Oswego

The name Oswego derives from the word "osh-we-geh" which means "river mouth" or "place where river pours into lake" in the Iroquoian language.  The Iroquois Confederacy consists of six indigenous tribes (Mohawk, Cayuga, Seneca, Oneida, Onondaga, and Tuscarora) that lived in what is today central New York State prior to the British invasion.  

The Oswego River in that same part of New York State starts at the confluence of the Oneida and Seneca Rivers, north of the current City of Syracuse, and ends at Lake Ontario, the smallest of the Great Lakes.  The beginning of the current City of Oswego, located at the junction of the Oswego River and Lake Ontario, dates from 1722 when British fur traders established a settlement to facilitate trade with the Iroquois.  It created a connection from their state capital in Albany through the Mohawk Valley to a new western outpost.

From 1754 until 1763, the British and the French engaged in the so-called French and Indian War to determine who was going to control northern North America.  As protection for their trading outpost, the British built three forts during this period, George, Oswego, and Ontario, in what is today the City of Oswego.  In 1766, Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa Nation met Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, at Fort Ontario to formally end hostilities between the Indians and the British. During the American Revolutionary War, the British maintained control over Oswego and stayed there until 1796, well after the establishment of the United States of America.

In 1829, the Oswego branch of the Erie Canal opened allowing for the economic blossoming of the city over the next 5 decades.  "Flour, grain, lumber, iron, salt, and cornstarch" were shipped out of Oswego via the canal.  In 1861, the State of New York founded the Oswego Primary Teachers Training School (today known as the State University of New York at Oswego).  

The population of Oswego hit its zenith in 1920 with 23,626 residents.  Currently, there are estimated to be less than 18,000.  In 1944, 982 Holocaust survivors from Europe were relocated to Oswego's Fort Ontario by order of President Franklin Roosevelt. They remained there for eighteen months.

In 1904, my grandparents, Julius and Naomi Karch (in their early 20s), and their baby, my aunt Frances, immigrants from the Russian Empire, settled in Oswego.  My mother, Margaret Karch, was born three years later. In 1925, my father, Harry Lasky, a native of Troy, New York, moved to Oswego to take over the management of a local business, The Netherland Dairy.  Needing to observe kosher laws, he boarded with the Karch family for some period and thus met my mother. They married in 1930 and I was born 15 years later in August of 1945.

My family, which included four boys, lived in a three-bedroom, two-family house at 30 East Oneida Street (corner of East Third Street) until November of 1956.  Across the street was the East Side Park (where I spent many happy hours playing) plus a Catholic church and the Oswego County Courthouse.  I attended the Fitzhugh Park School from kindergarten through the middle of the sixth grade.  In the spring of 1956, Little League baseball came to Oswego and for three years I played on a team sponsored by the local Police Department.  Games were played on fields adjacent to Fort Ontario.

Just before Thanksgiving of 1956, my family moved to 327 West Seneca Street (corner with Draper Street) at the very western end of Oswego.  Instead of six family members sharing one bathroom, I now shared one of the four bathrooms in our brand new, pink brick, ranch-style house with my older brother, Ted.  And that bathroom had a shower, instead of a bathtub.  In January of 1957, I transferred to the Kingsford Park School where I remained until the end of the ninth grade in June of 1960.  I then advanced to Oswego High School until my graduation in June of 1963, following which I left for the world beyond Oswego.  However, in my dreams it sometimes seems as if I never left.

A couple of my favorite places in Oswego were the Oswego Theater at the corner of West Second and Bridge Streets, where I watched many memorable films, and Rudy's, a food stand just outside the city on the rocky shore of Lake Ontario, where I ate a lot of hot dogs and hamburgers.  We also skipped smooth flat rocks into the lake.  Growing up in Oswego during those eighteen idyllic years gave me a sense of belonging to a time and a place I will always remember and cherish. O-S-W-E-G-O, Let's go.