Buffalo Unbound, page 3
Thumps aside, Mr. Leslie was everyone’s favorite teacher because he was in charge of ordering movies for our school. He showed lots of educational films featuring avalanches and volcanoes and then played the horrifying parts backward and forward dozens of times. This was before computer-generated special effects, so an avalanche in reverse with people becoming unburied alive and catapulting upward had the same impact on us as when Star Wars arrived a few years later. We kids went wild, heaving with laughter and screaming, “Do it again!” Retainers were swallowed. Lunches were lost.
Old Fort Niagara was part of some major Western New York history going all the way back to 1678. Originally a French fortification, it fell after a nineteen-day siege of British redcoats, American colonists, and Native American warriors during the Battle of Fort Niagara in July of 1759. This was an important turning point in the French and Indian War, and had the Brits not prevailed we’d all be drinking Perrier and taking the entire month of August off as paid vacation.
Fort George sprang up in 1802 as headquarters for the British Army in Canada and would be the setting for several significant battles in the War of 1812, also known as The War I Always Have to Look Up. Basically, the United States landed in the middle of a squabble between France and England, we got jiggy and tried to invade Canada, we were repelled, the British got jiggy and tried to invade us, and the boundaries ended up right back where they were. If you, too, are feeling jiggy, the forts offer special events, including battle reenactments complete with bombardments and military music. However, calling the cavalry on cell phones is not permitted.
Before the war wound down in 1814, the village of Buffalo was burned to the ground. In April of 1813, the Americans had crossed Lake Ontario to York (now Toronto) and torched public buildings. More skirmishes followed. In mid-December of 1813, the Americans burned Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake), Ontario, and the British, along with help from some non-peace-pipe-smoking Indians, retaliated on December 30 by incinerating Buffalo. Happy New Year! I’ll have that drink now.
Lost were 143 residences, businesses, and churches, with twelve villagers left dead, while in the surrounding countryside 334 houses, barns, and stores were destroyed. The redcoats did such a thorough job in town that only the stone jail, a blacksmith shop, and a cottage remained, the last being purposely spared. Margaret St. John, the Heroine of Buffalo, had refused to move her nine children when the British approached, and their general was impressed by her pluck. The mom of my friend and neighbor Mary Pyne had nine children, so I can explain this situation based on firsthand knowledge. The Pynes went on a family vacation exactly once in thirty years, never to be repeated. Packing for that many kids is truly impossible, and when Mary got pinkeye they had to come back early anyway.
Fortunately, the Buffalo locals of the early nineteenth century had their priorities straight, and Pomeroy’s Tavern was the first thing rebuilt. Residents were nothing if not creative and resilient. Not surprisingly, the conflagration spurred demand for the city’s earliest brick homes.
The city’s first physician, Dr. Cyrenius Chapin, took it upon himself to open the first drugstore, and, after losing a patient, he became the first funeral director. During the War of 1812, he was promoted from lieutenant colonel to colonel while engaged in all sorts of derring-do, and he was the final holdout during the Battle of Buffalo, when the British temporarily drove off the city’s American defenders. Next, the ever-entrepreneurial Chapin appointed himself negotiator in chief, but the British rejected his credentials and he ended up as a prisoner of the Crown for nine months. Over the following decade, Chapin helped bring the Erie Canal to Buffalo, organize the first county fair, and found the Medical Society of Erie County, of which he became the first president. Chapin Parkway is named after him.
By 1826, the Buffalo/Black Rock area was back in action, with a population of 8,653 and over a thousand homes, businesses, and breweries. There were four public schools, four newspapers, four houses of worship, at least three times as many brothels, and ten times as many saloons. Still, after seeing dozens of books about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, and nary a one about the night they drove old Buffalo down, a person wants to say, “Hey, we got our butts burned too!”
The redcoats were finally gone for good from American soil, leaving behind a yen for baked beans and Shakespearean sonnets, weird spellings of words like theatre and catalogue, and the urge to name our dogs King and Duke. Had it really been a wise idea to march around the thick woods of Western New York and harass people while dressed in bright scarlet jackets with shiny gold epaulets in the first place? The Americans would continue to make a few lame tries at taking Canada, mostly involving pigs—the Aroostook War of 1838–39 resulted in the death of one pig, and the Pig War of 1859 was triggered by the shooting of a pig.
This final Canadian offensive could only have been hatched by a people of such creativity and imagination to include James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, poet Brendan Behan, who on his deathbed said to the nun caring for him, “Bless you Sister, may all your sons grow up to be Bishops,” and Buffalonian Chauncey Olcott, who wrote and composed “My Wild Irish Rose” and cowrote the lyrics for “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”; a people who, if three are put in a pub together, will somehow end up with four political parties. In 1866, an Irish nationalist organization called the Fenians decided it’d be a grand idea to use Buffalo as a base to attack British targets in Canada and thereby persuade the British to withdraw from Ireland. It brings to mind the definition of Irish Alzheimer’s: you only remember the grudges, which is not to be confused with Irish amnesia, where you only forget the food. Ironically, though the raids didn’t do much for Irish independence, they helped galvanize support for the confederation of Canada and the collective security of nationhood.
Rather than toss tea in a harbor, storm bastilles, or don black berets, Canadians eventually just asked nicely for their independence. After patching together some provinces, territories, and Tim Hortons donut shops, the Canada Act of 1982 severed any lingering legal dependence on the British parliament. However, to be courteous, they left the queen on some of their money and on the nation’s Great Seal, even though she doesn’t visit as often as she could.
Mo’ Better Bagels
You couldn’t beat the early nineteenth century for excitement in Western New York. In 1815, New York State purchased Grand Island, a thirty-three-square-mile parcel smack-dab in the middle of the Niagara River between Buffalo and Niagara Falls, from the Iroquois for a thousand dollars on the barrelhead and a yearly fee of five hundred dollars, which is paid every June to this day. However, the Seneca tribe, part of the Iroquois Confederacy, retained hunting rights. In 1993, the Seneca tried to get back the land, which is now home to a population of about nineteen thousand, including the popular indie-alternative-rock band Inlite. Their argument is that Grand Island was taken without the approval of Washington, and this violates the Trade and Intercourse Act of 1790, which states that Native American lands can’t be sold without consent of the federal government. Through a series of court decisions in 2002, 2004, and 2006, the Seneca Nation lost their case.
Okay, this is really not a joke. In 1824, playwright, soldier, impresario, and utopian Mordecai Manuel Noah acquired two thousand acres on Grand Island to found a Jewish homeland. It was to be called Ararat, after Mount Ararat (in what’s now Turkey), the biblical resting place of Noah’s Ark, and if it succeeded could’ve potentially saved us from the tasteless frozen bagels of the 1960s and ’70s, which easily doubled as hockey pucks.
Noah believed that some of the Native Americans were from the Lost Tribes of Israel, and it’s possible his ideas influenced Joseph Smith, who founded the Latter-day Saint movement (a.k.a. the Mormon Church) a few years later. Noah was convinced that the Jews needed to return and rebuild their ancient homeland on Grand Island. However, the idea didn’t fly, and bad weather kept Noah from even making it to the dedication ceremony. Furthermore, I’m not sure if there’s a single synagogue on Grand Island today, though it’d be hard to find anyhow between the lawn statues of angels and Blessed Virgin Marys, or if you’re there around Eastertide, the warren of thirty-foot-high inflatable rabbits. And a recent swingers convention at the local Holiday Inn brought out plenty of pastors. In protest.
However, Grand Island is home to Martin’s Fantasy Island amusement park, which prides itself on being welcoming, safe, fun, and affordable. And even if most of the locals don’t throw Purim parties, many of us fondly remember the “Fun! Wow!” commercials of the 1970s. Men who were teens during that era of the shoulderless, sleeveless tube top, a.k.a boob tube, surely remember strategically positioning themselves where the Wild Mouse ride took its sharpest turn and often caused the cups of well-endowed women to runneth over.
As the Seneca lands were taken and they began leaving the Buffalo River settlement during the mid-1800s, a religious sect from Germany established the Ebenezer Community of True Inspiration, formally adopted communism, and developed a network of six villages with jointly owned mills, factories, and farms. However, as a friend from West Berlin once explained to me about East Germany in the 1970s, “Communism will never succeed because you cannot keep a German from working.” Similarly, in 1855 the Community of True Inspiration relocated to Iowa and went on to form a joint stock company for the purpose of manufacturing and selling Amana kitchen appliances. What started with a belief in mysticism and Pietism ended in the side-by-side refrigerator/freezer. And thank God for that.
Leave It to the Beavers
While people grow up singing “Dixie” down South and “(I’ve Got Spurs That) Jingle Jangle Jingle” out West, in New York State it’s “Fifteen Miles on the Erie Canal” (a.k.a. “Low Bridge, Everybody Down”). Ask any Buffalonian to fill in the blank: “I’ve got an old mule and her name is ___” (rhymes with Hal but starts with an S). This ditty was a staple in the repertoire of our elementary school music teacher, who similarly favored the French Canadian folk song “Alouette.” I subsequently discovered the latter was about tearing the feathers off the head of a beautiful skylark being prepared for the oven, and this song, in conjunction with my employment on a farm, was the reason I became a vegetarian. It was similarly traumatic to be told that “Ring around the Rosie” (or, if you were Catholic, “Ring around the Rosary”) was actually about the bubonic plague, and that’s why at the end “We all fall down!”
The creation of the Erie Canal reads much like an O. Henry story, known for their great characterizations and surprise endings. Flour merchant Jesse Hawley went to debtor’s prison in 1807 after he lost money because of the poor roadways available to move his goods. From his jail cell, writing under the heroic name Hercules, Hawley published more than a dozen essays on the prospect of a canal from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. Many said they were the ravings of a lunatic; however, a few prominent men, including future governor DeWitt Clinton, saw the seeds of genius.
George Washington, prior to becoming president, was in favor of a different gateway to the West—a canal from the Potomac River, on which he was coincidentally the largest property owner. In 1784, the enterprising father of our country raised funds for a private company to undertake his own project, which eventually collapsed. It was one of the few instances in history where a federally financed venture, in this case the Erie Canal, would manage to outperform entrepreneurship, even if it was judged to be an enormous boondoggle along the way.
Joseph Ellicott (1760–1826), who had laid out the city of Buffalo, fought for the Erie Canal’s western terminus to be in Buffalo and not the Black Rock area to the northwest, which had a more protected harbor. He succeeded. (Don’t feel bad, because 120 years later Black Rock would get Rich Products, and if you’ve ever had their éclairs or mousse cakes you know what I’m talking about.) However, Ellicott was plagued by depression, and family members sent him to Bellevue Hospital in New York City, where he hanged himself in 1826.
Still, Joseph Ellicott is to Western New York what John and Robert Kennedy are to the rest of the country. His name is on two towns, a village, a square, a building, a street, a dormitory, a creek, a park, a road, and an elementary school. A bridge and a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor are surely not far behind.
At least these names have a provenance, whereas the person who went berserk with the words maple (Maple Road, Maplemere, Maplewood, Maple West—eh, are we in Canada?) and beaver (Beaver Island, Beaver Meadow, Beaver Lake, Beaver Hollow) was just plain unimaginative. I guess it could be worse. In Manhattan, there’s a neighborhood called Turtle Bay, which is home to neither bay nor turtle, at least of the free-ranging or nonchocolate varieties.
Another song, “Erie Canal,” sheds considerably more light on the times with the chorus “Oh, the E-ri-e is a risin’, and the gin is gettin’ low, and I scarcely think we’ll get a drink ’till we get to Buffalo-oh-oh.” More than three thousand Irish laborers were employed on this early mass transit project. And to get work on the canal done quickly, there was an incentive plan—casks of whiskey placed along the Buffalo stretch for intrepid workers to find. Meantime, two oxen drivers named their animals Jesus Christ and God Almighty so they could swear with impunity up and down the canal.
Finally, on October 26, 1825, Governor DeWitt Clinton started a ten-day inaugural journey along the 365-mile Erie Canal, which now connected Lake Erie to the Hudson River. Clinton brought with him two barrels of water from Lake Erie and upon arriving in New York City poured the contents into the Atlantic, kicking off a hundred years of prosperity for Buffalo and other towns along the artificial waterway and transforming New York into the Empire State. Travel time for passengers and cargo went from two months in a bumpy wagon to ten days on a smooth canal boat. The cost of shipping a ton of goods from Albany to Buffalo dropped from one hundred dollars to ten dollars, and enough tolls were collected so that the canal turned a profit just ten years after opening. A seemingly impossible undertaking known as “Clinton’s Folly” or “Clinton’s Ditch” was quickly relabeled “The Eighth Wonder of the World” and is still considered to be one of the greatest engineering marvels of modern times.
Buffalo grew along the banks of Lake Erie while handling massive shipments of grain and other raw materials sent from the Rockies and the Midwest to the growing eastern seaboard and on to Europe. While making New York City the nation’s richest port, the canal brought a surge in population and commerce, which led Buffalo to incorporate as a city in 1832 with about ten thousand people. Back then, cockfights were permitted but were called “chicken disputes.” (Obviously the historical dotted line to the Korean War’s billing as a “conflict” and Vietnam being labeled a “police action.”) However, the city charter forbade prostitution, billiards, card playing, and that ultimate vice, bowling. As it turned out, aside from tracking the sound of wooden pins being hit, these rules were difficult to enforce. Canal Street alone boasted over a hundred bars and brothels, earning the nickname “The Wickedest Street in the World,” which is so much catchier than “You’ve got a friend in Pennsylvania” or “Oklahoma is OK.”
Living in Buffalo during the 1970s, it was sad to look back at a time when canal traffic was heavy and the city was a thriving center of industry, the western outpost of the East and the East’s gateway to the West. But the famed area is experiencing a rebirth. The Erie Canal Harbor in downtown Buffalo, the historic western terminus, now has a naval and military park complete with ships that can be toured, including the USS The Sullivans. The Sullivans was the first American navy ship to be named after more than one person. The five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, all enlisted on January 3, 1942, under the condition that they serve together; they perished together on November 13, 1942, when the USS Juneau sank after being hit by a torpedo during the Battle of Guadalcanal.
In addition to the park, there’s also an aerospace museum and plans for small businesses in canal-era-style buildings laid out on the original street grid. Only, watch out kids, because there are so many informational placards and interpretive signs that the place just screams educational field trip. If you suddenly feel a skull-shattering thump or hear the squishy wet sound of a not yet fully formed brain smacking into a hard skull, it’s most certainly the ghost of Mr. Leslie.
Likewise, the waterway itself is staging a comeback. Although they weren’t pulled by mules, 112 commercial shipments navigated the Erie Canal in 2009, with the number expected to rise as the high price of fuel makes barges a cost-effective alternative to trucks.
A scenic place for plying pleasure craft, the canal also features walking and biking trails. And while stuck on an Amtrak train outside of Chittenango, New York—birthplace of Wizard of Oz creator Frank Baum, complete with yellow-brick road, which is now a sidewalk in this age of downsizing—one might decide it’s actually faster to take a barge on the Erie Canal from Albany to Buffalo. Even one pulled by mules.
