Buffalo Unbound, page 14
An hour southwest of Buffalo, on the tranquil shores of Cassadaga Lake, sits the spiritual community of Lily Dale. This psychic center is a great conversation starter in Western New York since almost everyone has a Lily Dale story. And if you tell people you’re going, they’ll most certainly inquire if you have “the gift,” which means that they do and be sure to ask them about it.
Bring directions. My GPS doesn’t register Lily Dale and I had to assume it was removed for the same reason Dick Cheney’s bunker is blacked out. Once safely there, you can enjoy private readings or join the daily message service at Inspiration Stump, an energy vortex that assists in connecting to the astral plane. The last time I visited, the spirits sent a message via hailstorm saying that the meeting should be moved inside of Assembly Hall. Several mediums conduct a this world/next world call-and-response, in which they describe to the entire group a person on the other side who is sending a communiqué and audience members can then identify themselves as the recipients. One thing I noticed is that the messages usually come from someone named Mary, Richard, or Jeff and rarely a Hortense, Jasper, or Ignatius. Similarly, the person who has crossed over tended to like jazz or rock or Frank Sinatra rather than marimba bands or panpipes or Panic! At The Disco. And the ailments they suffered from most often were heart trouble or cancer-related as opposed to Fuchs’ corneal dystrophy, rectal fissures, or a flesh-eating virus. I was rather hoping that one of the mediums would point at someone and say, “I can read your mind, and you should be ashamed of yourself,” but none of them did. Still, whether you have “the gift” or not, are a believer or not, are there in body or just in spirit, it makes for a fun day.
A half hour from Lily Dale is the Chautauqua Institution, perched on the northwestern edge of scenic Chautauqua Lake, an old Seneca word for either “bag tied in the middle,” as this describes the shape of the lake, or else “wear batik clothing and carry a quilted shoulder bag,” as this describes most of the clientele. Either way, lifelong learners have been coming from around the country to the Chautauqua Institution to enlarge, enlighten, and ennoble themselves with educational programs and entertainment for more than 135 years. Presenters include everyone from presidents, journalists, and professors to pop stars, big bands, and orchestras. There are even rumors that one of the cozy gingerbread cottages serves as headquarters for a top secret UU Mafia that goes around in shiny hemp suits and unisex Bass penny Weejuns fighting reverse reverse discrimination. So if you’re in the Unitarian Witness Protection Program (or just have an aversion to white wicker furniture), this is not a good place to vacation, particularly in the vicinity of any mystic heart learning circles or gourd pottery classes. In fact, although it’s probably against the rules, I know a lot of UUs who want their ashes scattered behind the Hall of Philosophy, where many happy hours were spent in talkbacks about social witnessing, peacemongering, ethical eating, and bee colony collapse, all accompanied by faint whispers of an international Unitarian conspiracy that has been credited with permanently grounding the super environmentally unfriendly Concorde supersonic airliner.
Drive across the Peace Bridge from the West Side of Buffalo to historic Fort Erie, Canada, and save yourself a time-machine trip to ancient Greece by visiting the classically designed Point Abino Lighthouse. It’s inside a private community, but if you’re nice and don’t have any visible explosives strapped to your chest, they’ll let you look. Then drop by the Bridgeburg secondhand bookstore on Jarvis Street, neatly tucked in among the pawnshop and tattoo parlor. Try and arrive around noon so as to catch the Chipwagon, a.k.a. the French fry truck. Bridgeburg Bookstore’s warm and welcoming sole proprietor, Annie, will be glad to tell you her name really is Annie Hall and isn’t that ridiculous, and how her husband ran off with a twenty-year-old, but she bears him no ill will because people fall in love and what can you do, and that she probably drinks too much wine, and sleeps in bed with thirty or so books surrounding her, and will get on the Internet one of these days, along with taking her ex-husband’s name off the sign and organizing the downstairs. Many of Annie’s best volumes are stored in the mazelike basement, but she won’t allow you to browse there because it’s rather unorganized. That said, Pete managed to talk his way down in about ten minutes, so I guess the challenge is there for true bibliophiles. The best lav, according to my source on this subject, is at Coffee Culture, three doors down.
Next, drive ten minutes through some spectacular wine country to Niagara-on-the-Lake and see a brilliant revival of The Little Foxes or Born Yesterday at the Shaw Festival. Crowds are manageable, staff is friendly, and there’s rarely a line to use the well-maintained women’s restrooms.
As if good lavatories aren’t reason enough to drop everything and plan a trip, The New York Times recently named Buffalo one of forty-four places in the world to visit, comfortably nestled among hot spots such as Phuket, Bhutan, Cuba, Hawaii, and Zambia. Ironically, the report landed on frigid front porches during a monthlong Arctic blast known as an Alberta clipper, a mass of cold air that rushes into the region from the north and is Canadian for “butt-freezing cold.”
City of Great Neighbors (and Cat People)
Yes, you’ll find upstanding citizens and good-hearted people everywhere, just like you’ll find sociopaths and tail-pullers. But I do believe Buffalo’s designation as the City of Good Neighbors, where a true friend lends you his last pair of long johns, is not only earned but deserved. The examples go on forever, and include residents returned to their homes in eleven days and not the six weeks federal agents said it might take after the Clarence plane crash, the well-documented community assistance and generosity shown to victims of disaster, such as the Amherst family left homeless by a mud slide and the Kenmore clan who lost their home and family dog in a Christmas Eve blaze. Now add to this countless unrecorded acts of humanity performed on a daily basis for friends and strangers alike. When Extreme Makeover: Home Edition shot an episode in Buffalo, over four thousand volunteers turned out, including many local craftsmen. It was the largest number of volunteers the TV show had ever seen and more than triple the number they typically attract in other places around the country.
One trait in particular I feel necessary to highlight is that when a butcher in Western New York calls out, “Who’s next?” five people don’t yell out their order as is the case in Me-First Manhattan, where “Excuse me!” serves as a direct threat rather than a polite request or an apology. Similarly, the height-challenged don’t stealthily move to the front of a waiting crowd as if they’re just trying to see into the display case when they’re in fact strategically positioning themselves to catch the eye of the next available counterperson. No siree, when the “next” call goes out at Wegmans supermarket, people look around to see who is NEXT. Meantime, the old or infirm will almost always be ushered ahead, in case they’re in a hurry to get to a lav. The employees at Wegmans are also terrifically pleasant and when asked for help, instead of proffering one of those vague sweeping arm gestures, will actually take you directly to the item you’re in search of. The staff also has a fine sense of humor, as evidenced by of an employee who liked to glue silver dollars to the floor in front of the beer coolers on Saturday nights. The family-owned supermarket ranked third on Fortune magazine’s 2010 list of 100 Best Places to Work and had been in the top ten for the eight years prior.
Similarly, it’s with dignity that people shovel their driveways and mow their lawns along with the yards of their older relatives. Yes, some folks hire a service, but none would brag about it, well aware that personally attending to these tasks is a badge of honor rather than something to be looked down upon as a form of labor beneath them, including those with good jobs and more degrees than a thermometer. Just the opposite: shoveling is often hailed as the secret to longevity, after sponge candy. Stories about plucky old people almost always contain a line about how they were still out clearing the walk at age ninety-two. “I finally said, ‘Grandpa, at least wait until it stops snowing so you don’t have to go right back out and do it again.’ But he wouldn’t listen. And the Bills were playing the Patriots at one o’clock.” In fact, some people take such pride in their snow-removal skills that upon finishing the clearing-out part they use the shovel to go around and edge their masterpiece.
Meantime, if you’re wandering around a parking lot in Buffalo helplessly clicking your key with the hope that your vehicle will call out to you, rest assured that not one but several perfect strangers will offer to drive you around in search of your car. I know from experience. Rotarians are particularly dependable for this activity, and they’re talented at locating my make and model.
By US standards, Western New York has been settled for a long time. Before police stations were organized, fire brigades were formed, hospitals were built, phone lines erected, and snowplows roared through the streets at dawn, people had to look out for one another and form networks of protection. And even as local services evolved, if you were an immigrant, a minority, or from the lower ranks of society, they weren’t necessarily there to ensure your safety and well-being.
The area is steeped in agrarian roots, and if your barn was on fire or the family had typhus, it was the nearest neighbors who determined whether or not you survived. Thus, it wasn’t a good idea to do anything to tick off said neighbors, even if you didn’t like their politics or religion or music all that much. Nor was it a good idea to hold a grudge because their dog made peeing on your pachysandra appear to be a job that he was getting paid to perform.
My South African–born husband is astounded that people in the Midwest walk into each other’s homes uninvited. What does he think the word yoo-hoo was invented for? Certainly not just to be the name of a beverage. Furthermore, as most Buffalo bedrooms contain an electric blanket, one rarely risks interrupting couples having sex on the kitchen table, even with their socks on.
Winters are protracted, or as Samuel Johnson said about Paradise Lost, “None ever wished it longer,” and deadly storms on the eastern end of Lake Erie hit hard and fast. We are all too well aware that Mother Nature has stacked the deck, and she’s no one to fool with if you value Father Time. Car trunks contain a shovel and a blanket. A Buffalonian’s last words are rarely, “Hey, y’all, watch this!” except perhaps in the ice-fishing community.
If you’re caught on the wrong side of a storm and need assistance, it’s just as likely you’ll be dependent on an ordinary citizen as a platoon of rescue workers. Similarly, a stranger in trouble may knock on your front door or car window. It’s for this reason that if you call and wake Buffalonians in the middle of the night, they insist that they weren’t sleeping, because you’re probably stuck somewhere and they have to come and get you and don’t want it to appear to be an inconvenience. Remember how you decided who to be friends with as a kid based on pool ownership? Well, this is the criterion for making adult friends (assuming you don’t have a large Italian family)—who will come fetch you in a storm?
Bowling remains a popular sport in Buffalo because you stay put while the ball automatically comes back to you, without anyone having to chase after it. Throughout its history, Buffalo has never been a transient town. Families tend to stay in the area for generations. Residents sit out on sprawling front porches. In fact, few cities have porches this size or as many of them. Neighbors know what you’re up to and with whom. Big Brother is watching via the earliest known social networking site—good old-fashioned gossip, making the world a smaller place since 500,000 bc.
It’s been said that Buffalo isn’t a small city or even a small town (because of its famous one degree of separation) but merely a large living room. Even the paper, The Buffalo News, despite its coverage of world and national events, feels more like a village chronicle by including an appeal to the Lancaster High School Class of 1965 for volunteers to help celebrate their forty-fifth reunion, a save-the-date for the South Buffalo American Legion chicken barbecue, tips for family fun, a report on a lawn tractor stolen from a garage, a long list of birthdays, and plenty of space for locals to chime in with a point of view about what’s going on at home, across the nation, or around the world. There are problems and solutions—when cinnamon toothpaste irritates (get a prescription for medicated Magic Mouthwash), excessive dog scratching (apply Listerine, mineral oil, and water in equal parts to doggy hot spots)—and a spirited debate as to whether a basement or first-floor laundry is best. If your tastes run more to the racy and ribald, you’ll need to turn to the Amherst Bee police blotter, which diligently tracks the nefarious doings of scheming squirrels, marauding raccoons, attacks by psychotic deer, naked people sprinting through backyards, geese tapping on library windows, lawn ornament decapitations and disappearances, and even the occasional shirt caught in a blender. Criminals, take warning: Western New York is a place where police still capture evildoers by tracking their footprints through the snow.
When I sat down to speak with Charity Vogel, daughter of Buffalo News reporter Mike Vogel, it turned out her father once worked with my uncle Jim “Never bring a knife to a gunfight” Watson at the Buffalo Courier-Express. When I was ten years old, I’d waved the two men off at the Erie Basin Marina as they set sail on a training exercise aboard the Norwegian tall ship Christian Radich. In other words, Google Earth isn’t watching Buffalo-area residents so much as everyone they know from work, church/temple/mosque/synagogue, school, sports, and the crybaby matinee. Trips to the mall or stops at gas stations almost always involve running into acquaintances. Therefore, do not perform smash-and-grab robberies, leave the scene of an accident, or think that nude sunbathing, cross-dressing, or a karaoke addiction can be kept on the down low. Your parents and/or children will know about it in the time it takes to say the rosary. And definitely don’t have an affair in Buffalo. My sources tell me that one needs to go at least twenty miles out of town. But Baltimore is even safer. There’s a saying about small towns that just as easily applies to Buffalo: if you don’t want anyone to know about it, then don’t do it.
It’s not easy for cats and dogs without homes or caretakers to survive our Wuthering Heights winters. The stray pooches that once populated the area are largely gone, having been taken in, joined the wild packs roaming Detroit, or else traded their fur coats for Ray-Bans and a life in the Sarasota sunshine. However, there are an estimated 100,000 feral felines, and that’s where the cat ladies come in. Unfortunately, cat lady is often used in the pejorative, as in “crazy old cat lady,” possibly because it sounds like “bag lady.” But it shouldn’t be, and they live among us as teachers, toll collectors, nurses, carpenters, and Scrabble champions. In fact, many have master’s degrees, doctorates, and prettily appointed homes—granted, with lots of cat bric-a-brac. A small percentage of men even fall into this regal cat-caring category. They, like the cat ladies, work tirelessly to fix and feed strays living outdoors year-round, rescue their kittens, get them veterinary care, and place them in good homes.
For me, the true nobility of the cat lady is in her willingness to care for Persians and Himalayans, felines with hippie-length hair and lots of it. By all appearances it seems their only occupations are to eat, sleep, shed, and poop themselves. I’m just thinking that you may as well help out around a kitty hospice.
It’s easily possible to fill every day volunteering at the SPCA, local shelters, and clinics, and attending the Ten Lives Club FurBall, Feral Cat Focus Dinner, ABC (Animal Birth Control) luncheon, and the City Kitty fund-raiser, and many good-hearted folks do exactly that. Meantime, Operation PETS accepts strays twice a month on Freaky Feral Fridays for spaying and neutering.
Most of the benefits are held in February and March, right before kitten season, when everyone would otherwise be too busy with hands-on rescue work. My favorite event is where the cats actually climb up to Jesus in “suffer the little children to come unto me” fashion, but on all fours. It was at this particular silent auction where, between a three-story cat condo and twin hemp scratching posts, I was surprised to find a gift basket filled with analgesics and cough suppressants. Did they know I was coming?
My aunt had twelve cats at one point. She wasn’t supposed to shelter that many felines in her apartment, so when the landlord came by she traded on the fact that they all looked alike, and so long as they stayed about four in a room with a few under the beds, she could get away with saying she had only five. Something similar happened in my friend Julie’s Italian Catholic family. Her grandmother had twelve children, which was not all that unusual for Buffalo back in the day, but they lived on a street with German families and didn’t want to appear déclassé, so only four kids were allowed out to play at a time, also under the assumption that by looking fairly alike and moving around quickly they couldn’t be told apart all that well.
Along with my former Sweet Home teacher Kathy LeFauve, my aunt Sue is now busy almost full-time with cat rescue work, and so she no longer raises the exotic-looking sable-colored, golden-eyed Burmese. I have to admit that I miss going to cat shows with her, where as a kid it was my job to bring Bloody Marys around to the judges all morning. Analyzing cat coats and features was obviously incredibly stressful work. But nowadays Aunt Sue always has a houseful of adorable foster kittens waiting for good homes. A retired English teacher, she writes up their Purrsonality Profiles in brilliantly creative and impressionistic prose, which has resulted in a 100 percent adoption rate. Most begin with “Perfect Pussycat Companion…,” as I understand that the word pet can sound a controversial note in cat circles.
“Those who say that we are in a time when there are no heroes just don’t know where to look,” Ronald Reagan declared in his first inaugural address. He went on to say that they can be found among farmers and factory workers and people on both sides of the counter. “They are individuals and families whose taxes support the government and whose voluntary gifts support church, charity, culture, art, and education.” And cat shelters, I might add.
