Here’s a quick little story that’s just too cute not to share.
On Friday I was substituting in the library at State Rd. Elementary School. As part of the day’s lessons, the library teaching assistant and I were acting out We Are in a Book!, one of a series of beloved children’s books by Mo Willems, starring Elephant and Piggie.
As we prepared to do so for one class, Officer David Herrle, Webster’s School Resource Officer, popped his head into the library to say hi. I immediately had an idea, and asked him if he had ten minutes to spare. To his credit, without knowing what I had in mind, he said yes. I quickly finished my lesson, then sprung my idea on him:
HE would play the part of Piggie.
With book in one hand and a stuffed Piggie in the other, Officer Herrle presented a polished cold-read performance of We Are in a Book! to the delight of the second graders who sat before us. It was a great way to show these kids that police officers are pretty cool, fun-loving people, too.
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Adam Pruyne, Aiden Pruyne, Asher Crittenden, Will Cerveney, Jacob Bowen. (In back: Tracy Cerveny and Dave Crittenden)Mike Seeley, Bill Ernst, Maria Gallina
I love it when a great community story just falls into my lap.
On Saturday morning I was running down Holt Rd. and had just turned onto the bike path when I came upon a small gaggle of teens and adults in bright construction vests, picking up trash. Of course I had to stop and find out who they were and what their story was.
Turns out these community-minded folks were from Webster Scouting America Troop 262 (from the Webster Presbyterian Church), and picking up trash along the bike path is a service project they complete two times a year.
Troop 262 Committee Chairman Adam Pruyne wrote,
Each year we spend a few hours walking the bike path along Rte 104 from Bay Road to Phillips patrolling for trash. We are registered with the DOT and they provide the vests, hard hats, garbage bags and trash bag pick-up and we provide the effort. In general, this is likely the largest organized community service project our troop performs and we’ve done it so many times, it is part of our yearly routine.
The troop also invites Cub Scout Pack 262, Troop 425, and Troop 163 to join them for clean-up day.
“Troop 163 always covers from Bay Road to Five Mile Line for us,” Adam wrote. “Troop 425 (all-girl troop) and Pack 262 weren’t with us today as they were on their own adventures but typically they join us. We had 30 attendees today and have had as much as 75 if the timing is right for everyone.”
Mike GallinaBrandon Seeley, Callan Ernst
The Scouts and their adults managed to fill somewhere between 10 and 15 big orange garbage bags (which Adam considered a “light garbage day”). When the Cub Scouts attend, they’ve been known to collect as many as ten more bags from within Charles Sexton Park alone.
And they have a lot of fun doing it. “We sometimes have an informal competition on who got the weirdest find of the day,” Adam wrote. “Today, one of the boys found a realistic looking $1,000,000 bill!”
Saturday’s service project is a very good example of how Scouting is much more than just tying knots.
This is an excellent opportunity for the scouts, both boys and girls, to understand what selflessness and sacrifice is as they give back to the community, even though some are too young to fully appreciate that they are doing those things. This is one of the better aspects of scouting that I feel is lost on the general public. The scouts learn so much about life in these few hours they spend doing this cleanup. They learn about other people, they learn manners as we attempt to let others have the right of way on the path and they learn about environmental conservation and why it is important to “leave no trace” as we conduct our tasks.
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Today’s blog is a thank-you to all of my friends and readers who have been following my journey as I trained to run my first-ever (and only) half marathon, and a report about my experience.
It was a long haul; I started training in earnest the first week of January, completing at least three training runs every week for the following (almost) five months. I ran in the snow and the sleet, I ran in Florida when we took a short February respite from winter, and didn’t even take a break when I spent a month in Prague.
My goal was the Buffalo Half Marathon on Sunday May 25, part of “Marathon Weekend” held in Buffalo every Memorial Day weekend. My daughter lives in Buffalo, so we went up Saturday and stayed overnight with her, which was wonderfully convenient since the race started at 6:30 a.m. Sunday morning. (We got up at 4:30.)
It was a very cool morning, about 45 degrees, but the skies were bright blue and cloudless, which was a big relief given the frequent rainy weather we’ve had of late. My husband Jack dropped me off near the start line around 6 a.m., then found a place to park and scouted out a spot along the race route to cheer me on.
Given that I knew this was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for me, I started taking photos to help me remember the day. Having never done a race of this magnitude (5,000 people), everything was new to me. And downtown Buffalo was gorgeous in the morning sun, so I had to take some photos of that, too.
I had an enthusiastic cheer squad. My daughter and her best friend surprised me at one turn. My sisters-in-law camped out at another corner where I ran by them twice, and Jack managed to do some jogging of his own, posting up at four separate locations to see me run by multiple times.
The race route took us through city neighborhoods, through parks, by the Key Bank Center and all the way out onto the pier. It was a beautiful route on a beautiful day. I didn’t necessarily notice all the sights as I ran by because I was often focused on the wide variety of funny and encouraging signs people had made. (Like, “Smile, remember that you paid to do this!” and “Thanks to tariffs, this race is now 28% longer!”)
My goal when I stepped up to the start line was to finish the 13.1 miles in two and a half hours, a pretty achievable goal for a first-timer, I thought. Well, I’m pleased to report that my final time was 2:24.05, almost 6 minutes below my goal. I ran faster every mile of those 13 miles than I had at any time during my training. AND I placed 5th in my 65-69 age group. A race-day atmosphere will do that to a person.
So all in all, it was a fun experience. I wore a tutu and a fun shirt my friend designed, I smiled a lot, danced to some music along the route, laughed with some of my fellow runners, saw some beautiful scenery, and finished the race strong. I got to ring the “PR bell” at the end of the race and take the requisite post-race-holding-the-medal photos. I got a great shirt and left the post-race party with an armload of drinks and snacks. And my husband bought me flowers.
Thank you, Buffalo for a well-managed race, and I’ll see you again next year. But this time, I think I’ll run the 5K instead.
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For the last month, (until two days ago) I’ve actually been blogging from across the pond — in Prague, Czechia to be specific. My husband Jack had secured a 6-week Fulbright Specialist consultant position in that beautiful city, which he started on April 1. Ten days after he got there, I joined him, and had four wonderful weeks to explore and discover, and become part of the community of Prague, before returning to Webster very early Tuesday morning.
I knew there was no way I could take a vacation from blogging for that long. So, before I left town I worked hard on writing a handful of blogs in advance, and scheduled them to post automatically. It was business as usual the rest of the time, connecting with the community through emails and texts to find blog topics. In short, I posted something every day I was there. There were a few night owls who might have wondered why I was cross-posting them to Facebook at, like, 1 a.m. (7 a.m. Prague time), but otherwise I hope no one noticed any difference.
This was actually our second trip to Prague. Back in October, when we were pretty sure that Jack would be awarded the Fulbright grant, we decided to visit the city for a few weeks to get to know it. When we got there, we were tourists. By the time we left, we felt like part of the community. We had learned so much about the city, the tram system, the best beer gardens, and even got comfortable using some of the language.
Thanks to that experience, when we got to Prague this time, we already felt like we were part of the community. Plus, the fact that we were familiar with the basics — the money, the public transportation, the grocery stores and most popular tourist attractions — meant we were free to explore even more deeply and discover things we hadn’t done in October.
Jack’s Fulbright work left us plenty of time to do that exploring. We took day trips to the Pilsner Urquell brewery and a cute little town called Český Krumlov. I went on a river cruise and did a Haunted Old Town guided tour. We went to a monastery beer festival on Jack’s birthday, and had a traditional Czech dinner at a restaurant for mine. We enjoyed the Easter markets, went to a Witches’ Night festival, cheered on some marathon runners, saw a light show projected on a building, saw peeing statues and a huge rotating Kafka head. We drank a lot of really good (and inexpensive) beer. We had the luxury of time to really discover many more things than we had seen in October. I was even able to keep up with my half marathon training, running miles in a nearby park. (Not easily; Prague is exceptionally hilly.)
Plus, we had visitors, so we were able to play tour guide and introduce them to some of our favorite places in the city. But our guests had also done their own research and guided us to places and things we hadn’t seen and done before. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Even five years ago, there was no way we could have imagined that we’d spend more than a month living in a city in which we didn’t know the language, in a country I’d have had a hard time finding on a map. Now, though, I would definitely say that Prague is one of my favorite places to visit.
By the way, I did keep a travel blog for friends and family. It’s called “Czeching out Prague.” It goes into much more detail about what I did on our adventure and has a lot more photos. If you’ve made it this far, you might be interested in reading that. You can see it here.
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I suspected that my blog — and subsequent article in last week’s Webster Herald — about Willow Point Park would strike a chord with a lot of my readers. After all, Webster’s very own little amusement park was very popular during its 30-year life, and well loved by both adults and children. Indeed, I’ve received some fun and touching emails, a few of which I’d like to share with you.
Sharon F. wrote,
My Dad worked at Haloid’s (which was later named Xerox) and he would take our family to Willow Point Park every summer for his Haloid work picnic. Seeing your article on the park this morning brought a flood of memories back.
Jackson T. wrote,
I worked there for one summer during my first year at the UR and managed the golf driving range, a notable and very popular feature that you did not mention. This was a very busy part of the park, and it even provided the visual excitement of watching golf balls being picked up from that huge, sloping lawn while people were still hitting other ones in that vicinity.
My favorite memory, though, came from Jean Palermo, who wrote:
Amazing that this article came out today as my husband (Samme) and I celebrate 58 years of meeting at Willow Point Park on April 16, 1967. We’ve been married for 55 years.
Jean sent me this photo that she and her husband took at a Willow Point photo booth in 1967.
If you’d like to explore a little deeper into Willow Point, you might be interested in this short movie, created by Frank Laloggia, a local filmmaker better known for his 1988 film, Lady in White. Apparently it was one of the first films he made, and it’s very much a tribute to the old park.
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We all know Seabreeze Amusement Park in Irondequoit. It’s been around for almost 150 years, making happy summer memories for generations. Fewer, however, will remember Willow Point Park, Webster’s very own amusement park. It was in business for only three decades, but to this day it evokes very fond memories.
Willow Point Park was located on Bay Road (where Willow Point Rd. is now), a little more than a half mile north of the Empire/Bay Rd. intersection. It was a small, rather quaint amusement park, quite different from the sprawling parks that today’s kids know today. But its more intimate atmosphere was one of Willow Point’s biggest draws, especially for young families. It was also popular because, despite its moderate size, it featured many unusual attractions which were – and are – hard to find at the bigger amusement parks.
Everett DeNeve opened the first incarnation of Willow Point Park in the early 1930s. It began as just a miniature golf course, but every year DeNeve expanded it with new attractions. By 1939, he sold Willow Point to Jack Garliner, who would direct its expansion well into the early 1960s.
In many respects, Willow Point seemed more like a summer camp than an amusement park. Throughout its almost 30-year history, its various attractions included an archery range, trampoline, batting cages, tennis, volleyball, badminton and small boats. But of course there were also plenty of traditional amusements and rides, including an arcade, a roller coaster, carousel, tilt-a-whirl, kiddie rides (which by today’s standards were especially quaint), and several other rides for young thrill-seekers.
As Garliner added and swapped out features through the years, Willow Point became a favorite gathering place for all ages. Teens and young adults would crowd into the roller rink/dance hall to see nationally-known bands, and a bingo hall added in the 1950s attracted older adults.
Garlinger even made sure that disadvantaged children could enjoy his park. In the 1950s, he started offering “free days” for blind children one day a year and provided free lunches. Those events were followed later by similar days for children with multiple sclerosis and cerebral palsy.
In 1964, a year before he died, Garliner offered to sell Willow Point Park to the Town of Webster, with no success. After Garliner’s death, Joseph Schuler bought Willow Point in 1966, and kept it open until Labor Day, 1968. The land sat vacant for years before it was redeveloped as the Waterview Townhouse Apartments complex.
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An every-evening tradition that has brought an entire neighborhood together is still going strong — without a break — even after five years.
Every evening for the last five years (and I mean EVERY evening), the residents of the Brooksboro neighborhood on Webster’s north side have been gathering at the end of Jack Turan’s driveway for a kind of happy hour, sharing a beverage, conversation and a few laughs.
The tradition began in March 2020, just as the pandemic was shutting the world down. You remember those awful days; we were resigning ourselves to putting our lives, and relationships with our friends and family members on hold for the foreseeable future.
That idea didn’t sit well with Jack Turan. He’d heard about how, in small towns all across Italy, residents were opening their shutters, sitting in their windows with their glasses of wine, and singing. The story gave him an idea: how about meeting up with his neighbors, outdoors, to enjoy a beverage and socially-distanced conversation?
That was the evening of March 22, 2020, and the beginning of a tradition that has continued ever since. Every night, Jack stands out at the end of his driveway with a beverage, welcoming anyone to stop by for a chat. And he does so regardless of the weather or the temperature. Remember those really cold days in January? Jack was out there. No way was he going to be the one to break the tradition.
“There has to be at least two people” to make it official, Jack said. “That’s the rule.” The frigid temperatures did, however, prompt Jack to (at least temporarily) reduce the required time spent outside from 15 minutes to 10 minutes.
Last Saturday, five years to the day it all began, the weather cooperated. Skies were sunny, the temperatures were tolerable, and Jack had a lot of company at the end of his driveway. Almost two dozen neighbors, with their kids and dogs, gathered that evening to commemorate their long-running neighborhood tradition. There were beverages, of course, but also a nice selection of hors d’oeuvres and sweet treats, supplemented by ice cream from Bruster’s and mac & cheese from M.O. Pasta. Jack grilled hot dogs, and emcee Alex Scialdone played dance tunes.
The neighbors hold these anniversary gatherings every year, and even had one to mark the 1,000-day mark (I blogged about that event here). The celebrations are pretty much the same every year, just another opportunity to enjoy a nice evening outside with friends. The children get bigger and there’s usually a new dog or two. But there always seems to be a fun new twist every year.
This time, emcee Alex had upgraded the previous year’s paper plate awards to shiny statuettes, personalized for each attendee with whimsical award designations, like “Secretly a Fish,” “Best Drinking ‘Buddy’,” and “Harder to Track Down Than Someone in Witness Protection.” Also new this year was a “What the heck is this?” game. Neighbors were invited to bring an unusual item from home, and everyone tried to guess what each of the almost 20 items was.
Each “regular” got a personalized statuetteAlex Scialdone with a statuetteThis year’s brand new game
In the short time I spent there Saturday night, I heard some discussion about how much longer these daily gatherings should continue. I got the sense, though, that no one really wanted to think about that.
Even if it does eventually run its course, Jack Turan can rest easy knowing that his little social experiment accomplished exactly what it was designed to do: bring people together.
email me at missyblog@gmail.com. “Like” this blog on Facebook and follow me on Instagram and Threads (@missyblog)
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Like most of you, I have really been enjoying these warmer days of spring. The Winter That Was this year (especially February — yick) was just awful and we have earned the right to finally get outside again.
It’s not just the fact that the last of the snow piles are finally gone (that took long enough) or that I was FINALLY able to take my Christmas lights off the fence without wading through snow. What I really like most about these early days of spring is, well, SEEING everyone again.
People are taking after-dinner strolls, and plopping their children into strollers and wagons, and rediscovering the neighborhood. And there are a LOT of people out walking their dogs, more than I ever remembered there being before.
Now given that dogs have to be walked every day, chances are most of these people had been walking by my house all winter, and I just never noticed them. But now chances are good that I’m actually outside doing something, so we can actually greet each other and even have a short chat.
I’m sitting on my front porch again, chalking pictures in the driveway for the group of child-care kids who come by every day, and I’m very much looking forward to finally getting to know my new next-door neighbors, who moved in just before Christmas.
Chances are quite good that we’ll still have a little snow before spring takes hold in earnest, but I’m gonna be outside as much as possible, making up for lost neighborhood time.
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I heard on the radio the other day that it snowed at least a little bit EVERY DAY IN JANUARY. And February is starting out pretty much the same way. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a winter with this much snow. Everyone is grumbling about it.
That is, everyone except Village of Webster resident Devin Englerth.
Devin has a hobby that helps her glide through winter (literally) with a smile. Devin is a dogsledder, and when there’s this much snow, it means there are a lot more opportunities to take her dogsled, seven huskies and big black shepherd out for a run. And every once in a while, when the conditions are right, she doesn’t bother going very far to do so.
A few weeks ago, the conditions were perfect, so instead of packing up her dogs and heading to her usual sledding spot far on the west side of town, she hooked them all up and took them out on the streets of the village.
Perhaps you saw them that day. A lot of people did, and photos popped up all over Facebook from village residents surprised and delighted to see an actual dogsled speeding down their street. ‘Cause that’s not something you see every day.
I sat down the other day with Devin (and her dogs) to find out more about her history with the sport, both in the village and elsewhere.
Devin has been dogsledding since 2011, ever since she got her first husky. Not long afterwards, she joined the Seneca Siberian Husky Club, and tries to get out and run the dogs at least a couple times of year. That’s been difficult in recent years when lack of snow has made for poor conditions.
“You have to have a frozen base and the snow on top of it,” she explained. “If you go before it freezes my sled would sink in the slush.”
But not running makes for unhappy huskies.
“(Running) is all they want to do,” Devin said. Even when she goes out to fire up the snow blower they start getting excited, thinking they’re going to get out and go. And when she is able to finally hook them up out in a wide open space, they might be out there for two and a half hours.
The day she decided to run them in the village, “they were going crazy,” she said. They hadn’t been sledding in a long time, and the conditions were good, so “we went all over the east side of the village.”
It proved to be rather challenging. People were coming out to take photos, the dogs kept stopping to say hi to the neighbors, even deciding to go up a driveway or two. So they got tangled up a lot. But despite the distractions, they were out on the streets for more than an hour.
It wasn’t the first time Devin has dogsledded through the village, and it probably won’t be the last. Because sled dogs live to run.
(Thank you to Jessica Cataldi for this great blog idea.)
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This is the latest in my on-again, off-again series of Bygone Blogs, in which I’m re-posting some of my favorite blogs from the last 17 years.
I’ve been doing more running these days, as I train for my first-ever half marathon in May. A few days ago I saw something that reminded me of this blog, from August 28, 2010.At the time I wrote it, I was living in North Penfield, and my regular running route would take me along Hatch Rd.
Our Hatch Rd. lush is back
A little more than two years ago, as I ran through my North Penfield neighborhoods, I noticed several discarded Black Velvet bottles along Hatch Rd. It appeared that someone was regularly throwing their empty bottles onto the grassy shoulder as they walked (or drove) along Hatch. It started out as just a few of them, but over several weeks the number grew to more than 20.
I mentioned this curiosity a few times in my blog. A short time later the bottles not only miraculously disappeared, but they never returned again. Could have been a coincidence, but I like to think some disgruntled spouse read my blog and put two and two together.
Well, the bottles have returned. But this time they’re not Black Velvet. Our drinking and tossing friend has apparently switched to the less expensive (but still imported) Canadian Leaf whiskey. I saw two of them yesterday along that very same Black Velvet stretch. It will be interesting to see if they multiply.
Or maybe that disgruntled spouse is still reading my blog.
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That, by the way, was not my last encounter with the Hatch Rd. Lush. Four years later, I noticed a new, and growing, collection of empty bottles along that Hatch Rd. sidewalk. By now, however, his booze of choice had turned to vodka(as you can see in the photo above).
At least he wasn’t getting stuck in a rut.
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email me at missyblog@gmail.com. “Like” this blog on Facebook and follow me on Instagram and Threads (@missyblog)
You can also get email notifications every time I post a new blog by using the “Subscribe” link on the right side of this page (or all the way at the bottom of the page if you’re on your phone).
I feature the people and places and events that make Webster the wonderful community it is — and throw in some totally-not-Webster-related personal ramblings every once in a while as well.
I love it when readers send me news about the great things happening in their schools or the community, so please email me anytime at missyblog@gmail.com
