Hometown USA. That's what's someone used to call Binghamton, New York.

As a boy, he played on the antique carousels that ring the city. There are six of them, the largest (and only) collection of its kind in the world. All are on the New York State Historic Register and the National Register of Historic Places.

Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, when the carousels are open, the price of admission is one piece of litter.

Binghamton, the "Carousel Capital of the World," operates them as a gift to the community, in other words. And anyone who completes the "Carousel Circuit" all in one day, visiting all six town parks where carousels play, receives a special button. A tin lapel button, with rhinestones on the bridle of a proudly bedecked pony.

I have a little pile of those buttons.

No, I'm not that little boy. But he grew up to be a writer, and those ponies often spoke to him from the page. Imagine, if you will, the shadows growing long, the sunny music of another generation suddenly silent, the laughter become still, the rustling of wind in the grass, and the tricks that after-sunset plays on a painted wooden horse, when you and no one else are there.

And so the carousels of Binghamton have a place in Hometown USA, somber, evocative, challenging, sweet, mysterious, nostalgic, melancholy. They are a small returning theme in The Twilight Zone, the series authored by Binghamton's most famous native, Rod Serling.

I have been some years gone from Hometown USA; but part of me must never have left. I seem to have been called back there tonight, as a vigil comes together in answer to insensate pain. I can feel the warmth of a hand slipped into another hand. I don't know how many dozens, hundreds of pairs of eyes I recognize, because my own are not too clear.

I wonder if, somewhere, I will hear a solemn fiddle all alone, tonight? Ashokan Farewell, Amazing Grace, Will The Circle Be Unbroken. In my mind, I hear a duet, at least. The defiant spirit speaks without words, our way of saying this is not us, we are more than this. We are better than this.

No, I was not born there. I was called there, to watch the turning of seven summers and seven moons. And so I do know the civic soul of that city center, the rude and bold ebullience of its creative promise, the whole in the wall through which dreams dare to pass, the poetry of a deputy mayor.

I remember the shine on the Susquehanna flowing beneath the South Washington Street Bridge, an old iron wonder (also on the National Historic Register). Used only for bicycles and pedestrians, its massive trusses once became the canvas where two dance companies painted an outdoor pas de deux, scant blocks away from the events of today.

I was in the circus parade among those merry long ago, when two members of the Bordeaux Ballet troupe, from our sister city in France, honored us with a real wedding for the occasion of The Bridge Dance.

And I was onstage in Binghamton High School, along with members of the Rod Serling Dance Company, named for that most famous alumni whose portraits grace the entrance walls, when a niece of Lawrence Welk directed The Twilight Zone Dance. I had a role. Maybe that's how it happens, when a place becomes a part of you, and you become embedded in a place.

I hope that you hear me, Binghamton. I've kept my silences, yes. You do not know the shadows that lengthen across my path. But I have not forgotten that little boy.