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Table of Contents
Pt I CORTLAND 1950-1963 1
NEIGHBORS IN CORTLAND included: 4
MEMORABLE EVENTS ON RIVER ST. 7
LIFE REFLECTED IN MOVIES 13
END NOTES: 14
FOOTNOTES 14
PHOTOS 15

ARDIS HISTORY I 1950-2000 Cortland

Cortland, NY, located in central New York state is a small city with 20,000 people. Cortland sits a valley of among rolling hills covered with dairy farms and maples tree. Summers are pleasant. Winters are bitterly cold and snow falls heavy. Cortland bustled with manufacturing industry when Clarence and Jeanette moved there. Jeanette had grown up in Cortland, and her family had a farm in nearby Virgil.

Just married Clarence and Jeanette Ardis arrived in 1950. They rented the smallest house in Cortland in the factory district. Across the street was one of the steel mill operations. Pollution from the plant poured up the factory stacks and out the sluices. No one paid attention to pollution in those days. Cobakco, a large baking company around the corner, gave a pleasant aroma to the neighborhood. In to this small house with two bedrooms fit a growing family.

Clarence was the breadwinner in the house. He started work at Brockway Motors, (later part of Mack Trucks). He worked on the “bull gang”, shoveling coal in to the boilers and unloading trucks and train cars. The group leader on the bull gang was his father-in-law, Clint Congdon, my grandfather. Family stories about Clint differ. According to my aunt, Clint was a hard worker that towed the company line and made every man on the crew work hard. On the other hand, Clarence and my mother, Jeanette, said that Clint was an indolent alcoholic, and the other men covered for him while he went off to get beer. Clarence and Clint helped organize the union labor at Brockway and bring in the United Auto Workers. Establishing the union led to better working conditions and pay in the factory. Having a union made Clint’s job more secure because the union covered for him if he was drinking a beer. Clarence changed jobs to the steel mill, Brewer-Titchener Corp. The work there was harder but it paid more.

In 1955, Clarence and Jeanette had a new house built for themselves near the corner of River St. and Elm. They bought the land from great-uncle Kaiser Ardis. River Street curved around following the contour of the Tioughnioga River. River Street was the oldest (150 years) part of Cortland. Houses on the street were widely spaced.The family’s new house was next door to Kaiser’s and about a block from the river and a block from the steel mill where Clarence went to work. This neighborhood was zoned industrial. Within a few blocks of their house were the two steel forgings plants, a boat building factory, a tennis racket factory, the Cortland Fish Line Company, an animal hide tannery, two coal train unloading depots, the Mack truck assembly plant, big production bakeries, and Smith Corona, the typewriter capital of the world. These loud, busy factories created a sense of hustle bustle and confidence in life in the neighborhood. Life was full of promise. Interspersed with the factories were the modest homes of blue-collar workers. All was kept clean. Clarence’s house had small empty grassy lots on three sides and a park nearby. This grassy openness created a large playground for the kids. Boys played “army” or softball. They played tackle football without any protective gear. Girls rode bicycles in the fields in the summer. All the kids built snowmen and trod through the snow in the winter. Life was good!

Uncles and aunts from both sides of the family stayed with them. Most, like Wayne and Jim Congdon and Jerry and Ray Ardis were young, but not all. Great-uncle Bob stayed with them until he died. He rigged up a small hose to a bottle above his head so that he could nurse a drink to ease the pain1. Clarence set up the first of his many stills in the basement of this small house. The ceramic jars of corn mash sat in a corner of the tiny basement and fermented before distilling.

The family grew to 5 kids: Allan, Cheryl, Steve, Bill, and Mike. Everyone in the family had blue eyes and red or blond hair. Clarence was tall and all the kids grew to be tall and attractive. Health was generally good, except that Cheryl had a leg malady that kept her in a cast for a year of more. It did not dim her fighting spirit.

Clarence was a firm, sometimes harsh, disciplinarian. Spankings were made with a pancake turner on the butt. From Allan’s memory, the discipline was commensurate with its cause. Physical punishment of children was the norm in those days, and spankings from Clarence were on a par with that of other parents in the neighborhood. However, brother Steve’s punishments were often too severe. Older relatives remember his punishment as abusive. Steve was just “all boy” with a mind of his own.

Clarence told war stories of his service in northern Italy. He said that nobody was trying to be hero, they were just shooting back at whoever was shooting at them. His war stories were well told and enjoyed. Uncle Wayne C. later pointed out that some of Clarence’s war stories were possibly embellished by similar ones he read in a the men’s action magazines laying around the house. That was okay because Clarence’s stories were colorful and interesting.

Jeanette had an animated, rousing, cheer-leader way of raising her voice and creating excitement. She used this skill in exalting Clarence’s manly qualities, in amplifying problems that sent Clarence in to action. She embellished the stories that followed. We loved her for it, but the exaggerations may made Clarence seem even bolder and bigger than he was.

The neighborhood had many working class bars2 and grocery stores3. The kids walked past five bars to get to school. The industrial noises and aromas were pleasant to hear and smell: the pounding of hammers, buzz of saw, smells of wood sawing and bread baking as they passed by these businesses along the way. Most the neighbors had jobs. The Thompson’s owned their own garbage truck, which they parked outside their house on Elm Street at night. Some neighbors were on relief because they were disabled or just did not have the skills to hold a job. Jeanette kept up a banter that people on relief (welfare) were getting an unfair amount of aid. Although she was complaining about them, they were among her best friends. Clarence was more generous about their plight. People on relief needed help, and he felt the compassion to do so. He had seen hard times back in the burnt corn fields of South Carolina in the Depression.

Being gregarious, Clarence knew all the neighbors and was on good terms with all except for Mr. Perfetti. He owned a vacant lot next door and complained about kids playing on or crossing it. He allowed his lot to full height hay, and he was much irritated when Jeanette called the city Public Works Department and had them mow it all down. The feud with Perfetti came to a head one Christmas Eve.

NEIGHBORS IN CORTLAND included:
• Protas family. They were immigrants from post-war Europe-Ukraine, hardworking, quiet, clean. The perfect neighbors. Their son Walter was best friend to Allan, Steve, Billy. We broke his heart when we moved away in 1963. He led a successful life as a machinist and retired working at Cornell University. Walter had several hobbies skiing, hang glidig, and motorcyles. The sadness to his life was never finding the right woman. He had one great love that ended early and two marriages that ended sadly. He compensated with mild, continuous drug use.
• Harringtons- Friendly and loud, Rachel H. lived across he street.She was divorced with two boys. Son Joey stayed at home for years. Rachel met my uncle Herman Congdon at our house and married him.
• Burnhams- Frannie worked at the steel mill in the Hammer Room. He and wife Betty liked their beer!. Their kids Sheila, Doug, Stevie, and Marsha were our friends. They inherited the beer habit and it caught up with them in early deaths. Stevie went in the Green Beret. Like most boys on River Street, he was physically fit. I was the exception at that time.
• Jordans, Elliotts, Kings, Lanes, Alois were all working nice people. Meade Lane worked with Jeanette at Durkee’s Bakery. He lost his false teeth down the toilet when he got drunk at the company Christmas party. The local kids, including brother Steve, got in to the Elliott’s kitchen and trashed it a little. Clarence reupholstered their furniture to make up for it. David Lane was a childhood chum the age of Walter and Allan. David could do 200 pushups in gym clss while I struggled to do 2 But, 60 years later, I could do 300 in one set and 2000 in a day. I spent a life time exercising to build up.
• Ken Clark lived a block down on River St. We were school mates. He no recollects us as “the River Street gang”. I’m fond of the phrase and revisit it in the song Heart of My Hearts..
• The Ellis family lived couple houses away in the upstairs apartment in the Alois house. Shirley Ellis and Jeanette were good friends. The Ellis family was poor but good hearted. Their exploits seemed funny at the time, example, they went to the county fair with no money but said that they enjoyed it anyway by watching everyone else eat and get on rides. Shirley Ellis spotted corn-in-the-husk that Jeanette was delivering to the pigs and asked if she could have it to feed her kids for dinner. They enjoyed it. One daughter walked across the river and back, up to her neck in water. God prevented her from drowning.
• Huey Northrup broke out of their family poverty by setting up a successful house painting business. Clarence and family encouraged them all. Huey’s sister Nancy was a nice person and sometimes a baby sitter for us. Uncle Wayne C. teased, saying Nancy was cross-eyed. It was funny then, but not now.

• FRIENDS: Junior Natalie, a local electrician with ex-Navy hula-girl tattoos on his arm was a friend so loyal that, surprisingly, he came to Grandma Congdon’s funeral 30 years later, long after his friend Clarence has left Cortland. Cless Coon, a helper on Clarence’s hammerman crew. Jeanette held Seth’s hand and convinced him that working in the hammer room was killing him. Joe Kannalis was a really good friend with a family similar to ours. Joe went nuts in the hammer room. Clarence had to wrestle him out. Mr. Burns, from the Brockway truck factory, was a friend but also a pest. Burnsie would show up on Saturday and Sunday mornings at the unwanted hour of 8 AM to visit Clarence. Burns made the mistake of making a pass at Jeanette and came close to getting his teeth knocked out. Burns made another mistake, too. He took his family on a long vacation to California, fell in love with it, came back, sold his house, quit the truck factory, and moved to the Golden State. Later, as his son said they spent every penny and were left flat broke out there. Everyone in the family had to pitch in, work, and pool their money to live. Burns moved back to Cortland, but he could not get his job back. He ended up dejectedly running a small store. A similar fate was about to happen to the Ardis family.

• Bob Argyle and Don Fox were hammermen who had musical talent. Clarence did not, but he tried hard to play the guitar or mandolin with them. They would came over to the house with other friends on Saturday afternoons and set up electric guitars in the kitchen. They and Clarence played instruments all afternoon while getting drunk. The cacophony they created made the house congested, smokey, and noisy. The only Ardis to eventually have musical talent was Roger, Clarence’s brother. Roger learned to play in the basement.

• A set of new friends came along when the Buchanan brothers’ car broke down on River St. in front of the Clarence and Kaiser Ardis’ two houses. Clarence and Kaiser were always willing to help a fellow neighbor down on his luck. The Buchanan brothers s, Rusty and Bob, were as unlucky as any pair could get. They had families. They were poor enough to be on welfare, but weren’t. They were trying to work for a living. They were so poor that they ate onion sandwiches for lunch. After Clarence and Kaiser got the Buchanan’s car was fixed and they were mobile again, they became regular visitors along with their kids. Their visits on winter afternoons were dreaded because they and their kids were loud and intrusive. They spoiled many a Saturday afternoon for Allan. Clarence always enjoyed company, though, and they were welcome.

Joe Yocano owned the house two doors away, next to the river. His tenants were the Ellis’ upstairs and his own family, the Alois, downstair. Joe had a large garden and pedaled fresh produce. He rode through the neighborhood on a wagon drawn by a garden tractor, selling fruit and vegetables and his homemade wine. Jeanette explained to us kids that there are three kinds of drunks. Hard liquor drinkers, like Clarence, are feisty but acceptable. Beer drinkers, like Granddad, are sleepy. And winoes were the most sotten. Gee, thanks Ma for the comparison.

Several of the neighbors were on public relief. Many working people, including Jeanette, criticized “welfare” recipients. Even so, she was quick herself to accept aid such as government-surplus flour and rice when it was handed out. Clarence had no reservations about government aiding people. He was friendly with everybody. He saw it as humorous when the Mr. Bell, who lived on the corner nextdoor and scrounged to provide for his family, painted a large sign on the side of his house saying LIGHT BULBS FOR SALE.

Clarence had a flair for southern cooking. His southern fried chicken and country-style cube steak were melt-in-the-mouth delicious. Everyone loved his cooking. Grandma Congdon was a great farm lady cook, but she could not mimic his fried chicken. A heavy black cast iron pan that he used was a key part of the his seasoning.

Jeanette specialized in cooking spaghetti from scratch. Everyone loved her spaghetti, just like they loved her. Clarence, being a southerner, was not used to spaghetti and did not care for it. He’d rather have rice & beans,

Grandma Congdon noted that at family gatherings, if there was not quite enough food on the table to go around, Clarence would say, “I’ll just have a cigarette.” He did not eat. Grandma respected him for his self-sacrifice. He was the only man there to do so.
In thetheir new house, the kids went to sleep listening to the ka-boom clang-clang4 from the steel mill hammer room.
Walking a few blocks to school, the kids passed Durkee’s Bakery, where Jeanette worked. Durkee’s was a big, block long, production-size bakery. Flour was brought in by rail road tanker cars, and baked goods shipped out in tractor trailers all night. The pay at Durkee’s for women was good, but she had to work Christmas Day and some other holidays.

Clarence made extra money with a side job running the Ardis Top Shop upholstery. Clarence and Kaiser operated the Top Shop in Kaiser’s barn outback, and in Clarence’s basement. So together, Clarence and Jeanette had the best paid family in the neighborhood.
Houses in this Industrial Zoned end of the town there were mingled in between the factories, parking lots, railroads, bars, parks, stores, and warehouses. Fortunately, all these buildings were busy and humming with jobs in the 1950’2-‘60’s. The deterioration of small urban neighborhoods had not yet started.

The corner lot for their house was large and had fields around it. Uncle Kaiser lived next door with his wife Arlene and their kids Linda, Tom, and Barry. That made for a lot of Ardis family in one spot. Additional nearby family visitors were Laverne Weeks and Leon Geddings, from Syracuse with their families. Both were from Pinewood and that set the seen for southern cooking a shot of whiskey.
Everyone looked back on the River St. period as the happy days. As factory workers go, they lived comfortably. Lots of relatives from both sides of the family were frequently piling in to the house for stays of a weekend, a week, or a summer. The Ardis’ always had something going on at the house on River St.
MEMORABLE EVENTS ON RIVER ST.
• MOONSHINE: From early on, Clarence and Kaiser built new and bigger liquor stills. It was strictly for home consumption. Walter Protas remembers that even the local cops dropped by and sampled the brew. The recipes came from their old-South days, when making moonshine liquor was a necessity to generate cash during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. They knew how to build a still safe to use. Copper seams were pinged tightly closed, and plumbing grade silver solder was used . Sometimes they made a mash. In later years, they just started the process with cheap wine, and distilled that in to hard liquor. The stills sat on two burners on the stove. The alcohol steam condensed cooling pipes. Allan recalls seeing it drizzle in to the bottle. The liquor came out 150 proof. They had to cut it with water to about 100 proof. Hard drinkers staggered after taking a swill.. When Clarence moved south, the last still was hauled in a wagon pullte by Walter and Stee over to Finkelstein’s junk yard. Fink displayed it curbside on Port Watson Street, the main drag through town.

• SHOT: Clarence was sitting on his front steps on a summer day, when someone drove by and shot him. He was leaning forward, and the bullet came in through his shoulder and penetrated close to this heart, similar to the bullet wound that President Reagan experienced. Uncle Wayne C. was in the living room at the time and remembers the excitement and commotion of it. The bullet was removed at a doctor’s office. This being River St., the police did a cursory investigation then ignored it. Police follow up for working class people on River St. was not like it is depicted Law & Order episodes. Cops just don’t bother with it. He had been shot in Italy during WWII, so this was the second time wounded. No purple heart for it in Cortland.
• THE HAMMER ROOM: All the men in the family including
Clarence, uncles Kaiser, Charlie, Roger Ardis and Herman and Wayne C., cousins Tom Ardis and Carl Warner, and Allan and Steve worked at Brewer-Titchener Corp., the steel mill.
Kaiser worked in the drilling room. Allan was an engineer there. Herman was a tool maker. Wayne worked the coffee wagon one summer. Tom was in testing. Clarence, Roger, Charlie, and Steve were hammermen. The hammer rooms were a man’s world. The furnaces roared and spit out flames across their slots, which were kept filled with heavy bars of steel. The steel was heated to a red hot glow. Strong men pulled hot bars from the furnace all day and hold them on the hammer dies as they were pounded in to shape by 5000 lb. hammer rams. Noise levels were 110 decibels. Smoke and sparks flew constantly high and filled the air. Hammermen and their crews were blackened by soot and oil witin minutes at the start of each shift. Despite the open flame furnaces, the temperature indoors was as cold as it was outdoors in the winter. They had the best paid blue-collar jobs Cortland. Everyone had respect for the might of a hammer man.

• HOT STEEL POURED IN BOOT: The hot bars were pulled from the furnaces and swung over to the hammerman by helpers. On one occasion, a helper got the bar too close to Clarence and melted steel dripped off in to Clarence’s shoe, instantly severely burning his ankle.

• STABBED: On Christmas Eve, 1961, a neighbor, Mr. Perfett, knocked on the front door. Cheryl and Allan remember the night clearly. Clarence stepped out to give Perfetti a Christmas Eve greeting. Perfetti pulled a butcher knife and stabbed Clarence in the back between the should blades. Clarence slugged Perfetti and threw him in to the street. Perfetti was avenging a grudge he had over the empty lot he owned next to their house. The stabbing was serious, but Clarence was bandaged up by Arlene and Jeanette, and that was the end of it. They didn’t call the police. On River Street, it would have been pointless

• PROTECTING THE FAMILY: Clarence was always confrontational, and that trait served well to protect the family. Some instances were:
-When Allan was threatened by bullies who told him to pay them a nickel every day or get beat up, Clarence called one of their fathers, Clint B., a co-worker at the steel mill. Clarence told him that if his son Allan paid even a penny to walk to school safely, he was going to come over to Clint’s house and knock all of his teeth out. Clint’s house was across the block and the next sounds we heard next were screams of pain as Clint beat the daylights out of his son. The bullies never said a word after that.

-Jeanette’s supervisor, Max, at Durkee’s bakery had pushed her, and she bumped into a machine. Jeanette told Clarence, who was instantly incited. Next thing, he was in the bakery, grabbing Max in a choke hold, and telling not to try that again!
-The local theater manager, Mr. Anthony, hassled Steve about some mischief, and Anthony soon had Clarence in his face protecting his son. All of us including Cheryl were tall. Mr. Anthony confronted Cheryl and acused her of being over 12 years and cheating to get the reduce kid price ticket. Little did he know that Clarence was was standing behind her. Oh, boy, there they went again! Mr. Anthony saw danger coming but couldn’t stop it. Clarence was indignant, left the line, went home, and brought back Cheryl’s birth certificate to wave in front Mr. Anthony.
Mr. Anthony was terrified and couldn’t apologize fast enough! Sadly, it was his wife who got their revenge. She was an English teacher and she failed Linda Ardis, Kaiser’s daughter, in 12th grade English. That prevented Linda from graduating with her friends. Linda did not need a HS diploma to assemble typewriters the rest of her life, but getting it would have kept her with her friends. Fortunately, she married Carl W.. He was a young hammerman, right off the farm, the right man for her.

• APES MOVE TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD: Trepidation was felt by every boy when the
Marshalls periodically moved back to the neighborhood. They were a mean family, and as Uncle Jim C. said, “All the Marshalls look like cavemen”. Everyone anticipated trouble, but fortunately, the Marshalls liked Clarence. Clarence was not fazed by reputation and when they met on the street, they all hit if off. Nevertheless, we kids remained cautious around their kids.A kid game “dare” was going around at the time and Allan got slugged in the arm by Larry
M. as a boy to boy thing. Years later, when a friend Bob V. visited at the steel mill with Allan, and ecognized Gary Marshall in the hammer room and commented, “Wow, the Marshalls, you’ve got some mean people working here.” Yep.

• STUCK IN THE BRIDGEWORK. Steve wiggled down in to steelwork of a bridge across the river. On his way back up, he was stuck in the steel lattice work, with only his head above street level. The Marshalls came by and taunted him. Other boys, like the Baranoskis, were trapped in the steel work below Steve. They finally pushed him up and out.

• BRAWL: Clarence was with his buddy Junior N. one afternoon at Junior’s house in McGraw. Three men came in to the back yard and jumped them. Clarence was badly beaten up. Clarence said that the men had a beef with Junior. Clarence came home and said, “Get my shotgun out”. Fortunately, he did not find them that day. He later caught up with them individually and broke legs and arms. .
• PIG ROASTS: Clarence raised a couple pigs out at Uncle Jim Ardis’s place on Kellogg Road.and on two occasions Clarence organized pig roasts in the field behind our house on River St. A bonfire was built to generate hot ashes, and the pig was hung and butchered in a tree. They then proceeded to drink for the next 24 hours as the pig cooked. Neighbors poured in. Clarence and Kaiser warmly fed everyone. Walter P. and Uncle Wayne both remember the pig roasts as good times, good food.
• BASEMENT FLOODS: In the Spring, snow thaws swelled the river. The water table rose and water streamed up in to the basement. If the builder had provided for a sump pump this flooding would have been avoided. Clarence and Kaiser got it out with a combination of pumping, opening the outflow to the sanitary sewer, and blasting out blockage with a shotgun.

• LOSING THE FARM: In Virgil, NY, outside of Cortland, Jeanette’s family owned two small farms. Uncle Herman Congdon had been willed one of farms, but had given up farming and went to work at the steel mill. Herman hung around the Ardis house on River St. and met Rachel H., a large, gregarious divorcee who lived across the street. He had never been with a woman before. Herman married Rachel, then he died. Rachel inherited the Congdon farm. Great-grandmother Congdon lived on in the farmhouse until age 92. Granddad Clint Congdon’s farm next door is still in family hands. Several of us have visited over the years to get a few minutes of sweet memories on the farm.

• PRAYER PLUS GRANDMA WORKED: Cheryl developed osteomyelitis, a disease of the bone, following a Staph infection at age 3. It did not get medical attention. She ran a temperature of 1050 over 5 nights before getting to the doctor. Grandma Emily C. got her to the hospital. Clarence learned to pray from this incident. She spent months or years with her leg in a cast as a child.
• WINTER WONDERLAND: Cortland is in the snow belt, and the snow piled high. Clarence and Kaiser made the winters more fun for the kids. They constructed a sturdy large sled that was driven through the fields by a garden tractor. They built a respectable igloo for the kids, complete with interior lighting. They also had the boys out shoveling the driveway. It was a good introduction to work ethic. One night the boys were out playing. Allan stood on the top of driveway snow mound with a deep puddle of icy slush at the bottom. A car swerved in to the slush. The freezing cold slush flew up and drenched him from top to bottom. Was it on purpose? Probably. Is the world full of assholes?

• CONSTRUCTION: River St. was lined with mature maple trees, but it was narrow, potholed, without sidewalks, and unimportant to the city planners. That changed, as a mixed blessing. City officials turned it in to a heavy trucks bypass through Cortland. All the maple trees were chopped down. The street was widened and paved. Few, if any, of the homeowers living along River St had a say in this decision but they were charged for the upgrade. The Ardis disrespect for authority went up notch.6 A year later, the new intersate highway eliminated the need for a heavy truck traffic. Trucks did not route down River St. The cost was the loss of the charm and ambience of the neighborhood.
• The river was dredged because the interstate highway required new bridges across it. Both sides of the river had been lined with mature maple trees that were knocked down and burned on site. A garbage dump on the other side of the river was simply bulldozed in to the river. We kids threw rocks at the floating debris. Concern for the environment was missing in those days.

• SAVING A LIFE: When two of his fellow workers in the hammer room had an argument, one manhandled the other and stuck him upside down in a barrel of water. Clarence recognized that the man stuck upside down would drown. He knocked the barrel over and the barrel drained, saving the co-worker’s life. As said, the hammer room was rough. It was strictly a man’s world.

• RELATIVES PILE IN: Grandma Ardis, and uncles Charlie, Ray, Jerry, and Roger Ardis and uncles Jim and Wayne Congdon from the other side along with friends often visited and stayed for days or weeks. The house was packed. Clarence was well liked and respected by his brothers and brothers-in-law. He was quick to engage them in friendly banter..
• ROGER’S ACCIDENT: Uncle Roger W. Ardis7 learned to play guitar in the basement of our house on River Street. He made a small income with it. Roger had a bad motorcycle accident in 1961. When he got out of the hospital, he moved in to the house on River Street to recover. At birth, Roger had been given to relatives living just outside Cortland. Roger never really knew his family as a boy and longed to visit Pinewood and become part of the family..
• VACATIONS: Almost every year, in the first two weeks of July, vacation trips were made from Cortland to Sumter, SC. The drive was 24 hours along two-lane roads Rtes. 13-14-15 as the roads meandered around rock outcroppings and over steep hills and across narrow bridges. Driving was hard and hazardous compared to travel on the interstate highways today. Compensating in retrospect was that it was more interesting. They passed down main street in Gettysburg and many other small towns, past massive railway yards and hillside junk yards in PA, and stopped for breakfast at a bus station in VA. Arriving in SC, the change of temperatures and aromas and culture was pleasant. They always heard, “Y’all come back.”

• NIGHT AT THE DRIVE-IN: One night they loaded up the car and went to the Dryden Drive-In, about ten miles away. After they got there, a tire went flat. Clarence had a spare tire and a jack, but no jack handle. Many of the people in their cars at the drive-ins were young couples out there to kiss and neck and make out. Clarence received more than one threat from surprised couples as he went from car to car, knocking on the window, interrupting romantic interludes, looking in, and asking, “Can I borrow a jack handle?”. He didn’t get one, so they drove home 10 miles on a flat tire. The rubber burned off the rim, the car filled with burnt rubber smoke, and the rim was ruined. This was just one more of Clarence’s misadventurex.
• CAR RESTORATION: This was an impressive feat of mechanical ability. Clarence bought a French Renault car that had been crushed and totaled in an accident. He parked it in the carport that he had added to the house. With skill and strength, he and Kaiser popped the caved-in roof back in to place, then totally rebuilt it. It looked like a new car when they were finished. The rear doors swung open frontward, which is not allowed anymore. The Renault was suited for about 4 people, but Jeanette would pack in as many as 6 kids plus a driver to go off on a picnic. No one got hurt, but it was a miracle.
• MOVE SOUTH: The end life on River St. started with a visit by Aunt Thelma Ardis. She urged Clarence to move back to South Carolina and “take care of momma”. Thelma had married a serviceman, and then moved in to brother Clarence’s house several months while her husband transferred overseas Thelma stoked the lure of southern climes, magnolia scents, and “easy living “ in the south, so the decision was made to move to SC. A Mayflower Van took them all to Sumter. When they got there, “taking care of momma” was not necessary. Momma (Grandma Ardis) had remarried, this time to an Air Force sargent, Tom Griggs. She had a nice house, steady income, and was surrounded by her other adult children and grandchildren. She did not need Clarence. Clarence’s family had left everything behind, and now had to make the best of the situation. Thelma, who caused the changes, moved on. She rejoined her husband, then later divorced him anyway. She moved to Sumter and took up a series of sex affairs with country boys half her age.

With the move South, much of the personality and charm of the River St. neighborhood was lost. For many, their house had been the center of activity. When they left, so did the excitement.

For the rest of the story in South Carolina, read Ardis History II 1963-2000 SC-NYC-SC
 
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LIFE REFLECTED IN MOVIES
Steve Martin in Grand Canyon comments that movies are a reflection of life. Here are some movies that reflect the Ardis lives:
No Time for Sergeants.”, Clarence was like Andy Griffith, big happy enthusiastic.
Goodfellas, seemed like life in the Cortland neighborhood
Tobacco Road, depression era rural South. Not quite that bad, but getting there.

EPILOG
The move to South Carolina was both a tragedy and a blessing.
On the tragic side::
• They left a comfortable home; good jobs; excellent schools; and good neighbors in Cortland. They got all the opposite in Sumter.
• Clarence and Jeanette hovered below the poverty line for the next 35 years.
• Everyone’s life was derailed, resources were wasted; potentials were not met. 16
• There was no happiness in their house and the effects of it lingered on for decades on everybody.
The positive side:
• The relaxed school allowed the kids to work through the stresses of the teen years safely. Everyone stayed trim, fairly healthy, and physically fit.
• The drug scene was late getting to Pinewood. Allan, Cheryl, and Steve never used drugs.
• All five kids developed independence and inner ambition.
• The difficulties created resilience and self-reliance. They were stronger for it.
Clarence’s exploits were emotionally, socially, and financially painful. Jeanette’s rationalizations of them made for interesting stories but did not help. As the kids looked back on the situation 10 years later, they laughed at it all. Clarence was outlandish. Jeanette was an enabler. But, looking back from 20 years later, the perspective has changed. Their exploits were an embarrassment, and many of the details need not be retold to the grandchildren17
I collected stories for years. Many thanks to contributions from: Cheryl, Steve, Bill, Mike, Matthew, Rebecca, and Barry and Tom Ardis, and Aunt Lorraine, Wayne, Uncle Jim, Carol C., and Walter Protas.

Allan C. Ardis                       3/13/2017 

END NOTES:
FOOTNOTES
1 Uncle Bob had been in Atlanta Federal Prison for moon shining and there enjoyed having
“chicken every Sunday”. When he tried to get back in, he ended up on the chain gang

2 bars passed walking to school included the Green Arch, for the mafia types; the Alton, for derelicts, Sardo’s, for Clarence sometimes; Charlie’s, where Granddad Clint hung out; and the Palm Gardens, ar. Clarence’s favorite bar was Footie’s, a few blocks away. Footie’s daughter Rebecca was in Allan’s class, and the whole 3rd grade was invited to her birthday party at a restaurant.
3 Nick Grillo’s was the favorite store. A tab was run all week and paid on Friday. Allan or Steve would be asked to run down to get cigarettes, meat or bread, or with a wagon to haul back sugar for the moonshine mash, or candy for themselves. Jeanette had a sweet tooth which she shared with her kids.
4 Read the Eulogy To A Hammer Man, Steve Ardis, for more on the ka-boom clang clang
5 Paraphrasing Jack Nicholson in Chinatown, “what happens on River Street, stays on River Street.”
6 During construction on River Street, large earth cavities that filled with water were briefly used as swimming holes.
7 See also Allan’s Eulogy Letter to Roger J Ardis, who died young. He was Roger W.’.s son. 8 Male pigs have to be castrated, and his three were castrated on a Christmas day outside Clarence’s house. It didn’t add any joy to the Yule Tide Holiday.

PHOTOS

Sumter Mains.