buffaloEx-Pat

 

confessions of an ExPat

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You can take the person out of Buffalo, but… (..You know the Rest)

My mother used to work as a nanny and a pastry chef for the Saperston Family. When I was very young, she told me tales of Buffalo’s former greatness, when the moniker, Queen City, actually almost applied. Hence, I grew up thinking Buffalo was the greatest city in the world, and at the same time developing the inherent Buffalo defensiveness.

I joined my fellow Buffalonians in outrage at Sports Illustrated for publishing an article in ’67 or ’68 berating Buffalo, and showing a photo of a trash strewn parking lot at the Old Rockpile.

When the NHL and NBA expanded to Buffalo in 1970, I sat by the radio listening to every Braves game that wasn’t on TV. I was a little less of a hockey fan back then, so I didn’t listen to the radio, but still watched every televised Sabres game.

In ’73 my best friend got a job as a stats runner for the Braves. I went to school in Oklahoma but whenever I could make it back for a game, he got me a press pass to sit courtside. I’m actually quite visible in a game photo of the Braves vs. Hawks in December of that year. It was their first winning season—and playoff year.

I remember the great Braves teams-- those three great seasons when they were in the thick of the playoffs, could have easily won it all, with legends like McAdoo, DiGregorrio, McMillain, and Randy Smith (though Gar Heard was my favorite) against the likes of the Celtics and the Knicks, posting fifty-win seasons, before the team was sold for salvage and then hauled off in a garbage truck to California. By the way, part of me is glad the Clippers (Clippers? As in barber shop?) only barely made the playoffs twice in their post-Buffalo history. Part of me still follows them, knowing they might be the perfect team for a guy like me. Born in Buffalo, lost since leaving.

It is that part of me that still feels a sick affinity with the Clippers in spite of everything, that also keeps me forever bonded to the teams that never left (and may they never), and the town they continue to represent. I’ve lived in Chicago now longer than I lived in Buffalo. Other than a year after college and seven years after that in Rochester and Syracuse, I’ve lived away from Bills Country. But Bills vs. Bears is no contest for my loyalty. I don’t even feel a little torn. Sabres/Blackhawks, even less. Bulls/Clippers? Now that’s probably a draw, but for obvious reasons.

Of course an old Braves fan feels quite at home cheering for the NBA Bulls since our first Center was a Chicago retread. Remember Bob Kaufman? Plus there was something likeable about the guys who played for the Bulls back in the early seventies. Guys with names like Love and Boerwinkle. But I digress.

Now in the same way that Dan Quayle is no Jack Kennedy, Buffalo is no Chicago—or any of the other places I‘ve lived or frequented since leaving Bills Country—Denver, Santa Fe, Miami, Southern California.

You could say Chicago is Buffalo in its heyday on steroids. There are more than a few similarities. Chicago hosted the World’s Fair within a few years of the Pan Am Expo. Some of the buildings that survive from the Fair resemble their counterparts in Buffalo. Obviously we’re both on a lake. And Chicago is a commercial center now, as Buffalo was when the lights first came on from the Falls. Lots of old money. Lots of new money. And lots of immigrants: Poles, Germans, Italians, just like old Buffalo. And industry too. Buffalo had Pierce Arrow. Chicago has Boeing. And so on, and Scooby Doo.

But Buffalo isn’t just a place, it’s a state of mind, a religion, a cultural overlay that works like ethnicity even though it isn’t exactly. It isn’t but it is.

Being Buffalonian is like being Jewish in a way. Even if you’re Buffalo Blueblood. Even if your grandparents actually owned one of the mansions on Delaware when they were still single family homes. Being Buffalonian in Buffalo is the great equalizer. Being Buffalonian outside of Buffalo, is like being Jewish in Tehran.

And therein lies the bulk of my experience. The ex-pat. The diaspora. If there is a Jewish bar in Tehran, I can imagine the comaradery there. Pretty much like what you’d find at the Nickel Bar in Tampa or the Buffalo bars in a hundred other cities that get less snow. It’s instant kinship. Run into someone with a Bills or Sabres baseball cap or t-shirt or jacket, in the airport, on the beach, in some other city’s stadium when the Buffalo teams are not even playing, and it’s always the same. It’s like meeting the twin you never knew you had. All you have to do is say, "Wide Right," or "In the Crease" and you’ll keep buying each other drinks until you both need a designated driver.

You can imagine how excited we ex-pats get when the Bills are scheduled for Sunday night or Monday night. At least we get to watch the games at home on our own TV sets and we don’t need Sunday Ticket.

Sunday Ticket is the greatest invention since color TV. The only problem is, I can’t get Direct TV where I live. Fortunately my son can get it. I drive 75 minutes to watch at his house most Sundays. I wear my throwback logo baseball cap because it reminds me of the Kemp-Dubenion era when the Bills were the class of the AFL. But not just because of that.

The old grazing buffalo is pure (as opposed to the flashy, charging one with speedlines). I wish they’d go back to the old uni’s permanently, like the Jets did. That retro look fits Buffalo, in the way Buffalo is eternally retro, always was retro before retro was retro, sort of iconic in a way that’s both quaint and a little musty. Of course the speeding Buffalo reminds us of the K-gun. Like I said, I like the retro look.

Back when those were our uniforms, we had dreams of making the Superbowl without the accompanying nightmares, without the creeping, nagging suspicion that the Bills may have morphed into the Cubs of the NFL. God, must we wait a 101 years?

And the Sabres seem equally cursed. From Kate Smith, the Aud in the fog, to a non-goal in the crease, things don’t go better with Coke in the HSBC any more than they do in the Ralph.

1975 Stanley Cup Finals. The original Fog Bowl

So in a way I feel guilty. I don’t have to live with the misery of Buffalo fandom full time. I can forget I’m from Buffalo when the Bulls are winning. And I have been lucky in ways no Buffalonian deserves to be lucky. I lived in Denver the first time the Broncos won it all. (When I went to Sears to buy a TV, the clerk asked me if I wanted it in Bronco Orange.) I lived in Chicago the first year the Bulls did it. And the second, and third and the next three after that. And I was here when the Sox won the series. (Poor Cubs!)

In a way I feel guilty, but in a way I don’t. Because the success of teams in my adopted home towns only deepens the pain of the failures of the teams where my heart is still firmly planted. It’s like, why the hell couldn’t I have brought this luck to the Bills or the Sabres? Do I need to move back? Would that do it? And why don’t I move back?

One word. Four letters. S-N-O-W! But you live in Chicago, you say. True, but do you know the difference between East and West relative to lake effect? Winter, in the middle of a lake effect squall, is the one time I feel no guilt for having abandoned my tribe. I watch footage of white-outs as the school closing list scrolls across the bottom of my TV screen, laughing because all of that is going on in Northwest Indiana-- the other side of the Lake. Hammond or Gary might as well be Buffalo. Or Upper Michigan. I watch them get buried over and over again all winter long and feel pretty damn smug. I might have to shovel my driveway five times in an average winter. Hey, you idiots. I figured it out! I moved to the West side of the Lake. And then someone says, "If you’re so damn smart, why Lake Michigan and not Lake Havasu?" Touche. But I digress.

I’ve spent all this time talking sports, mainly, but it isn’t really about sports at all. Sports are the metaphor, the religious rite. It’s what makes the Buffalo sort-of-but-not-but-sort-of ethnicity so similar to being Jewish. We are bonded not only by our common roots but to the ritual. Watching the Bills or the Sabres, or to a lesser degree, the Bisons or even the freaking Braves (I mean Clippers) is like going to Temple for Yom Kippur. We have this common ritual of atonement.

Atonement for what? In a way, for being Buffalonians! We’re like Rodney. We don’t get no respect. Our homeland is often reviled as Cleveland’s ugly stepsister. Queen City? Not unless it’s Drag Queen. And we’ve done a lot of this to ourselves. Especially in the past. If you’re old enough, you remember Stan Roberts on KB Radio giving the weather report on Lake D-reeeear-y. Like the Jews, we’ve wandered in the wilderness for generations awaiting deliverance. We await the coming Messiah, having endured many false prophets. We thought it would be O.J., then Kelly and company, then Dominick Hasek. We thought the second coming of the Mighty Marv might finally lead us to the promised land. (And it still might, after the fact, but it hurts too much to hope.) So, like the Jews we wander. We hope. We have our hopes dashed. We hope again. And we go to Temple. The Ralph. The HSBC. We fast. We sacrifice. We sob. We celebrate.

We wait. We celebrate. We curse! But we do it together. As one. We are the chosen people. We still don’t know what exactly we’re chosen for, but we’re chosen.

But here’s the good part about leaving and coming back, albeit temporarily. You notice the changes for the better. In the time it takes me to drive across the entire Niagara Frontier (you don’t use that term any more, I don’t think, but it stays with me) I might get through two stop lights on the main drag outside my far suburban house. In the time it takes to drive from the Airport to the Peace Bridge I’d still be in line on the on-ramp to the Kennedy at rush hour. I come back and hear your bemoan the fact that 200,000 people have left Erie County and I see the wide open expressways and say, you don’t know how good you’ve got it.

And housing prices? What you spend a hundred grand on, even in this depressed market, would cost me easily three times that.

But here’s the best part. Your restaurants are as diverse and as rich with ambience and gourmet gravitas as anything in Chicago. Your arts and cultural life is vibrant, just as good, but much more accessible and much more affordable than in Chicago, or just about anywhere else I’ve spent any time.

Downtown’s making a comeback. The Niagara Thruway is no longer lined with belching factories. South Buffalo no longer reeks of sulfur. And what other city has the equal of Our Lady of Victory? Throw in the Falls, the scenic drive on the Canadian side—the Canadian suburbs in general—and Buffalo can hold its own against any city anywhere. I know, ‘cause I’ve been there.

Ok. It’s no Chicago. But it’s also no Dan Quayle. It’s a Buffalo simultaneously mature and reborn, retro and post-modern, Art Deco and just art. Whenever I come back (which for the past three years has been once or twice monthly, on business) I don’t want to leave. But in a way, I never do, and I never have.

God bless you, Tim. (Tim Russert always will be the quintessential Buffalo ExPat.)

Go Bills!

-jwh-

Note: A variation on this article was supposed to appear in three parts at Buffalo Rising Online. Part One and Part Two have already been published. Part Three has been killed. Most of the comments at BRO were-- shall we say--- a bit strong on the critical side (to show more decorum than most of the commenters did) which piqued our curiosity a little? What about that article (or this one) inspired so much eire? We play with that question a bit in a special column. See Buffalo Chips.