For young men, the sixties centered on rejecting traditional bourgeois goals. This required growing long hair and pork-chop sideburns, donning fringed suede vests over wide-collared shirts open to the navel and flared trousers worn above the leather ankle boots of a tango dancer, and applying Hai Karate Oriental Lime cologne in large doses. When it came to women, the birth control pill had recently arrived on the mass-market contraceptive scene, thereby giving females a new sexual liberty, especially when combined with micro-miniskirts and thigh-high white go-go boots. Or as comedian Lily Tomlin said about the sixties, “the only thing we didn’t pull out of was Vietnam.” Though, no matter how many conquests any hippie worth his or her hip-hugger jeans was able to claim, it’s doubtful they could compete with what had constituted the secret sex life of President John F. Kennedy.
In 1965, a loaf of bread cost twenty-one cents, a half gallon of milk fifty-three cents (delivered), and a five-pound bag of sugar was fifty-nine cents. Stamps were a nickel, the average price of a new home $21,500, and gas cost thirty-one cents for a regular gallon. The Sound of Music hit theaters on Memorial Day weekend, and admission was a quarter. In order to vote you had to be at least twenty-one, but to drink and be drafted you only had to be eighteen. Soon the hills were alive with the Vietnam cry of “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote,” which helped lower the voting age, while increased concerns about drunk driving eventually raised the legal age to drink.
Three
American Buffalo…
The King of Cool and Demon Rum
Around the time I was born, Buffalo was the picture of an industrial city in decline, much like Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh—all part of that mid-twentieth-century constellation of decay known as the Rust Belt. However, this had not always been the case.
Located on the western edge of New York State and along the eastern shore of Lake Erie, arguably the least great of the Great Lakes, the area that includes Buffalo was “purchased” from the Seneca Indians. This was accomplished through a series of slippery treaties and, one assumes, while looking down the barrel of a gun. The Indians believed the world was created on the back of a giant turtle, as opposed to the Christian Genesis story. Thus, it’s safe to say the original inhabitants probably had slightly different views on land ownership. For example, that the earth should be shared by everyone, and that treaties are long-term agreements.
Much like today’s planned communities that take their names from native trees and birds, like Oakwood and Meadowlark (after removing most of the aforementioned oaks, meadows, and larks for the development), Indian names were kept for the newly established English towns and villages—Tonawanda (“swift running water”), Cheektowaga
(“place of the crabapple tree”), Lackawanna (“the meeting of two streams”)—while the Natives were sent packing. Same with Buffalo’s
downtown streets called Huron, Mohawk, Pawnee, Tuscarora, Shoshone, and Scajaquada. Even Lake Erie takes its name from the tribe of Iroquois who once lived on the south shore. Their totem animal was the bobcat or puma, and they wore its tail as a ceremonial headdress. Erie means “long-tailed.”
The Holland Land Company paid ten thousand dollars for a large parcel of land in 1797, which had the Genesee River to the east, Lake Ontario to the north, the Niagara River and Lake Erie to the west, and Pennsylvania to the south. In 1803, Joseph Ellicott, an agent for the company, laid out an elegant grid pattern with curves to accommodate Lake Erie, making Buffalo one of the first planned cities in America. He modeled it after Washington, DC, where he’d worked with his brother, civil engineer Major Andrew Ellicott, who was an assistant to Pierre L’Enfant, architect of the new nation’s capital.
Buffalo was incorporated in 1816 and began to thrive when the Erie Canal was completed in 1825. This 363-mile-long artificial waterway from Buffalo to Albany and then down along the Hudson River to New York City made Buffalo the transfer point between canal boats and Great Lakes vessels. The first iron foundry went up in 1826,
and the first steam engine plant in 1829. By 1845, the city also had a stove factory, bell foundry, nail factory, cabinet factory, and dozens of other plants turning out products such as mirrors, bathtubs, and picture frames.
In the meantime, the fertile soil of the Midwest had turned the Plains states into the breadbasket of America. While visiting Buffalo in October of 1861, the English author Anthony Trollope wrote, “I went down to the granaries and climbed up into the elevators. I saw the wheat running in rivers from one vessel into another, and from the railroad vans up into the huge bins on the top stores of the warehouses—for these rivers of food run up hill as easily as they do down.”
Trollope failed to mention that when it came to nightlife, Buffalo was an early version of Las Vegas. The city, with its sailor-rich environment, was perhaps the most notorious port on the Great Lakes in the 1870s and 1880s, according to historian Frederick Stonehouse.
Back then, 60 percent of the buildings on Canal Street in the infamous waterfront area known as The Flats were bordellos, and 30 percent were taverns. A popular hangout in the 1880s and 1890s was Boney’s Concert Hall, where the bar was almost seventy feet long and staffed by a dozen bartenders and thirty or so prostitutes with rooms upstairs. “A trip to America wasn’t complete without including The Flats on the itinerary,” writes Stonehouse.
By 1900, Buffalo was the eighth largest city in the country in terms of population, about to overtake Chicago for the number seven slot. The rapid development of railroads had turned it into a major grain and livestock market. In fact, Buffalo is where the grain elevator was developed. As the Northeast turned increasingly industrial, the Midwest provided its food supply.
The railroads allowed for large-scale steel production by linking Buffalo to the coalfields of Pennsylvania and utilizing iron ore from Minnesota that could be easily transported across the Great Lakes by massive cargo ships. The Edmund Fitzgerald was such a vessel; it sank in 1975 and became immortalized in a song by Gordon Lightfoot.
Just twenty miles north, the city of Niagara Falls was fast becoming the Silicon Valley of the new century, attracting the nation’s best scientists and inventors with the possibilities of hydroelectric power. And now that reliable transportation was available to connect it with other major cities, the magnificence of the falls attracted travelers, artists, and famous writers. It became renowned as the honeymoon capital of the world. (Or “a bride’s second biggest disappointment,” according to Oscar Wilde.)
From an Indian word meaning “thundering water,” Niagara is a remnant of the last ice age, when melting glaciers sent torrents of water down the Niagara River. With an almost ever-present rainbow arched above the mist, the falls are truly one of the most spectacular sights in the world. They provided the breathtaking scenery for the popular 1953 movie Niagara, a thriller starring blond bombshell Marilyn Monroe, as well as a nail-biting rescue scene from 1978’s Superman, featuring Christopher Reeve as the man of steel.
The falls are actually two separate waterfalls. On the American side is the cleverly named American Falls, which is 1,060 feet wide and 167 feet high. Just opposite, but on the Canadian side, is Horseshoe Falls, which is 2,600 feet wide and 158 feet high. Unfortunately for Americans, the Canadians got the slightly better-looking falls. Fortunately for Americans, many people say the best view of it is from the American side.
The transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, was the final piece making it possible to transport large amounts of raw materials, supplies, and finished merchandise from one end of the country to the other. With the Erie Canal and a major railway hub, Buffalo was now a significant link between the old country and the new frontier, with goods moving from Europe and the Southeast to New York City, up to Buffalo on the canal, and then across to Chicago and the fast-developing Plains, Rockies, and California.
In 1901, Buffalo boasted sixty millionaires, more per capita than any other city in the United States. This new wealth, created by entrepreneuria
l titans of business and industry, allowed Buffalo’s leaders to build a culturally and architecturally grand city with the latest and greatest in commercial and governmental buildings, public parks, and elegant mansions. Spare-no-expense commissions attracted such famous architects as Stanford White, Louis Sullivan, H. H. Richardson, and Frank Lloyd Wright. The park system, planned by renowned landscape architect
Frederick Law Olmstead, became a splendid sanctuary for people seeking to escape the mills and factories and enjoy nature, much like Central Park in Manhattan, which Olmstead had designed a decade earlier.
The residents of Buffalo proudly sent two sons to the White House—Millard Fillmore (usually ranked as one of the worst presidents) and Grover Cleveland (ranked slightly better than the worst presidents). Prior to heading to Washington, Cleveland was mayor of Buffalo and, before that, sheriff of Erie County. In his capacity as sheriff, he put an end to public hangings by installing a screen in front of the proceedings. Furthermore, he saved the citizens the ten dollars typically paid to the hangman by pulling the gallows lever himself.
Buffalo was a center of social activism that hosted the first NAACP conference in 1905 and had famously helped slaves along the
Underground Railroad; once across the Niagara River, fugitive slaves were free. But before we start reminiscing about how Negro spirituals used to communicate information about the journey north, let’s make it clear that there was also a branch of the Ku Klux Klan operating in the area.
Buffalonians were satisfied to have their city chosen as the site of the 1901 World’s Fair (known as the Pan-American Exposition), a six-month-long national event recognizing the industrial and cultural achievements of the United States, also aimed at promoting trade and friendship among the States, Canada, and Latin America. It showcased the new technological breakthrough known as electricity at America’s first hydroelectric power plant in nearby Niagara Falls. As a result, Buffalo was one of the first cities in North America to be electrified.
Unfortunately, the 1901 World’s Fair in Buffalo would become better known as the place where President William McKinley was assassinated by the anarchist Leon Czolgosz. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in at the Wilcox Mansion up the street. His inauguration in September of 1901 occurred at the height of the city’s grandeur. It was wealthy, thriving, and self-confident. Gracious mansions with wide terraces and elaborate gardens lined Delaware Avenue. On the periphery were dozens of factories and warehouses. Grain elevators and steel mills that exhaled flames like fire-breathing dragons towered over the waterfront. The enormous, smoke-belching steel plants in Lackawanna coated the area in a layer of orange dust that resembled fluorescent pollen when it settled on windowpanes.
You’ll often hear people talk about downtown Buffalo. Prosperity didn’t last long enough to have an uptown.
***
Perhaps the ultimate irony is that frigid Buffalo is the place where air-conditioning was invented. While working in the drafting department of the Buffalo Forge Company in the early 1900s, Willis Carrier received a United States patent on an “apparatus for treating air.” This engineer from the Snowbelt would pave the way for the creation of the Sunbelt boom. “And think of the difference he’s made,” columnist Molly Ivins wrote about the King of Cool. “As anyone who has ever suffered through a brutal summer can tell you, if it weren’t for Carrier’s having made human beings more comfortable, the rates of drunkenness, divorce, brutality, and murder would be Lord knows how much higher. Productivity rates would plunge 40 percent over the world; the deep-sea fishing industry would be deep-sixed; Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel would deteriorate; rare books and manuscripts would fall apart; deep mining for gold, silver, and other metals would be impossible; the world’s largest telescope wouldn’t work; many of our children wouldn’t be able to learn; and in Silicon Valley, the computer industry would crash.”
Being home to the invention that would spark the industrial South marked the start of an unusual pattern that continued throughout the century: Buffalo often acted as its own worst enemy—every move made in the name of innovation and increased productivity seemed not to result in the desired progress, but in just the opposite, providing local citizens with another reason to leave.
Prohibition (1920–1933) was perhaps the exception, since Buffalonians regarded the national alcohol ban as more of an opportunity than an encumbrance. Much of the fuel that made the twenties roar was ethanol, better known as rotgut, firewater, hooch, bathtub gin, and moonshine. The “noble experiment,” as it was called by President Hoover, served to make the Great Lakes a headquarters for rumrunners between the United States and Canada, which had loophole-ridden Prohibition laws. Although the province of Ontario outlawed the retail sale of liquor, the Canadian government approved and licensed distilleries and breweries for its manufacture, distribution, and export.
In the meantime, there was no shortage of bays, coves, inlets, and other hiding places to prevent the heartland from experiencing an alcohol drought. Secondary fuel tanks, false floorboards, steamer trunks with fake bottoms, and even coffins were used to hoodwink police, the Coast Guard, and customs officials. Hundreds of boats hauled millions of gallons of illicit booze across the lakes, while bullets occasionally whizzed past as bootleggers and government agents did battle. One trick of the trade was to dump the containers overboard and return for them later, which often resulted in delighted fishermen and beachcombers harvesting divine gifts from the sea. If patrol boats came too close before the bootleggers could unload, they’d oftentimes set fire to their vessels in order to destroy the evidence.
Local thirst was easily slaked by the home-brewing operations of immigrants, and literally hundreds of speakeasies popped up overnight. Even Buffalo mayor Francis Xavier Schwab, part owner of a local brewery, was charged with manufacturing and selling beer, in 1922. He pleaded no contest and promptly paid a five-hundred-dollar fine.
Another happy-hour option was the booze cruise, a short ferryboat ride from Buffalo to Fort Erie, Canada. Bootleggers also made profitable use of this narrow stretch of the Niagara River, which served as a rather ungovernable border between the two countries.
That the city of Buffalo was heavily Catholic enabled it to take full advantage of the exemptions from the Prohibition laws that applied to alcoholic beverages used for sacramental purposes. Interestingly, the demand for sacramental wine increased by 800,000 gallons between 1922 and 1924, according to a report by the Department of Research and Education of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ. Obviously so much clean living was creating lots of converts.
Back in the twenties, Buffalo was not only lively with commerce and cocktails, but it was also recognized as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, especially Delaware Avenue, with its majestic canopy of Dutch elm trees. In 1929, just before the stock market plunged the economy into crisis, the New York Central Railroad built its palatial new terminal in Buffalo, a symbol of the bustling energy of this transportation giant.
The city prospered until midcentury, when its population peaked at 580,000 (twice what it is today). People came from surrounding towns and even Canada to shop at the large downtown department stores like AM&A’s and Kleinhan’s, and to see nationally known big bands play at local nightclubs.
But the Central could not hold. A perfect storm had begun, only this time it wasn’t a blizzard. With the birth of jet engines and the building of an interstate highway system in the forties, railroads were eclipsed as the transportation of choice. In the fifties, the Saint Lawrence Seaway began siphoning business away from Buffalo. The city was unable to reinvent itself as manufacturing jobs moved abroad. In Mexico, plant workers earned one-tenth of what Bethlehem Steel employees made. As a result, local factories were shuttered one by one, year after year.
Dutch elm disease destroyed most of the trees lining stately
Delaware Avenue and other streets, while highways ruined much of the rest of downtown. What was once kn
own as the City of Light had by the seventies become the City of Blight. Strong unions, which had done so much to support the rights of the workers, were making demands that the steel companies could not meet and still remain profitable against competition from overseas.
Buffalo had always been hailed as a solid union town and viewed this as a source of economic strength, not the mark of death. In fact, the national longshoremen’s union started at the Swannie house near the Buffalo waterfront. And Buffalo was the only place in the country that could boast a grain-scoopers union. When I was growing up, a popular joke was, “How many people work at Bethlehem Steel?” The answer: “About one-third.” Others dubbed the city “Mistake on the Lake.” (This moniker is shared by Cleveland, Ohio.)
Economic decline was exacerbated by Mother Nature. The blizzard of 1977, with its twenty-foot snowdrifts that buried cars and homes, generated a run of one-liners by Johnny Carson, and Buffalo became once and for all a national joke synonymous with snow. Even today you’d be hard pressed to get a local citizen to turn out for a conference on global warming. It’s tough to be all that concerned about the environment when it’s so busy trying to kill you.
Make fun of the blizzards all you want. Buffalonians are quick to tell you that they’re quite happy not having to worry about earthquakes, volcanoes, monsoons, and tsunamis.
Four
He’d Always Have Paris…
Trading Up…Danish for Beginners
My father, John Anders Pedersen, moved to Buffalo in 1955 to take a job as a court reporter. He was born in Manhattan in 1931, shortly after the start of the Great Depression, and named after John the Baptist—not the apostle John, a pope John, John Donne, or even Johnnie Walker. I assume this was because John the Baptist was also an only child of older parents.
Buffalo Gal Page 3