Three on a March Part Three, an Addendum

By Larry Cohen  c 2026

Due to the number of questions sent to me about Part Three of Three on a Match, I owe it to my dear readers to make some clarifications and additions. I admit the addendum is longer than the original piece but the additional material could not have been included in order to avoid a jagged and jumpy read.

The street I lived on in Binghamton, NY during the last year in college was Tremont Ave, just off of Conklin Avenue on the South Side of this NYS Southern Tier city.  The house was only a few doors up from Conklin on Tremont’s west side of the street. The home was a large house, green with yellow trim, that was divided up in such a way that allowed for several bedrooms on the second floor, one of which had a private, if antiquated, kitchen. I had the room with the kitchen. There was a shared bath for three bedrooms, but only two of the three rooms were ever rented during the time I lived there. The fellow in the second room was a quiet, older gentleman from Waverly/Sayre, PA who was there only three days a week.. He operated the Art Movie Theater, also on Conklin Avenue, only a few walking-distance blocks away. The Art Theatre ran porno films, which I thought was funny if anyone knew how conservative a lifestyle this gentleman lived. One might expect the owner of such a theatre to drive a sports car and dress with a thick gold neck chain and a shirt open to the chest. This fellow was completely the opposite so that he could have passed for an English professor with his tweed sports coat and vest sweater. He drove a Pontiac sedan. If he ever saw me walking by his theatre on the way home from the bus stop, he would ask me to stop in. I usally declined telling him “if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all” He nodded in apparent agreement.

There was a set of stairs that ran up on the side of the house that allowed for a separate entrance leading directly into the kitchen.

The landlady, a Mrs. Robbins, an older woman herself , did very little in the way of chores around the house.  The maintenance was left to an old fellow, Mr Harry Kaiser, who was originally from Cleveland, Ohio, lived in Erie, PA and somehow ended up in Binghamton, NY.  He was an exceptional person, Mr. Kaiser, even at the age of nearly 85.  One day, for example, I came back from class, and he was high up on a ladder fixing a roof rain gutter, working all by himself.  He had a wonderful garden in the backyard of the house in which he grew cucumbers as well as garlic and dill to turn the cucumbers into pickles.

The pleasant aroma of the hanging dill drying in the glass-enclosed back porch was a welcomed aroma. To this day, if I add dill weed to any of my food preparations, the aroma always reminds me of Mr. Kaiser and his garden.

I found the house by using skill, not luck.  During the first part of August, I drove to Binghamton’s South Side, which at the time, was a predominantly Irish-American inhabited area of Binghamton.  During the drive, I found an old-fashioned styled grocery store.  I simply asked the owner of the store if he knew of anyone who rented rooms in the vicinity. The grocer immediately gave me the name of Mrs. Robbins, although he could not remember the exact address without looking it up in his records. From that point, it was easy to secure housing for my last year in Binghamton.

Getting back to Mr. Kaiser for a moment, I want to expand on this fellow.  In the evening, we occasionally watched baseball games together in the first floor living room.  Although he smoked cigarettes, they generally went out before he could finish one and doze off. At times, however, I feared he might accidentally start a fire, but Mrs. Robbins always was around to look after him since he lived on the first floor. Mr. Kaiser would also tell me stories about his experiences as a door-to-door salesman for White Sewing machines.

Promising Mr. Kaiser that after I graduated I would take him back to the Erie, PA, area for a fishing trip, In June, I kept the promise and we headed west for a small lake, Pleasant Lake, near Oil City, PA.

NYS Route 17 was not yet completed, so we crossed over into Pennsylvania and took U.S. Route 6 across the northern section of the Commonwealth.  He had to buy an out–of-state fishing license which was quite dear at the time.  I didn’t buy one and basically just sat in the small row boat while he fished.  I can’t remember if he caught any fish except for a few “suckers” (he called them that) which he returned to the lake in a somewhat damaged condition. We stayed in a bunkhouse next to the lake.

As to why I bought the smoking pipe when I did.  I don’t have a real good reason nor explanation for doing so.  Possibly, since I had a small, part-time job at a men’s clothing shop, Saul Sterns, I would talk to the nice looking girl who worked the counter at the nearby drug store.  Maybe I wanted to sound or act more mature since she was older than I was. I can’t be sure but I don’t think buying the pipe made me sound nor act any older than I was… just a young and callow fellow trying to finish college.

I was not much of a cook so for breakfast I would eat at a little place called “Hoagies” which was run by an older, thin and tall woman with salt and pepper colored hair, and her daughter, a short girl on the chubby side. The owner, who originated from Harrisburg, always called me “young man” since I never gave her my name and she never asked.  I ate the same thing every time, French toast, coffee, and orange juice.  The owner kept a quart of Crowley’s Dairy milk on each table and along the counter.  I don’t think that would be allowed these days, but it was accepted then.  Further, the Crowley’s Dairy was only a few blocks away which also gave the impression of freshness to the milk. (One day, she told me, two customers drank up an entire quart of milk so she charged them for it to the dismay of the milk poachers)

The only other eating establishment that I would frequent was “Sullivan’s Hotel” or locally known as Sully’s.  It was more tavern than restaurant, with nothing that resembled a hotel. Sully himself was famous for his hamburgers.  Since they were hand made, one never knew the size of the hamburger that one would receive.  Ordering two was the safest bet.  Sully was a strange looking fellow who seemed to have only one working eye, the other, in baseball pitching parlance, was always pointing up and away.

The only true supermarket in the area was Loblaws, a name that I was familiar with from my home area.  I remember buying a lot of TV Dinners and frozen, ready-to-eat fish items. These fish items came in a box with a New England fisherman in a yellow rain jacket and yellow hat steering a boat pictured on the cover of the box. It was not great eating but anything to me was a welcomed change after three years of cafeteria food.

All of the above, should help my dear readers understand more about Part Three of “Three on Match”

Part Four will be available soon.