Looking for Skaneateles
Personal essay published in the Skaneateles Press for a special visitor's section

May 14, 2008

Sometimes I feel like I didn’t really grow up in America. I don’t identify with the cable TV, cul-de-sac, shopping mall, celebrity-obsessed, freeway, drive-through, McMansion culture that so many of my peers seem to have known.

The Skaneateles of my childhood was a place without play dates. If I wanted someone to play with, I wandered next door to see who around, or joined the neighborhood games we organized after dinner. I roamed freely, making forts, catching frogs and getting lost in the fields of milkweed and bunny grass that grew behind our house on Leitch Avenue. When the light started to fade, I headed home for dinner, feet wet, the feeling of play still clinging to my imagination.

I miss this Skaneateles.

Like any place created by nostalgia, my Skaneateles is less a geographic location than a cluster of images that lives deep within me, a feeling triggered by a drizzly spring rain, the smell of freshly cut grass, or the sound of a church bell tolling the hour.

The actual place, of course, looked different back then.

Twenty-five years ago, Skaneateles was a modest, self-sufficient village, with a local bank, a family-owned pharmacy and a five and dime store. As children, we liked to walk into the village to take part in the community that built and reinforced itself daily on the sidewalks of downtown. We said hello to Teton, the Burmese mountain dog who pressed his hairy belly onto the cool sidewalk outside the White Sleigh; swatted at the flies that buzzed around our tuna melts and smiley-faced cookies at the old Skaneateles Bakery and headed over to Herb’s for candy, inhaling the bouquet of hardwood floors, cigars and newsprint.

Morris’ Bar and Grill on the main drag is now one of the few reminders of these humbler days, the last of the many watering holes and working man’s pubs that catered to the working men we once were. Carved from the wilderness of Native American hunting grounds, Skaneateles was settled by veterans of the Revolutionary War, who received plots of land as payment for their military service. The early residents grew crops, opened taverns and worked in the industries that fueled our growth. From the woolen mills, paper mills and factories that sprang up along the creek in Skaneateles Falls came the industrial fortunes of the McLaughlins and the Thayers. The natural beauty of the area also attracted seasonal residents like the Spechts, whose 25-room summer estate on the top of Lake View Circle was once a hub of lavish entertaining.

Nowadays, it's easy to overlook our history and become tangled in the issues of paid parking and the emergence of Skaneateles as a tourist destination.  Still, the best of Skaneateles thrives along with the village’s commercial success. Doug’s Fish Fry still serves the same fried haddock and chunky French fries on thick cardboard plates they always did. Roland’s is still stacked to the ceiling with blue jeans and Carhartt jackets and has the same vinyl flooring that creaks and slopes downhill toward the lake. There are still band concerts in the gazebo, Rotary pancake breakfasts at the Allyn Arena, and Skaneateles Festival concerts under the stars on the sprawling lawn at Brook Farm.

And at the heart of our village, the lake is still here.

Slipping into the lake on a moonlight night, you suddenly feel drawn back toward a cleaner, quieter time, toward a world without man, when the melting glacier filled this basin with the cold, clear water that seems to magically wash all stress away.

Our love for the lake is the one thing we all share that neither time, nor money nor change can diminish. As kids we raced to see who could be the first one in each year. The boys were known to break the ice as early as February, but even in May, your muscles hardened when they hit the water, sending you red and gasping for a sunny spot to dry.

First-time swimmers in our lake comically try to avoid the pain by tip toeing their way through the rocky shallows, but as the locals know, you can’t walk your way into the lake. You just have to let go and jump.

During the years I lived in New York City after college, I came back for a swim every chance I got. I didn’t have a share in the Hamptons, but with an $89 ticket on the 6:30 bus from the Port Authority, I could escape the hurry up, who’s next, need it by end of the day, conference call, two-inch heels, take out menu, treadmill world I lived in.  Yes, only a bus ride away was a clean set of sheets, an open window and the leafy bloom of summer in Skaneateles.

Here, my neighbors knew me by name and cared about my life. Here, I could spend endless days swimming and sunning and then collapse, exhausted, on our wicker couch for a nap on the front porch. Stretched out in the afternoon sun, the wind chime tinkling in the breeze, my skin felt cool and soft from the lake water, my heart heavy in my chest.

Here, I could run alone at night the way I did as a teenager, my feet repeating the steps I had tread since childhood, the path Kelly North and I lollygagged ourselves late to school on, through the fragrant patch of wild oregano on the side of the hill in Austin Park, by the park where the seniors still plunge into the lake after graduation, past the college kids packed into Morris’s, and up the hill to my sleeping house, where the porch light was on and the front door still open, quietly welcoming me home.