Back There Where the Past Was: A Small-Town Boyhood

For Charles Champlin, formerly a writer-correspondent for Time and Life magazines and since 1965 an editor and columnist for the Los Angeles Times, his "other time" was the nineteen-thirties. His "other place," where he was born and spent his boyhood and early adolescence, was the lovely Finger Lakes village of Hammondsport in western New York State. Its population was, and is, 1,200, and it was a fine place to grow up: Keuka Lake to swim in, band concerts in the park on Saturday nights, wa...