Street barkers did a smashing business in the sale of canes and badges. Few people on the street could be found who did not posses one or the other. As crowds continued to swell, barkers, much to their horror, ran out of goods to sell and began buying any and all sorts of food, drink and objects at full retail in the open stores to resell, unlicensed, on the street right outside at a handsome profit. With so many people and so few police, the risk was worth it.
September 3rd, 1907 would be remembered as the night that Buffalo completely ran out of souvenirs.
Wednesday September 4, 1907
Old Home Week
Canada Day
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Twenty-five thousand people who jammed into a hollow square saw the Seventh Royal Fusiliers—500 strong from London, Ontario—troop the colors at The Front on Wednesday afternoon.
Like regulars, the Fusiliers in scarlet tunics, blue trousers and Waterloo bearskin busbies, performed the intricate ceremonial which is honored by age-long British military traditions. Seldom had any such a pageant been enacted at The Front, which had seen many a military maneuver over the years. Nothing exactly corresponding to trooping the colors exists in the United States services, and therefore, to easily two-thirds of the day’s crowd, the spectacle was a revelation.
Bearing arms and carrying the British and regimental colors, the lads from London marched and counter-marched, wheeled and saluted, while the regimental band of 50 pieces under Conductor Slatter played national airs. Zealously they guarded the colors, proudly and with due solemnity they enlisted it—all within a stone’s throw of American Fort Porter and within eyesight of the spot just across the Niagara River where lay the crumbling ruins of old British Fort Erie.
When the Fusiliers’ band played the British national anthem, clapping began away over to the left of the line. Before six bars had been completed the applause had spread entirely round the square of spectators and none could scarcely refrain from cheering. It was a thrilling moment. Loyal Canadian soldiers of the King honoring in their most imposing ceremonial the old flag, and true Americans honoring themselves by honoring that flag which has stood for so much in the civilization of the globe—the scene was enough to thrill any but a stolid, to hearten any but a dolt.
How well the Fusiliers under their popular commander Colonel Frank Aspinall Reid did their work, none but they who saw the spectacle know—and they probably would find it hard to describe. Doughty men are the Fusiliers. They marched in the hot sun in the parade with the Thirteenth, and then over to The Front, but not a single man fell out, not one sought a doctor. Their scarlet tunics are not exactly light weight, and as for their headpieces—bearskin busbies—that tells it all in two words. Trooping the colors took 40 minutes, yet the line never wavered. Every man knew that no matter how they had excelled at other cities across the Dominion, they had a reputation to uphold over here.
Afterward, at the military parade downtown, two portly captains of the Canadian regiments, one of the Royal Fusiliers of London, the other of the Thirteenth Regiment of Hamilton, deserve notice in their march down Main Street. They were not only in contrast to the slim and trim youths who compose the regiments, but they showed that they were in their element on parade.
He of the Fusiliers, who wore busbies, marched gallantly and might have posed as the typical John Bull.
He of the Thirteenth, who wore light white helmets, looked fresh and cool, as if he might have had a piece of John Sullivan’s ice hid under the headgear. He swung along with an easy stride and was a smile all over.
Both carried their swords at the proper angle and evoked thunderous applause.
Delaware Avenue and Main Street had their walks lined to the curb with expectant thousands long in advance of the hour of the Canadians’ display. It was a close day with a hot sun and those whose curiosity kept them in the crush suffered. The vendors of things circulated everywhere and he who was not decorated with a Canadian flag can attribute the fault to himself or a lack of cash. Even Alderman Sullivan was observed sitting with one in the grandstand. He got up and waved it bravely in the infection which caught the crowd as the parade passed. “No, it wasn’t the color of the coats that made me do it,” he explained to Judge Stern after. “But those who honor us, I believe in honoring them.”
In numbers it was a small parade compared to what has been shown and would be shown during the remainder of Old Home Week, but in nattiness and excellence of march, there were none to compare with It. The redcoats, busbies and white helmets of the Canadians made a beautiful moving line, as viewed from the reviewing stand in Main Street. More than ten thousand Canadian visitors joined by many more thousands of Americans bordered the parade route and cheered riotously,
The Express reported “All along the line the people were grinning and enthusiastic and the Canadians were given a rousing, rollicking welcome which surely must have done their hearts proud. It certainly did ours.”
That day was the first day of the new school year in Buffalo but fully seventy five percent of the city’s students had declined to attend.
The Grotesque Parade
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The evening of Canada Day the high point of all high points took place along Main Street in the form of the Grotesque Parade. A number equaling three quarters of Buffalo’s entire population—300,000 people—crowded the streets along the parade route to witness this pageant of marching mirth, mimicry, monstrosity and monkeydoodlism. It set a record for crowds that would never again be equaled in the city.
The throngs along the Main Street, Ellicott, Chippewa, and Broadway parade route burst all bounds, literally. What might be looming ahead was evident as early as 6 o’clock, when folk who wanted to be sure of a vantage ground began pouring downtown. By 7 o’clock all the streetcars on all the tracks were so crowded that men were hanging on the sides and the trolleys passed through crossings without halting. Men and women stood in bunches vainly pleading to the conductors to stop.
For blocks even before reaching Main Street the surging crowds brought the streetcars to a standstill. It was impossible for them to make headway. Their passengers disembarked where the cars stalled and hoofed it the rest of the way to their destination. Along Main Street extending from Exchange to Goodell the sidewalks were unable to contain the seething masses. There were policemen every dozen feet vainly trying to keep the people within the curb line, but even well before 8 o’clock the numbers told the tale. The wire barrier marking the line within which the crowd was supposed to stand was swept away all along the street like a piece of thread, and forward surged the crowd to the streetcar tracks.
The best efforts of the police could keep only a narrow passage open for the paraders. The line of spectators on each side of the passageway averaged twenty deep. Back of the three first rows the only view which could be had was that of the floats and wagons and men on horseback. It is a safe assumption that fully two-thirds of the night’s crowd had but a poor idea of the spectacle which it came out to view.
It seemed as if all the clowns and cutups of a score of circuses, freak shows, midways, county fairs and vaudeville and comic opera companies had broken loose, formed a union and were turning out as the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Merryandrews, Tomfools and Dam-phools.
There had never been another such aggregation of sights and sounds on earth. At least, Buffalo, which during Old Home Week surely was the center of the universe, was pleased to admit that it had never before created, seen, nor heard anything like that night’s Grotesque Parade.
As to sound, it ranged from the absurdities of the words of the unending Schnitzelbank as sung by lusty German throats, down through the dippy discords of burlesque bands and woosy windjammers, to the nerve-crushing noises of the simulated serenade and the shocking charivari—or shiveree, as Herr Schwabl’s Sprudels would perhaps better pronounce it.
As to sights, it galloped madly up and down the gamut of all that is comical, ridiculous, queer, quaint, unique, grotesque, farcical an
d foolish—and that’s going some. In spots it was tamely humorous. In others excruciatingly funny. In the ensemble it was a spectacle worth going miles to see. And yet it was but one feature of one day’s program of Buffalo’s Old Home Week reunion carnival.
The Grotesque Parade was seen by the biggest crowd that had ever turned out in the city. There was hardly a square foot of space on Main street from Exchange Street to Chippewa that was not occupied by a pair of human feet. Windows, roofs, fire-escapes, posts, pillars, railings, stepladders and every other possible perch for both feet or part of a foot was made use of. Chippewa Street, Ellicott Street and Broadway, along the line of march, were hardly less thronged.
Did the crowds enjoy the show? The answer lay in the roars and shrieks of laughter, the piercing whistles, the horn-tooting, the hand clapping and the cheering which the following morning still rang in celebrants’ ears. Faces and sides still ached from the unusual strain placed upon them.
The panoramic pageant of miscellaneous monstrosities galloped into view of the packed reviewing stand at 9 o’clock. It began with about the only serious picture there was in the whole procession—a platoon of mounted police and grand Marshal Willert, in silk hat, mounted and dignified on a gorgeous calico horse.
Just behind rolled the old-fashioned horse-drawn streetcar that went out of service only sixteen years previous. The car was loaded with distinguished passengers—Buffalo Mayor J. N. Adam; Mayor Coatsworth of Toronto; Mayor Steuart of Hamilton; Mayor Judd of London; President Clawson of the Old Home Week Association, and other officers of that body. As a Director of the Old Home Week spectacular Alderman Sullivan was invited and should have been there among them, but he apologetically declined, for he had crazier plans in mind.
Following the street-car full of dignitaries, the sight of the odd spectacle that followed it—grotesque in its combination of things ancient with men modern—caused the crowds up and down the streets to cheer and clap enthusiastically.
An imitation hobo pranced freakishly in front of the 74th Regiment Band playing, what else? The Schnitzelbank. The everlasting Schnitzelbank song was played by band after band, sung by groups of marchers and echoed by hilarious spectators.
The Uncle Sam Marching Club which followed the 74th Regiment Band was more picturesque than grotesque in its natty identical Uncle Sam suits, with blue swallowtails and red and white breeches and gray plug hats. They carried canes and marched their prettiest, about 300 Uncle Sams in all.
Then began the comedy. The Pipeline League, composed of clowns, coons, tramps, Germans, Jews and Irishmen, filled a big float drawn by four horses and bearing the greeting, “Welcome Home, Son and Brother.”
There was real historic interest in the vehicle that followed, an old-fashioned stagecoach, the General Scott, which ran on the Accommodation Line from the foot of Main Street to Cold Spring back in 1840. The sign on it said “Fare 6 and 1/2 cents; 20 fares for $1.”
There were four sets of Sprudels in the parade: Herr Schwabl’s Sprudels, Herr Carl Meyer’s Sprudels, Der Spring Street Sprudels, and Herr Johan Sullivan’s Teutonic Hibernian Sprudels. Long known city-wide as the jokester of Buffalo’s Common Council, the crowd knew they were in for a good laugh when Herr John P. Sullivan’s Sprudel troupe marched into view first.
Headed by a small white-trimmed float full of pretty young girls, a group of mounted clowns with a dog that walked on its hind legs, and by Lay’s Band, Herr Sullivan’s fun-makers came along 200 strong. They had three floats. The first was really and truly a schnitzelbank—a cooper’s bench, mounted on a wagon, with a cooper busily at work paring down staves. Surrounding him were finished barrels filled with a bunch of clowns performing antics.
And the Band played...would anyone like to take a guess what? A huge chart of the wildly popular song of the moment, Schnitzelbank, with its characters representing a collection of cooking and eating utensils, sausages, beer glasses, and miscellaneous other things, each of which formed the basis of a fresh verse of the interminable ditty, was borne aloft by two queer clowns.
“Herr” Sullivan conducted the vast throng of onlookers with his wooden teacher’s pointer, selecting the object of that verse’s attention so the crowd could sing it. Sullivan and his merry troupe of cross-cultural minstrels decked themselves out in lederhosen which were worn over shamrock-patterned shirts, leading the crowd in a rousing, loopy rendition of Schnitzelbank in Irish-accented German.
Then followed a heterogeneous aggregation of zanies, buffoons, coons, apes, devils, dwarfs, spooks, what-is-its and other masqueraders made up of the Alderman’s children, nephews, nieces, cousins, friends, enemies, neighbors and virtual strangers bearing surnames like Sullivan, Saulter and Nugent, Halleran and Driscoll, Shea, Dalton, O’Brien and Kennedy, each of whom wore on his back, head or waist the particular character sculpted in papier mache of the schnitzelbank chart which was supposed to represent.
“Kurz und lang”, “dicke frau” and “grosses glas” were some of the characters thus represented. The alderman’s seventeen year old son Daniel was dressed as “dicke frau”—fat lady—and personified a decidedly masculine yet hilarious stout woman, receiving a chorus of wolf-whistles from the gentlemen in the crowd whenever he pulled up his skirt. Delores Jean reveled in the attention of the assembled 300,000, wearing her overturned schuper proudly on her head, smiling and waving at everyone as she pranced to the music.
Daughter Mazie was dressed as “Tannenbaum” complete with tinsel and electric lights, and setting aside her usual self-consciousness, animatedly whirled and twirled and danced to the tunes. Her cousin, twenty-one year old Jim Jr., with his face painted red, was encased in a giant papier-mache-over-chickenwire bratwurst, which did not prevent him in the least from executing an Irish jig to accompany the Schnitzelbank song.
Eighteen year old Thomas Sullivan, almost six feet and still growing, carried little sister Mildred on his shoulders, representing kurz und lang. Mildred was thrilled to be transported at such an altitude and to be the center of attention in front of more people than she had ever seen in her life.
Whatever shyness or reserve any of the Sullivan kinder had once had was quickly dispelled by the mammoth and wildly enthusiastic audience cheering their every step. The Aldermen looked around every few yards to keep checking on his brood, and was tickled to see his previously-reluctant participants enjoying the time of their lives.
“Grosses durst,”—big thirst—was epitomized by a horse-drawn wagon filled with vari-costumed freaks drinking beer from schupers, the merry group made up of all the Sullivans’ Irish and German neighbor-saloon-keepers along South Street and Hamburg Street. Every saloon was represented, its name painted on the wagon. Another feature of Herr Sullivan’s Teutonic Hibernian Sprudels’ outfit were a band of dirty-faced rowdy newsboys chewing on stubby cigars, interspersed with girls dressed as dirty-faced boys, with their long hair tucked up under newsboy caps, also singing the Schnitzelbank song.
The Sullivan Brigade was followed by a troupe of green-haired acrobatic clowns who did their tumbling stunts as they marched along; a live chicken in a cage carried by a coon; a gorilla and an orchestra of grotesque soldiers whose instruments were teapots, through the spouts of which they hummed—one might have guessed it—the Schnitzelbank song.
Then into view came a clown on an old-fashioned high bicycle who rode ahead of a troupe of male and female masqueraders, among whom were veiled brides, sober monks, grimacing monsters, cowboys, louts and rubes. Close behind was a fake orchestra composed of dilapidated fiddles, triangles, bones, accordions and other antiquated instruments.
Next came a float that made an extraordinary hit with the crowds. A six horse team dragged an immense dray heavily loaded with bags of cement labeled to represent money, while the fore end was loaded with oil barrels representing more money. Across the sides of the wagon were big signs on which was printed the sum, “$90,000,000.” Another big sign on the horses read: “On the way to the disinfecting plant.” Dr. Jo
hn T. Claria, dressed as Uncle Sam, drove. Not a word of Rockefeller or Standard Oil appeared on the signs, but the crowd caught on immediately and roared with laughter and clapped with applause. The float was the device of Andrew D. White, a local lawyer.
“The Twins”—a man six feet nine inches tall, and Chiquita the midget, three feet, two inches—were one of the entries for the small-group prizes. The Oakwood Club Collection of Clowns; The 33 Bunch of Vegetarians, Prohibitionists and Escaped Lunatics; Mother Katzenjammer And Her Kids; The Nouveau Grotesque Band (one of whom in tights wore an illuminated carbuncle); the Zimmerküche Club, bearing a big cinnamon cake and including representations of women in various stages of undress; the Black Rock Coach (which it was privately reported was sneaked out of an old woman’s barn at the Rock, where it had been stored for over 44 years); the Hamburg Street Buffoon Society Of Odd Disfigurements, with participants having affixed hideous papier-mache appendages to their heads, backs and faces; the Spring Street Sprudels, a bunch of youngsters with odd costumes half-animal, half human; Mrs. Casey’s Laundry; the Mayor of Dublin; a burlesque chariot drawn by Roman gladiators; a troop of 30 men and women on sleek horses from the local riding academy The Luna Park Cowboys—these and a multitude of other features followed one after another in kaleidoscopic confusion that kept the crowd roaring.
One of the hits of the parade was the Waiting At The Church float of John Dupont. Beside a miniature church, aglow from lights within, and clanging an alleged wedding bell, sat a bewildered bride in full costume with a bunch of limp beets for a bouquet, surrounded by her bridesmaids carrying cabbages, a flower girl wantonly tossing fake dollar bills to the wind by the fistful from her basket, and the bride’s bankrupt father crying hysterically.
There were other groups and individual features too numerous to itemize, all of which contributed to the mile of merry nonsense that wended its way slowly over the line and back again—allowing all the merrymakers to be viewed twice—to where the prizes were handed out by Vice Chairman Hoteller. It took less than an hour to pass a given point, but it was one hour of solid fun for the most immense crowd of spectators Buffalo has ever seen.
Murderers, Scoundrels and Ragamuffins Page 36