My Anti-Woodstock, and a Communion with Mr. Feynman

When I woke up in the morning at the Motel 6 in Binghamton, the skies were blue and bright. The storms had completely passed. It would be a good day for driving.

I'd been to Binghamton before, but I spent a couple hours in the early morning exploring the city again, thinking of it as my entry point into western New York, an area that has come to increasingly fascinate me as the incubator of many interesting strains in American history. Not for nothing that Rod Serling was born in Binghamton.

In the late morning I headed north towards what I called my "Anti-Woodstock." It was only a couple days until the anniversary of the great music festival, and I had toyed with the idea of going through Bethel, but somehow it had fallen off my agenda. Instead my goal was the tiny hamlet of Richford, on the road between Binghamton and Ithaca.

I didn't know what I would find there of interest, but I knew I had to at least see what it looked like now, and get a glimpse of the terrain and how it felt.

But it turned out to be more interesting than I though. As I neared the small town, I passed a sign that read "Michigan Hill Road" (map). The name leapt out at me, and I slammed on my brakes and turned around. It was a dirt road that took me off the main highway over one of the rolling green hills. I was perfectly content to think I had found what I was looking for, and I was about to turn around, when I saw the sign at the crossroads for "Rockefeller Road."

This had to be it. It took me down the hill, across a small creek, and hundred yards later there was the marker I was looking for. It was small information sign below a little roof, placed there not by the federal government, or New York State, but by the county. Without much fanfare it marked the birthplace and the boyhood home of arguably the most wealthy man who ever lived, and the godfather of much of the economics and politics of the 20th Century---John Davison Rockefeller. The inconspicuous nature of it was exactly what I would have expected.

I was thrilled to have found it. I knew there would be nothing else besides the sign, and the rotting foundation in the woods, so I turned around and went back to main highway, snapping many pictures along the way with my digital camera.

About a half hour later I was in Ithaca for the first time. I like exploring college campuses, so I parked on the hill near Cornell, fed the meter with quarters, and spent a good hour walking round the old section, getting an eyefull of both of the gorges that flank the campus, and of the Finger Lake below, all the while thinking of Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, Kurt Vonnegut, and Nelson Rockefeller (for various reasons).

It was a pleasant visit.