Hoxsie started as a simple exercise in sharing tiny bits of history, often without much by way of explanation, under the banner of an old advertisement featuring a rooster crying out “Hoxsie!”
13 years ago I started this site (under the editorial “we”) as an extension of my old personal blog, with a simple advertisement and a tiny amount of information about Cozzens and Lay, then proceeded with simple, lightweight little stories inspired by things I found in old directories, almanacs and newspapers.
Then it started to get more complicated. I wanted to tell more stories, to dig up some true history, and make a contribution to knowledge about the area that I had called home for such a long time. Coincidentally, or not, that came just as I was moving away from that home, to a place where I had no connection, no history. That turned out to be very much the rightest of moves, but I sure didn’t know that at the time, and despite my distance from home, the stories on Hoxsie started to get more complicated, requiring more research. More rewarding, but fewer and farther between.
Then, during the pandemic, when it would seem I would have had all the time in the world (though my job never slowed down even a bit), I embarked on the ridiculous project of tracking down the history behind each and every one of the 47 Albany Bicentennial markers. That took me three years, and though I was very happy to have done it, the singular focus meant that I wasn’t publishing here very often, and my folder of “ideas” was filled to overflowing.
Along with this project, I have quite a few others, like any other attention-addled person in the digital age. I write about my actual life, I write about my vinyl records, I post pictures of signs and markers that catch my fancy. And most of all, I’ve been working on becoming a late-blooming musician for several years now, which takes up all kinds of free time that I used to devote to the history of local globe manufacture.
So, with an overflowing folder of things that probably don’t need or deserve a significant amount of research and a limited amount of time, I’m going to try returning Hoxsie to its roots. More frequent posts, way less writing. And, I think, elimination of the editorial “we.” (Sorry, it was a generational thing.) Snippets, findings, things that amuse. For now, that’s what you’ll see here.
So think of this as a safe, sane way for Hoxsie to continue.
Therefore, I tried to present the above headline from 1927 without context or comment. But:
Pete Reude was an Albany traffic cop “who flings a wicked traffic signal” at the corner of State and Pearl. He was known as “the human semaphore of the traffic squad.” He was known for leaping on and off running boards of passing trolleys as he directed traffic – balletic but dangerous. A 1927 headline read, “Balky Cars, Jaywalkers, Gas Fumes Perplex Wits of ‘Busiest Policeman.’” The article from which I’ve clipped the headline above was presented without a byline in the Albany Evening News, Dec. 1, 1927.
“For be it known by these presents that no one relieves Patrolman Reude when he goes to lunch. The twinkling traffic lights alone remain, pick your color and beat the flash as motorists and pedestrians joust for inter-sectional honors and back the red and the green.” “However, the problem of crossing may be solved if the example of a visiting gentleman is followed.”
The story then gives a certainly made-up account of a drunken visitor standing below the Ten Eyck Hotel and, seeing no away across the street, going to the taxi stand, and demanding, “Take me to the Arkay Building!” The driver, of course, retorted, “That’s just across the street, buddy.” “‘I know it and I know my business,’ replied the visiting gentleman. ‘Take me there, and by the most direct route.’”
Because I can’t help myself: Pete Reude was born May 25, 1887 . In 1926 he lived at 90 Alexander St. It looks like he died Oct. 6, 1951, at age 74.
Leave a Reply