Tuesday, August 31, 2004

All Your Memory Are Mine

 High Bridge Road - I think! Between Dewitt and Manlius, it's sort of the Fayetteville bypass. Apparently, Manlius New York was born a little over two centuries ago, disappeared around the turn of the 20th century, reemerged just long enough to contribute some WW II war dead and to build and abandon some invisible school buildings, and disappeared again until the 21st century.  Currently, the town is invisible except for some real estate offerings, High Bridge Road (left), Snook's Pond (large lots available) and the village mayor, who wears an American flag in his pocket.

At least, that's the impression you get if you Google up Manlius, NY.  There are virtually no pictures to illustrate anything I've been writing about recently.  The only references to many of the places I grew up with are in a journal entry I wrote months ago, The Seven Ancient Wonders of Manlius.  There's a Manlius Historical Society, but it basically only has pictures of its own buildings.  Other than that there's an unillustrated narrative of the comings and goings of school buildings written by my former vice principal, Platt Wheeler, a listing that features lots of churches and cemeteries (but not St. Ann's), info about what family film is being shown at the library, and a huge number of real estate listings.  It seems that hardly anyone used a camera in Manlius after 1900.  Kind of makes it hard to find out what's been happening there in the past 30 years, from about 3,000 miles away.

Don't make me come over there!  Come on, people of Manlius!  If any of you stumble on this blog, please email me some pictures.  Give me visual proof that Arly's, Manlius Elementary, Temple's, Weber's, etc. really existed outside my mind!

I'll wait.

Karen

P.S. To all of you who don't know or care about Manlius, NY, have you looked up your home town on the web?  Was there much there that meant anything to you?

P.P.S. I just found evidence that Temple's Dairy Store still exists!  I'm so pleased! No picture, though.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You inspired me to go looking for the town of my elementary and middle school years...and I found tons of links and photos (as I knew I would). That's the benefit and the curse of growing up in a town of major historical significance like Bedford, MA. Darn that Revolutionary War anyway. ;-) -B  

p.s. I found that my middle school has a website and I was able to email the librarian to see if she will look up a teacher's name for me. I've been wondering about this guy for decades.

Anonymous said...

I tried to upload Manlius pictures to the site for you but I can't get it to take them. Much is the same but lots of changes too.