Syracuse, NY came of age during the Erie Canal, which it utilized to trade with Canada and an emerging Midwest. Its downtown was picturesquely bisected by the old waterway, which was paved over in the Nineteen-twenties and called Erie Boulevard.

Syracuse was once known as the “Salt City,” for the saline deposits that were extracted from the earth and kiln-dried. Sister industries sprang up, making Syracuse, New York a place to reckon with. Its concentration of banking and other businesses swelled the population, built absurdly ornate mansions, and created a work-force that was mostly labor-oriented. Its many fine parks provided working-people with places to go – and be seen. Immigrants from Italy and Germany made an impression on the city which is visible even today. One of the nation’s best Italian delis is in Syracuse – a place also dotted with restaurants that don’t just sell spaghetti. The Germans added a downcast quality to the place (as if it needed any more of that!) This industrious people made (and polished) its precision instruments, its cutlery, its china. Their legacy seems to live in the city’s law-abiding nature. I found the place friendly, if occasionally inbred.

Perhaps the long winter season plays a role in keeping the peace. From late October till nearly May snow is on the ground. The two winters I spent there were prodigiously enduring. People say they like fresh snow – and it is aesthetically superior to the slushy, hard-bitten stuff most people have to deal with. But a constant blanket doesn’t seem quite proper to the natural order of things. Whenever patches of ground started to show, it would snow again, thus obliterating the earth as I had come to know it. Yet I became almost fully acclimated that second year. The first was spent studying all the new color. Snow irradiates everything. On a typical wintry day – whose sunshine is generally vaporized – you get this phantom luminosity which comes from peaked roofs and rolling hills sounding off in unison. Thank God! Along with Portland and Seattle, Syracuse leads the nation in overcast.

The dour feeling the German people may or may not have brought to Syracuse came into this view from nature. It is late in the day, snow is on the ground to stay, and everybody has gone home. I was the only person standing in this lovely little park where children actually do play in the summer and it is wonderful to be alive, knowing that you won’t want to be anywhere but inside the house for six months of the year.