It’s hard to remember what I did for Thanksgiving breaks those first few years when I was in college in Ithaca, NY. I was a mid-year transfer student to Cornell in January 1985 having done my first year and a half of school in my hometown at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. I tried to make it home most Christmases but it was a long train or bus ride just for Thanksgiving and too expensive to go by plane. In later years I went with friends, but there was at least one Thanksgiving, maybe a whole Christmas break when I wondered the campus feeling lonely with the other few who appeared as bundled miniatures stepping from giant buildings or walking across barren quads.
The flat-roofed, three-story cinder block coop I lived in was a former sorority house with architectural elements of Frank Lloyd Wright pasted on Soviet brutalism. The coop was on the North side of campus across both gorges from College town. There was a pervading sense of quiet especially in winter bundled against the cold with footsteps on new snow. Where footpaths paralleled or crossed the salted roads the sharp sound of wet, spinning tires came alive.
I never went over Thurston Avenue bridge without thinking of the students reputed to have thrown themselves into the gorge. It was said guards were placed on this bridge after chemistry exams. I assumed this was for all the hard sciences. No one thought hotel school students like me were in danger. We were the ambassadors for service-oriented capitalism and spent Wednesday afternoons drinking alcohol in Statler Auditorium for the two-credit, pass/fail Intro to Wine and Spirits class.
It was Philosophy that did me in — specifically Existentialism 213 which I took as an elective the second semester of my junior year. The professor was a charming, short, middle-aged man with a pockmarked face who slowly paced with a cigaret as he lectured. He hopped a seat on the front of his desk when he wanted to pose a serious question, taking a deep drag on his cigaret and giving us all an open, friendly look through thick glasses that made his eyes look watery and big. He’d swing his legs a bit like a child. It was halfway through the semester before I realized one of his black shoes had a four-inch thick sole so the length of his legs would match.
There were six books on his reading list. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky was the cheeriest of the texts. Then there was The Stranger by Albert Camus, The Will to Power by Friedrich Nietzsche, and the Concluding Unscientific Postscript by Søren Kierkegaard. Jean-Paul Sartre had two titles: Being and Nothingness and Nausea.
I understood very little of what Kierkegaard had to say. Still, of all the authors, his long essay gave the clearest prescription for becoming a more enlightened person. He said that the greatest despair of all is not knowing despair. That is, we all have despair but it is much worse to be in despair and not recognize it.
Reading this I was hell bent on finding my despair. Apparently I had a great aptitude for this. I started to question everything about my existence. My grades started to drop. I succeeded so much that I had to take a leave of absence the next semester. I stayed in the 32-member housing cooperative sleeping late everyday while friends went off to class.
It’s debatable whether one finds despair or it finds you. It was my first encounter with depression. The next time I wasn’t actively looking for it, it just showed up like a mobster picking his teeth and leaning against the wall waiting for me to come out of my door.
The second depression was much more serious. The gap in my soul was much wider than any of Ithaca’s gorges. Even today, remembering that person so completely taken by nihilism invokes a sharp fear.
Revisiting Ithaca always carries with it that memory. Yet, there is something useful in returning to places of your past and witnessing the change. This time I found a forest that grew up where a field once was.
I have reason to remember this field because one evening when I was still in college I was with a group of friends at Friendly’s — a chain of ice-cream-parlor diners that was high on our list of favorites.
We’d just finished eating at the Elmira Road location. It was perhaps the last commercial establishment within the southern bounds of the city’s street lights. The bill had been paid and we were hanging out when a line of wailing fire engines passed by spinning red in the crisp, autumn night. For some reason we decided to chase them and ran to our one car and packed in.
The night was black. The red lights ahead were a beacon that soon brought us to an orange conflagration. We pulled onto 327 which split off from Elmira Road and watch the dramatic fire from a safe distance across a wedge of unobstructed field. It was the beautiful ginger bread victorian that housed Turback’s Restaurant on fire. We could see the multi-peaked roof poking through the flames.
The picture above shows what was then an unobstructed field that we looked across to watch the fire. The trees that now stand there are a representation of the time that has passed. New as well is the road which is another entrance to Treman State Park.
Friendly’s restaurant took a longer time to die, as did The Nine’s Pizzeria and Bar, another favorite hang out. Reports indicate they both went under in the last few years. Time swallows all things.
The Nines had everything I wanted in a bar. It was walking distance from my campus coop. It had pizza, beer and a pool table that if I was lucky I could hold all night. There was a regular band that became my favorite. Neon Baptist‘s preacher/lead singer slung a southern drawl full of dark prophecy and sordid endings that fit with my brand of pessimism and inspired me to perfect some signature dance moves with housemates.
Time marches on. It’s not on your side or against you. The Thai Cuisine where I worked as a waiter for several years after college is also no longer in existence. The tiny strip mall that contained the restaurant as well as my optometrist’s office is torn down.
Lex, the restauranteur has had other successful operations over the years and when I’m in town I go visit whatever his newest is. This time it was Mia, a popular upscale Asian restaurant on the commons. I went my last night in Ithaca this past September. I learned from the hostess that Lex had passed the restaurant on to a relative and moved to Syracuse.
Talking more with the hostess, the thin face of an attractive young cook from 34 years ago pierced the extra padding and spectacles she wore. My younger face emerged to her simultaneously and we both laughed with the recognition. It was Bun, the sister-in-law of Lex and she told me her husband, Noi, who was the main cook at the Thai Cuisine is now a monk back in Thailand. My waitress was their daughter.
The Thai Cuisine was always a family affair. Lex’s mother who we all called Mom was a fixture when I was there. Lex and his brothers Max and Noi all cooked though Lex was most often the front-of-house manager. It was a busy place for many years after opening in 1988– one of the early Thai restaurants to bring this new delicious cuisine to the states. It took the cuisine seriously. The tables were white cloth and the staff was black tie. It was several years before Lex put any artwork on the walls. He wanted the focus to be on the food.
In the days before people were trying to kill themselves with Ghost peppers and Carolina Reapers, the heat of the dishes were always a point of discussion. We offered them served hot, medium or mild, with strong warnings about the hot.
Max, the oldest, biggest and jokiest of the brothers was cooking one day and he put on a serious face and asked if I knew the three kinds of hot. When I said I didn’t he explained, “You’ve got hot, Bangkok hot and then GOD-DAMN-HOT!” At this he exploded with laughter.
His two daughters who were four and six when I first met them are now professionals–I believe Bun said a lawyer and a social worker. I’m glad the older girl survived. She always arrived standing on the bench seat next to her father as he swung his big sedan into the parking lot at a high rate of speed and slammed on the brakes. When she came through the front door she often had messy hair and a big smile on her face as if she’d just gotten off an amusement park ride. Max’s trademark was fun.
Below are some things I’m thankful for. New bike lanes on several routes I take to the grocery store, the BART station and to the gym. And of course Sasha!
Spotty West Goes East 