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�ACTION FOR OLDER PERSONS
BROOME COUNTY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
ABSTRACT
Dr. Carl S. Benson whose approximate age is 80 was born in
Binghamton, N. Y.
He graduated from Binghamton Central High
School, Colgate University and studied medicine at Buffalo,
tL
Y.
ur. Benson mentions working in the Erie Penitentiary during
World War I - later operated a sanitarium in Dansville before
coming back to Binghamton.
He was a memoer of the cardiology
department at Binghamton General, Lourdes and tlancock Hospital.
ue is well known and has been honored for his charitable work for the
Lions Club, American Legion and ti1e Shriners.
�ACTION for Older Persons, Inc.
Independent, Membership-based, Non-profit
Broome County Court House, Room 307
Court House Square, Binghamton, New York 13901
Telephone (607) 722-1251
BROOME COUNTY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
Interview Transcription
Interviewer:
Susan D obandi
Address:
Person Interviewed:
Address:
Date: 6/8/78
Tape No.:
1
295 Front St., Binghamton, N. Y.
Dr. Carl S. Benson
109 Murray St., Binghamton, N. Y.
Date of Birth or approximate age:
80
(Dr. Benson, could we start this interview by having you tell us where
you were born, something about your parents and any of your recollections
of your childhood?)
That's easy.
the westside.
I was born on 5 King Ave. between Walnut and a and it's on
It's between a Walnut and St. John.
came from Sweden.
My mother and father
My mother from the north of Sweden and my father from
the south of Sweden.
Mother talked very much about having come from the
place where the King used to spend his summers out in the open and my
grandfather I realize now was the man that insulated an fortified the
iron mines of Sweden so that if anybody attempted to take over they merely
blew up the bridges andthey had so much trouble getting the iron ore out
that they never did.
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
2
They met here in Binghamton my father being from the south of Sweden
and my mother from the north.
I always kidded mother about stealing
her sisters girl - boyfriend but they had a rather happy life together
till mother over did and showed herself to me as a medical problem
which I had a lot of fun solving.
As for me I went to St. John Ave. School.
I had only one sister
Ruth who was five years older than I was and followed the same trail
and the thing I think you would enjoy the most was that I was constant
ly reminded that I wasn't supposed to be relying on somebody else I
was supposed to dig it out for myself and I was supposed to keep
going no matter what happened.
My father was a tailor so called
merchant tailor at a time when there wasn't any such things as ready
made clothes and part of the fun was that I in the early grades in
school wore tailor made clothes and often got in trouble with the
teachers because they couldn't understand why the clothes I had on
made so much noise with the!: corduroy knees banging each other and
actually asked me if I didn't have any other clothes I could wear to
school.
Today I'd like to have such good clothes back.
Work - I can remember the very funny things that happened there was
the time somebody stole our Thanksgiving dinner that we had carelessly
put on top of the refrigerator on top - on the back porch at 5 King
Ave. We didn't get much to eat that day.
It was a lot of fun.
We
had a lot of time trying to find it.
One of the stories that might interest you was that the man on the
corner who was a horse tailor got after me to prove that he knew more
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
3
about the things then 1 did and my father did and said "Of course we
grew horses and horses barns."
He said "Didn't 1 realize if 1 plant
ed a cigar box and watered it regularly every day in about six weeks it
ought to come up and show me a horse barn that 1 could be proud of."
So 1 tried it and at the end of four weeks he told me "Didn't 1 know
the top from the bottom"
So 1 dug it up and turned it over and it
wasn't till the six weeks were well up that he never admitted just said
1 got the wrong kind of cigar box."
You see these queer things for
instance his office - his where he fixed leather and did all this stuff
was on State St. behind Sissons and in front of it was the old canal.
My father lives on - worked on the other side in the Bosket Block and
that was the way life was treated.
They were both equal - now do we
get a rest.
1 started school at St. John Ave. school and 1 can still see our
kindergarden and our first grade where Bill and Ed Keeler and some of
the - the rest of the boys were sure that if they took their hands and
folded them around the side ways they could see what was going on the
room and it was just as good as having them sit as well as having
them sit on the edge of the stage - of the desk.
One of the boys
Doff Kane just followed one of the girls out of the kindergarden and
it wasn't till two days later that we found out that he had gone on and
supposed to have been promoted anyway because he was older than the
rest of us.
the desks.
Third grade was fine cause of the exercises we got up on
We gathered up books as being bricks, stones and we went through
all the stories of llliad, the Romans and their troubles and threw
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
4
the books on the floor just with a grand abandon that made it a great
life.
We really enjoyed Mrs. Tillapough's teachings.
I could go on teach
and tell you about each of the other kids each of the other teachers
just as well of course.
Miss Hunt was the principal but we never had
any trouble with her we didn't know enough·· to.
She kept us busy and
we kept her busy and that's all that was necessary.
nephew in the class with us.
Course we had her
Maybe that helped us stay out of trouble.
From the sixth grade we moved over to Laurel Ave. under old Professor
Johnson for out 7th - 7th grade and that was when I used to ride a
bicycle across to school.
over to Laurel Ave.
It was quite a ways down from where we were
But that was when we had all the fun nobody knew
what to do, nobody cared.
Then we went on to high school.
8th 9th and 10th 11th and 12th over in high school.
We had the
No not the high school
you people know about but in the same place until we wore the building out
or they thought we did or said we wouldn't get a new one if they didn't
stop using it and then I remember when they decided to close it up.
They
put the letters the colors and the letters of the class on the school.
We
got up on the fourth floor on the fire hatches handed two by fours to
through down if the other class got in our way or started to come after us.
Instead one of the boys got the fire hoses out of the Front St.
fire
department and we had a grand time watching them walk up and chop those
hoses to stop the water so they could get at us.
Now I got to get back to teaching at our school.
It seems to me that
I must have been along about the ,{th or 5th grade when I started to
�Dr. Carl g. Benson
Page
5
to doing some work on the outside.
Maybe it was younger but I was
delivering flowers for Oshier up on 148 Court St.
shag I got 10¢ for it.
If it was a long
If it was a short shag I got 5¢ and he always
used to kid me on how much money I took down at the end of the week
for a guy that was just riding around on a bicycle.
I would almost get
I think on the average of five dollars maybe a little less maybe a
little more depending on how business was.
I got shipped down to Graham.
Then he disappeared and
Graham's Florist Shop was in Wally
Websters Drug Store which was 45 Court St. next door to the corner of
Walnut - uh uh Washington St. and Court.
Wally said the smart thing
to do is to buy buildings next to the corners or where if anybody was
going to increase the size of their place they'd have to take your
place in.
In that way you'd make money on any enlargement of the
town without having too much invested that was where I learned that
if you stole old time tombstones and you poured a little acid on them
that make pretty good soda and that's what you gave people in place of
soda on their ice cream.
sometimes less.
Ice cream was worth 10¢ or sometimes 5¢
Those were in the days when we used to see these
special men come through.
The automobile stage was just starting to
grow and there was one man that had a small two seated or one seated
buggy but he had his wheels on his pulling whee�s on backwards and
therefore the horse twas behind you and pushed you foreward and he tooktook that I tmagine he'd go pretty fast too but he was just advertising
a new kind of ice cream or a new kind of softdrink.
Made quite something
to work with.
Then, I got interested in other work.
The morning newspaper came along
�Dr. Carl�. Benson
Page
6
course the business be+onged to Carl Legg's father and then he sold
it and that brought it out in the open.
When I used to go to dances in
high school I'd used to have to get up before 2'o'clock and we didn't
get home much before that in order to get over and roll the singles for
the old morning paper.
I'd roll about 50 of those and then lay down
on the bags - the mail bags then get up and carry the longest route up
to the top of Mount Prospect and into the old tavern up Front St. next
to Prospect St.
That's where they give you the description of the real
early things that happened here in Binghamton.
My father and I used to argue a lot about Court St. bridges, boats and
spent a good many nice days in the summer pushing a roeboat up and down
the Chenango River borrowing it from Mr. Ritz or renting it rather from
Mr. Ritz at the corner of Laurel Ave. and the river.
just what you were going to get into.
Violet Island.
We had one island that we called
We had another island that was a littlebit tough to get
at but you went out where the 4th Ward sewer came in.
a little bit dirty.
island.
You always got
You went out rode up then down and landed on an
Dad and I always called our island.
other way.
You never knew
Then we had to hunt up the
There was always something to think about.
If you went up
the Chenango and I've tried and took my canoe later up to Port Dick and
all the way to Lilly lake and right up the river right back down.
left it in Port Dick for a whole summer.
I had a lot of fun.
I
We'd sneak
around behind a barn loosed up underneath the barn drop it into the
water then climb in then go around the landing to show that we were there.
It's a wonderful thing and always we worried about the Chenango River
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
7
and then we remembered that there was an old man named Mr. Whittemore
that got my interest first in steamboats because he told me about the
steamboat that used to come up the Chenango River - Susquehanna River
and Chenango River from Owego every spring did it for a number of years
and the people came up and went down but in my early days we usually
caught tlte train at about 8 o'clock on Saturday night went down to
Owego and then took the boat up as far as Ouaquaga as Hiawathia Island
or on up further to the endings in Hickory Grove.
stretch in those days.
That was a beautiful
I've heard them talk about it a good many
times before my time but I was too busy working to pay much attention
to riding around in it.
Court St. bridge.
Then I remembered what Dad had told me about
It seems that the boats used to come up and stop
against those big trees that used to be back of McDevitts so I had to
find out about it.
Find out what it was what was happening and why
the end of it there was so little not big enough and I did I stuck
my nee¥, in it.
Before ti1e bridge was finis lied or built there was a
ferry that used to come across there and that tied up just above where
the bridge came in and came across the river almost straight and stopped
about where Main St. or Court St. is and you could load and unload to
catch the bridge er to catch the ferry.
The next thing that happened
was that they cornmensed to fuss about wanting to do something and it
was because they didn't like the way in which things were done.
I
know my Dad at that time said he had a chance to buy the old farm
that ran all the way down to about where the Lourdes Hospital is and
up as far as Leroy St. and down to the river and down to the junction
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
8
and back up to about Leroy St.
Can't remember the name of the farm
right now but Dad was very seriously interested in buying it and he
was going to get that land for $2,000.
over toQuaker Lake.
The people that sold it went
They had a place over there too but I don't
remember the name.
Then we had to worry about why all these strange things were set up
around Main St. and when I checked up Sam Wear said his father had
a bar there for years in fact he said there were five bars between
Front St. and the Chenango River.
Maybe that accounts for their
going after the law because I understand that's when they got to
work - that's when they got to work and built the church at Wal at a Front St. and Main St.
It took me a long time to figure it out
then I found the ruling any territory with a church in it cannot
have a saloon or a bar within a hundred twenty-five feet of the front
door of the church now that old rule has been in for a long time an
probably accounts for why 4 of the 5 things disappeared unless some
body has forgotten the laws.
The thing that counts in rememberance
is that when we came to building the Sheraton, the Ramada and the
rest of the new hotels that were wanted to be near the water just
across the bridge they all of a sudden stopped and moved them a block
away.
I think I know the reason because I looked up some of the deeds
on lower Main St. and over on Front St. and they all contained this
record that no building can be put across south of Main and Front er Court St. unless it's far enough away and unless there is an opening
through it left down to the river so that people can take their
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
animals to the ford and across the river.
Page
9
That's why you'll find that
big mark in the bottom of the Treadway building.
I remember also that we
built a very lovely little park on the end of Wall St. and Wall St. was
connected with this other stuff but people all forgot it and it disappear
ed.
I wonder how many people remember its name.
It was Carmen Park and
while I'm speaking about parks we had one over on the southside wherein
there was a tree for every man killed in World War II and a nameplate on
it but I was over there the other day and God if we can go through big wars
like World War II with no more losses than that we better stick up in
the first ranks because I assure you I couldn't find enough trees or
enough plaques to justify our even having been considered as being in
World War II.
Now I think we ought to look up and see whether this new business about
extending the high school and shutting off the ford with kids coming
from high school and with a parking lot and with some other things like
that can be done any better and any more legally than shutting it off for
hotels and places to eat particularly when the city is kinda short of
money
It was during these times when I was wondering around town that we all
got wrapped up in cigar bands and we used to argue as to whether it was
smarter to stop in the cigar factories which were on Wall St., Water St.,
State St. was solid from Court to Henry and see if we couldn't buy beg or
steal a few cigar bands that were out of the ordinary so we could make
money.
As a matter of fact there was a lot of them that were so out of
the ordinary that if you found the owner and he had a smile on his face
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
10
he would give you half a dozen and then your collection would be way
way above your friends.
We had as many as 56 cigar factories around here
then they commenced to get into the factory kind where it wasn't made
by hand it was made by machinery and the last one I remember being here
into this part of the country was the General Cigar factory down on
Court St. - er Main St. down near Johnson City that worked for a few
years.
The problem was that we got much poorer tobacco for a while.
If you've traveled up through Canada and seen the various shades of
tobacco and seen the various kinds you realize that it's not a bad
crop to grow.
It's quite nice and if you've hunted around the old
barns down below Owego and seen the openings in the sides of the barns
where they drain and let the tobacco leaves dry you will quickly get
established in your own mind what a handy comfortable thing it is but it
requires a lot of work and we had just the people to roll them and not the
people to grow them maybe thats why we lost it and then we had to get so
many of our women folks had to get tied up in cigaretts and anxious about
cigaretts and they could buy them all rolled so they didn't look different
a lot cheaper or rather a lot more expensively than we could cigars.
High school and schools in Binghamton it seems funny to talk about them.
There was a little girl named Alice VanMoon and she beat me by 1/2 point
when we went up to St. John er to Laurel Ave. and on down into high school.
I know I could have caught her but she went and moved away.
Oh so I had
to go on and I graduated as :valedictorian I think when I graduated from
high school.
It was a big problem to remember because I was working all
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
11
the time on the side and despite the fact that I worked from 2 o'clock in
the morning up till school time.
I worked after school until 7 or 8 o'clock
at night I thought I was pretty darn lucky when I got in twelve - thirteen
dollars a week as an adult maybe after I got into college I realized more
about it.
I had $285.00 in my pocket when I left for college.
If I hadn't
been fortunate enough to find some friends up there who knew where the
cheap places to eat were because I remember the chap that went with me he
was a teacher afterwards at Cornell. We paid a $1.60 apiece for two rooms.
One to study in and one to sleep in and around the corner we paid $4 and
then $4.50 and then $4.60 and then $4.90 for a place to have our three meals
a day in comfort.
Of course it was the crowd that was there that made it
interesting because many of them were inclined to head for the ministry
and many long were the sermons that got preached at us while we sat there
waiting to see what was goiy,g to happen but if anybody was hungry they were
taken care of and you could buy a roast beef sandwich for 10¢ - you could
buy
We w�re lucky from Binghamton. We could go over to the Candy Kitchen
and Jimmy the Greek would say "I remember you."
thirsty."
We'd say, "Yes, and were
"Wait a minute" and he'd give us an ice cream so we wouldn't
feel too bad about it and we appreciated his kindness.
ial.
Fifteen cents would take you to the movies.
from somebody if you needed to.
Money wasn't essent
You could always borrow
There wasn't enough girls but what you
had a good alibi that there wasn't any girls to get so you didn't have one
and I think maybe that's the thing that made life worth while because it
certainly made us study a lot more than we would have otherwise.
Then we
would go on and I still remember even at my decrepit old age that my first
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
12
year in Colgate from the time I left in September to go till I came back
in June having finished one year cost me $496.16.
I think maybe that's
a record because I remember my last year in medicine cost me over $1100 or
pretty damn close and I know that's not counting the fact that I worked
in the fraternity house and I took care of the animals.
amimals for both physiology, biology.
The research
That's why I had to wear a
moustache because one of them got mad and caught me on the upper chin er
upper lip and it was a lot better having it covered by hair than not
having it covered at all.
There are many stories I could tell you about the faculty of Colgate.
It
was one of the grandest bunch of men I ever knew despite the fact there
were a lot of wonderful queer characters.
There was Johnny Green who
always bobbed around at us, flashed his eyes back an forth and said that
if he excercised his eyes enough that he wouldn't have to wear glasses
and then he had a man who was his assistant very big dignified fat man
that always put his paws down in front of you as though he was going to
bite you Spencer but he wouldn't.
He'd scare hell out of you.
could go on and talk about the rest.
Then I
My particular sidekick in these
days was Bill Turner six foot tall a big base voice, a bachelor.
He
took care of his mother and sister and always acted as though something
was going to push him around into something.
He was so afraid that
people would misunderstand him get him into trouble.
He even came to me
once and said, "I'm going to quit and " I said "Well let me look
things over a bit for you."
And I says, "No, you're not going to quit.
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
13
You're going to work a little harder than you have worked and you're gonna
do it more this way and you aren't gonna get mixed up with so many people."
And when he came to me five years later and said "I'm gonna quit."
"Yep, youre gonna quit now but not before.
I said,
You hadn't finished your job."
It's a wonderful feeling to be able to say I helped a professor as much
as they helped me but I didn't because he and his mother and his sister
fed me Sunday nights dinner for a good many years.
God knows I couldn't
sing I couldn't do anything else but I traveled with the Glee Club with
the sublimed feeling that I didn't have to worry because he told me, "Make
your mouth go big, smile good and for God's sakes if anybodies out of
tune shut up.
Now lets stop a minute.
It seems that along about my sophmore year in
Colgate I got on the pan and I never blamed them.
I suddenly decided
figuring closely that they were going to let me have my degree in three
years why couldn't I do three years work in two and a half - get the
.:,a
degree and talon I made the mistake that so many young fellows do and
old fellows maybe of thinking that rubber stamping something and throwing
it over your shoulder makes it get in your head.
It doesn't and I
remember when Dr. McGregory and Dr. Bryant and Cookie Cutter and a few
of the others Brigham looked at me point blank when I said, "I wanted to
get through in three years and they argued that it wasn't for my benifit
to get through in three years.
I'd do better if I stayed four and I
decided that eating those last year was kind of important and much more
important than just getting through so when Hog said that "He wouldn't allow
for it and he was objecting to it."
I said, "OK Dr. McGregory just for
that I'll major in your subjects and give you every opportunity to flunk
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
me you can get."
instead.
Page
14
He tried to talk me out of taking a couple of subjects
But I got through in three years and they were probably the happ
ist three years I have ever spent because Colgate is a beautiful, wonder
ful institution.
I'm glad Craig went there.
Afterwards I was tempted or persuaded and almost sure that I was going to
go to Cornell in order to get my medicine but I looked around and I saw
that Cornell started a class at Ithaca and a class in New York and at the
end of the year without saying anything you just became half out and half
as big as you were before so I didn't think that was very good and then
Sukie Higgerman said "I was nuts."
And I started for Buffalo where John
Dr. John Lappious had helped me get registered.
Well I arrived out there
on the train then went up the street to High Street.
I went in they were
very nice to me but I still don't know who saw me - who had anything to
do about it what happened to me and I think maybe it was the fact that
my class instead of being 76 succeeded in rounding up nineteen for our
first year.
So, you see if they do raise the requirements there is a
very definate reason for it.
get a job.
Then I had to snoop around and see if I could
Didn't get anywheres on that till somethin happened down
in the so called jail and the Erie County Penitentiary because of the flu
because of the - because of the and in came the flu - a most gorgeous mess.
So, I had to eat and live so John took me down to the penitentiary and
they looked at me and took off my soft hat - my a cap insisted I wear a
soft hat and I was fully signed in as a doctor in the Erie County Penitentiary
which became famous afterwards - after having had three weeks of medicine.
Well the first thing I did was told I oughta clean up the drug room - so
I started to and got some nice little country boy.
Didn't know why he
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
15
was in jail but he did the cleaning with me and helped me and he'd
light my cigars and gave me his tobacco.
God it was awful - couldn't
touch it but he was very proud of being an associate of mine.
That was
when I had my funny time when I met the Diamond Lill fame - when I met
lot of other unusual people.
Diamond Lill was an operator in a carnival
and in her teeth she had two diamonds - above and one below so that she
could smile as she did the loop the loop on a bicycle and hoped that she
was sober to keep on the track.
I always remember when they - Dr. Frost
who was in charge said "Why hello - when did you - how long you've been
back?" and she says, "Why doctor - why you know - I haven't been out yet."
This was the kind of stories we would hear.
Then we found out if somebody got into a mess that they were more afraid
than we were so we went on and enjoyed it and that's when I made a
reputation because the waiter who was a prisoner leaned over my shoulder
one night and wanted to know if I had any good cathartics.
I said, "Yes"
and rolled him off a half dozen of c.c. pills asked if he knew how to
take them and he said, "Yeah" so I went on back to quarters.
The next day
I didn't have anybody waiting on me as a waiter and the day after I didn't
have anybody waiting on me as a waiter but on the third day when I sat
down in my chair I noticed that I was taken care of when the chief wasn't
andover my shoulder came a faint whisper saying "You sure do handle powerful
drugs, sir.
•
II
Buffalo - That's the place where I was supposed to learn medicine.
guess I did.
I
Leastwise I'm still studying it to find out if I didn't.
It's hard to understand the study of medicine.
My sidekick the first one
had been a chemist in Canada got chased down by the police so on and so
forth so he taught me chemistry and I was supposed to teach him well I
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
guess the rest of the stuff.
Page
16
Another chap took the anatomy.
I took
physiology, pharmacology and that's the way we divided up our work so we
all had the chance to pile in as much as we wanted to and learn from
each other.
My class in medicine started out as nineteen.
We lost a
bunch and brought a bunch up from Fordham University our sophomore
year and then we stayed about the same and only lost one making it 25
instead of 26 our senior year but then the fight came for internships
and what an interesting story it was.
They wanted me to go to the
Evertt Marme Memorial in Buffalo and I said "No, I wanted the General
and if I couldn't have The General, I was going down to Blackley in
Philadelphia of course I didn't know anybody in Blackley - I never did
get there - I never saw the inside of the place but Dr. Ryman from our
class from the class ahead of me went down - Tape II
They gave me a royal ride also on internship because they handed me a
faternity pin when I was already wearing a faternity pin and asked me if
I had lost that in the nurses home and would I please tell them which
room it belonged in for sarcasim.
Oh the full money that we were to recieve
for one year of work starting at about 8: 30 or 8 o'clock every morning
and maybe getting one or two evenings after seven out but otherwise know
ing that we were on call all night long was a very valuable swaping
proposition.
We got three suits of white clothes.
I don't imagine they
would bewould be worth something today.
I think they were linen but in
those days we didn't think much of them.
No socks, no underware - we
had to find that from someplace else and four meal - three meals and a
lunch and we went on pretty well living but it was damned embarrising.
You didn't have any money to spend.
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
17
You didn't have any cigars unless you inherited them or somebody gave
them to you.
Cigaretts were out of question and the nurses got more money
than we did but it was fun.
I always remember that at 10 o'clock at
night they came around with lunch usually big pieces of chocolate cake
and after Mary Storm the night superintendent had gotten in wrong the
second time we posted ourselves in very advantageous positions and when
we saw her coming somebody yelled and we all ran out in the hall looking
back - looking the other way and turn around suddenly and we actually hit
her broadside with no less than nine out of the 12 pieces of chocolate
cake.
Nice treatment for a supervising nurse.
I got the blame for the
whole thing and rightly so.
Then we had to have some parties.
Course we were learning a lot and at
the parties we took yes we took the big machine TV - we took it upstairs
to the private operating room and we had a dance and a lovely concert and
a lovely time.
We pushed the thing out on the roof to hid it and the
only thing they got mad at was they were afraid we were trying to start
a fire to roast some hot dogs on the roof and they couldn't see the sense
that we could stake the fire out.
Then I got caught riding down the aisle
with so and so on my shoulder when I walked into Mary Storm the night
supertendent of course the fact that we had stolen the liquor from the
training school office the day before didn't make any difference.
She
wanted to talk to the girl so I put her down in front of her and let her
talk.
When I heard she was sending the girl home the next day I went to
the training school office and said "Dant blame the girl blame me - she n�d
nothing to do she was just sitting on my shoulder."
So, it was fun.
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
18
The next year - my second year I went out to Marme Memorial and what a
glorious time I had.
I was supposed to have three months of contagion,
three months of TB and six months of medicine especially cardiology.
What did I end up with?
I ended up with one month added on of veneral diseases.
I ended up with two months off from contiagous diseases.
I ended up with
particular care on pediatrics which is a whole lot of kids and I ended
up with most of the rest of my time on cardiology and doing it all oh yes
one month I was in Boston.
It was a lot of fun but you never knew what
was gonna happen to you the next day and then I finished and the big scramble
came.
Dr. Green said I was getting hospitalized.
I was having too good
a time in hospitals and time I got out and earned a living.
The rest of
them didn't dare disagree with him because he was the chief so I did and
the first thing I knew I was running a sanitarium in Dansville that belong
ed to doctors.
That was when they looked at me and said that anybody
could vault over the cushions and seats and chairs and couches in a
fashionable place or turn summersaults over them certainly couldn't know
medicine.
Of course I lost those patients but I made up for it and travel
I did back and forth all around and finally I came back to Binghamton.
Thats when I had my big surprises even my father seemed to think it was
time I went to work and mother couldn't understand why I took two weeks
of sitting on the hills around the town thinking figuring out what I
uanted to do and how I wanted to do it and how I was going to do this
and how I was going to do that.
Oak St.
I started to set up an office on 104
I well remember to this day.
My mother decided that a in as
much as they had helped educate me and do things for me that I was going
to supply her with ammusements for the rest of her life because she was
going to sit and watch me work of course that didn't work.
She got mad
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
19
at me because I tried.
Then Harry came down from Buffalo tried to give me a check for $50,000
to set up the kind of an office I wanted.
I could easily have spent the
money but I didn't think I should because after all so far all I had
recieved from running the sanitarium was a couple of three four blank
checks asking me to please put my amount.
They were all signed down
and tell them how much I wanted for my work.
Nobody ever raised any
questions about it and I went over the stuff in the kitchen every day to
see if there was anything better I could eat.
Didn't do much good
though cause Dr. Goodell's wife was with me as superintendent or some
thing and then W. George left me and the fellow that come in his place
was supposed to be trained as a hotel man happened to be a Christian
Scientist and I've heard that I had the ability to drive anybody nuts
but the next day when I watched him plunge from a six story building
down onto the ground and splatter around the floor I wasn't too happy.
I hated to think it was my fault.
It really wasn't but it's something
I'll never forget by the fact in that time I had an all - all american
swimming instructor.
She didn't like me and I didn't care very much
for her but I had one and I had a staff that was quite remarkable.
The old place had established the Boulaire Baths.
I had a training school
office of about twelve and I was supposed to teach physiotherapy massage
and the various things I don't know - I think it was just something to
keep me from being lonesome but then I went on home just because they
were unkind enough to try to move my folks up to the sanitarium and give
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
20
them private quarters just to be with me.
")nJ (d/
Now we ready to start the practice of medicine,
When you start to
think about it I remember the first thing I did was to talk to the man
at Norwich Pharmacal and he came up and he said, "Well you'll need a lot
of this and a lot of that and a lot of this and a lot of that."
said, "I've got a wife that's sick.
He
I want you to take care of her."
And I did and we both fared pretty good.
I fared better than he did.
His wife died and I still found some medicine from there the other day
when I shut the place up and my office died.
Then I became facinated in studying the various things that happened.
never did find out where I got all the degrees I got after my name.
I
I
know there two others I can't even think of but somebody told me if you got
enough of the alphabet dearanged never had to know any of it because you'd
say, "Yeah I think so and that would be more important than trying to be
smart.
Yes I've spent a lot of time hanging around Rochester trying to
learn somethin and even when I was out in the west out to Ann
Arbor and
when the man that was supposed to have this nice course in electrocardo
graphy looked at me and said, "What the hell do you want to take it for
you know more about it than I do now?"
I didn't agree with him or it
made me feel awful good to hear him say it.
Money - they tell me I've made a lot of it, lost a lot of it.
I think
the funniest thing was in World War II er World War I when I got back from
World War I Uncle Sam wrote me a letter and said, "We don't think you're
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
P�ge
21
able to afford to put as much of your money into insurance as you are
doing."
I never argued with them.
I think he was right but the
funny part is that insurance has all disappeared and then the other
batch that I had that's disappeared so maybe someday somebody will
find a way to have me put away insurance as they say I can't now.
Nobody ever had more fun in medicine than I did.
any harder.
It's not a plaything.
Nobody ever worked
It's a real honest to God tough
job but the satisfaction of knowing that you're doing something for
other people to help them is the greatest satisfaction in the world.
Yes, here in town I had the cardiology at the Binghamton General Hospital.
I was on cardiology at Lourdes.
man at Wilson and at the General.
I was offered the job of laboratory
I was a cardiologist at Hancock but
the fun was in trying to diagnose and make up the things when nobody else
knew what to do and how to do it.
What you did for the cases was easy
but trying to understand them was difficult.
I don't know if I had it
to do over again I thinkI propably do the same damn fool thing.
Thank you.
Uh, by the way I have had a couple things that have kept me busy one of
them for the last nineteen years.
I took care of the blind for the Lipn's
Club yeah for the club (Lion's Club) - Lion's Club or rather I took care
of Mrs. DeWitt because I started back in the beginning when she lived
downstairs under me in my home.
Then we had a disagreement not Mrs. DeWitt
but I and the Lion's Club so I disappeared and after that out of a clear
sky after having spent sometime in the Masons and gotten up into the Shrine
back around in 1928 I was suddenly got told that I was no longer Medical
Director but I was in charge of the Charities and what a surprise that was
for me that mean't that I had to hunt up the kids that might be damaged
by burns and believe it or not one of the hospitals that I represent is
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page 22
the only hospital in the world that ever brought back a child 91% burned.
The rest of them think they're damn lucky if they can bring back 50 or
35%.
I've made many trips to Boston and to some of the other hospitals
and I've had them all do work for me on the burn kids and then before
that we had 19 orthopedic hospitals.
That didn't seem enough to me anyway
no matter what I found that was wrong I usually was able to decide it
was orthopedic and you'd be surprised how much my training taught me to
make the other fellow think twice.
I haven't made as many trips this
year but a little while ago I kept track of them.
I think I've gotten
stuck in the snow down around Boston at least six times.
I think I've
been down through over the Hudson when it was frozen solid four or five
times and I get to the clinic once a year and most people can't understand
why my hobby is helping to spend forty-nine million dollars a year and
I don't think it keeps me busy.
I'm willing to have some help but the
thing that interests me is that very few people understand that this
isn't just a patch me up stuff.
This is a thing of building people kids
and trying to make them live happy and enjoy things.
Sure it takes longeer
than it does if you're going to just give them a kick up and let them
startle them but I think it's the greatest charity in the world.
What
do you think about it?
(Well, I think it's remarkable what you've done and I think you oughta
mention thdt you have several awards for your work and that you were man
of the year in 1973 - was it?)
All right if it will make you any happier.
They're urging me to talk about awards.
- (Well you deserve some credit.)
I don't know whether I told you
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
23
I have 21 - 22 letters dearanged after n.,y name.
It isn't enough to make
an alphabet but some of the letters I've got so many of I don't know
what to do with.
The other thing they ked me about is brass plaques.
Yes, I've got a bunch of them.
When you're young they're important,
when your old you wonder if you're worth it.
I've yes this last year
I received the award from the American Legion - Man of the Year then
found out that on 73 I had the Shriner of the Year from Kalurah then I
got a whole lot more of them but the thing I think you ought to get is to
come along and see the fun and find out how much fun work is when you do
it right.
(Well thank you very much Dr. Benson.
It's been very enjoyable talking
with you.)
Well now there is a lot more if you want it, so if you get stuck just
call me.
(Fine)
And we 1 11 try and see if their because I don't know a
for instance somebody might get somewheres like taking a film like this why I enjoyed being a doctor - (That's right.)
Why I don't want to be a lawyer do you see what I mean.
And I think you might get further ahead with such ideas.
(Right)
Put down a list
and then half a dozen of us go through what we can add or take off of it
on each one and then go ahead and get it dictated by someone that you
can pick out as being the person that will do the best job because that's
what you gotta do.
(Well certainly if I know someone in trouble your the man to call
Dr. Benson.
Thank you again.)
�Dr. Carl S. Benson
Page
24
Your entirely welcome.
This is Susan Dobandi interviewer and I have been talking with Dr.
Carl S. Benson who lives at 109 Murray St., Binghamton, N. Y.
The date is June 8, 1978
�
https://omeka.binghamton.edu/omeka/files/original/ff3332aa443b300f60d6fcd8d50afc2c.mp3
5c2eee48a3c8c97326c1de601cab050d
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04e0be1c08a8c0c397d5569e9040fd4c
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Broome County Oral History Project
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Broome County -- History
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Binghamton University Libraries
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The Broome County Oral History Project was conceived and administered by the Senior Services Unit of the <a href="http://www.gobroomecounty.com/senior">Office for the Aging</a>. Funding for this project was provided by the Broome County Office of Employment and Training (C.E.T.A.), with additional funding from the Senior Service Unit of the National Council on Aging and Broome County government. The aim of this project was two-fold – to obtain historical information about life in Broome County, which would be useful for researchers and teachers, and to provide employment for older persons of a limited income. The oral history interviews were obtained between November 1977 and September 1978 and were conducted by five interviewers under the supervision of the Action for Older Persons Program. The collection contains 75 interviews and transcriptions, 77 cassette tapes, and a subject index containing names of individuals associated with specific subject terms. One transcribed interview does not have an accompanying audio recording. <br /><br />In 2005 Binghamton University Libraries’ Special Collections Department participated in the New York State Audiotape Project which undertook preservation reformatting of the audiotapes, and the creation of compact discs for patron use. Several interviews do not have release forms and cannot be reviewed.<br /><br />See the <a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">finding aid </a>for additional information.<br /><br /><strong>Acknowledgment of sensitive content</strong><br />Binghamton University Libraries provide digital access to select materials held within the Special Collections department. <span>Oral histories provide a vibrant window into life in the community.</span> However, they also expose insensitive, and at times offensive, racial and gender terminology that, though once commonplace, are now acknowledged to cause harm. The Libraries have chosen to make these oral histories available as part of the historical record but the Libraries do not support or agree with the harmful narratives that can be found in these volumes. <a href="https://www.binghamton.edu/libraries/about/collections/digital/">Digital Collections</a> are created for educational and historical purposes only. It is our intention to present the content as it originally appeared.
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2
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Ben Coury, Digital Web Designer
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1977-1978
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<a href="https://archivesspace.binghamton.edu/public/repositories/2/resources/44">Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections, Broome County Oral History project</a>
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Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Benson, Carl S.
Interviewer
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Dobandi, Susan
Date of Interview
1978-06-08
Collection
Broome County Oral History Project
Subject LCSH
Benson, Carl S. -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Physicians -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.); Colgate University; World War, 1939-1945; American Legion; Binghamton General Hospital; Lourdes Hospital; Hancock Hospital; Shriners; Lions Club International
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Binghamton University Libraries is working very hard to create transcriptions of all audio/visual media present on this site. If you require a specific transcription for accessibility purposes, you may contact us at <a href="mailto:orb@binghamton.edu">orb@binghamton.edu</a>.
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<p><b>Broome County Oral History Project</b></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Interview with: Dr. Carl S. Benson</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Interviewed by: Susan Dobandi</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Date of interview: 8 June 1978</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Susan: Dr. Benson, could we start this interview by having you tell us where you were born, something about your parents, and any of your recollections of your childhood?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Benson: That's easy. I was born on 5 King Ave., between Walnut and, ah, and it's on the west side. It's between, ah, Walnut and St. John. My mother and father came from Sweden—my mother from the north of Sweden and my father from the south of Sweden. Mother talked very much about having come from the place where the King used to spend his summers out in the open, and my grandfather, I realize now, was the man that insulated and fortified the iron mines of Sweden so that if anybody attempted to take over, they merely blew up the bridges and they had so much trouble getting the iron ore out that they never did.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">They met here in Binghamton, my father being from the south of Sweden and my mother from the north. I always kidded mother about stealing her sister’s girl—boyfriend, but they had a rather happy life together ’til mother overdid and showed herself to me as a medical problem, which I had a lot of fun solving.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As for me, I went to St. John Ave. School. I had only one sister, Ruth, who was five years older than I was and followed the same trail, and the thing I think you would enjoy the most was that I was constantly reminded that I wasn't supposed to be relying on somebody else, I was supposed to dig it out for myself and I was supposed to keep going no matter what happened. My father was a tailor, so-called merchant tailor at a time when there wasn't any such things as ready-made clothes, and part of the fun was that I, in the early grades in school, wore tailor-made clothes, and often got in trouble with the teachers because they couldn't understand why the clothes I had on made so much noise with their corduroy knees banging each other, and actually asked me if I didn't have any other clothes I could wear to school. Today I'd like to have such good clothes back.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Work—I can remember the very funny things that happened, there was the time somebody stole our Thanksgiving dinner that we had carelessly put on top of the refrigerator, on top—on the back porch at 5 King Ave. We didn't get much to eat that day. It was a lot of fun. We had a lot of time trying to find it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">One of the stories that might interest you was that the man on the corner, who was a horse tailor, got after me to prove that he knew more about the things than I did and my father did, and said of course we grew horses and horses’ barns. He said, didn't I realize if I planted a cigar box and watered it regularly every day, in about six weeks it ought to come up and show me a horse barn that I could be proud of? So I tried it, and at the end of four weeks he told me, didn't I know the top from the bottom? So I dug it up and turned it over, and it wasn't ’til the six weeks were well up that—he never admitted, just said I got the wrong kind of cigar box. You see these queer things, for instance his office—his, where he fixed leather and did all this stuff was on State Street behind Sissons, and in front of it was the old canal. My father lives on—worked on the other side in the Bosket Block, and that was the way life was treated. They were both equal—now do we get a rest?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">I started school at St. John Ave. School, and I can still see our kindergarten and our first grade where Bill and Ed Keeler and some of the—the rest of the boys were sure that if they took their hands and folded them around the side ways, they could see what was going on the room and it was just as good as having them sit, as well as having them sit on the edge of the stage—of the desk. One of the boys, Doff Kane, just followed one of the girls out of the kindergarten and it wasn't ’til two days later that we found out that he had gone on, and supposed to have been promoted anyway because he was older than the rest of us. Third grade was fine ’cause of the exercises, we got up on the desks. We gathered up books as being bricks, stones, and we went through all the stories of the </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Iliad</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, the Romans and their troubles, and threw the books on the floor just with a grand abandon that made it a great life. We really enjoyed Mrs. Tillapough's teachings. I could go on, teach and tell you about each of the other kids, each of the other teachers just as well, of course. Miss Hunt was the principal but we never had any trouble with her, we didn't know enough to. She kept us busy and we kept her busy and that's all that was necessary. ’Course, we had her nephew in the class with us. Maybe that helped us stay out of trouble.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">From the sixth grade we moved over to Laurel Ave. under old Professor Johnson for our seventh—seventh grade, and that was when I used to ride a bicycle across to school. It was quite a ways down from where we were over to Laurel Ave. But that was when we had all the fun, nobody knew what to do, nobody cared. Then we went on to high school. We had the eighth, ninth and tenth, eleventh and twelfth over in high school. No, not the high school you people know about, but in the same place until we wore the building out, or they thought we did or said we wouldn't get a new one if they didn't stop using it, and then I remember when they decided to close it up. They put the letters, the colors and the letters of the class on the school. We got up on the fourth floor on the fire hatches, handed two-by-fours to throw down if the other class got in our way or started to come after us. Instead one of the boys got the fire hoses out of the Front Street fire department, and we had a grand time watching them walk up and chop those hoses to stop the water so they could get at us.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Now I got to get back to teaching at our school. It seems to me that I must have been along about the fourth or fifth grade when I started to, to doing some work on the outside. Maybe it was younger, but I was delivering flowers for Oshier up on 148 Court Street. If it was a long shag I got 10¢ for it. If it was a short shag I got 5¢, and he always used to kid me on how much money I took down at the end of the week for a guy that was just riding around on a bicycle. I would almost get, I think, on the average of five dollars, maybe a little less, maybe a little more, depending on how business was. Then he disappeared and I got shipped down to Graham. Graham's Florist Shop was in Wally Webster’s Drug Store, which was 45 Court Street, next door to the corner of Walnut—uh, uh, Washington Street and Court. Wally said the smart thing to do is to buy buildings next to the corners or where, if anybody was going to increase the size of their place, they'd have to take your place in—in that way you'd make money on any enlargement of the town without having too much invested—that was where I learned that if you stole old-time tombstones and you poured a little acid on them, that’d make pretty good soda, and that's what you gave people in place of soda on their ice cream. Ice cream was worth 10¢ or sometimes 5¢, sometimes less. Those were in the days when we used to see these special men come through. The automobile stage was just starting to grow, and there was one man that had a small two-seated or one-seated buggy but he had his wheels on, his pulling wheels on backwards, and therefore the horse was behind you and pushed you forward, and he took—took that, I imagine he'd go pretty fast too, but he was just advertising a new kind of ice cream or a new kind of soft drink. Made quite something to work with.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Then, I got interested in other work. The morning newspaper came along, ’course the business belonged to Carl Legg's father, and then he sold it and that brought it out in the open. When I used to go to dances in high school I'd used to have to get up before two o'clock, and we didn't get home much before that, in order to get over and roll the singles for the old morning paper. I'd roll about fifty of those and then lay down on the bags—the mail bags, then get up and carry the longest route up to the top of Mount Prospect and into the old tavern up Front Street next to Prospect Street. That's where they give you the description of the real early things that happened here in Binghamton.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">My father and I used to argue a lot about Court Street bridges, boats, and spent a good many nice days in the summer pushing a rowboat up and down the Chenango River, borrowing it from Mr. Ritz, or renting it, rather, from Mr. Ritz at the corner of Laurel Ave. and the river. You never knew just what you were going to get into. We had one island that we called Violet Island. We had another island that was a little bit tough to get at, but you went out where the Fourth Ward sewer came in. You always got a little bit dirty. You went out, rode up, then down, and landed on an island. Dad and I always called it our island. Then we had to hunt up the other way. There was always something to think about. If you went up the Chenango, and I've tried and took my canoe, later, up to Port Dick and all the way to Lilly Lake and right up the river, right back down. I left it in Port Dick for a whole summer. I had a lot of fun. We'd sneak around behind a barn, loosed up underneath the barn, drop it into the water, then climb in, then go around the landing to show that we were there.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It's a wonderful thing and always we worried about the Chenango River, and then we remembered that there was an old man named Mr. Whittemore that got my interest first in steamboats, because he told me about the steamboat that used to come up the Chenango River—Susquehanna River and Chenango River from Owego every spring, did it for a number of years and the people came up and went down, but in my early days we usually caught the train at about eight o'clock on Saturday night, went down to Owego and then took the boat up as far as Ouaquaga, as Hiawatha Island, or on up further to the endings in Hickory Grove. That was a beautiful stretch in those days. I've heard them talk about it a good many times before my time, but I was too busy working to pay much attention to riding around in it. Then I remembered what Dad had told me about Court Street bridge. It seems that the boats used to come up and stop against those big trees that used to be back of McDevitt’s, so I had to find out about it. Find out what it was, what was happening, and why the end of it there was so little, not big enough, and I did, I stuck my neck in it. Before the bridge was finished or built, there was a ferry that used to come across there, and that tied up just above where the bridge came in and came across the river, almost straight, and stopped about where Main Street or Court Street is, and you could load and unload to catch the bridge, er, to catch the ferry. The next thing that happened was that they commenced to fuss about wanting to do something, and it was because they didn't like the way in which things were done. I know my Dad at that time said he had a chance to buy the old farm that ran all the way down to about where the Lourdes Hospital is and up as far as Leroy Street and down to the river and down to the junction and back up to about Leroy Street. Can't remember the name of the farm right now, but Dad was very seriously interested in buying it and he was going to get that land for $2,000. The people that sold it went over to Quaker Lake. They had a place over there too but I don't remember the name.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Then we had to worry about why all these strange things were set up around Main Street, and when I checked up, Sam Wear said his father had a bar there for years, in fact, he said there were five bars between Front Street and the Chenango River. Maybe that accounts for their going after the law, because I understand that's when they got to work—that's when they got to work and built the church at Wal—at, ah, Front Street and Main Street. It took me a long time to figure it out, then I found the ruling, any territory with a church in it cannot have a saloon or a bar within 125 feet of the front door of the church—now that old rule has been in for a long time and </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">probably accounts for why four of the five things disappeared, unless somebody has forgotten the laws. The thing that counts in remembrance is that when we came to building the Sheraton, the Ramada, and the rest of the new hotels that were wanted to be near the water just across the bridge, they all of a sudden stopped and moved them a block away. I think I know the reason, because I looked up some of the deeds on lower Main Street and over on Front Street, and they all contained this record that no building can be put across south of Main and Front—er, Court Street, unless it's far enough away and unless there is an opening through it left down to the river so that people can take their animals to the ford and across the river. That's why you'll find that big mark in the bottom of the Treadway building. I remember also that we built a very lovely little park on the end of Wall Street, and Wall Street was connected with this other stuff but people all forgot it and it disappeared. I wonder how many people remember its name. It was Carmen Park, and while I'm speaking about parks, we had one over on the south side wherein there was a tree for every man killed in World War II and a nameplate on </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">it, but I was over there the other day, and God, if we can go through big wars like World War II with no more losses than that, we better stick up in the first ranks, because I assure you I couldn't find enough trees or enough plaques to justify our even having been considered as being in World War II.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Now I think we ought to look up and see whether this new business about extending the high school and shutting off the ford, with kids coming from high school and with a parking lot and with some other things like that, can be done any better and any more legally than shutting it off for hotels and places to eat, particularly when the city is kinda short of money. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It was during these times when I was wandering around town that we all got wrapped up in cigar bands, and we used to argue as to whether it was smarter to stop in the cigar factories—which were on Wall Street, Water Street, State Street was solid from Court to Henry—and see if we couldn't buy, beg, or steal a few cigar bands that were out of the ordinary so we could make money. As a matter of fact, there was a lot of them that were so out of the ordinary that if you found the owner and he had a smile on his face, he would give you half a dozen and then your collection would be way, way above your friends. We had as many as 56 cigar factories around here, then they commenced to get into the factory kind where it wasn't made by hand, it was made by machinery, and the last one I remember being here into this part of the country was the General Cigar factory down on Court Street—er, Main Street, down near Johnson City—that worked for a few years. The problem was that we got much poorer tobacco for a while. If you've traveled up through Canada and seen the various shades of tobacco and seen the various kinds, you realize that it's not a bad crop to grow. It's quite nice, and if you've hunted around the old barns down below Owego and seen the openings in the sides of the barns where they drain and let the tobacco leaves dry, you will quickly get established in your own mind what a handy comfortable thing it is, but it requires a lot of work and we had just the people to roll them and not the people to grow them—maybe that’s why we lost it and then we had to get, so many of our women folks had to get tied up in cigarettes and anxious about cigarettes and they could buy them all rolled so they didn't look different, a lot cheaper, or rather a lot more expensively than we could cigars.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">High school and schools in Binghamton, it seems funny to talk about them. There was a little girl named Alice VanMoon, and she beat me by half a point when we went up to St. John, er, to Laurel Ave., and on down into high school. I know I could have caught her, but she went and moved away. Oh, so I had to go on, and I graduated as Valedictorian, I think, when I graduated from high school. It was a big problem to remember because I was working all the time on the side, and despite the fact that I worked from 2 o'clock in the morning up ’til school time. I worked after school until 7 or 8 o'clock at night, I thought I was pretty darn lucky when I got in twelve-thirteen dollars a week—as an adult, maybe after I got into college, I realized more about it. I had $285.00 in my pocket when I left for college. If I hadn't been fortunate enough to find some friends up there who knew where the cheap places to eat were—because I remember the chap that went with me, he was a teacher afterwards at Cornell. We paid $1.60 apiece for two rooms—one to study in and one to sleep in—and around the corner we paid $4, and then $4.50, and then $4.60, and then $4.90, for a place to have our three meals a day in comfort. Of course it was the crowd that was there that made it interesting because many of them were inclined to head for the ministry, and many long were the sermons that got preached at us while we sat there waiting to see what was going to happen, but if anybody was hungry they were taken care of, and you could buy a roast beef sandwich for 10¢. You could buy—we were lucky from Binghamton. We could go over to the Candy Kitchen and Jimmy the Greek would say, "I remember you." We'd say, "Yes, and we’re thirsty." </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">"Wait a minute," and he'd give us an ice cream so we wouldn't feel too bad about it, and we appreciated his kindness. Money wasn't essential. Fifteen cents would take you to the movies. You could always borrow from somebody if you needed to. There wasn't enough girls, but what you had was a good alibi that there wasn't any girls to get so you didn't have one, and I think maybe that's the thing that made life worthwhile, because it certainly made us study a lot more than we would have otherwise. Then we would go on, and I still remember even at my decrepit old age that my first year in Colgate, from the time I left in September to go ’til I came back in June, having finished one year, cost me $496.16. I think maybe that's a record, because I remember my last year in medicine cost me over $1100 or pretty damn close, and I know that's not counting the fact that I worked in the fraternity house and I took care of the animals—the research animals for both physiology, biology. That's why I had to wear a mustache, because one of them got mad and caught me on the upper chin, er, upper lip, and it was a lot better having it covered by hair than not having it covered at all.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">There are many stories I could tell you about the faculty of Colgate. It was one of the grandest bunch of men I ever knew despite the fact there were a lot of wonderful queer characters. There was Johnny Green, who always bobbed around at us, flashed his eyes back an’ forth and said that if he exercised his eyes enough, that he wouldn't have to wear glasses, and then he had a man who was his assistant, very big dignified fat man that always put his paws down in front of you as though he was going to bite you, Spencer, but he wouldn't. He'd scare the hell out of you. Then I could go on and talk about the rest. My particular sidekick in these days was Bill Turner, six foot tall, a big bass voice, a bachelor. He took care of his mother and sister and always acted as though something was going to push him around into something. He was so afraid that people would misunderstand him, get him into trouble. He even came to me once and said, "I'm going to quit," and I said, "Well, let me look things over a bit for you." And I says, "No, you're not going to quit. You're going to work a little harder than you have worked and you're gonna do it more this way and you aren't gonna get mixed up with so many people." And when he came to me five years later and said, "I'm gonna quit," I said, "Yep, you’re gonna quit now, but not before. You hadn't finished your job." It's a wonderful feeling to be able to say I helped a professor as much as they helped me, but I didn't, because he and his mother and his sister fed me Sunday night’s dinner for a good many years. God knows I couldn't sing, I couldn't do anything else, but I traveled with the Glee Club with the sublime feeling that I didn't have to worry because he told me, "Make your mouth go big, smile good, and for God's sakes, if anybody’s out of tune, shut up.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Now let’s stop a minute. It seems that along about my sophomore year in Colgate I got on the pan, and I never blamed them. I suddenly decided, figuring closely that they were going to let me have my degree in three years, why couldn't I do three years’ work in two and a half—get the degree? And to go on, I made the mistake that so many young fellows do, and old fellows maybe, of thinking that rubber stamping something and throwing it over your shoulder makes it get in your head. It doesn't, and I remember when Dr. McGregory and Dr. Bryant and Cookie Cutter and a few of the others, Brigham, looked at me point blank when I said I wanted to get through in three years, and they argued that it wasn't for my benefit to get through in three years—I'd do better if I stayed four—and I decided that eating those last year was kind of important and much more important than just getting through, so when Hog said that he wouldn't allow for it and he was objecting to it, I said, "OK, Dr. McGregory, just for that, I'll major in your subjects and give you every opportunity to flunk me you can get." He tried to talk me out of taking a couple of subjects instead. But I got through in three years, and they were probably the happiest three years I have ever spent, because Colgate is a beautiful, wonderful institution. I'm glad Craig went there.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Afterwards I was tempted or persuaded and almost sure that I was going to go to Cornell in order to get my medicine, but I looked around and I saw that Cornell started a class at Ithaca and a class in New York, and at the end of the year without saying anything you just became half out and half as big as you were before, so I didn't think that was very good, and then Sukie Higgerman said I was nuts. And I started for Buffalo where John, Dr. John Lappious, had helped me get registered. Well, I arrived out there on the train, then went up the street to High Street. I went in, they were very nice to me but I still don't know who saw me—who had anything to do about it, what happened to me, and I think maybe it was the fact that my class, instead of being seventy-six, succeeded in rounding up nineteen for our first year. So, you see, if they do raise the requirements there is a very definite reason for it. Then I had to snoop around and see if I could get a job. Didn't get anywheres on that ’til somethin’ happened down in the so-called jail and the Erie County Penitentiary because of the flu, because of the—because of the, and in came the flu—a most gorgeous mess. So, I had to eat and live, so John took me down to the penitentiary, and they looked at me and took off my soft hat—my, ah, cap, insisted I wear a soft hat—and I was fully signed in as a doctor in the Erie County Penitentiary, which became famous afterwards—after having had three weeks of medicine. Well the first thing I did was told I oughta clean up the drug room—so I started to, and got some nice little country boy. Didn't know why he was in jail, but he did the cleaning with me and helped me, and he'd light my cigars and gave me his tobacco. God, it was awful—couldn't touch it—but he was very proud of being an associate of mine. That was when I had my funny time, when I met the Diamond Lill fame—when I met a lot of other unusual people. Diamond Lill was an operator in a carnival, </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">and in her teeth she had two diamonds—above and one below, so that she could smile as she did the loop the loop on a bicycle and hoped that she was sober to keep on the track. I always remember when they—Dr. Frost, who was in charge, said, "Why hello—when did you—how long you've been back?" and she says, "Why, Doctor—why, you know—I haven't been out yet." This was the kind of stories we would hear.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Then we found out if somebody got into a mess that they were more afraid than we were, so we went on and enjoyed it, and that's when I made a reputation, because the waiter, who was a prisoner, leaned over my shoulder one night and wanted to know if I had any good cathartics. I said, "Yes," and rolled him off a half dozen of C.C. pills, asked if he knew how to take them and he said, "Yeah," so I went on back to quarters. The next day I didn't have anybody waiting on me as a waiter, and the day after I didn't have anybody waiting on me as a waiter, but on the third day, when I sat down in my chair, I noticed that I was taken care of when the chief wasn't, </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">and over my shoulder came a faint whisper saying, "You sure do handle powerful drugs, sir.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Buffalo—that's the place where I was supposed to learn medicine. I guess I did. Leastwise I'm still studying it to find out if I didn't. It's hard to understand the study of medicine. My sidekick, the first one, had been a chemist in Canada, got chased down by the police, so on and so </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">forth, so he taught me chemistry and I was supposed to teach him, well, I guess the rest of the stuff. Another chap took the anatomy. I took physiology, pharmacology, and that's the way we divided up our work, so we all had the chance to pile in as much as we wanted to and learn from </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">each other. My class in medicine started out as nineteen. We lost a bunch and brought a bunch up from Fordham University our sophomore year, and then we stayed about the same and only lost one, making it twenty-five instead of twenty-six our senior year, but then the fight came for internships, and what an interesting story it was. They wanted me to go to the Edward Meyer Memorial [Hospital] in Buffalo and I said "No.” I wanted the General, and if I couldn't have The General, I was going down to Blockley in Philadelphia—of course I didn't know anybody in Blockley—I never did get there—I never saw the inside of the place, but Dr. Ryman from our class, from the class ahead of me, went down.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">[End of Tape I]</span></p>
<p></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">[Tape II]</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Benson: They gave me a royal ride also on internship, because they handed me a fraternity pin when I was already wearing a fraternity pin and asked me if I had lost that in the nurses’ home and would I please tell them which room it belonged in, for sarcasm. Oh, the full money that we were to receive for one year of work, starting at about 8:30 or 8 o'clock every morning </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">and maybe getting one or two evenings after seven out, but otherwise knowing that we were on call all night long, was a very valuable swapping proposition. We got three suits of white clothes. I don't imagine they would be, would be worth something today. I think they were linen, but in those days we didn't think much of them. No socks, no underwear—we had to find that from someplace else—and four meal—three meals and a lunch, and we went on pretty well living but it was damned embarrassing. You didn't have any money to spend.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You didn't have any cigars unless you inherited them or somebody gave them to you. Cigarettes were out of question and the nurses got more money than we did, but it was fun. I always remember that at 10 o'clock at night they came around with lunch, usually big pieces of chocolate cake, and after Mary Storm, the night superintendent, had gotten in wrong, the second time we posted ourselves in very advantageous positions, and when we saw her coming, somebody yelled and we all ran out in the hall looking back—looking the other way—and turn around suddenly, and we actually hit her broadside with no less than nine out of the twelve pieces of chocolate cake. Nice treatment for a supervising nurse. I got the blame for the whole thing and rightly so.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Then we had to have some parties. ’Course we were learning a lot, and at the parties we took, yes, we took the big machine TV—we took it upstairs to the private operating room and we had a dance and a lovely concert and a lovely time. We pushed the thing out on the roof to hide it, and the only thing they got mad at was, they were afraid we were trying to start a fire to roast some hot dogs on the roof and they couldn't see the sense that we could stake the fire out. Then I got caught riding down the aisle with so and so on my shoulder when I walked into Mary Storm, the night superintendent—of course the fact that we had stolen the liquor from the training school office the day before didn't make any difference. She wanted to talk to the girl, so I put her down in front of her and let her talk. When I heard she was sending the girl home the next day, I went to the training school office and said, “Don’t blame the girl, blame me—she had nothing to do, she was just sitting on my shoulder.” So, it was fun.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The next year—my second year I went out to Meyer Memorial, and what a glorious time I had. I was supposed to have three months of contagion, three months of TB, and six months of medicine, especially cardiology. What did I end up with? I ended up with one month added on, of venereal diseases. I ended up with two months off from contagious diseases. I ended up with particular care on pediatrics, which is a whole lot of kids, and I ended up with most of the rest of my time on cardiology and doing it all, oh, yes, one month I was in Boston. It was a lot of fun but you never knew what was gonna happen to you the next day, and then I finished and the big scramble came. Dr. Green said I was getting hospitalized. I was having too good a time in hospitals, and time I got out and earned a living. The rest of them didn't dare disagree with him because he was the chief, so I did, and the first thing I knew, I was running a sanitarium in Dansville that belonged to doctors. That was when they looked at me and said that anybody </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">[who] could vault over the cushions and seats and chairs and couches in a fashionable place, or turn somersaults over them, certainly couldn't know medicine. Of course I lost those patients, but I made up for it, and travel I did, back and forth, all around, and finally I came back to Binghamton. That’s when I had my big surprises—even my father seemed to think it was time I went to work, and Mother couldn't understand why I took two weeks of sitting on the hills around the town thinking, figuring out what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it and how I was going to do this and how I was going to do that. I started to set up an office on 104 Oak Street, I well remember to this day. My mother decided that, ah, in as much as they had helped educate me and do things for me, that I was going to supply her with amusements for the rest of her life because she was going to sit and watch me work—of course, that didn't work. She got mad at me because I tried.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Then Harry came down from Buffalo, tried to give me a check for $50,000 to set up the kind of an office I wanted. I could easily have spent the money but I didn't think I should, because after all, so far all I had received from running the sanitarium was a couple of, three, four blank checks asking me to please put my amount—they were all signed down—and tell them how much I wanted for my work. Nobody ever raised any questions about it and I went over the stuff in the kitchen every day to see if there was anything better I could eat. Didn't do much good, though, ’cause Dr. Goodell's wife was with me as superintendent or something, and then W. George left me and the fellow that come in his place [who] was supposed to be trained as a hotel man happened to be a Christian Scientist, and I've heard that I had the ability to drive anybody nuts, but the next day, when I watched him plunge from a six-story building down onto the ground and splatter around the floor, I wasn't too happy. I hated to think it was my fault. It really wasn't, but it's something I'll never forget by the fact in that time I had an all—all-American swimming instructor. She didn't like me and I didn't care very much for her, but I had one, and I had a staff that was quite remarkable. The old place had established the Boulaire Baths. I had a training school office of about twelve, and I was supposed to teach physiotherapy massage and the various things, I don't know—I think it was just something to keep me from being lonesome, but then I went on home just because they were unkind enough to try to move my folks up to the sanitarium and give them private quarters just to be with me.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Now we ready to start the practice of medicine. My God, when you start to think about it, I remember the first thing I did was to talk to the man at Norwich Pharmacal, and he came up and he said, "Well you'll need a lot of this and a lot of that and a lot of this and a lot of that." He said, "I've got a wife that's sick. I want you to take care of her." And I did, and we both fared pretty good. I fared better than he did. His wife died, and I still found some medicine from there the other day when I shut the place up and my office died.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Then I became fascinated in studying the various things that happened. I never did find out where I got all the degrees I got after my name. I know there are two others I can't even think of, but somebody told me if you got enough of the alphabet dearranged, never had to know any of it because you'd say, "Yeah, I think so,” and that would be more important than trying to be smart. Yes, I've spent a lot of time hanging around Rochester trying to learn somethin’, and even when I was out in the west, out to Ann Arbor, and when the man that was supposed to have this nice course in electrocardiography looked at me and said, "What the hell do you want to take it for? You know more about it than I do now," I didn't agree with him, or it made me feel awful good to hear him say it.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Money—they tell me I've made a lot of it, lost a lot of it. I think the funniest thing was in World War II—er, World War I—when I got back from World War I, Uncle Sam wrote me a letter and said, "We don't think you're able to afford to put as much of your money into insurance as you are doing." I never argued with them. I think he was right but the funny part is that insurance has all disappeared and then the other batch that I had, that's disappeared, so maybe someday somebody will find a way to have me put away insurance as they say I can't now. Nobody ever had more fun in medicine than I did. Nobody ever worked any harder. It's not a plaything. It's a real honest-to-God tough job, but the satisfaction of knowing that you're doing something for other people to help them is the greatest satisfaction in the world. Yes, here in town I had the cardiology at the Binghamton General Hospital. I was on cardiology at Lourdes. I was offered the job of laboratory man at Wilson and at the General. I was a cardiologist at Hancock, but the fun was in trying to diagnose and make up the things when nobody else knew what to do and how to do it. What you did for the cases was easy, but trying to understand them was difficult. I don't know, if I had it to do over again I think I’d probably do the same damn fool thing. Thank you.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Oh, by the way, I have had a couple things that have kept me busy, one of them for the last nineteen years. I took care of the blind for the Lions Club, yeah, for the club—</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Susan: —Lions Club—</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Benson: —Lions Club, or rather I took care of Mrs. DeWitt, because I started back in the beginning when she lived downstairs under me in my home. Then we had a disagreement, not Mrs. DeWitt, but I and the Lion's Club, so I disappeared, and after that, out of a clear sky, after having spent some time in the Masons and gotten up into the Shrine back around in 1928, I was suddenly got told that I was no longer Medical Director, but I was in charge of the Charities, and what a surprise that was for me—that meant that I had to hunt up the kids that might be damaged by burns, and believe it or not, one of the hospitals that I represent is the only hospital in the world that ever brought back a child 91% burned. The rest of them think they're damn lucky if they can bring back 50% or 35%. I've made many trips to Boston and to some of the other hospitals and I've had them all do work for me on the burn kids, and then before</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">that we had nineteen orthopedic hospitals. That didn't seem enough to me, anyway, no matter what I found that was wrong, I usually was able to decide it was orthopedic, and you'd be surprised how much my training taught me to make the other fellow think twice. I haven't made as many trips this year, but a little while ago I kept track of them. I think I've gotten stuck in the snow down around Boston at least six times. I think I've been down through over the Hudson when it was frozen solid four or five times, and I get to the clinic once a year, and most people can't understand why my hobby is helping to spend forty-nine million dollars a year and I don't think it keeps me busy. I'm willing to have some help, but the thing that interests me is that very few people understand that this isn't just, ah, patch-me-up stuff. This is a thing of building people, kids, and trying to make them live happy and enjoy things. Sure, it takes longer than it does if you're going to just give them a kick up and let them startle them, but I think it's the greatest charity in the world. What do you think about it?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Susan: Well, I think it's remarkable what you've done, and I think you oughta mention that you have several awards for your work and that you were Man of the Year in 1973—was it?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Benson: All right, if it will make you any happier.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Susan: Well, you deserve some credit.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Benson:They're urging me to talk about awards. I don't know whether I told you, I have 21-22 letters dearranged after my name. It isn't enough to make an alphabet, but some of the letters I've got so many of I don't know what to do with. The other thing they kid me about is brass plaques. Yes, I've got a bunch of them. When you're young they're important, when you’re old you wonder if you're worth it. I've, yes, this last year I received the award from the American Legion—Man of the Year—then found out that on ‘73 I had the Shriner of the Year from Kalurah, then I got a whole lot more of them, but the thing I think you ought to get is to come along and see the fun and find out how much fun work is when you do it right.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Susan: Well, thank you very much, Dr. Benson. It's been very enjoyable talking with you.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Benson: Well, now, there is a lot more if you want it, so if you get stuck just call me.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Susan: Fine.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Benson: And we’ll try and see if they’re—because, I don't know, ah, for instance, somebody might get somewheres, like taking a film like this—why I enjoyed being a doctor—</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Susan:That's right.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Benson: Why I don't want to be a lawyer, do you see what I mean?</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Susan: Right.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Benson: And I think you might get further ahead with such ideas. Put down a list and then half a dozen of us go through what we can add or take off of it on each one, and then go ahead and get it dictated by someone that you can pick out as being the person that will do the best job, because that's what you gotta do.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Susan: Well, certainly if I know someone in trouble, you’re the man to call, Dr. Benson. Thank you again.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dr. Benson: You’re entirely welcome.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Susan: This is Susan Dobandi, interviewer, and I have been talking with Dr. Carl S. Benson, who lives at 109 Murray Street, Binghamton, NY. The date is June 8, 1978.</span></p>
Rights Statement
This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Dr. Carl S. Benson
Subject
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Benson, Carl S. -- Interviews; Broome County (N.Y.) -- History; Physicians -- Interviews; Binghamton (N.Y.); Colgate University; World War, 1939-1945; American Legion; Binghamton General Hospital; Lourdes Hospital; Hancock Hospital; Shriners; Lions Club International
Description
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Dr. Carl S. Benson talks about his upbringing and education in and outside of his hometown of Binghamton, NY. He attended Binghamton Central High School, Colgate University, and studied medicine in Buffalo, NY before working at the Erie Penitentiary during WWII then moving back to Binghamton to work as a cardiologist at Binghamton General, Lourdes, and Hancock Hospital. He also discusses his charitable work.
Publisher
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Binghamton University Libraries
Rights
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This audio file and digital image may only be used for educational purposes. Please cite as: Broome County Oral History Project, Special Collections, Binghamton University Libraries, Binghamton University, State University of New York. For usage beyond fair use please contact the Binghamton University Libraries Special Collections for more information.
Format
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audio/mp3
Language
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English
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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Recordings 3A, 3B
Contributor
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Benson, Carl E. ; Dobandi, Susan
Date
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1978-06-08
Is Part Of
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Broome County Oral History Project
Extent
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34:00 minutes ; 23:38 minutes