Buffalo Unbound, page 15
Aside from its several nicknames such as Queen City, Nickel City, and City of Light, Buffalo is not known by any catchphrases the way Beirut was the Paris of the East and Nashville was the Athens of the South. Buffalo is not called Gateway to Eden, New York—Home of the Original Kazoo Company Factory, Museum, and Boutique Gift Shop, even though it is! Or else as the first stop on the road to nearby LeRoy, New York, the birthplace of Jell-O! Likewise, one doesn’t often hear Saint Moritz called the Buffalo of the Swiss Alps, or Aspen, Colorado, referred to as the Buffalo of the West.
That said, although there are cities named Buffalo in many other states—Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, Wyoming, and two in Wisconsin—when a national newspaper or magazine refers to Buffalo, they almost always mean Buffalo, New York, home of God’s Frozen People.
Despite the fact that the weather is cold for a good part of the year, Buffalonians are a warm, generous, high-spirited, and neighborly people, proud and protective of their turf. This is easily visible at any home game of the Buffalo Sabres, Bills, or Bisons, and something my husband experienced firsthand a few years back. As I mentioned, my husband was born and raised in South Africa, though his ancestors were Dutch, which immediately raises the question, if people from Poland are called Poles, then why aren’t those from Holland called Holes?
Unfamiliar with the exalted level of hometown pride, he went around asking anyone who would listen, “So why did people first settle here and decide to stay?” This is somewhat understandable if you appreciate that my husband didn’t grow up pulling on wool hats, covering the windows with heavy-gauge plastic, and scraping his car windshield, thus rendering him out of his element in the Great White North. And his visit was during a particularly bad winter. However, tribal loyalties prevailed and constituents immediately translated his question into: Why does anyone in his or her right mind live in Buffalo? Leave it to say this was an unpopular conversation starter, or rather, it made him about as welcome as a Saturday turd at Sunday’s market, as we like to say in Western New York.
Along similar lines, on minus-ten-degree days Buffalonians do not go around saying, “Is it cold enough for you?” This is considered to be just plain stupid, like saying “eh” to Canadians. On May 13, 2010, when President Obama made his first official visit to Buffalo and said he was happy it wasn’t snowing, the otherwise enthusiastic crowd stopped smiling and murmured. It was, after all, following a winter in which the East Coast (including Washington, DC) had been pounded by worse snowstorms than Western New York. Famous CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer, who grew up in Buffalo, explained via Twitter that such remarks are a “NO-NO in Buffalo where folks are sensitive about snow jokes.” Much like that proverbial large Italian family, Buffalonians prefer to crack wise about themselves rather than have outsiders do it. But if you insist, at least try to be funny. Or get better speechwriters. Fortunately, Obama had stopped at Duff’s Cheektowaga location for a medium order of chicken wings with five extra crispy. A local woman told the commander in chief, “You’re a hottie with a smokin’ little body,” which ended up being the quote heard round the world, and references to all things cold were quickly forgotten.
Western New Yorkers take advantage of winter by skiing, snowboarding, skating, snowmobiling, tobogganing, and sledding—crossover activities occasionally necessary to get the mail or walk the dog. This past winter the first annual Powder Keg Festival offered tubing, snowshoeing, broomball, a snowman-building contest, live music, a soup and chili cook-off, a Saint Bernard–led parade, and the world’s largest ice maze. The Guinness World Records judge on hand to measure the ice maze, Amanda Mochan, also judged locals as being “really friendly.”
And it’s safe to say that cold weather capitals such as Western New York can take credit for the surge in scrapbooking. In pursuit of this perfect indoor hobby, one spends hundreds of dollars on albums, craft punches, stencils, inking tools, eyelet setters, heat-embossing tools, personal die-cut machines and templates, vellum quotes, stamps, rub-ons, edging scissors, pens, lace, wire, glitter, fabric, and ribbon (or a desktop publishing and page layout program with advanced printing options and scanner, if you want to go the digital route), only to realize that a January getaway to the Caribbean would’ve been less expensive.
Despite a growing season that falls squarely into the stingy category, locals work hard to create award-winning gardens, oftentimes starting those seedlings on the kitchen countertop in Dixie riddle cups in February. Meantime, Buffalo has the largest garden walk in the country. And it’s free. Take that, Forbes magazine Misery Measure! In fact, the garden walk has been so successful that it was recently transformed into a five-week festival. “Maybe it’s just an intense strain of the contagious gardening virus that makes one tiny flower-filled yard turn into a streetful, and a street turn into a neighborhood of gardeners,” says local garden expert and author Sally Cunningham. “But I believe it also has to do with all the uncommonly open, friendly people, who share their backyards, flowers, and art in an unprecedented display of hospitality.” Furthermore, the stunning Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens features year-round exhibits, guided tours, classes, and special events.
Fishing is a popular year-round sport. It’s not for nothing that Lake Erie is known as The Walleye Capital of the World. They’re caught by boat, out on the ice, and by casting from shore. You can also fill a cooler with yellow perch and smallmouth bass. If you’re looking for a fight, then set your sights on salmon and silver bullet steelhead. If you’re looking for a bigger fight, a four-foot-long American alligator weighing eighty pounds was captured in Scajaquada Creek after a four-day hunt back in 2001. Gator aid came in the form of the local dogcatcher, and it was strictly catch and release, as the reptile was given a one-way ticket to a game farm in Florida.
Songwriter Jack Yellen (1892–1991), who emigrated from Poland when he was five years old and grew up in the Buffalo area, scribed “Happy Days Are Here Again,” which became Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s campaign theme song in 1932, and that of subsequent Democrats, until it was co-opted by Reagan Republicans in 1980. Yellen was always amused by the fact that he wrote the song in just thirty minutes for a relatively unheard of movie called Chasing Rainbows, released shortly after the stock market crash of October 1929 marked the onset of the Great Depression.
Although we proudly claim our share of standouts and eccentrics, the denizens of B-lo don’t have a tremendous interest in the peccadilloes of politicians and the rehab stints of celebrities. We’re more apple brown betty than crème brûlée. The Buffalo and Erie County Library has a first edition of American writer Henry David Thoreau’s Walden (a.k.a. Life in the Woods) in its fabulous rare-books collection. However, Thoreau is not necessarily a hero in my hometown. Buffalonians know that, despite his belief in the divinity of manual labor, Thoreau was wrong about a lot of things. First, you don’t traipse off to live alone in a cabin in the woods because (a) it’s boring; and (b) you might freeze to death. And let’s rather call Nature Boy’s cabin a dorm room, because he walked into town almost every day and regularly went home to raid the cookie jar and have his laundry done. Plus, his mom delivered care packages containing homemade meals, pies, and donuts every Saturday.
Thoreau most famously said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Now one could just as easily say this about Bills fans, but I beg to disagree and believe that those fanatics out in subzero weather with DOLPHINS BLOW painted in bright blue across their bare chests are passionate, engaged with humanity, and leading lives of thunderous hope, not only for that Super Bowl ring, but for their children to have good lives in a world devoid of poverty, disease, and brutality. And they’re thankful we’re not home to the Detroit Lions.
Second-most–famously, Thoreau said, “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears.” Now picture a high school marching band stomping around outside on a crisp fall Buffalo day with the French horn player turning at the twenty-yard line, the timpanist heading off toward the concession stand, and all the while everyone is pounding out flats and sharps exactly as they please.
Thoreau died from bronchitis after going out alone on a late-night expedition in a rainstorm to count the rings of a tree stump. Shortly before he passed away, his aunt asked if he’d made peace with God. Thoreau told her that he didn’t know they’d quarreled. This seems a good place to mention that he was a Unitarian and helped to advance the belief that man was a part of nature, not separate from it. However, he was such a devout Unitarian that he had to resign being Unitarian because he felt being Unitarian precluded him from being a joiner.
No, Buffalonians have it right. Join the club and pay the dues. Find others. Celebrate your joys and mourn your losses together. Stick with the herd. Swim with the school. Stay with the flock. And my mother says to wear a hat.
About the Author
Laura Pedersen is a former New York Times columnist and the best-selling author of ten books, including the award-winning humorous memoir Buffalo Gal. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Late Night with David Letterman, Good Morning America, The Today Show, Primetime Live, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Pedersen divides her time between Amherst, New York, and Manhattan. More information can be found at www.LauraPedersenBooks.com.
Laura Pedersen, Buffalo Unbound
