The countdown is on. We're now inside a year until all television is broadcast digitally, and unless you make certain technical arrangements by then, you could be staring at a blank screen.
It might make some wonder what people watched or did before TV or radio. Some may remember alternatives to one or both.
Oneonta was a railroad town. Many used to watch trains come and go from the D&H depot, today a popular restaurant on Market Street. Some actually considered train-watching a sport. The depot was the arena. Game time was when trains arrived in Oneonta. Admission was free. The players could be interesting to watch. This might have been a form of "reality TV" in earlier generations, and viewers didn't need to worry about a writers' strike or costly technology upgrades to keep watching.
The D&H depot, now Stella Luna Ristorante, was considered by Albert R. Silliman as "the front yard to the community." Silliman had the job at one time of making the grounds of the station attractive.
"Lawns and flower beds were all around the station," Silliman told The Oneonta Star in March 1958. "It was that way from Wilkes-Barre through to Mechanicville, and I guess even farther."
That was the main route for the D&H. Silliman had charge of two greenhouses, which the D&H maintained at the foot of Cliff Street. Sweet peas, geraniums and asters were grown there for the bouquets that he distributed to patrons, mostly ladies, in the passenger train dining cars.
Silliman also transplanted flowers to beds around the depot and put flowers on the tables in the station dining room. "We liked to keep the place looking nice," he recalled, "and there was nothing better than flowers."
It was around 1922 that the greenhouses were closed, Silliman recalled. Shrubs replaced the flower beds, motorcars lured passengers from the trains, and the depot became less and less of a place of public visitation.
Even as late as 1930, train-watching was a popular fascination. An article in The Oneonta Herald in November 1930 said it was still a popular "small town sport."
Some trains were more popular than others, and sometimes more than a dozen men were around the station when train 306 from Albany arrived at 6:23 p.m., followed 10 minutes later by 308.
"Ask some of these men if they are going anywhere, and they will answer in varying degrees of frankness, some with half-sheepish smiles, that they just came down to see the cars come in, or they didn't have anything special to do just then so they dropped down to the station for a little while," the Herald reported.
For a variety of reasons, this practice may be looked upon suspiciously by many if it were still going on in the early 21st century.
"While most of the lookers-on seem to favor the early evening trains, there can usually be found from one to four or five at the station when other trains come in during the day," said The Herald.
The depot's waiting room was the best place to observe quite a cross-section of the community. On weekends, the place was swarming with students from the Normal School (today's State University College at Oneonta) or Hartwick College on their way to visit friends or relatives. Shoppers from nearby villages came into Oneonta to spend part of a day. There were always traveling salesmen and business people to be found coming and going. People watched the trains come in, discharge the passengers, baggage, express and mail, load up again, then pull out for its next destination.
The Herald article concluded, "Yes, even in these days of automobile and airplane travel, there still lingers some of the old fascination that used to make the railroad station the common social meeting place of many a community."
The social meeting tradition continues today in Oneonta at both of the former depots "" D&H and the Ulster & Delaware "" with dining having replaced the traveling.
On Monday: A good night's sleep helps promote tourism in Otsego County.
City Historian Mark Simonson's column appears twice weekly. On Saturdays, his column focuses on the area during the Depression and before. His Monday columns address local history after the Depression. If you have feedback or ideas about the column, write to him at The Daily Star, or e-mail him at simmark@stny.rr.com.
His website is
www.oneontahistorian.com.
Print this story
E-mail this story
