by Bud Kenny
Because of the article, Blasdell’s invited us in for pizza. The next afternoon the owner of the Malamute Saloon yelled at us from his side of South Park Avenue. “How about a beer and something to eat?”
Farther into the city, a baker gave us two bags filled with fresh bread and other goodies from his one-hundred-year-old brick oven–the only commercial brick oven in Buffalo.
I think being in the newspaper and on the evening news helped us in city traffic too. Cab drivers all read the newspaper–that’s part of their job. It gives them something to talk about. So usually they knew who we were and what we were doing. Walking in a city we always want the cabbies on our side.
Obviously it helped with the police. You always want them on your side no matter what you’re doing, especially in city traffic.
It certainly helped to have that recognition with drivers who were jockeying for position in the heart of downtown. That’s where we were Wednesday afternoon at 4 p.m. Of all the greetings and gestures we got downtown, none were ugly. Some of the hands that waved at us only had one digit up, but none of them was the middle finger.
Buffalo’s City Hall was the most impressive municipal building I had ever seen. It’s a massive tan brick art deco structure with more than twenty floors and six wings. On top was a dome of multi colored tile. Acid rain had stained the brick, but the dome was still brilliant.
If I were superman just passing through Buffalo, I would have to stop and fly out of City Hall just because it’s such a classy building. Metropolis’ Daily Planet looks mighty plain compared to Buffalo’s City Hall.
We got a real good look at it because we walked around the same block three times before we got on the right route–but we weren’t the only ones lost. During the work day, barricades had been erected for street repairs. So when people got in their cars to drive home, they found themselves going in directions that they weren’t used to taking.
Here again, being in the newspaper helped. A policeman, who’d read our story, escorted us a few blocks and headed us in the right direction.
The Buffalo News article helped us get through downtown and helped us meet some nice people. But I’ve got to say, some of our most memorable Buffalo encounters were with people who knew nothing about us.
Like the young black man standing at a bus stop on South Park Avenue. We were headed toward downtown, and as we approached him I could tell he was doing his best to ignore us. With his arms folded across his puffed-up chest, the man’s eyes were focused straight ahead at the street. I knew he saw us coming, but he was intent on ignoring us.
So when we got in front of him I said, “Whoa Della.”
The young man didn’t look at me, until I said, “You waiting on the bus?”
“Uh, yeah.”
With a straight face I said, “Well, it broke down. So they sent us to pick you up.”
Every shred of coolness dissolved, and his arms melted down to his sides as he slowly turned to survey the situation. While he panned from me to Della to the cart his whole body began to slump. He looked straight into my eyes and asked, “What?”
I tried, but I couldn’t keep a straight face. He was quick to catch it and a wide toothy smile sprang to his face. “No, man. That ain’t right!”
Laughing, we brushed palms. “You got me dude. You really got me!”
From City Hall we took Elmwood Avenue north. Nearly everyone we encountered while we walked up into Buffalo said it was the coolest part of town. Both Buffalo State College and the Buffalo campus of State University of New York were nearby. It had art galleries, a couple of museums and lots of boutiques. People told us the coolest coffee houses and hippest bars were on Elmwood. It sounded like a good street to walk a mule on.
But what they didn’t tell us was that it’s a main commuter route out of downtown. It was a little after 5 p.m. when we finally got onto Elmwood and we became part of the gridlock–not the cause of it, just part of it. With everyone else, we were at a standstill for several minutes in the five-hundred block. Traffic had just begun to move when I heard a female voice yell, “You, with the horse, stop! Wait for me.”
When I turned to my right I saw a woman with long blond hair waving and yelling from the crowed doorway of a bar. She was trying to push her way through the crowd as she yelled, “Wait for me!”
From the cart, I heard Patricia sigh, “Now what?”
Traffic was gaining momentum, so I quickened our pace to keep up with it. Behind us the woman continued to yell, but her voice was soon drowned out by the noise of rush hour.
A block farther, traffic was at a standstill again. After I craned my neck to see if I could spot what the holdup was, I turned to look at Della. There was the blonde from the bar beside Della holding onto the bridle, kissing the side of her face. This woman was in her mid-thirties, and while looking nothing like Marilyn Monroe, she had that kind of face and physique, and she was cooing to Della. When I looked back at Patricia in the cart, she was grimacing and shaking her head. I knew what she was thinking. Who’s this flake?
I turned back to the woman who was grinning at me with lush pink lips that said, “I just love this.” Her voice had the vibrato and breath of afternoon cocktails. “Where are you going? Come stay at my place.”
Had I been a single man, I might have entertained that invitation–but I wasn’t. The car in front of us started to move. I said, “Lady, step back. We’ve got to go.”
“Take me with you. I love this. I love you.”
Right then Della stepped forward, and the woman jumped out of the way. But she still had hold of the bridle. I yelled, “Lady, let go!”
I quickened our pace, and she had to jog to keep up. “Please let me go. I love this!”
Suddenly, she stumbled against a parked car and lost her grip on the bridle. We were trekking away as she pleaded, “Take me! I love it! I want to go!”
Walking up Elmwood Avenue, sometimes I felt like we were in a parade. Lots of people yelled and waved at us. Some on the sidewalk clapped as we went by. And we heard plenty of, “Right on, man!” “Awesome, dude!” “God Bless you!”
We had just stopped for a light, and were at the head of the line in that lane, when I heard, “Can I pet? Can I pet?”
She was a brazen, stout, black woman dressed in a flowered Hawaiian shirt, pink sweat-pants, un-laced work boots and a black knit stocking cap. When she marched up to us, it was more like she demanded instead of asked, “Can I pet?”
Her right hand started petting Della as she shouted, “I love to pet! This is nice!”
Lodged in the fingers of her left hand, was an open cigarette paper filled with tobacco ready to be rolled. Not a shred of it fell out as she rubbed Della’s nose.
The light turned green. I said, “We’ve got to get moving.”
“Okay.”
When she turned to cross Elmwood, I yelled, “Don’t get hit!”
“They wouldn’t dare.”
Then she stepped in front of the car in the lane next to us, aimed her right index finger at the driver and barked, “You wait!”
He lurched to a stop, and so did the other three lanes when she pointed to them on her march across Elmwood Avenue. The whole time, she balanced that unrolled cigarette in her left hand. A block further, we were stopped in traffic again and there she was strolling up the left side of Elmwood. She beamed as her left arm swung back and forth over her head. Clinched in those fingers was a burning cigarette. “I love to pet!”
And on it went, one urban character after another. But none of them–except the drunk woman–offered us a place for the night.
So with the orange beacon on top of the cart, and flashing red lights on the back, we wandered the dark streets of Buffalo looking for a place to bed down. The lights on the cart, and the sound of Della’s steel shoes on the street, brought many faces to front windows. Several people stepped out onto their porches or into their front yards. Some waved, a few said “Good Luck,” but no one tried to engage us in conversa
tion. And nobody offered a place to stop for the night.
All we needed was a front yard, a back yard, a vacant lot, or some sort of spot somewhere. Like on the grounds of a huge hospital that we came to. It was in the north part of town and had several grassy acres that begged to be grazed on–but they couldn’t find the administrator to give us permission.
In the next hour-and-a-half we made two bad turns that took us in the wrong direction. We had planned to leave north on Delaware Avenue, but somehow ended up headed south back toward downtown on another road. But finally, on a residential street, with our maps, I figured it out.
Patricia was brusque when she said, “So you really know where we’re at this time?”
Both of us were grumpy, and by her tone I knew my wife was at the boiling point. I thought I might lower the heat with a bit of humor. “Well, the last time I was here–”
Patricia exploded, “Don’t give me that ‘The last time you were here.’ shit! There’s nothing funny about this! Next you’ll tell me, ‘It’s just part of the adventure, baby.’ I don’t want to hear it!”
She whirled around and tromped back to the cart, climbed in, sat down and started pounding her feet on the floor as she screamed, “This fucking stinks!”
While I walked back to the cart, I expected a porch light to come on at one of the nearby houses–but none did. I was soft, but stern when I said, “Patricia, calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Although she wasn’t screaming, my wife was still loud. “This is serious! We’re walking the streets of Buffalo in the middle of the night. We could get shot or mugged. Someone could rob us.”
I chuckled, “Rob us? The joke would be on them.”
She stamped the cart floor again. “Stop it!”
“No, you stop it! Throwing a fit isn’t going to help us at all.”
Had anyone been home at the residence we were in front of, surely they would have come to their windows when Patricia let loose with, “I’m venting!”
I grabbed her by the arm, and from deep within me growled the words “Patricia, shut up!” It felt like some monster inside was saying, “I don’t want to hear another word out of you! You’re going to get us arrested for disturbing the peace. Just sit there and keep your mouth shut!”
My wife was leaned back as far away from me as she could. Her eyes were huge with fear, and when I let go of her arm she scooted to the other side of the cab. I turned around and walked to Della’s head feeling very mean. I untied her lead rope from the street sign, looked into her mule face and whispered, “I’m not good at this.”
Aside from the clip-clopping of Della’s shoes, we continued through Buffalo’s nighttime streets in silence. Although Patricia’s presence loomed enormous behind me, I felt very much alone right then.
A few blocks later, a police car pulled in front of us and stopped with its blue lights flashing. Oh God! Someone heard us fighting and called the cops.”
The officer got out with a flashlight, which he shined all over us and the cart as he walked up to me. He was in his early forties, and had concern in his voice. “What are you doing?”
“We walked here from Arkansas and–”
He held up his hand. “I read the paper, I know what you’re doing. But why are you out on the street after dark?”
From the cart, Patricia yelled, “We need a place to camp.”
I said, “Can you think of some place where we could stop for the night.”
The cop stroked his chin. “That’s a new one. A campsite for a mule?”
From the radio fastened to his uniform, a female voice babbled a series of numbers. He tipped his head toward his left shoulder and rattled a bunch of numbers back to her. She said something else, which energized him. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll try to think of a place for you. But right now, I’ve got to move.”
A couple of blocks farther we came to a large field with a chain-link fence around it. It was a schoolyard, and ahead of us at the end of that block was a monstrous five-story school building. In front of it was a lawn of at least two acres with several towering oaks. A winding drive led from Delaware Avenue to the back of the building. At the entrance to the drive was a sign: Mount Saint Mary’s Academy for Girls.
My wife, who went to Catholic schools, was suddenly giddy. “This is perfect.”
“If we can get permission.”
Although it was well after 8 p.m., there was still lots of activity around the building. A dozen cars passed us as we walked up the driveway and around to the back of the building. There, we found two school buses unloading a triumphant soccer team. So the parking lot was already effervescent. Then we pulled in, and the lot got chaotic.
A coach helped us get permission from the principal to camp on the grounds for the night. They also invited us to use their showers. The coach stood guard in the hall to make sure none of the girls walked in on us.
Unlike the boy’s showers I had experienced in public school–where everyone is in one big room–St. Mary’s had individual stalls, each with a small private changing area. Hot water had just begun to rain down on me when I had the thought, “This is every boy’s dream come true. Taking a shower with your sweetie in the girl’s locker room.” Then I thought, “Why aren’t I in the stall with Patricia?”
I turned off the water, and had just stepped into the changing area, when I recalled the ugliness between us an hour ago. My lust was suddenly overcome by despair. Never before had I grabbed a woman and yelled at her like that. Every fiber of me was racked with guilt as I wrapped a bath towel around me. When I pulled the wooden louvered door to her shower open, my wife jumped and gasped, “What?”
“I’m sorry.”
She was in the far corner of the shower stall with her arms crossed to hide her breasts. “Sorry for what?”
I felt like a little boy begging forgiveness. “I’m sorry I got rough with you.”
Cowering behind the shower she said, “I’ve never seen you like that. It scared me.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll never grab you like that again.”
Patricia uncrossed her arms and stepped from behind the shower as she said, “Well, I guess I really had it coming. I was kind of out of control, wasn’t I?”
“Even so, you don’t deserve to be man-handled like that. I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
I stepped into her changing area, pulled the door shut behind me and said, “Can we kiss and make up?”
It was as if the sun came from behind a cloud as she shuffled toward me. “Sure.”
I pulled the towel from around me, laid it on the bench and stepped into the shower as Patricia giggled. “Watch it buster! Looks like you’ve got more than kissing in mind.”
Although Mount St. Mary’s had several acres of schoolyard, they insisted that we camp beside the building near the back door. It’s the busiest entrance to the building, and our tent was about twenty feet from it.
The first people to show up in the morning were custodians. The first two arrived just before sunrise. While one of them fumbled with keys, I heard the other say, “What the hell is this all about?”
An hour later, teachers and students began to trickle in. Some students arrived on buses, others were chauffeured by parents. Then there were the lucky girls who drove their own cars to school–none of them clunkers.
Although Saint Mary’s was owned by the Catholic Church, it wasn’t just for Catholics, and the teachers weren’t nuns. That morning the principal told us, “We do have classes on religion, but it’s not the emphasis here anymore. Our goal is quality education. We hire the best teachers we can find, regardless their faith.”
One of the teachers put it this way: “This is a moneymaker for the Catholic Church. It’s not cheap to send your kids here.” The same teacher told us about a scholarship program for welfare families. “If a girl really wants to go to school here and she works hard, and if her family is poor enough, she can get in.”
So, while the st
udent body at Mount Saint Mary’s was all girls, they were from a wide variety of backgrounds. We saw faces of every race coming to school that Thursday morning. They had grades from preschool through high school, so girls of all ages were walking past our camp at the back door. Most of the younger ones were either awestruck or giggled all the way into the building. Many of the older ones just smiled and walked by, and there were some who asked questions. And then there were those who were too cool or self-important to notice. Most of them were the ones who drove themselves to school. They ignored us.
But all of the girls had one thing in common, they dressed alike. Mount Saint Mary’s uniform was a green plaid skirt with a white blouse. The hem of the skirt came to just above the knee, and they wore white knee-high socks with black shoes. From first grade up through the twelfth, all of the girls were dressed identically.
Kenneth handed me a Styrofoam coffee cup as he said, “When I taught in the public schools, I used to think uniforms were horrible.” He’d been teaching English at Saint Mary’s for five years. “I thought uniforms robbed them of their individuality–but I was wrong.”
“How’s that?”
“In any school, the big thing is who’s the coolest, and what they wear is a big part of that–especially with the girls. And a lot of the time that’s as far as they go toward creating an identity. But these girls don’t have that crutch. They have to dig deeper.”
A few minutes after the bell rang for classes to begin, three high school girls came out the back door. One was almost six feet tall, and she said, “Our teacher told us to ask if we could interview you for our school newspaper.”
The girl with long blond hair asked the questions, while the shortest one took notes. She had a hard time holding the pad steady, so the tall girl bent over and put her hands on her knees. “Here, I’ll be the desk.”
After some giggling, the interview continued. At one point, the girl taking notes said, “Do you get tired of answering the same questions all the time?”