates or repels me about this area. Oh and weird stuff I find in books.
How's about we start with what I hope to be the first in a continuing series I am calling I don't need to spell it to sell it.