A (Subjective) History of Podunk University

My first trip to the Newport Folk Festival was in 1965. While wandering the town early one morning, trying to stay warm until the concert venues opened, I chanced upon the Newport Tower and was transfixed by the cylindrical stone edifice. I had always wanted to be an architect, as space-relation was my one strong suit, and was eight years away from commencing more than two decades of intermittent stonework. This great historic ruin stopped me dead in my tracks, its obvious form and function calls one to project form and function. The columns... Though I have never been called upon to build anything so large, I have juggled its mass in sheer tonnage many times over.

I returned to Newport and the tower during the next four years while attending both the Folk and Jazz Festivals. I began a paper on the Tower for a course in the history of American architecture, taught by Hugh Morrison, at Harvard Summer School in 1968. But the thesis got lost somewhere in-between the disputed theories on its origin, and I finally abandoned it in favor of the political activities of the day. The year 1968, had begun with the rude awakening of the TET Offensive in Vietnam, and by mid-summer the Boston Commons had its first enforced curfew since the British left town.

After a short stint in the Regular Army, I moved to the Finger Lakes Region of New York in 1971. High above Cayuga's waters, and several miles inland, there exists a sleepy little burg known as Podunk. The two most oft quoted depictions of the climate are both inaccurate, for it is neither "Nine months of Winter and three months of (darn) poor sledding", nor does "Spring come on a weekend...!"

It is a region lush with vegetation, or as my grandfather, Gene Roberts, on his first trip east of the Rockies stated, "The place is lousy with chlorophyl!" I have to admit that, having worked out of doors in the region as a stone mason and landscaper for the better part of the last three decades, I've been snowed on in every month of the year, except July and August.

Today Podunk is a collection of dwelling houses and small farms. Light industry has come and gone, as have many distinguished citizens. A friend once said that you judge a place by the people who pass through it. By that determination, and many others, Podunk is a nice place to be from.

Taughannock Creek flows lazily through Podunk on its way to the magnificent 215 feet tall Taughannock Falls and Gorge, finally emptying in to Cayuga Lake. At the north end of the lake is the Montezuma Wild Life Refuge which, along with a link to the Erie Canal, allows the water's of Cayuga to flow into Lake Ontario, the St. Lawrence River, and eventually the North Atlantic. If one sails south through the Gulf of St. Lawrence, around Nova Scotia and down along the eastern seaboard of New England, with luck one might find their way to Narragansett Bay, Newport Island and my favorite tower!

This does not tell the story of the university, the origin of the word, or give the complete history of Podunk, for there are several places by that name, and we have said nothing about the Native American tribe from Central Connecticut, known as the Podunk Indians. But it's Thanksgiving Eve, 2001 and time to launch this bird and see if this hallowed enterprise will fly.

TO BE CONTINUED....