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Our recent article about the City’s initiative to fill the abandoned subway tunnel drew many interesting comments from our readers. I wanted to highlight one of those comments from Patrick Eagan—a native Rochesterian who has since relocated to south Florida (RochesterSubway.com receives almost as many emails from people now living outside Rochester as we get from current residents). When Patrick was a kid he used to play softball with the Kodak Park Athletic Association. And when you’re a kid what could go better with a game of softball than a ride on the Rochester Subway?

Patrick agreed to let us post his subway story here—but do check out his great blog and original post.

“It was summer, school was out and that meant softball. Not just any softball but KPAA Softball, sponsored by the Kodak Park Athletic Association. I don’t believe that this program still exists in Rochester but I suspect that most men my age (just turned 70) in Rochester participated in the program. Here is my team, the Cameos, probably about 1952.

I lived in the southwest area (19th Ward)of Rochester while Kodak Park was in the northern area of the city. In addition, most of the playing fields that KPAA used were also in the northern part of the city such as Jefferson High School, etc. That meant that it was a bus ride to the game sites. A bus ride and a subway ride! Here is the subway station at Exchange Street.

Taking the subway was not the most direct and quickest way to get to some of the fields but it sure was the most fun. We would get a bus on Genesee Street and take it downtown to West Main and Broad Street to get the subway. Down in the subway if there was a subway going south (and we were going north) you could put a penny on the track for the subway to flatten out. Voila! A souvenier for the day!

We would take the subway north to Emerson Street and then take the bus again up Dewey Avenue to some elementary school field off Dewey. Not the most convenient route. We could have taken the bus to the Four Corners (Main and State) and transferred to the Dewey Avenue bus but there was no way to flatten a penny by going that way.

Quite a way to spend the summer!”

Tags: 19th Ward, abandoned subway tunnel, Cameos, Dewey Avenue, Emerson Street, Exchange Street, Four Corners, Jefferson High School, Kodak Park Athletic Association, KPAA Softball, New York, NY, Patrick Eagan, Rochester, Rochester Subway, Rochester Subway story, Rochester's northwest quadrant, softball

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 4:52 pm and is filed under Rochester History, Rochester Subway, Rochester Subway Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.