Naples, N.Y. 1978. (Pt.1)

In the summer of 1978, when I was 17 years old, my best friend, Tommy, told me that he had gotten word that his dad had died. Tommy had been living with his mom and step dad in North Carolina for years. He hadn't had much, if any, contact with his dad in upstate New york. We decided, in August, to try to go up there to see his family.
Tommy's mom, dad and step dad had all grown up in the same area near Naples, NY. He got in contact with his step grandmother and she said we could stay with her. We bought Greyhound tickets and we were on our way.
The bus ride up took 25 hours! We stopped at bus stops in the middle of nowhere all along the way. We had to wait 4 hours, in D.C., for a connecting bus. I remember walking around D.C. in the middle of the night. I don't know what it looks like now, but in the 70s it was a slum. You could see the dome of the Capital building just blocks away from the run down area we were in. Looking back, it probably wasn't a great idea for 2 teenage white boys to be wandering around that area in the middle of the night.
When we arrived in New York, the bus station was in some nearby town and we had to walk to his grandmother's house. She lived in this really cool, run down , old, wooden two-story house. There was a barn next to it. Beyond her back yard, the land began to slope down toward Lake Canandaigua - one of the Finger Lakes. Between the house and the lake was her vineyard. On the other side of the lake were rolling green hills. It was beautiful. I would move there now, if I could. His grandmother's grapes were made into Taylor wines, among many others. The old Taylor label looked like her back yard.
His grandmother, who was 85 years old, lived in this ancient house by herself - if you didn't count her dog Traveler. There were some grand-kids and great-grand-kids living nearby who would drop in occasionally, but with most of the men in the family gone, she wasn't able to assertively manage the vineyard. I think she was making just enough to pay taxes on her property.
I remember her huge, old fashioned stove and her unsweetened iced tea. I remember her sitting at night, next to a lamp, reading through Coke bottle glasses. I recall her telling tales about the people in the area (there's a lot of insanity in the Finger Lakes region).