Fifteen years on the Erie Canal
We've hauled some barges in our day
Filled with lumber, coal, and hay
And we know every inch of the way
From Albany to Buffalo
“My city smells like Cheerios,” a bright pink shirt says. I’ve seen many like it, but they always take me back, to dim memories of driving along the Skyway, going into the city from the suburbs, and my mother telling me, “Get ready! Okay, now! Can you smell it?” She always knew when to warn me, and I thought that was magic (years later, I’d find out that General Mills just has a really big sign on their building). I can still remember the smell of Cheerios on the Skyway, although that might be because I know the smell so well now, and the sights. The smell, even the tee shirts, they all remind me of my first glimpses of skyscrapers on my right, and of a vast expanse of water on my left. This was the first lesson Buffalo taught me: The world is bigger than I can imagine.
When I came to college, I started hearing jokes about my home. “It’s a dead city,” they’d say. “Buffalo is the worst,” “Nothing good ever comes out of Buffalo.” I smile and laugh along, but those jokes drive a knife through my heart. Those are people you’re talking about, I want to say. They’re trying their best. We have art, big questions and critical thinkers to answer them, cheap land and cheap rent, a true blue collar mentality, expensive suburbs, refugee and emmigrant problems alike, rebellion, and for a short time, a small golden buffalo on the side of the road.
“We've hauled some barges in our day
Filled with lumber, coal, and hay…”
Buffalo, like Las Vegas, is one of those places where you can drive 50 miles from its epicenter and still be in “Buffalo.” Our suburbs are anonymous to outsiders, Orchard Park, Hamburg, Clarence, so we all adopt the name of the Queen City in order to form some kind of identity. Our identity, as it is, is strange, like a wrinkled former beauty queen, back straight, trying to preserve her remaining dignity. The frame’s still there, but the allure is gone, and she knows it. She makes me sad but I am grateful for her pride.
They used to teach us this song in school, that went, “Fifteen years on the Erie Canal/ We've hauled some barges in our day/Filled with lumber, coal, and hay/And we know every inch of the way/From Albany to Buffalo” I remember being proud of it—I remember being taught to be proud of it. It’s a sad source of small-town pride, to have our name mentioned in something. You see it in the local news too, “Buffalo man makes it to the Olympics (even though he hasn’t lived here since he was ten).” He’s still ours—if he wasn’t, what would we have?
Early on in our history, we were a necessity to the world. We had steel mills and car plants and grain elevators. We had electricity and the World’s Fair, and Frank Lloyd Wright and Mark Twain and the Erie Canal. We had Delaware park, and Millionaire’s row, the street of houses just off the park from the time period that, even now, continue to speak to me of an era when we were on top. Like some small Gods or twisted Monopoloy pieces, we refer back to these relics in times of trouble, whenever we need something or someone to pray to. The Albright Knox art museum, City Hall, Kleinhans, Sheas, Symphony Circle, the Broadway market and the one we pin our hopes to the most, the beloved waterfront.
I love Buffalo like a mother loves her drug addict son. Sadly, and mostly from afar, but I still think of the way the sun shone on his hair as a kid, and I think of what might have been, had the demand for railroads not died, and the steel mills hadn’t closed.
This was the second lesson Buffalo taught me: how easily beautiful things die.
”And we know every inch of the way…”
For as long as I can remember, there have been five or six life-sized bison statues lining the I-90. They stand right on the grass the exit for the I-190, the exit that divides the Southtowns from the Northtowns and leads to the heart of the city, downtown Buffalo. They line the I-90 on both sides, so no matter which direction you’re driving, you always have the chance to see them. They are the symbol of something lost, and because of that, they’re also the symbol of Buffalo the city in more than a nominal way.
Coming from the West heading East, however, there’s one small difference. A small golden buffalo stands just behind the pack of three, and stares out at the cars driving past. All I know about him is that he’s different because he’s much newer, a dedication for the anniversary of something maybe 10 years ago. I saw it on the news, and for a few months it became the new thing my mother pointed out to me, Cheerios then a Buffalo, before it became uninteresting again. I never miss a chance to seek him out though. I’m not quite sure why. Maybe its because he’s special, and we, in our desperation are always seeking the thing that will make Buffalo unique, that will put it on the map. Maybe it’s because he’s another thing I’m afraid will disappear, and no one will notice. It’s pretty common here. I’m terrified, though, that someday we’ll disappear from the map too. Will the world even notice? Will we notice?
“…She's a good old worker
and a good old pal…”
I remember the first time my city moved me to tears. It was sometime during my freshman year of high school, and my mother had to drive up to Buff-State to visit my cousin. After our visit, Mom asked if I wanted to just take a drive. Just two turns around the campus was the most beautiful, haunting building I’d ever seen. A two, maybe three story, dark building loomed across a lawn that stretched on two blocks. Mom said it was the called Richardson-Olmstead Complex; it was an old insane asylum at the turn of the century that the state abandoned and just didn’t have the money to repair. I remember tears stinging in my eyes as my mother explained it to me. There was so much that massive building could offer. It was an architectural wonder. It could be a museum to attrack tourists. It could be a historical landmark, and just think of all the ghost stories. I’d come to hear some later; of secret initiation rites where teenagers fell through floors only to find walls in the basement, never scrubbed clean of blood or cleared of rusty chains….
And here it was, rotting before my eyes. This was the third lesson Buffalo taught me, how tough it is to see something disappearing in front of your eyes.
Last month, driving through Western New York on the I-90 with a bunch of friends, I waited patiently to point out the many things I love about my hometown. Even though there’s no actual city lining the interstate, the things that line the 90 are as familiar to me as my own driveway. There’s the sign that proudly proclaims, “Buffalo, An All America City.” It’s no typo, there are four of them strategically located on the possible entrances to Western New York, and they all say the same thing. There’s the blue water tower, the marker of the worst traffic from 4-7 every workday. Keep going and you’ll see the Galleria mall, weekend home of every Canadian this side of Toronto (turns out, freedom smells like low-sales tax). There’s the bison statues and there’s the…
“….Where’s the fucking golden buffalo?”
My friends laugh at my outburst, they have no idea what I’m talking about, and continue chatting but I am legitimately upset. I immediately assume it’s been stolen, by thieves, bandits, or worse, hooligans. They’ve probably spray painted the poor creature and left him to die, under a bridge somewhere.
We drive on, but I do not forget about him.
A week later, I call the New York State thruway authority, through their “media relations” line.
“I’m looking for two things” I tell them. “Firstly, I was wondering if you had any articles dealing with the bison statues off the I-190? I know there was a new one added maybe ten years ago, and I’d like to read anything you’ve got on that. Secondly, the new one, the little golden buffalo, I noticed it’s missing last week. Can you offer any comment as to why?” I’m half hoping he says I’m wrong, that it’s still there. I’m also hoping he just doesn’t know—I don’t want to know either, but I can’t allow myself not to try.
“I’ll call you back as soon as I figure it out.”
I’m still waiting.
“Fifteen years on the Erie Canal…”
It wasn’t until I got my first job, until I turned sixteen and could actually drive myself to work, that I started to become aware of the city around me. It took me sixteen years to look around. The owner of the bookstore I work at now gave me a “gateway” job—Would I mind terribly selling merchandise, mostly books, to children at the “Theatre of Youth” Downtown? I would not.
“It’s on Allen” she said, “right in the heart of Allentown, you can’t miss it.” I didn’t know what Allentown was. My parents knew—they lived nearby for a while after college.
“Don’t walk alone at night,” My mother said.
“Parking’s terrible out there.” My father said.
On the day of the show, I plugged the address into my GPS, drove up the 90, nodded to the golden buffalo and got off on the 1-90. All of the major exits of my city branch off this highway on a bridge that cuts rights a path right through all of the tallest buildings. Coca Cola Stadium, formerly Dunn Tire park, is snuggled in between some much taller buildings and the road I’m driving on right now. The Adam’s mark hotel, the Buffalo news building, and First Niagara Center all seem like they’re right next to each other in the sky, when really they might be separated by a few blocks or more. I drive past them all, a few exits more, and get off into one of the “bad” parts of town—I turn on a couple of streets, slowly roll through a stop sign or two, and suddenly I’m in Allentown.
You can tell it’s different immediately. The houses are painted in bright colors, and the shops that line the street are neither boarded up nor advertising liquor. The people, too, are young and hip, and are all probably into art and music and riding their bikes places. There’s a guy blowing bubbles out of the apartment above a Jim’s Steak Out. Apparently he does this every night it’s warm. Did I mention these people were young? These people were hopeful—they chose to live in the heart of this supposedly crumbling city.
I had gone my whole short life not knowing what “the city of Buffalo” really meant, but my first job in Allentown started opening my eyes to the kinds of strength and magic that could be found there.
“…One more trip and back we'll go
Through the rain and sleet and snow…”
What you’ve heard about Buffalo is true—we tend to be the land of ice and snow. We’ve had hail in August and sleet in July, and once, a snowstorm in October that left many without power for weeks. We’ve got chicken wings (the original might be the Anchor Bar, it’s uncertain, but the best are at Duffs). Our Golden Buffalos are disappearing, and no one really notices anymore. I’m not even surprised by it. We’re like a lot of crumbling blue collar cities. We understand Detroit, and fear only surpassing it and Cleveland on the lists—“Worst public schools in the country,” “Highest rate of child poverty,” “Worst place to raise a child.”
Most kids I grew up with were sheltered from these kinds of statistics. We grew up in the ‘burbs. We had a great public school. One girl even went to Yale. We were all waiting to get out, of Orchard Park and away from Buffalo. It’s like, even though we had few real problems, there was something oppressive about watching the school board bicker over Public school number “X” on the news, or knowing that we weren’t being desensitized to violence, but place.
“African American boy killed in firefight with gang last night,” the news would say,
“Eh?” My mom would say to the TV while it continued,
“… on the West Side of Buffalo.”
“Honey, would you turn it down, it’s kind of loud.”
“…sources close to the boy say that he was the victim of a drive-by shooting, and had never been associated with gangs….” We’d hear these stories at least once a week—every city has them—and use them to keep our children, our loved ones out of the West Side. Don’t go there for anything, don’t even stop your car, you can’t help them. We can’t help them.
I thought all of these things, get out of Buffalo, you can’t help, before I ventured into Allentown. I thought them before I saw the Richardson- Olmstead complex. I thought them before I saw Delaware Park or Millionaires’ row, or the little golden buffalo. I thought them until I left Buffalo and came to college with people from bigger cities, and I had to start defending my own. “You can only succeed if you leave” I thought, “you have to get out.” I had thought that the only place I could get a high paying job was in New York City, or Chicago where I could make glamorous connections and eat in well-reviewed places, in places that wouldn’t close in six months, in places where there was hope.
I was so wrong.
My city may smell like Cheerios, but my city also brings tears to my eyes and protest to my lips. To those who’d say nothing good comes out of Buffalo, I say great. We’re keeping the best for ourselves. Even though I grew up isolated from many of Buffalo’s beauties, I see them today, and even though I grew up sheltered from many of her problems, I’m learning about them everyday. My life may take me far away from Buffalo, and for a while I hope it does, but I know I’ll be back. I had to leave home first, to discover that home was ever missing. Out of everything Buffalo has shown me, from great pride to great poverty, the greatest lesson I’ve learned is that leaving home has taught me exactly where “home” is.
And by the way? It’s not soda, it’s pop.