Stopping by a school on a winter's day

This column may appear at first to be about my hair, which would make for wonderful reading, but it really is about what a place and its people mean to a young person’s life. The place is the former Charles Williams School in Hudson, but I am going to start with my hair.

I was in first grade in 1966 and it was picture day. My mother dressed me nicely in a checked black and white sport coat, white shirt, red paisley tie and black pants. She carefully combed my hair using what seemed like a gallon of water and a green plastic comb, a tool she would use for years in a futile effort to give me a pompadour.

However, I was determined to spoil her styling that day and every day. As soon as I got out of Mom’s sight, I would run my hands through my hair to mess it up so it didn’t look so “mothered.”

On photo day, Mom was one step ahead of me. Her best friend, Fran Brady, was a secretary in the principal’s office at Charles Williams, home to Hudson’s kindergartners and first graders. She asked Fran to make sure my hair was combed for the photo. I remember Fran re-combing my hair in her office just before the photo.

As you can see in the photo, Mom’s backup plan didn’t work. I look like I am in the world’s youngest punk rock band. I don’t remember if I sabotaged the pompa-doo for the second time that day or another student did.

When mom and Fran saw the photo, they laughed until their eyes watered. Fran, one of the funniest people I know, would send me notes throughout my life asking if I needed someone to do my hair for big events such as a graduation or my wedding.

This memory sprang to mind on a recent blustery day when I went running past the 98-year-old Charles Williams building, which now is home to the Second Ward Foundation, a non-profit arts organization. Despite the building’s faded glory, I felt I was back at my neighborhood school where I walked to school with my siblings, where I knew someone in the principal’s office, and where I would make friendships that lasted for many years.

On my run, I circled around the back of the school by running down Robinson Street to North 2nd Street and then to Mill Street, where Charles Williams’ athletic field is located. My father played City League softball there for the Hudson Elks. There were lights for night games, gangs of marauding mosquitos, and merciless needling of teammates. For me those games were heaven. For Dad too. If he stayed out late with the boys after the game, he would fib to my mom that he had played a double-header.

This was the same field where I played flag football as a young teenager. My teams were terrible except for one day when we upset the best team in the league. Rather than euphoria, our win produced epic fear as the losers promised they were going to kick our asses after the game. When the game ended, we sprinted out of there on the Dugway, a path leading up to Harry Howard Avenue (today it’s part of the Empire State Trail). I am not sure the losers were in pursuit because I never looked back.

Built as a grade school for Hudson’s Second Ward, and named for a superintendent of Hudson schools, Charles Williams closed in 1970 and later was home to offices for alternative education programs and Columbia County, including the sheriff’s office. These sturdy pre-WWII structures seem to keep delivering whatever we ask of them.

I remember Charles Williams as an extension of my home and the students and staff as family. Granted, I may be completely captive to nostalgia as I get older. At the same time, I know there’s something true and unshakable in the sense of neighborhood and belonging that I get nowhere else except for places like that old school in my hometown.