McKinley Green Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Sunday Stealing — Complete the Thought

McKinley Green

**“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley recounts the crumbling legacy of a once-proud king.**

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. “A blogger named Elisha shared 10 things about herself. By turning her revelations into prompts, we hope to learn more about you.”

Complete the Thought

1. I wish someone would …

Stop being a purblind Nero, a Herod, a Heliogabalus, an Ozymandias.

2. When I order Chinese food …

I like to order a variety of different items so that I can enjoy them over several days. Hmm. It’s been a while.

3. I know it’s not everyone’s favorite activity, but I actually enjoy …

Handwashing dishes. I like the soapy water. It reminds me of my childhood when I used to wash the dishes. One thing they did at my elementary school was to check your fingernails to ensure they were clean. My fingernails were never clean because I was a kid who played in the dirt unless I had just recently washed dishes.

5. A major pet peeve of mine is …

This happened on Thursday: my wife was driving, stopped at a red light. The light turned green, so she started moving when a bicycle from the sidewalk coming from her left suddenly pulled right in front of her. If she hadn’t had rapid reflexes, she could have easily pancaked him. In general, bicycles and, especially, these motorized vehicles often show a lack of respect for the rules of the road. It’s scary for other people, but it’s, frankly, dangerous for them as well.

Pop

6. I remember when my grandfather …

McKinley Green took me hunting one time when I was about seven years old. I fired his rifle and I landed on my butt. Mostly, I remember watching Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, boxing, and Wide World of Sports with him, as well as playing gin rummy.

7. I am not fazed at all by …

No, I am hard-pressed to answer this question. I engage in a variety of activities, including donating blood, speaking publicly, and writing this blog. Am I unfazed by doing these things? I don’t think so.

8. Long car rides …

Since I’m not driving, I’m usually the navigator. Between those times when we have to change roads, I read a lot of newspapers and magazines that have accumulated.

9. I don’t understand the fuss over …

Answering this question would involve me being aware of things that I don’t care about. If there’s a music, television program, or fashion trend that I’m not familiar with, and other people think it’s terrific, then good for them. It doesn’t have any real effect on me. This is a corollary to Arthur’s Law.

10. When I’m home alone …

I spent the first hour playing a CD and probably writing a blog post. With the second CD, I need to change positions, so I’ll empty the dishwasher, reload it, and maybe vacuum. With the third CD, I would sort my mail, pay my bills, and read the newspapers. The length of CDs can range anywhere from 35 to 75 minutes, so this is an approximate agenda.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week!

DNA Day is April 25

Your DNA Guide

According to Your DNA Guide and other sources, today is DNA Day. Their resident storyteller developed a framework for writing about 300 words. I’ll have a go at it with a previously shared tale.

The beginning of your story: What was your DNA question, or what were things like before your DNA discovery?

My sisters and I have known since we were children that the man we knew as our paternal grandfather, McKinley Green, was not the biological father of our dad, Leslie H. Green (1926-2000). I don’t think my father knew we knew.

We learned this info from our mom, Trudy, and HER mother, Gertrude Williams. Grandma Williams referred to vague details about a minister in Pennsylvania.

The middle of your story: What happened, or what did you learn? What did you think or feel about it? Then what happened?

In 2018, I took my first genealogy tests. When I looked at my DNA matches, I discovered ten people were second cousins. The Yates, Walker, and Williams folks I recognized.

But who were the other four people? Three of them had trees, and two common people were on each, Carl Lorenzo Cone (b. 1915) and Raymond Cornelius Cone (b. circa 1888). But who was Raymond, and how did he meet my future grandmother, Agatha Walker (1902-1964)?

I wrote about this on my blog. On December 26, 2019, my dear friend Melanie discovered an article from January 1927 in a newspaper in my hometown of Binghamton, NY. The Reverend Raymond Cone was acquitted of impregnating Agatha and being the father of Les!

And then…

The end of your story: Where do things stand now? Why does this story matter to you?

By 1918, Raymond Cone’s first wife and father had both died, and he had a certificate to be a preacher. I followed his trek that brought him to Binghamton in the fall of 1925, departing two years later.

I have learned more about him than people I’ve known in person. He died of an apparent heart attack at his church in New York City in December 1947 before he turned 60. My Grandma Green also died of a heart attack at 62. That’s sobering medical news for me.

#mydnastory

Personal History: Sunday Stealing

Who Knows Where The Time Goes

**daughter, wife, niece, sister, sister, niece (Feb 2011)**

This week’s Sunday Stealing is called Personal History, an interesting topic.

1. What would you like people to know about your mother?

I was thinking about this a lot this week. My father was the more outgoing and visible member of the couple. But I doubt they would have been been able to pay the bills if it wasn’t for my mom.

She was a bookkeeper at McLean’s Department Store in Binghamton, NY, then worked at Columbia Gas, not even a block away. When she moved to Charlotte, NC, she was a teller at First Union Bank, which eventually was swallowed by Wells Fargo. I probably got my love of numbers from her. When I told her we were learning base 2, which we were told was the basis of computers, she was clearly excited.

2. What would you like people to know about your father?

I’ll be writing about him on August 10, the anniversary of his death. My eclectic taste in music started with him.

3. What was your childhood bedroom like?

HA! After my second sister was born, my father put up two walls in the dining room, built a wooden shelf into the two walls, then put a mattress on top of that. My storage was under the “bed,” though my books were around the corner on a bookcase. My dad painted the solar system on the ceiling.

Ballgame

4. What was your favorite activity as a child?

Alone: playing with my baseball cards. With others: playing softball/baseball/kickball. And singing.

5. What was high school like for you?

When we first got there, there was a certain hostility from some because my friends were identified as against the Vietnam war. But by the time I graduated, most of the school was against the war. I was on the stage crew and president of the Red Cross club. I was also president of the student government, which is how I sort of got to introduce Rod Serling.

6. Write about your cousins.

I have no first cousins. My parents were only children. Well, essentially. My mom had a younger sister who died as an infant. So my cousins were my mother’s cousin’s kids who lived in NYC and were a decade or more younger than I. Still, aside from my sisters and their daughters, they’re the closest relatives outside my nuclear household.

7. What was your favorite food as a child?

Spinach. Totally indoctrinated by Popeye.

8. What was your most memorable birthday?

My 16th was held at the American Civic Association, so it was a real party. Lois, who I’ve known since kindergarten, gave me Judy Collins’ album Who Knows Where The Time Goes. She was afraid it might be too country for me; it was not.

9. What world events were significant to you as a child?

The integration of the high school in Little Rock, AR. Sputnik. The Cuban Missile Crisis – I didn’t really understand it, but I grokked adults all being nervous. The assassinations of Medgar Evers and John F. Kennedy. The massive 1965 blackout was the only time I ever heard my father worry about a possible Soviet plot.

To Starr Avenue

10. What did a typical day look like as a child?

During the school year, walk to school about half a mile, usually trying to vary my route. At lunch, walk home to my grandma Williams’ house for lunch, watch JEOPARDY with her sister, my wonderful Aunt Deana, back to school, then walk home with, in geographic order, Bill, Lois, Karen, Carol, and Ray. I’d walk home.

11. Write about your grandparents.

Gertrude Williams (1897-1982) operated out of making us afraid of the boogie man. I don’t remember her husband, Clarence Williams (d. 1958), though I may have gone to his funeral.

Agatha Green (1902-1964) was my Sunday school teacher and taught me how to play canasta. She was the first person I knew well to die, and I was devastated. McKinley Green (1896? -1980) was a custodian at WNBF-TV-AM-FM and would bring home stuff the station no longer wanted, such s the soundtrack to The Night They Raided Minsky’s (1968).

12. Did you move as a child?

I moved from the second floor of 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton, NY, to the first floor when my mother was pregnant with her second child. Until college, that was it.

13. Who taught you to drive?

Several people tried, including the Okie, Uthaclena, my father, and a professional.

14. Which job has been your favorite?

FantaCo, the comic book store/mail order/publisher/convention, where I worked from May 1980 to November 1988.

15. What was the best part of your 30s?

Working at FantaCo, singing in the Trinity UMC choir

Getting to 5 Gaines Street, Binghamton

spray-painted

Les.Roger.backporch — Les and Roger Green, back porch of 5 Gaines St, 2nd floor, 1953

One of the facts I’d previously established is that Agatha Walker married McKinley Green in April 1931. But by 1936, they were living apart in Binghamton.

In the 1940 Census, they were still separated, with Mac at 98 Lewis and Agatha and her son Les at her parents’ house at 339 Court Street. My father’s last name had changed from Walker to Green, misspelled Greene in the Census.

By the 1941 City Directory, though, the three of them were all together at 10 Tudor. Not incidentally, that address doesn’t exist anymore, demolished to facilitate a bypass off of Riverside Drive.

The single useful thing found from a visit to the Broome County Clerk’s office was a record of the Order of Adoption of Leslie H. Walker, inf, [presumably infant, though he was 13 days shy of his 18th birthday] by Mr. McKinley Green. I knew this had happened, but seeing it in Book 22 of Civil Actions and Special Proceedings, page 572, was kind of cool.

Les was in the military in 1945 and 1946. I know from anecdotal information that he had a variety of jobs, including delivering flowers, before and after his service.

McKinley was a porter at Wehle Electric, but usually, he was a laborer. In 1947, he started at WNBF radio and Tv, as a laborer, and by 1956, as a janitor. He stayed there until he died in 1980.

No perceived miscegenation

My parents were married on March 12, 1950. They looked for a place to live in town but were thwarted. Potential landlords thought my mother, who is very fair, was white and that they were an interracial couple.

They subsequently moved to 5 Gaines Street, on the top floor of the two-family dwelling. It was owned by my maternal grandmother, Gertrude Williams, and presumably, her siblings, though she outlived them all. She and her sister Deanna (d. 1966) lived about six short blocks away.

Back in the 1890s, the resident was someone whose last name was Archie, which was a variant of the family name Archer, so it had been in the family for a long time.

Gaines Street is a single short block, notable growing up because the Canny’s trucks would go from Spring Forest Avenue, take a right down Oak Street, a left across Gaines, and another left onto Front Street and head out of town to NYC, Syracuse, Albany, Scranton, or wherever.

The directory says Les worked as a chauffeur at Niagara Motor Express, or elsewhere through 1957.

Meanwhile, by 1954, Mac and Agatha had moved upstairs at 5 Gaines, with my parents moving downstairs. This was likely predicated by the fact that my mother had her second child, Leslie that year.

New job

In the 1958 volume, Dad is an employee of the Interracial Association at 45 Carroll, not all that far from where he grew up. He’s listed as the assistant director the following year. The organization morphed into the Broome County Urban League in 1968.

I know Les was doing lots of other things in this period: arranging flowers at Costas, painting, and singing. By 1964, he was at IBM, a job he hated. So when my homeroom teacher, Mr. Joseph, told me my father was crazy for leaving IBM in 1967 for an OEO program called Opportunities for Broome, I shrugged.

When I’ve visited 5 Gaines Street in the past, I’d noticed that the hunter-green asbestos siding was now brown. What I didn’t notice is that the brown was sprayed on. And not particularly well on the side of the house, because the green is still partially showing on the side.

This was one of the first stops on the Roger Green magical history tour that I went on recently.

Lydster: beware the card shark

gin rummy, go fish, poker

As an avid card player since my youth, I had tried but failed to interest my daughter in playing a number of games over the years. For instance, at the (almost) annual hearts game at our house, I gently tried to gently show an interest, but she had not.

But when the two of us were on one of our college excursions, she asked to play gin rummy. Basically, it involves the two players being dealt 10 cards. The players alternating drawing cards from the remaining deck, or the top card discarded by the opponents. The idea is to create three or four cards of the same rank (sevens, jacks, e.g.) or runs of three or more cards consecutively in the same suit (6, 7, 8 of hearts, e.g.).

What’s strange is that it was only this summer that she decided that she’d just learn how to play online. It was the game my grandfather, McKinley Green, and I used to play for years when I was roughly 10 to when I went to college when I was 18. So it was our “thing.”

It is my favorite two-person card game, and my daughter turns out to be quite good at it, beating me about 60% of the time. Oddly, this pleases me tremendously. The budding card shark also started wanting to play Go Fish with me, another game she did not really embrace as a child. She beats me at that too.

Poker

She wanted to learn how to play poker. I had always been of the opinion that poker wasn’t interesting unless you had 1) three, or preferably more players, and 2) wagering, even if it’s pennies from the change jar. It wasn’t a game I’ve played a lot, and there are a myriad number of ways to play.

Of course, the first thing we needed to do is teach her the relative ranks of poker hands.

From lowest to highest: High Card, One Pair, Two Pair, Three of a Kind, Straight (five cards in numerical order, but not in the same suit), Flush (five cards in the same suit, not in numerical order), Full House (three of a kind plus a pair), Four of a Kind, Straight Flush (five cards in a row, all in the same suit), Royal Flush(10, Jack, Queen, King, Ace, all of the same suit), Five of a Kind (only possible with wild cards).

After some frankly boring experiments, we came up with a game where each player got five cards face down. Then there were two common cards, face up. Each player could trade any cards in their hands. It was surprisingly engaging, trying to fill in that inside straight generated enough excitement to play any time we had some downtime.

Also…

Not exactly a card game, but my wife, my daughter, and I played a truly rousing game of Sorry. It was strange. I’d say, “I can’t get hit unless one of the others draws an 8,” not a common card in the deck. They drew an 8; ouch! I told my wife, that if I draw a 10, I’d go back one space and hit her piece, and I did. If this match had been recorded, it’d be on ESPN forever. We were all within 8 spaces of going out. My wife won, but it was truly quite exciting.