You might say that Salamanca, NY is quintessential small town USA. I doubt that there is a more quintessential small town than Salamanca. It’s located in the far western corner of New York State along the Allegheny River in a narrow valley among the Allegheny Mountains and adjacent to Allegheny State Park. The park, large in its own right at nearly 65,000 acres, sits on the New York - Pennsylvania border and continues in Pennsylvania as the immense Allegheny National Forrest which stretches out for over 500 thousand acres from Allegheny State Park in the north to the middle of the state of Pennsylvania in the south. My childhood home was no more than a few hundred yards down the street from the mountain rising to the south into the State Park. It was often said that you could begin by climbing up that mountain, which I did many times as a young boy, and by walking steadily south, not emerge from the woods for 200 miles or until you reached Pittsburgh.
Although Salamanca considered itself a city, no one actually remembers when it actually had a population of at least the 10,000 supposedly required for city status. As of the 2010 census, its population was just over 5,000. Salamanca’s primary claim to fame is that it was known at the time as the only city in the U.S. located entirely on an Indian reservation. Salamanca is intimately associated with the Seneca Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy and many of my high school classmates were Senecas.
Salamanca’s summers and falls were spectacular, relatively cool sunny summers and beautiful fall days with a broad spectrum of dazzling fall colors to enjoy, although often on briefly, because winter came early to that corner of upstate New York. You could count on snow by Thanksgiving but it frequently began to fall in October. I even remember one birthday, September1st, when it snowed. When I say winters were snowy I really mean major league snow. Salamanca was smack in the middle of the Lake Erie snow belt. Once snow time began in the fall, it seemed to snow every day until spring made its brief appearance, usually sometime in late April. I remember winters as being especially cold. Salamanca was at an altitude of nearly 1400 feet even though it lay in a river valley. As I walked the half mile or so to school each day, I would note which houses produced the largest icicles, some reaching two stories in length all the way from the roof to the ground. The city kept the sidewalks plowed using horse drawn snow plows. It was great fun watching the city workmen guide the horses to clean the sidewalks. Nearly all the cars and trucks put on tire chains to help them navigate the streets and roads in the area which always seemed to be covered with a layer of hard-packed snow. You could easily tell when a vehicle was approaching by that characteristic clickety clack of the tire chains.
My parents and the other adults in town tolerated these intense winters but we kids absolutely loved them. School was never called off because of snow. If that practice had ever gotten started, we would never have gone to school in the winter. The Salamanca Ice House, the adjacent ice pond with the rising hill behind was the winter focus of the school age population. Weekend days were spent sledding, tobogganing and skiing on the hill and every evening after supper most kids in town would grab their ice skates and head for the frozen pond. It was like a big, winter-long, party with boys meeting girls out on the ice and spending frequent breaks in the warming house for a warm cup of cocoa or just meeting others and visiting.
Christmas
What I remember most about that era was the Christmas season. In December, 1947, I was 11 years old and in Mrs. DeGroat’s 6th grade class. The big annual event of the winter in those days was the arrival of the Sears & Roebuck Christmas catalogue at the Sears catalogue store down on Main St. We didn’t have an actual retail store where you could go to actually see, in person, all those wonderful things that were pictured in the catalogue. When news got out that the Christmas catalogues were in, there was a steady stream of people, many children flocking down to the catalogue store for their free book of Christmas wonders. In our house that catalogue got heavy use every day after school and in the evening. I suspect it got significantly more use than any of my school books. Nevertheless, the appearance of that wonderful catalogue signaled the beginning of the Christmas season.
The Christmas season was pure magic as we counted down the days to the Big One. The local newspaper had a small picture of Santa in his sleigh at the bottom of the first page each day proclaiming how many shopping days remained until Christmas. At first, with the number in the twenties, it seemed interminable but as that number worked its way down to single digits, the thrill intensity nearly reached a fevered pitch. The town was aglow in multicolored Christmas lights, reds, greens, yellows, blues and more. Some bubbled, some sparkled and some blinked off and on but few if any were the plain-Jane white lights that appeared in future years.
Everyone had a live tree which most people obtained by venturing into the woods on family quests to find that perfect tree. Bringing the decorations, strings of lights, the toy train and, best of all, the platform down from Minnie’s Room was the definitive event that assured me that the Christmas season had actually arrived.
Minnie’s room was a unusual storage room that was tucked up under the eaves and entered through a door part way down the back stairway. Peering down the back stairway which led to my Dads medical office portion of the house, I could clearly see the door leading to Minnie’s room, a room that was often featured in my early childhood nightmares. I would never have dared to enter Minnie’s room alone in those days without my parents.
The large platform which occupied more than half of one of our two living rooms, was used to hold both the Christmas tree as well as the toy train layout that extended the full length of the platform. Even though the platform stood about table height above the floor, the room, with a 10 ft high ceiling still accommodated a large tree sitting on the platform. With many other special Christmas items placed by my mother around the house, I spent many hours just sitting amongst it all in a dreamy state of euphoria.
In the days leading up to Christmas, there was a steady flow of friends and neighbors coming and going at our house and, likewise, we visited many of them in their own homes. It was a time when people paused from pursuing their busy lives to just enjoy the season and their friends. These were not formal visits, often people just dropped in. We were all accustomed to this kind of very casual, informal interaction. Al and Maude Johnson would stop by in the afternoon with a plate of one of Maude’s Swedish goodies. Mel Fry would come to the door with an offer to take us on a horse drawn sleigh ride around town. We would stop in for a few minutes to visit Leland and Florence Stoll and their son Ralph, my best friend. I can still hear Leland asking, “Can I get anyone an eggnog?”
Emanating from our kitchen as well as kitchens from other homes we visited was that wonderful smell of Christmas - cookies just out of the oven, stollen, fruit bread, and many other smells that became familiar at this time of year from the kitchens of the diverse nationalities that made Salamanca their home. Polish and Italians comprised large segments of the Salamanca population but there were also Swedish, German, Scotch, Irish and a smattering of others, not to mention the large compliment of our hosts, The Seneca Indians. Many of my Dad’s patients would stop by with a plate of cookies or a loaf of homemade bread. Frequently that was the extent of Dad’s pay for services since there were a number in town who he took care of without regard as to whether or not they could afford the $2.00 for an office call or $3.00 for a home call.
Days were short this time of year with darkness beginning to creep in around 4:00 PM. I suppose it came especially early because of our location deep in a valley between mountains to both the south and north. As Christmas drew near, evenings were often spent around a large console radio in our living room listening to Christmas music or some of those wonderful radio programs of that era. Shows like The Jack Benny Program, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, The Lux Radio Theater of The Air, The Shadow, and many more presented their special Christmas programs. We didn’t have television but those old-time radio entertainers were highly successful in creating a vivid visual realization in our minds. I often lay on the floor in front of the radio with my eyes closed visualizing in great detail all that was being acted out and described verbally. As I think back about those experiences today, I’m not sure television has really added that much.
Christmas Eve 1947 was very special. Mom made a beautiful prime rib. Al and Maude Johnson came over to celebrate with us and, as usual, Maude brought her special Swedish Christmas dish which I didn’t like but all the adults raved about it. In fact I was so excited about the next morning I was barely able to eat anything, a slice or two of roast beef, bit of potato and a Santa cutout cookie was all I could get down. Carolers were in front of the house and as they sang “O Little Town of Bethlehem” I said good night to the adults and hurried upstairs to bed. My little sister, Lois, was already in bed and probably fast asleep with visions of sugar plums dancing in her head. I think I probably set a speed record for getting to bed but once there, tossed and turned for what seemed to be at least an hour. I just couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d find under the tree the next morning. Then almost before I knew it, I was awake and ran in to get my sister and to beg my parents to allow us to go downstairs. I knew the drill, we had to wait for both of them to get up, put their bathrobes on and then wait while Dad went down first to set up his movie camera and turn on the tree lights. Finally after what seemed like a lifetime he gave the o.k. for us to come down. Lois first spotted a new doll and there leaning against the platform as the little train chugged by was what I had hoped for, a pair of skis. I was so thrilled with the skis that I barely noticed the other gifts, our stockings stuffed with small toys and other treats and the presence of another surprise gift from Santa, a new Lionel diesel locomotive. Yes, the one I had drooled over for the past six weeks in the Sears & Roebuck catalogue.
After breakfast and after the excitement settled down, Grand Pop and his second wife Cora arrived to share Christmas dinner with us. Grand Pop was a Methodist minister and had come from delivering his Christmas message at his church in Eldred, Pennsylvania. Grand Pop was the perfect minister in his suit with tails, a crisp white shirt and neat tie. He was the essence of proper, offered the blessing before dinner in his classic Scottish accent. He called me laddie and referred to Lois as lassie. He made sure Lois and I understood the true meaning of Christmas, stayed for a while after dinner telling us of experiences he had as a young lad having recently arrived in Nova scotia from Scotland. I really liked talking to him on these rather rare visits and was totally fascinated with his Scottish accent.
After Grand Pop and Aunt Cora left, our small family gathered in the living room. I lay down on the floor as we listened to Christmas music on the radio with only the tree lights illuminating the scene. After the turmoil of the war years, I’ll always remember that Christmas of 1947 as the one when I felt that now, finally, there is peace on earth and I felt contented, very contented and very thankful as I lay there at home with my family, falling asleep with the Christmas music and very peaceful tree lights.
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