Nobody expects....Misssterrrrrrr CHEESE!!!! Cleveland, Ithaca, and Chicago: Day Three

 Our first official, full day in Ithaca!! 

I woke up before everyone else, which was a little surprising, but again, Adderall is a tremendously generous mistress. I made myself some coffee in my Ithaca College mug...would you fucking believe that I couldn't find a single god damn Cornell mug ANYWHERE? And on top of that, the Cornell store was always fucking closed no matter what fucking day we were at the Commons? Rude. Typical behavior of an Ivy. I read for maybe 45 minutes, sipping my coffee and enjoying my Two Good yogurt in absolute quiet. The way vacation mornings should start. 

We had to take the day a little easy, because Rhyann and I had a date with a tattoo artist on The Commons. Rhyann's first tattoo!!! And my first tattoo at home. I've gotten tattoos in every other place I've lived, but I don't have one from home. I really wanted one from home. But I made a rule that our tattoos had to be small and simple, because I didn't want us to spend the entire day at the tattoo parlor getting work done, and I also didn't want the healing process to somehow get in the way of our travels (i.e. a large leg piece making it difficult to hike for days on end). 

So we all got in the car to head toward our first stop: Stewart Park. I am realizing now I should have taken WAY more photos at Stewart Park. I played there a lot as a child, and I have a lot of memories of that park, but I didn't take enough photos. I didn't even take photos of the carousel!!!! They used to take the carousel down every winter season and then put it back up, but it has its own little carousel house now!! Derek asked me if I wanted to get out and take photos, and I said I would later. We had planned on being at Stewart Park for sunset one night, and I figured I would take that opportunity to get all of the romantic, gorgeous photos of my park. Bad news from the future: we didn't end up getting to Stewart Park for sunset. Or again. 

When we parked, it was a balmy 85 and sunny, with a deliciously warm wind that blew all the golden bits off of the willow trees and across the grass. 

I am so in love with Stewart Park. I was thrilled to take my kids there. I was happy to have Derek there with me, too, of course, but it meant more to have my kids there. Rhyann went off and explored on her own, which I expected, though it still made me a small bit sad. Alex stayed with me, and we took pictures together at the edge of Cayuga Lake (the best lake in the finger lakes region, she said with a large hunk of bias).

Alex looks so cute in her outfit and tights!!!

I took a video of the lake, of course. 

Because we got such a late start, we weren't able to tool around the park for as long as I would have liked. There are a few lovely walking trails through the back of the park that would have been nice to show the kids, though it was getting warmer by the minute. At the hottest day of our trip, coming in at 2 degrees, I didn't really have a right to complain. I don't think the daily highs got much warmer than 78 the entire time we were in Ithaca. Or Chicago, for that matter. 

We left Stewart Park and made our way to my great grandmother's house. My memories of my great grandmother are complicated. I hold a lot of love for her, I grew up basking in her fondness and good graces. My dad has told me that a part of how he and my mom survived was due to her paying them both to do odd jobs for her, and I'm grateful she employed my parents and gave them access to things that kept me cared for. I have so many memories of running around in her wigs, singing into a hairbrush when I was little, and she treated me like a star. Gram always indulged my theatrics, well into my teenage years, and sometimes I would call her just to read her a few passages of the play I was in at that moment. I used to play in a makeshift "pool" in her front yard, it was really just a big rubbermaid basin that she would fill with soap and water for me to splash around in. She loved making meatballs and putting them on mashed potatoes, a delicious and easy food that I still find myself craving from time to time, though I despise eating meat. When Gram was in her nineties, I went out to Ithaca to live with and take care of her. My dad was going to send the Suzuki X-90 out there so I had a vehicle to drive, because I am a tall girl, but I am not so large that a Lincoln Continental is a viable driving option for me. I was going to stay with my great grandma until she passed away. I wanted to care for her and be there for her passing. I wanted to be in Ithaca. I had so much fun with her initially. I found great joy in being her companion. I talked with her at night, I cooked for her, I ran errands for her, we kept each other company. We had meatballs and mashed potatoes. Gram loved to hear me sing, so when she offered to pay me 100 dollars to record myself singing on tapes for her to listen to in the car, I was thrilled at everything that offer meant. A few weeks in, my great grandmother asked me if I had ever dated a black man. I wasn't about to give my great grandmother an aneurysm by telling her that date was a strong word, though I had had plenty of one night stands with black men and would have jumped at the chance to date a few of them, had they offered! So instead I said yes, and told her I had recently been seeing a young man named Neil...which was partially true. I had been seeing him naked, but he had no interest in dating me. I was 17 at the time, he was 21, the specifics weren't necessary to the conversation. When my great grandmother told me that I had to stop dating black men immediately, I asked her why. She offered no other answer than, "I will disinherit you." I was pretty fucking shocked, though everything I've learned about my family history on my mom's side in the 20 years following this discussion has made that conversation make a fucking LOT more sense. She went on to tell me she would never be able to explain it to the women at the country club. I asked her if she was serious. She assured me that she was, and repeated that she would not only disinherit me, but she would disown me if I so much as looked at another black man with any intent to see him socially. I told her that I couldn't live with someone with such ugly views, and I went to bed. I called my dad and told him I wanted to come home. I can't recall if he asked why, or if I gave that information up freely, but I remember him saying, "we had a whole plan for you, Drea! Don't be so obtuse, just stick it out!" I told my great grandmother that I wanted to go back to Vegas. That I was so appalled by her racism that I felt like living with her was an untenable situation for me, and I had to go back to my dad immediately. My great grandmother begged me to reconsider. She offered me the deed to the house, she promised me money, she asked me to stay and said she needed me. I was so angry at her, and I said no. And I left pretty shortly after. That exchange has really clouded my fondness for her. She died not long after. I believe I came back to Nevada in...July? She died in late September. I didn't speak to her again. 

The child in me that clung to her gram still loves and adores her, because she was my biggest fan, and she poured love into me every chance she got. The apologist in me says that she was born in 1910, and it was a different time, and she should be allowed a bit of grace for her racism (though I do want it noted that I do not ACTUALLY believe that argument holds water. I'm sure she had no problem taking up voting, or driving a vehicle, or working when those changes came around. Having trouble not being a fucking racist because it wasn't always wrong in her lifetime is a pretty weak defense of choosing to be a shithead). The rest of me says that yes, humans are complicated and multifaceted, and I can love her and resent who she was in the same space, and that's how I hold my memory of her. It's nuanced. 

So as we pulled into her driveway, it felt like equal parts coming home, and stepping foot into a space that was unfamiliar. Her house, which had always seemed so grand to me in my youth, looked tiny. 

The house is an L shape, so there is a good sized porch hidden from view. My dad was told that my great aunt now lives there, so it's possible we could have taken a walk inside. I have so many memories of that house. So many memories on that property. All of them happy, except for the last ones. Even my encounters with what Derek calls "my spirits" are recalled with fondness. Part of me wishes we had gone in to ask my great aunt to let us take a quick tour inside. But my dad also told me that he is fairly certain that my great aunt is of the transphobic mindset, as her views align with Trump ideologies and religious fanaticism. My great aunt had always seemed like a loving woman my whole life...I also assumed she was a closeted queer woman. She lived her entire life with a woman that I just...grew up thinking was her partner. I think all of my family assumed this of them, though it was never spoken of with disdain or anything. I debated this assumption and weighed it against how likely it was that my great aunt might have a whole lot of hateful shit to say in that backwards way that religious people often do about my queerness, or the queerness of my beautiful, amazing children. I didn't want to take a single, solitary chance that I would have to defend my children's humanity, so I opted to not contact my great aunt for a quick tour. I do not think the trip suffered for that choice. 

After sitting in what used to be my great grandmother's driveway, lamenting with my dad what a fucking CHORE it was to mow that fucking lawn, we made our way down to the commons, because it was TATTOO TIME!!!!!!

This was Rhyann's very first tattoo, and I am so fucking happy I got to be with her for it. I got a tattoo of a single line drawing of a rabbit and a butterfly. When Rhyann was a baby, I called her rabbit and bunny. When Alex was a baby, I called her bug. I realize that butterflies are not bugs, but it's close enough AND my tattoo, so I don't need to defend the choice. 

I wasn't EXACTLY thrilled with the placement, I kind of wanted it a little closer to my wrist, but eh. It's fine enough!

Finished! A tattoo for my children!!! The two greatest loves of my life. 

Here is my brave, amazing oldest child!!! Look at how well Rhyann is sitting for a first timer!!

There was a small panic attack toward the end of the tattoo session, but other than that, Rhyann's first tattoo was perfection. And I got to be there for it AND it was in my hometown. I think the only way it could have been better is if I had designed Rhyann's tattoo and not just my own. 

But what a fun little piece!!! And Rhyann looks so happy with it that even if it WEREN'T a fun little piece, I wouldn't care, as long as it had the same happy outcome. 

The place we were having lunch, Hawi, was right across the street, but it didn't open until 3, so we had about an hour to spend tooling around the commons. And tool around we did!

This great alleyway of murals was tucked behind Ithaca Tattoo Parlor. I loved how colorful and vibrant they were!

Not to mention odd. The oddity of this one is just fucking joyous. I love it. 

Ok, I promise there is a reason I took a photograph of an adult bookstore. 

That adult bookstore used to be a store called Schmaus's, and it was owned by my great grandfather. It was a clothing store, and I was always told it was held in high regard locally. After HOURS of digging, I found a few ads my great grandfather's store placed in the papers in the 50s:

And I found this old photo of it circa 19957:

Schmaus Clothes is the yellow sign on the left side of the theater. It's so funny to me that it's an adult bookstore now! I wonder what Myron would have thought of that. He had a joke he told about a spouse trying to murder their spouse with poisoned mushroom soup. I wish I could remember it. 

This building was a little further down the street, and I believe this was The J&B Inn. I was wrong! My dad says it was the BPOE 6636, the Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks. 

It's an absolutely BEAUTIFUL building. I was quite taken by it. 

One of the things my dad and I have in common is a lot of ghostly experiences. As I said previously, Derek has taken to just referring to my experiences wholesale as "my spirits", but it isn't like my dad doesn't have a bumper crop of his own tales. One of them took place here, at the Elk's Lodge. Now, disappointingly, I tried to look up the history of this building, and sadly I was thwarted by Google's insistence that I live in the now. Everything it brought up was modern, so I'm going to have to wait until my dad gets off of work to call me and give me the kind of info I need for a proper deep dive. I would also like to recount his ghostly encounter properly here, as well. So I'll have a chat with him in...oh, about twelve hours, and I'll circle back. Edited to update: I DID get my dad's story! He wants to give me a more detailed version of the story, so I won't add what I recorded already. I'm hoping to get him to tell me about it on Wednesday, so two days from now. 

Here is what I think of as the ICONIC Ithaca Commons rooster! When I was little, I thought the rooster WAS Schmaus's, as my great grandfather still had the store when I was a kid. He died in 1999, and I'm not sure what year he closed Schmaus's. My dad might know. It isn't really important, as I was super wrong and the rooster has nothing to do with my grandfather's clothing store. It's actually for a restaurant/bar called Chanticleer, which has been a staple of the Ithaca Commons for a long ass time. 

Here is a photo of it before it had its rooster officially put up, which was so cool for me to see:

If you look, you can see Schmaus's right next to the theater!! So last night, when I was doing my deep dive into the history of my family's slice of the commons, I found that the address I thought was Schmaus's was a furniture store, and then I told Derek that where Chanticleer was was the space where the furniture store was. I was incorrect: The furniture store was tucked between Chanticleer and Schmaus's. And according to history, that rooster has been there since the 40s. As quoted from a story run in Ithaca in 2020:

"The Chanticleer's Jeff Mazer says the work was overdue, "no one's touched that rooster since it was put up probably. And that was sometime around the time the Chanticleer opened in around '46 or '47, my guess. We've had some of the neon replaced over the years as they burnt out, but that rooster hasn't been down since he got put up."

The Chanticleer is 101 W. State Street, the old furniture store was 103 W. State Street (previously thought by me to be Schmaus's), and porn store cum Schmaus's (pardon the pun, but I couldn't not) is 105 W. State street. There's my daily dose of facts that will never serve my life ever again. 

Or perhaps I will be serving up more facts, as I couldn't resist doing a bit of a deep dive on this AMAZING exoskeleton of one of my favorite childhood establishments: Home Dairy. 

I have so many memories of coming into Home Dairy as a kid, but I only remember eating two confections there: half moon cookies, and cinnamon buns. And if I'm being honest, I think the cinnamon bun memory is a plant, because what sort of monster goes to Home Dairy and eats anything other than a half moon????? I do casually call them black and whites, which is treasonous to both finger lakes region cookie aficionados AND NYC cookie aficionados. Black and whites are entirely different from half moons...different cookie, different icing. I know I should make the distinction, but I am not terribly worried about it. 99.9% of the people I rave about these cookies to don't know the difference, anyway. 

This is Home Dairy and Home Dairy Alley, as they sit today. Sadly, Home Dairy closed its doors in 1997, having been open and serving up delightful vittles since 1968.

A few years ago, I NEEDED to have a half moon. A Half Dairy half moon cookie had to be had by me. Unfortunately, I am keto, and was keto then (I've been keto since 2018), so a half moon was not something I could actually have. But I spent days trying to find a recipe. And then I fucking found it. From the Averys themselves (the family that owned Home Dairy). I made them, and I took a tiny bite, and it was DELICIOUS. Just bursting with nostalgia. Derek and Alex said they were delicious, and that they loved them, but those two LOSERS have no basis for comparison, and while I appreciated the praise, they cannot be trusted. 

I scoured the internet and found some old photos of Home Dairy, and one of them was very interesting to  me. I will tell you which one. 

Before 1968, when the Averys took over, food was still served out of this space. I cannot find a name, but I did find an old photo:

Maybe it was just called Cafeteria? I can't be sure. I may track down the history via its address later, but I am starting to feel like my inclination to be a tiny historian is overstaying its welcome, because as far as logging this day of the trip goes, we're at like, the 2pm mark and I'm not even done talking about the history of Home Dairy. 

I can't find a date for this newspaper clipping, but that lede is correct: You haven't experienced Ithaca without a trip to Home Dairy. Sorry, everybody visiting after 1997. Better get on that time travel thing. 

I do not recall ever seeing a sign hanging above Home Dairy. It does say cafeteria on it, so my best guess is that this is a 1968 staple that came down not long after this photo was taken? 

Now. 

As I said, Home Dairy closed its doors in 1997. As I was taking photos of it, Derek and I were remarking on how interesting it was that nobody had gobbled up the building and put something else there. Home Dairy is still on the eave, the façade has not changed from the memories I have of it circa the mid 80s. It's in a prime location in the commons, though, and Home Dairy Alley is a pretty good entrance way to the commons, so why didn't anyone try and buy the building? 

Turns out someone DID put a business there. Circa 2014, Home Dairy Co. was home to The Mate Factor:

Same building, different company. Different signage over the door. 

But that was almost ten years ago, and it now says Home Dairy Co. again. And I would absolutely love to know why. So I figured I would ask the ol' googler. I have yet to find anything about why it still says Home Dairy...I did find a photo of The Mate Factor, still in business with the Home Dairy signage back on top of it:

Why? Someone needs to explain this to me, because everything I learned when I was still pursuing a degree in business screams that this is counter-intuitive branding. 

Anyway, while trying to find out why, I came across an amazing bit of Queer Ithaca Legacy, and I am so fucking thrilled!!! In the second floor of the Home Dairy building was Firebrand Books, a fucking publishing house run by Ithaca's own feminist lesbian, Nancy Bereano. She knew there was a  need for lesbian and feminist publications, so she was the change she wanted to see in the world. She published fucking AUDRE LORDE, for fuck's sake!!! She published Allison Bechdel!!! And I never fucking knew. I had no idea. Please check out this amazing snippet about her:

Ithaca's FireBrand Books

Firebrand books has since been purchased by another woman, and moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan. But what a fucking legacy. Love seeing people in the queer community moving shit around and shaking shit up in the place where my roots grow deepest. 

I can't find anything about why Home Dairy still says Home Dairy. I would love to know. My guess is that it was such an Ithaca Staple that Ithacans wanted its legacy to be visible until the world falls down. And I am alright with that assumption. 

Moving on (finally, I can almost hear you say).

At the end of Ithaca Commons...I guess "end" really depends on where you're entering from...there are two installations: The first is the woman at the table, smiling at an empty chair that is open for you to sit in and take a photo. We've all done it. I grabbed one of my dad doing it:

And two of Alex. We all sat in that chair, though not all of us got pictures taken in it. I didn't tell everybody the story of the woman, but I will share it now. I knew the outline details, of course, but I did have to do a bit of research to find specifics and make sure the tale I knew was real. 

This statue is called Child of Ithaca. I believed that the statue was meant as a memorial for a woman who died, and it was placed in the Commons because it was her favorite place in the place she was born. I was half right. According to a 2016 write up in 14850 Magazine by Mark Anbinder, the statue is a commemoration to a woman named Erin Schlather, an Ithacan who died in a car crash on July 3rd, 2004, while visiting Ithaca to attend a wedding. A man named Roberto Bertoia, a professor of art and sculpture at Cornell, was approached by the family to do this work (their children had also been friendly growing up). Bertoia is quoted in the piece as saying that, per Erin's father, the sculpture should not be about any individual's memorial, and should instead be a celebration of all youth, their hopes, and their aspirations. The table is inscribed with the words, "Child of Ithaca, Citizen of the World".

I think it's only right that, as we took photos of ourselves with Erin, that I list her accomplishments, as she was quite the woman:

She was a Vasser alum;

she was attending Georgetown as a law student;

she worked at the fucking Pentagon as a legal analyst. 

I love so much that everybody passing through takes a moment to sit with her and enjoy a bit of their time with a Child of Ithaca. 

The second installation is the Sagan Planet Walk!!!

This installation is a memorial of sorts to Carl Sagan, my favorite Ithacan. He is not technically from Ithaca, though I do think it's acceptable to claim him. Suck it, Brooklyn. This arrangement of our solar system is .75 miles long, and it is a 5 billionth scale model. BILLIONTH. We walked the entire thing with the kids, stopping at each planet and ending our adventure along the walk the same place that we started it: the asteroid belt, where we parked our car. 

Fun fact: the second closest star to us is Alpha Centauri, and a few years ago, the Sagan Planet Walk expanded its model to Hilo, Hawai'i. This expansion makes the Sagan Planet Walk the largest exhibition in the whole world. Derek's shapely gams are not included anywhere else in the exhibit. 

We stopped at Hawi for lunch, which was a real coup. It was a bit of a haggle to get my dad to agree to Ethiopian food, but he acquiesced. I saw this written on the parking meter and greatly appreciated the sentiment, provided it was meant for white people to reflect on rather than...any other thing.

I fucking SWEAR I took pictures of everyone's food! I don't know what happened to them all, but this is the vegan platter I got. Holy fuck, everything was DELICIOUS.

OBVY had to get some coffee. Derek and I have been chasing the taste of the coffee we had at the Ethiopian place we loved in Austin. Hawi wasn't as great, but it was really fucking good just the same. Love that jebena!! 

After lunch and the commons, we were still doing the driving tour of Ithaca, and our next stop was Ithaca Falls. I spent countless hours swimming at the bottom of Ithaca Falls, playing around and enjoying being the summer baby that I always have been. I told my dad that my primary goal coming to Ithaca was to take photos of every waterfall that I could print and hang up. I do not know if I accomplished that goal. Skies weren't in my favor, and I tend to lose patience when I'm trying to abide by the schedule of others. We'll see how I did as we go!

Ithaca Falls has always been a favorite of mine, as it's within walking distance from my great grandmothers, and I went there just about every day when I was caring for her. Derek, Rhyann, and I grabbed our cameras and ran ahead of my dad and Alex to go take some photos. I will post my camera photos at the end of the blog, these are just cell phone snappies. 

Look at these two studious darlings!!! I took my photos about a foot away from where Rhyann is, and a bit further into the water. It should be noted that the water...I do not recall it being as....brown and frothy? It had the familiar stench of muddy Ithaca waterfall, though a lot more pungent than memory. 

It was such a gorgeous day, though!!!! We could have asked for nicer weather, I suppose, but I was quite content with the weather that we got. 

Down by where I was taking my first crop of photos. You may recognize this iconic location from my Oscar worthy video up above. 

I wanted to try and get a photo of a different angle of the falls. I was alright with the cell photo, but I do not think I liked the ones I took on my camera. I'll look again, but I'm pretty sure they were tepid, soggy trash. 

My first baby, enjoying the falls!

The retreating view of the falls (the water flowing over the falls and outward is from Fall Creek, which flows down into Triphammer Falls (we didn't make it there) and Beebe Lake. 

It was pretty late in the day by the time we were done at Ithaca Falls, so we went to Wegmans to do a proper food run. 

Wegmans pretty much became a daily thing, much to the chagrin of pretty much everybody but me. We decided on having Derek's delicious ginger garlic chicken, so we had to find a wok. Wegman's had a wok facsimile that was both shitty AND overpriced at 45 dollars, so we paused in the store to make phone calls to the Asian markets in Ithaca. Nobody had a wok. So we made a side trip to Walmart, where Derek picked up a super cheap wok imitation for 7 bucks. Now that we had spent a solid two hours shopping and everybody was cranky and tired, we could drive the thirty minutes home to spend an hour and a half preparing dinner! I bought my same vegan chicken and cauli rice and greens medley, which is what I ate every single night we were there. 

We had a lovely dinner on the patio, and after dinner we settled in to watch Season 4 of Stranger Things, but an episode in, the power went out. We had a whole issue with the power, it was ridiculous. The box was overpowered or some shit, I don't even remember. Derek and I had to drive about 15 minutes away just to get enough signal to let the hosts know we had lost power, they were very accommodating and said they would be right over to fix the problem. They did a short term fix, and while Derek and I were outside, a horse and buggy went CAREENING by us. The horse looked very skinny to me, the buggy was completely black and I couldn't see inside of it. It was fairly ghostly, if I'm being honest. Derek and I looked at each other for thirty seconds or so before in shock before I said, "....did you fucking see that?" And he laughed and went, "yeah, weird, right??" Right. It was fucking weird. 

When the power came back on (we were given another bottle of wine and some cheese from a local farm for the trouble! Delish!), we finished our episode, and then we all went to bed. All in all a fantastic day. 

So let's see what I did with my actual camera. It's been a little over two weeks since I edited these photos, so I don't even remember. 

I think I like the next two photos.

And this one. 

I am not as keen on these two, but I can't get everything right all the time.