Passing Through Kurt Vonnegut : Schenectady N. Y.

I grew up living in the shadow of three small cities. Albany , Schenectady and Troy ,New York. Three well know writers , atleast to some  spent time in these areas. Herman Melville author of Moby Dick lived for a couple of years near South Pearl Street in Albany. Andy Rooney of CBS Television grew up in Albany. For a short time Kurt Vonnegut , a prime author of my generation spent time in Schenectady. He worked for General Electric in the early 1950's during America's post war industrial empire years. A couple of Friday's ago I spent an over night in Schenectady. I was attending my nephews wedding. A highly staged affair that so many weddings now a days have become. It started at a large church across from Union college and ended up at the Glen Sanders Mansion  across the Mohawk River from Schenectady and near the old GE complex. As the evening wore on  and frankly perhaps one to many drinks and a noisy crowd I went out to sneak a cigarette. I am not supposed to smoke.  Anyway as I set out on their large patio area with the outdoor fire place burning and the people around me openly speculating about the cost , my mind went back to Vonnegut. Schenectady and the Tri - Cities area figured often in his novels. Though he sometimes changed the names. Player Piano being the book he used Schenectady and GE in metaphor form the most. For a moment I guess I became unstuck in time. I went from my present moment back to the boom yrs. The years when the USA was the major manufacturing country in the world. We had won a major war....our cities were not bombed out shells of themselves. Once everything General Electric made they made in Schenectady. From refrigerators to light bulbs. Those were the yrs that Vonnegut worked here. These yrs here and during World War Two were some of the foundations of what he was and taught through his writing. I admit he was a major influence on my thought processes. I believe from Vonnegut I learned about the danger of consolidated power.......Of arrogance whether from an educated elite , or people who inherent their wealth and think they were the ones that earned it. From political pols who live multiple lives to religious fanatics who do the same to the engineer who wants humans to behave more like math equations. I explored many of these concepts in my high school and early college yrs from this author. Schenectady is no longer the city it was. As a matter of fact I would say it is a shell of it's former self. GE is still here but only the turbine generator area is active along with some R&D and administrative functions. Most of the people he knew are long dead. Many pine away for those yrs. I remember fondly my early married life living in the stockade section of Schenectady. But I was just passing through , like Vonnegut. I was aroused from my daydream in the late evening by a bird across the nearby canal calling out as the last of the sun set. It was not a sweet tune like ....Poo Too Weet....it was a crow. CAW CAW CAW...........