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indangerinamerica- ("almost famous" former buffalonian part II)- ZARA- after reading your long comment about Buffalo that followed my "part one", I have to say that, first, i am in TOTAL agreement with your opinion of present- day Buffalo, and of it's recent past, and so in honor of your honest and straightforward post, i would like to share my personal, and, (thanks to my family's rather unique place in the history of the city ) somewhat terrifying account, of some of the factors that contributed to Buffalo's decline. Buffalo History 101. As the country began to industrialize and industry and the railways spread farther westward and south from the major eastern cities and ports, during the late 1800's, Buffalo began to gain more and more strategic importance, for several reasons. It was conveniently located on the shipping routes that pass through the great lakes. the newly- completed erie canal made buffalo a stop for all water- borne cargo that could now come directly from ocean- going ships arriving from europe at the Port of New York, up the Hudson river, through the canal system, and on to the midwest, and canada, via the great lakes shipping lanes. the Port of Buffalo began to boom.the massive grain elevators built along the niagara river held grain to be delivered to and from canada. the coast guard station was built, to regulate shipping. and, along with the outstanding location buffalo represented to the shipping industry, the abundant fresh water that the niagara river and lake erie provide made buffalo an ideal location for bethlehem and u.s. steel to build their vast network of mills, foundries,and smelting and curing plants all along the river, creating boom towns in buffalo's south like lackawanna, where i was born, at the height of buffalo's wealth and also it's marginal notoriety, in the eyes of the rest of the world.Despite all the money buffalo's industry and port made for the rest of the world, buffalonians traditionally got the s---y end of the stick when it came to wages, advancement, or decent living conditions. that is because when the shipping magnates and steel bosses decided to make buffalo a center of commerce, tho one major thing that buffalo lacked in the late 1800's, was a force of LABORERS to make their whole money- grab and exploitation of the region work for them, preferably immigrants who knew and spoke little english, and/or recently freed slaves, their children, and their children's families, who had begun streaming northward after the civil war ended, seeking jobs and a less hostile environment than the postwar segregated south represented. Posters were put up all over western europe, england and ireland, promising cheap passage and guaranteed employment in the mills and on the docks. soon, the port of New York, and ellis island, became the shipping point for massive amounts a human cargo, impoverished europeans and irish who were convinced that the good life lay across the atlantic, in america and canada's eastern cities. so they arrived in droves, and as they arrived, they had to be accommodated. those hundreds and hundreds of thousands who made their way to buffalo, like my grandparents did in the 1920's soon discovered that all of the dreams of a better life that the steelmen and shipping barons had promised were mostly just that- dreams, and unfulfilled promises. most arrived knowing very little english. some, like my italian grandfather, "anglicized" their surnames so that they would appear more "american" when applying for jobs, or standing in the milling crowds in the "shape- ups", the daily, informal temporary labor pools, where throngs of unemployed men would gather in hopes of getting a day's employment, if selected by one of the bulls that the mills employed. if a laborer got selected, and worked two shifts without a break at the punishing pace set by the employer's ramrods, he MIGHT get picked at the next shape- up. and if he got picked and worked even harder in several subsequent "shape ups", he MIGHT be CONSIDERED for PART TIME employment at that particular mill. or on that particular dock. and if after going through several rounds of the same rejection and selection and re- selection, the poor laborer actually managed to get a "permanent" job, it only meant the guarantee of a constant, daily repeat of the toughest, most demanding day the man experienced during his entire probationary period. the steel bosses were smart, they knew that a good, ignorant and financially enslaved employee meant money in the bank for them. they had figured a way to get an unlimited supply of cheap slave labor. whom they could simply toss back into the "shape ups" if they slowed down or became unruly. and a workforce made up of men who didn't share a common language or ancestry, and could barely speak english, were not likely to organize, to understand the terms of a contract, or walk off the job while they knew that they had a paycheck waiting if they stayed, which meant that their families wouldn't starve that month. the white, european immigrant men, like my italian grandfather, who "made the grade", and were thereby "awarded" full- time employment at the mills, were merely the hand- picked slaves of the steelmen, they had no more rights or chance of escape from the slave system that the steelmen created in buffalo, than the grandfather of the black man toiling beside him had to escape from the plantation owner's slave quarters in the pre- civil war south. Many of these slaves of the steelmen and shipping magnates, both black and white, died as they had lived,on the job. like my italian grandfather, john santuci, did, "grampa" dropped dead of a heart attack, in his mid 60's. working as a laborer at one of bethlehem steel's bessemer furnaces, a mile or so from where i was born. that was bethlehem's retirement plan at the time.I have been in those furnace buildings, where a long row of gigantic "pitchers" poured molten steel into huge curing vats containing sulphuric acid. The acid removes the "scale" from the steel as it cools in the ingot molds that line the vat's floor, the resulting cloud of steam produced when steel meets acid smells strongly of rotten eggs, and this steam can also peel the skin off of an exposed arm with the same ease that it can strip the paint off of a coupe de ville. entering a bessemer facility is the closest approximation to biblical hell that exists on earth. the second you open the inner doors to the plant proper, you are struck by a blast of air that, even on the coldest winter day, is easily north of 100 degrees. most of the light in these hells is supposed to come through the windows set high up above the pitcher dollies, around the top of the walls, not far below the high ceilings. the ceilings are so far above the floor of the facilities that one is almost afraid to look up and try to gauge their height. one could look down the length of the building and see several identical "pitcher and vat" arrangements, spaced evenly off into the dim recesses of the plant, each "arrangement", or work unit, had it's own blast furnace, which is like a gigantic, open incinerator with it's insides glowing a bright yellow to white light, as "white hot" flame is the only flame with temperatures hot enough to anneal the iron ore, refine it, and convert the ore, and the small amounts of other added ores and chemicals, into finished steel. the vast dimensions of the floorspace require constant moving about by the laboring crews, possibly, at my dim recollection, sixty or seventy men per bessemer plant per shift, three shifts per day, and, "grampa"s plant being the only one that i ever had opportunity to enter as a child, i remember driving past miles of these buildings, all uniform in size and shape, all set the same distance from the road, all surrounded by miles of chain- link fence, and all with their huge smokestacks, the smokestacks that belched the same extremely dense, extremely toxic, and vividly white, sulphur- smelling smoke out into the heavens, 24/7, 365 days of the year, for the entire time that bethlehem operated it's steel mills in buffalo, lackawanna, and the surrounding towns. my grampa lived and died in those mills. years later, when i attended college, i found a picture in an art history textbook of a painting by hieronymus bosch,the fifteenth century dutch master, that approximates my memories of the interior of those hellish mills that took my grandfather's life, it's the third or "hell" panel of his famous "garden of earthly delights" triptych. (end of part II, next installment- "memories of buffalo during the civil rights movement, and my family's part in the struggle" hope you enjoyed this last installment. i am trying to compile, in my spare time, documentation and hopefully, personal histories of others, who grew up in buffalo around the same time as i did. i believe that i have touched briefly on the fact that our entire nuclear family, (mom, me, bill and sari, dad had already remarried) were forced to flee the city due to - i should only state for the moment- "mob- related stuff"
indangerinamerica- ("almost famous" former buffalonian part II)-
ZARA- after reading your long comment about Buffalo that followed my "part one", I have to say that, first, i am in TOTAL agreement with your opinion of present- day Buffalo, and of it's recent past, and so in honor of your honest and straightforward post, i would like to share my personal, and, (thanks to my family's rather unique place in the history of the city ) somewhat terrifying account, of some of the factors that contributed to Buffalo's decline.
Buffalo History 101.
As the country began to industrialize and industry and the railways spread farther westward and south from the major eastern cities and ports, during the late 1800's, Buffalo began to gain more and more strategic importance, for several reasons. It was conveniently located on the shipping routes that pass through the great lakes. the newly- completed erie canal made buffalo a stop for all water- borne cargo that could now come directly from ocean- going ships arriving from europe at the Port of New York, up the Hudson river, through the canal system, and on to the midwest, and canada, via the great lakes shipping lanes. the Port of Buffalo began to boom.the massive grain elevators built along the niagara river held grain to be delivered to and from canada. the coast guard station was built, to regulate shipping. and, along with the outstanding location buffalo represented to the shipping industry, the abundant fresh water that the niagara river and lake erie provide made buffalo an ideal location for bethlehem and u.s. steel to build their vast network of mills, foundries,and smelting and curing plants all along the river, creating boom towns in buffalo's south like lackawanna, where i was born, at the height of buffalo's wealth and also it's marginal notoriety, in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Despite all the money buffalo's industry and port made for the rest of the world, buffalonians traditionally got the s---y end of the stick when it came to wages, advancement, or decent living conditions. that is because when the shipping magnates and steel bosses decided to make buffalo a center of commerce, tho one major thing that buffalo lacked in the late 1800's, was a force of LABORERS to make their whole money- grab and exploitation of the region work for them, preferably immigrants who knew and spoke little english, and/or recently freed slaves, their children, and their children's families, who had begun streaming northward after the civil war ended, seeking jobs and a less hostile environment than the postwar segregated south represented.
Posters were put up all over western europe, england and ireland, promising cheap passage and guaranteed employment in the mills and on the docks. soon, the port of New York, and ellis island, became the shipping point for massive amounts a human cargo, impoverished europeans and irish who were convinced that the good life lay across the atlantic, in america and canada's eastern cities. so they arrived in droves, and as they arrived, they had to be accommodated. those hundreds and hundreds of thousands who made their way to buffalo, like my grandparents did in the 1920's soon discovered that all of the dreams of a better life that the steelmen and shipping barons had promised were mostly just that- dreams, and unfulfilled promises. most arrived knowing very little english. some, like my italian grandfather, "anglicized" their surnames so that they would appear more "american" when applying for jobs, or standing in the milling crowds in the "shape- ups", the daily, informal temporary labor pools, where throngs of unemployed men would gather in hopes of getting a day's employment, if selected by one of the bulls that the mills employed. if a laborer got selected, and worked two shifts without a break at the punishing pace set by the employer's ramrods, he MIGHT get picked at the next shape- up. and if he got picked and worked even harder in several subsequent "shape ups", he MIGHT be CONSIDERED for PART TIME employment at that particular mill. or on that particular dock. and if after going through several rounds of the same rejection and selection and re- selection, the poor laborer actually managed to get a "permanent" job, it only meant the guarantee of a constant, daily repeat of the toughest, most demanding day the man experienced during his entire probationary period.
The steel bosses were smart, they knew that a good, ignorant and financially enslaved employee meant money in the bank for them. they had figured a way to get an unlimited supply of cheap slave labor. whom they could simply toss back into the "shape ups" if they slowed down or became unruly. and a workforce made up of men who didn't share a common language or ancestry, and could barely speak english, were not likely to organize, to understand the terms of a contract, or walk off the job while they knew that they had a paycheck waiting if they stayed, which meant that their families wouldn't starve that month. the white, european immigrant men, like my italian grandfather, who "made the grade", and were thereby "awarded" full- time employment at the mills, were merely the hand- picked slaves of the steelmen, they had no more rights or chance of escape from the slave system that the steelmen created in buffalo, than the grandfather of the black man toiling beside him had to escape from the plantation owner's slave quarters in the pre- civil war south. Many of these slaves of the steelmen and shipping magnates, both black and white, died as they had lived,on the job. like my italian grandfather, john santuci, did, "grampa" dropped dead of a heart attack, in his mid 60's. working as a laborer at one of bethlehem steel's bessemer furnaces, a mile or so from where i was born. that was bethlehem's retirement plan at the time.
I have been in those furnace buildings, where a long row of gigantic "pitchers" poured molten steel into huge curing vats containing sulphuric acid. The acid removes the "scale" from the steel as it cools in the ingot molds that line the vat's floor, the resulting cloud of steam produced when steel meets acid smells strongly of rotten eggs, and this steam can also peel the skin off of an exposed arm with the same ease that it can strip the paint off of a coupe de ville. entering a bessemer facility is the closest approximation to biblical hell that exists on earth. the second you open the inner doors to the plant proper, you are struck by a blast of air that, even on the coldest winter day, is easily north of 100 degrees. most of the light in these hells is supposed to come through the windows set high up above the pitcher dollies, around the top of the walls, not far below the high ceilings. the ceilings are so far above the floor of the facilities that one is almost afraid to look up and try to gauge their height. one could look down the length of the building and see several identical "pitcher and vat" arrangements, spaced evenly off into the dim recesses of the plant, each "arrangement", or work unit, had it's own blast furnace, which is like a gigantic, open incinerator with it's insides glowing a bright yellow to white light, as "white hot" flame is the only flame with temperatures hot enough to anneal the iron ore, refine it, and convert the ore, and the small amounts of other added ores and chemicals, into finished steel. the vast dimensions of the floorspace require constant moving about by the laboring crews, possibly, at my dim recollection, sixty or seventy men per bessemer plant per shift, three shifts per day, and, "grampa"s plant being the only one that i ever had opportunity to enter as a child, i remember driving past miles of these buildings, all uniform in size and shape, all set the same distance from the road, all surrounded by miles of chain- link fence, and all with their huge smokestacks, the smokestacks that belched the same extremely dense, extremely toxic, and vividly white, sulphur- smelling smoke out into the heavens, 24/7, 365 days of the year, for the entire time that bethlehem operated it's steel mills in buffalo, lackawanna, and the surrounding towns.
My grampa lived and died in those mills. years later, when i attended college, i found a picture in an art history textbook of a painting by hieronymus bosch,the fifteenth century dutch master, that approximates my memories of the interior of those hellish mills that took my grandfather's life, it's the third or "hell" panel of his famous "garden of earthly delights" triptych. (end of part II, next installment- "memories of buffalo during the civil rights movement, and my family's part in the struggle" hope you enjoyed this last installment. i am trying to compile, in my spare time, documentation and hopefully, personal histories of others, who grew up in buffalo around the same time as i did. i believe that i have touched briefly on the fact that our entire nuclear family, (mom, me, bill and sari, dad had already remarried) were forced to flee the city due to - i should only state for the moment- "mob- related stuff"
Capitalization is on the next person. Its an interesting read if you can get through it.
sean- thanks for your help with "paragraphization" of my post. you wouldn't know it by reading my literary offerings that i studied advanced english, english composition, journalism, literature, (english and russian), the novel, interview technique, etc., etc, beginning with the buffalo public school system, and thence onward through boarding school, and three different S.U.N.Y.- approved and accredited colleges and universities. (M.V.C.C., J.C.C., and S.U.N.Y. New Paltz) worked as staff writer for my family's "scene" magazine, starting in my teens, and also, one year, took second place in the buffalo all- school elementary spelling bee. (the word that got me was "jalousey", which i later learned was a type of window- blind, or somesuch.)Anyway, i realize that all this prior education and experience makes for even LESS of an excuse, for my poor compository habits. i was always upbraided for the use of run- on sentences by my various instructors. upon re- reading my posts, i agree, they are a bit tedious. as for capitalization, i type using the time- honored "hunt- and- peck" method, which makes minimal use of the "shift" key. i have explained to various folks how- as a young male student growing up in buffalo in the '60's and '70's, attempting to enroll in a public school touch- typing class would result in one's getting severely beaten by one's classmates.this also applied to home- ec. classes. and we had neither "health" or "civics" courses available to us back then. those courses entered the BPS curriculum years later. i will work on my compositional structure, and run- on sentences, but capitalization is a casualty of my primitive typing technique. thanks- andy ginter
all that i can do in this pro- buffalo, con- buffalo debate is to continually interject (and elaborate upon) my personal experiences as a child of buffalo, (born there in the 1950's), and what befell my family, and our friends and acquaintances in the social, business, civil rights, and italian- american communities there, all of which led to my present situation of exile, in the finger- lakes region (tompkins county, near ithaca) my african- american fiancee and i having had recent attempts made on our lives, that were directed at us by members of my own, (mob) family. we now have been forced to reside separately, my mother, who founded and published buffalo's "scene" magazine, in the early '70's., had a "hit" put out on her by my mobster aunt, mom is now buried in an unmarked grave up near glenfield, n.y., where we were forced to flee after my aunt sent the mob after us in buffalo. mom was a white civil- and human- rights activist, had attended college in buffalo, (state) was her class valedictorian at east high, best friends in childhood with lucy sayles, who later married fred clifton, lucille and fred clifton were close family friends, fred was a civil rights activist,we were regular visitors to their house in depew, where fred led an informal "salon" of civil rights activists throughout the "60's and early "70's lucille and mom tried to continue their friendship after both of our families were forced to flee buffalo, (through the combined forces of racism and the mafia). lucille and family moved to hickeyville, (near baltimore), where she became poet laureate of the state of maryland, my family fled to northern n.y., constantly followed and hounded by our aunt's mob connections, mom was run over and severely crippled in 1991. after spending many years caring for mom, trying to keep her safe and alive, she finally succumbed on august 15, 2009, in lodi, n.y., in a house i had bought her there. while diamond and i struggled to care for her, we were victims of various attempts on our lives, some involving attempted vehicular homicide. (two direct collisions, and various attempts to run us off of the road.) as a result of these, we lost our vehicles, i lost my driver's license after being fined into bankruptcy by local courts, and when diamond and i were rendered helpless to assist her, mom was immediately surrounded by agents of my aunt's. my sister, and their mob lawyers, (one of whom still practices law in buffalo.) her body was whisked away by my aunt and sister, diamond and i were prevented from attending her funeral, mom's forged and coerced will made no mention of us, and now, years after mom's murder at the hands of relatives, my various attempts to wrestle her journals, poems, the "scene" magazine printer's plates and back copies, etc. away from my sister before they are destroyed have been met with threats and harassment by local police, and even public officials. diamond and i have also been victim of recurring, regular thefts, of our personal property, possessions, our vehicles, bank account, even our dog, by landlords, police, and others who are in the employ of my relatives. mom and i were among the very few in the entire extended family who had any post- high school education, the mobster aunt had boasted of having attended coulmbia u., which is questionable, i was able to attend several colleges, an uncle, (robert santuci, now deceased) taught for many years at bennett high school, (computer technology). so my current struggle to retain documentation and record my memories and history of my (and my family's) past in buffalo, is now being made increasingly difficult by my struggle to keep diamond and myself alive. we are now faced with constant, regular attacks, directed at us by my mob relatives and their lawyers.. while the original situation that forced my family to flee buffalo had been created by my aunt's jealousy and hatred of my mother, now diamond and i find ourselves in ever increasing peril as a result of our attempting to protect mom from my aunt. this all may seem like a lot to digest and comprehend, it is even harder to live with and to endure, my many phone calls and pleas to buffalo archivists and civil rights groups, federal investigators, etc., are finally yielding some positive results, and i have put out requests that anyone who wishes to help us in our battle against my racist, criminal family should call the ithaca, n.y. FBI, and leave a message in their general mailbox, urging agent mercer to immediately retrieve my mother's journals, her poems, and the "scene" magazine plates and copies. from my sister, sari. (where she has them under lock and key, in lyons falls, n.y.) thanks, andrew j. ginter
zara ray- please read my last post, in which i outlined my buffalo mob family's attempts at exterminating my mother, who was a civil rights activist and publisher in '60's and '70's buffalo, myself, and my african- american fiancee. my mob family finally "got" my mom, but "missed" me and diamond. i believe that your problems and ours with buffalo have the same origin- buffalo's ignorant and racist white majority, and by majority i mean only in terms of their political power, not in their numbers. the racist organization that controls buffalo politics, along with most of the rest of new york state's is older and more intrenched than the KKK, i am speaking of the mafia. my mother wasn't exactly a "darling" of the mob in buffalo, although she was, for the longest time, one of buffalo's most famous, colorful, and popular italian- american socialites, with friends and admirers among the mafia, entertainment, publishing, artistic, and civil rights and social justice communities in buffalo, until her younger sister's jealousy got all of us run out of town.i myself went back briefly to buffalo and worked at a mob nightclub, owned by the turgeon brothers, frank and joe, who at the time owned seven restaurants and clubs all around buffalo and it's suburbs.
so zara- basically my advice to you is- do not give any thought or be concerned by the criticisms that your comments elicit from the "proper" buffalonians whom i see picking apart everything you say about buffalo. your comments are designed to be instructive and constructive, and the attacks that they are recieving all seem to come at you from ignorant and small- minded people, and buffalo has jillions of such folks. the good and positive features of buffalo, the kinds of things that my mom was trying to publicize when she founded "scene" magazine, will forever be put to shame and overwhelmed by buffalo's militantly ignorant and racist white populace. don't let them get to you. not everyone is "about" freedom of expression, or freedom of the press, in new york state, in fact, most white buffalonians want buffalo's racist past swept under the carpet and forgotten. i for one am with you.
"elmwood village" is a fairly recent invention,it's the name given to the stretch of elmwood avenue that runs west of main, and almost overlaps allentown, allentown covers a bunch of blocks far down main street, sort of down almost to swan and chippewa streets, in what i now refer to as to the "right-hand side" of main st.(as heading down main past bailey ave. and the university.) allentown in the '60's and '70's, (and probably on into the '80's and '90's) was buffalo's "hippie" neighborhood, where all of the "head shops" and little, funky art galleries and coffee shops and bohemian gathering places were concentrated. the annual "allentown art festival" was always held there during the first week of july, a tradition that probably continues to this day. i believe the name "elmwood village" was concocted by real estate investors and city planners, elmwood avenue does contain a lot of buffalo's more popular tourist attractions, parts of buff state college campus, the albright- knox are gallery, the old buffalo psych center campus, etc., as a child, my family rented a fairly miserable apartment "behind" elmwood avenue, a block south of bidwell parkway, a large toy store (clayton's toys) was across the street, (on the corner of elmwood and bidwell pkwy)., and we had tiny, "mom and pop" store- deli, bodega, whatever, (idk, there is no word that comes to mind to describe this kind of shop) the sort of which flourished all over buffalo back then, on our block of elmwood, "prindle's store". as kids we referred to these as "candy stores", because we would take our allowances, or earnings from odd jobs around the neighborhood, and buy penny candy there. i think old man prindle was also our landlord, as i recall, he owned the entire block that contained his store and our apartment house, and we had a rear apartment, our entrance was in the back, with a narrow alleyway between buildings as the shortest route through to elmwood ave.at the time we rented there, mom was "between husbands", mom and dad had seperated, but dad still came and paid his child support and took us kids on weekly visitation road- trips, in the brand- new pink ford galaxy that he had just bought mom before their separation, (which mom seldom got to drive) my brother and i had a daily walk from that apartment to P.S. 56, (public school 56), where i attended first grade, and billy attended kindergarden. buffalo winters were as cold back then as they are now. one backyard we passed every day on our way to and from school was enclosed by a chain- link fence, where two identical border collies were kenneled. these dogs would begin to bark at anyone who passed by their yard, from the moment they spotted we passers- by, until after we were farther down the block one night a ferocious snowstorm hit the city, combined with sub-zero temperatures. when billy and i approached the border collie's yard, several city sanitation workers were in the process of digging the frozen- solid bodies of the dogs out of the snow and placing the stiff dog- corpses in the rear of a sanitation dept. pickup truck. standing and watching this, with the crowd of other schoolchildren who began to gather, made us all late for our classes. P.S. 56 had separate entrances for boys and girls, with a huge, arched doorway on the left hand side of the building, marked "boys", and an identical doorway on the right- hand side, marked "girls". the walk to school was a lot less noisy after that snowstorm. mom read "story hour" to children once a week at the nearby crane branch library, eventually, she married one of her professors at buff state, who moved us into a huge duplex frame house around the corner, on bidwell parkway. the house was later bought by the hare krishnas, which was made into their buffalo "temple". the krishnas painted the house bright yellow, and, among other things, they manufactured incense sticks there, which they sold on the streets to passers- by and tourists. years after i left buffalo, i returned with my fiancee, and drove down elmwood, looking for my old neighborhood, for the intersection of elmwood and bidwell, for my old P.S. 56. everything seemed to have changed over the passing years, and after driving around aimlessly for the better part of an hour, i had to pull over and shout to pedestrians, to get directions back to main st. in fact, even that took awhile, the first few groups of passersby whose attention i got told us that they weren't sure of how to get back to main st. themselves. i am dead serious.
zara ray- please read my last post, in which i outlined my buffalo mob family's attempts at exterminating my mother, who was a civil rights activist and publisher in '60's and '70's buffalo, myself, and my african- american fiancee. my mob family finally "got" my mom, but "missed" me and diamond. i believe that your problems and ours with buffalo have the same origin- buffalo's ignorant and racist white majority, and by majority i mean only in terms of their political power, not in their numbers. the racist organization that controls buffalo politics, along with most of the rest of new york state's is older and more intrenched than the KKK, i am speaking of the mafia. my mother wasn't exactly a "darling" of the mob in buffalo, although she was, for the longest time, one of buffalo's most famous, colorful, and popular italian- american socialites, with friends and admirers among the mafia, entertainment, publishing, artistic, and civil rights and social justice communities in buffalo, until her younger sister's jealousy got all of us run out of town.i myself went back briefly to buffalo and worked at a mob nightclub, owned by the turgeon brothers, frank and joe, who at the time owned seven restaurants and clubs all around buffalo and it's suburbs.
Thank you for your posts and replies to my original post. I can see why people who live in Buffalo would get defensive about it, but the way some were responding to my post would make you think that I insulted their mother or something. It was nice reading your long, but interesting stories abut Buffalo and your family and the mob there. Pretty tragic regarding the events that happen and are still happening today.
No, I don't need them, but I can see why you would know about it and recommend it since you live in a place like this. It's a pretty depressive place and the cold long winters doesn't help either. Isn't Buffalo ranked one of the most depressed cities in the country?
8. Buffalo, N.Y.
This Snowbelt city is still the second-largest in New York state, but the population has fallen more than 50% over the past half-century as the industrial base waned.
Here is a smile for you to help you out.
Hey, Zara, how do you like us after THIS winter?
Still staying?
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