Goodbye to rain gauges and ticker tapes, hello murals and welcome signs in Wellsville
A COLUMN By Kathryn Ross, pictured is the West State Street Bridge from Google Street View
Girls who grew up in Wellsville and attended Wellsville High School have fond memories of crossing the old West State Street Bridge, especially if they attended school before 1968.
Back then, girls were forbidden to wear pants to school when attending classes.
Crossing the bridge was, to be cheeky, a memorable experience for those young women especially during the winter months with the wind from the river rushing up from underneath to be captured by our long coats and our long skirts.
Crossing the bridge was hazardous with the western end of the sidewalk sloping gently downward. One winter morning, I had crossed the bridge with my friends and started down the icy sidewalk when I slipped and landed directly on my derriere. It was a cold experience and I don’t mean fun.
On the western embankment of the bridge there was a water gauge, where you could see how high the water had risen during a heavy rainstorm.
It has always bothered me that when the replacement bridge was opened in the mid 90’s the rain gauge was gone. It has never been replaced. I wish it had been. It was informative.
The rain gauge would be easy to replace with a ladder, a rule and a can of waterproof paint.
This all came back to me while I was driving down Main Street the other day when it was so cold. I wondered what was the temperature? Sure there’s a thermometer on the dashboard, but it never seems quite right to me.
When the Main Street branch of Community Bank closed, we lost the ticker tape that told us the time and temperature and other information.
Why am I rambling on about these things? Because there are things we’ve lost in the community that have never been replaced. They aren’t important or life-threatening things. They’re just things that are missed, that made life a little more interesting.
It would be a little bit more difficult to replace the ticker tape, the difficulty would be finding a location because it would have to be programed unless they just replaced it with a thermometer like the one at the Bank on the Bolivar Road.
I think the best place for it is the village office where a ticker tape display could run across the top of the windows and utilized to advertise events like public hearings, parade times or a myriad of things since we don’t have a community bulletin board to look at.
I know we can look at our phones and our computers for the temperature and weather conditions and find out what’s going on, but don’t we have our faces glued to our phones too often? The rain gauge and the ticker tape would be more fun and more reminiscent of a small town.
Recently, the village board talked about putting a Welcome to Wellsville sign on the pedestrian bridge over the arterial into Island Park. They got into a discussion of where to put it because of the wire covering.
Well, take a look at the bridge fellows. Paint the message across the bottom support beams.
Earlier in the week I was looking at the mural on the side of L’Italia. No one doubts that it is beautiful and very much represents the village, but it doesn’t fill up the whole side of the building. There’s room to continue it with a winter scene showing the beauty of the season and how people have embraced winter activities and what can be done in winter around here? Maybe snowmobile businesses and shops specializing in winter gear could sponsor it.
And I see other buildings with easily accessible walls that could be spruced up with murals or other kinds of artwork. They don’t all have to be about the village or town, they could just be pretty. For example, the old Scoville Brown warehouse on Fassett Street could have its original sign, that can still be seen, repainted in an antique style. The side of the Jones Memorial Hospital Medical Clinic on Main Street could be painted with a historic view of medicine through the ages or something else like that. The building kitty corner to it could reflect the history of the building.
The ideas I’ve mentioned aren’t earth shattering and except for the murals, not that expensive. They are just another way of capturing the rural life, which is Wellsville’s legacy and a tourist attraction.
Kathryn Ross is a lifelong Wellsville resident, writer, and community activist. You can reach her anytime, kathr_2002@yahoo.com
