Helen Lauckarn by Anita Messina

 Helen Lauckarn and her husband Paul moved to Port Byron in 1951. Paul found employment at Columbia Rope Company, and they rented the upstairs apartment in one of the two houses located on the plot now used by Savannah bank. From that vantage point the young couple could watch the changing village. Businesses came. Businesses left.

Helen grew up on a crop farm in Cato. Her dad bragged that “Helen could manage a team of horses better than any hired hand.” She wasn’t bad at handling a tobacco crop either. Helen’s father, Talbot Streeter (Everyone called him “Tal.”) grew his tobacco seeds in a sock that he kept damp until the seeds sprouted. When sturdy sprouts grew to strong seedlings Helen planted them in the field. She knows all about cutting tobacco and hanging the leaves in the barn to dry. She spent Christmas vacation stripping and bundling fragrant leaves, which her father then trucked to the train station in Baldwinsville where tobacco buyers made their purchases. But each year “Tal” held back one bundle to make his own top-quality cigars.

When she was 18 Helen forged her way to independence. The bright 1942 graduate of Cato-Meridian High School was hired to work in the accounting department at Pass and Seymour. While she was there she heard about a new-fangled contraption that added, multiplied, subtracted and divided. No pencils needed. No erasers either. That contraption was called a comptometer. Its 90 some-odd keys needed agile fingertips and a quick mathematical mind. It’s safe to say Helen had both. She learned quickly and before she could take the final exam attesting to her proficiency, Allied Chemical in Solvay hired her for their payroll department.

 Ethel Blake’s home at 132 Main Street was up for sale in 1965, and Helen and Paul became the new owners of the beautiful Folk Victorian house. The front gable holds an exquisite example of an intricate jigsaw cut design that many passers-by pause to admire. Paul had 11 happy years there until he passed away, in 1976. He was 60 years old. Helen lives there still. There they raised four daughters—Mellony, Sharon, Nancy and Anne. Anne shows boxes and albums full of photographs that chronicle years filled with history and happy times. While the house rocked with glee, Helen watched continuing changes in the village.

Lucy’s ice cream store thrived on Utica Street where the thrift shop is now. The present hardware store was Carr’s Hardware back then. Beautician Dorothy Walker had her beauty parlor across the street. Out back was Lucien Martens warehouse where 10-year-old Mellony filled her red wagon with celery culls and sold them for five or ten cents, depending on the size of the bunch and how sales were going. Ken Tripp had a TV repair store next door. And a World War II memorial now stands where Mr. Kilmer once sold lumber building supplies and gas. Helen marvels at so many changes that have happened in these fleeting years. Marshall’s grocery store where she once shopped is here no longer. The folks who operated the store remember Helen as a sensible shopper who made her family meals and desserts from scratch. To this day she continues to monitor village activity, not out and about so much, but from the vantage point of her beautiful front window in the house that is still referred to as the Blake house.