{"id":1596,"date":"2009-04-20T10:35:36","date_gmt":"2009-04-20T14:35:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/?p=1596"},"modified":"2009-04-20T10:41:48","modified_gmt":"2009-04-20T14:41:48","slug":"i-grew-up-in-americas-coolest-small-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/?p=1596","title":{"rendered":"I grew up in “America’s Coolest Small Town”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seriously – it’s official!\u00a0 If you follow me on Twitter, you might remember me mentioning that my hometown – Owego NY, was one the towns chosen by Budget Travel<\/a>\u00a0as one of the coolest small towns in America and last week, it was announced as the winner!\u00a0 CBS<\/a>\u00a0has a video on their site of the announcement and the\u00a0Binghamton Press<\/a>\u00a0and the Owego Pennysaver<\/a>\u00a0both have stories about the win. In the CBS video, you will here mention made of the old jailhouse that has been turned into a restaurant, project that was conceived and brought to life by one of Larry’s cousins. He doesn’t own it anymore, but they haven’t changed the great job he did of repurposing a building a lot of people thought would never be used again. \u00a0<\/p>\n

I don’t live in Owego anymore, but I am not far away and I\u00a0still go there pretty frequently for groceries, or when I\u00a0run out of birdseed or peat moss.\u00a0 It was a great place to grow up\u00a0and remains a pretty little town of\u00a0old buildings that have been preserved or restored.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week, I had to go there for errands, so I took my camera along.\u00a0\u00a0 I didn’t have time to walk around town, so I decided to go for the big picture instead.\u00a0 I drove up to “Cemetery Hill” [actually known as Evergreen Cemetery], a favorite\u00a0hangout spot of mine since childhood.\u00a0\u00a0I know I am not alone in my fondness for cemeteries, but some people do find it odd that I enjoy them so much.\u00a0 \"owego6\"This one is particularly wonderful, in that it has twisting roads climbing the side of a pretty steep hill, with the cemetery wrapping around it.\u00a0 They didn’t level it off or change the natural formation of the hill very much, but just situated graves where they would fit.\u00a0\"owego5\"\u00a0I hadn’t been there in some time, so I was glad to see that it wasn’t an old memory that didn’t stand up well on reexamination – it is still just as wonderful as I remembered.\u00a0 You can see glimpses of the town through the trees.\"owego4\"At the topmost spot, is the monument to a young Indian woman, who was killed in a train wreck. There is an interesting page, explaining how she came to be buried\u00a0in Owego\u00a0here<\/a> .\"owego2\"From there, you can see the whole town:\"owego1\"\u00a0And in this photo, the arrow indicates a particularly historic spot.\"owego3\"In that building is the bar where on a fateful night, many long years ago, Larry and I met. The town has erected a small, tasteful marker out in front, to commemorate this\u00a0auspicious event.*<\/p>\n

It was a great place to grow up and I still love it. All of this has made me curious, though. So, in the comments, leave us a little blurb about where you grew up and how far away from that place do you live now?
\n*you know I’m kidding, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seriously – it’s official!\u00a0 If you follow me on Twitter, you might remember me mentioning that my hometown – Owego NY, was one the towns chosen by Budget Travel\u00a0as one of the coolest small towns in America and last week, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,5],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1596"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1645,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions\/1645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/dlynz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}