A cheerfully conservative, peaceful little town of roughly 8,000 inhabitants located near Binghamton in upstate New York. For Milburn, Binghamton represents modernity, sophistication, urbanity – as much urbanity as can be comfortably acknowledged. Generally speaking, Milburn sees no reason to further expand its definitions of the possible. Former children of Milburn have found themselves settled in places like New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle, some few even in Europe, and while their families, friends, and classmates respect the ambition of these prodigals, it is felt that they have paid a cruel price for the hypothetical sophistication they may have acquired.

Longtime local residents feel, perhaps justifiably, that, far from being a backwater, their town has taken part in every socio-economic, demographic, and generational shift significant to the nation as a whole. Milburn has seen discotheques (a discotheque, anyhow, the Playground, 1973-1979), vegetarian restaurants, vegan restaurants, a rebarbative storefront cinema specializing in “art films,” a local Gay and Lesbian alliance, a brief infatuation with piercings and tattoos, a “radical”, “feminist” bookstore, and plagues of both meth-amphatimines and OxyContin come and go, plus a recent, eye-opening influx of immigrants from Central America, not to mention a significant Green Party movement during the 90s; Milburn High School has produced (short-lived) garage bands, punk groups in thrall to the Ramones, old-style grunge bands doing their best to imitate Nirvana, alt-music groups, throwback folkies trying to snarl like the youthful Dylan, sensitive new-wave folkies imitating Jeff Buckley, clones of Ani deFranco and Tori Amos. Nonetheless, the core of Milburn has remained essentially unchanged for the past half-century.

The poor, disadvantaged, and dispossessed inhabit the Hollow; respectable citizens reside in the comfortable Victorian houses in the Melrose Avenue area. Graduates of Milburn HS typically go on to the excellent universities in the New York State network. Although traditional church attendance has declined, local evangelical sects have significantly grown in membership during the past two decades.

No one in Milburn now remembers the informal organization known to its members as the Chowder Society, nor the extraordinary events that occupied them in the severe, commanding winter of 1979. All of that has faded away entirely, out of memory and history both.