Straight to the Morrow

You can tell when you've reached Buffalo by the scenery change. When scenes of Western New York pastoral life become an awkward compilation of densely distributed wooden houses and clusters of cemeteries. Welcome to Buffalo, New York. An All American City.

"Do you need a cab ma'am?"

"No." I half way grumble at the woman without lifting my head to see her more than out of the corner of my eye. She shuffles away in her jean jacket with a grey hoodie underneath. It's cold out, but really cold. In New York City it gets cold, but it also gets windy, very windy, almost like a vindictive wind. Still, you can feel a bit of the ocean in the vengeful whips. In Buffalo it's just cold. A bitter cold that seeps through your clothes and tries to sting right through to your bone morrow. Often it succeeds. It is 5:45 am, and I am fresh off the bus from my third college semester in New York City. I have also just finished reading Greg Ames' Buffalo Lockjaw, a book I compulsively bought when I saw it oh so pretentiously sitting on a bookshelf in the NYU bookstore. What are you so proud about, no name author with your book about this coming home to this no name city? I had to do it, and now it sits heavy on my mind as I stare out at the chocolate brown wet pavement, the orange street lamps, and the accenting snow.

I wish my mother would come faster, not because I'm cold but because I worry that the cabbies think I'm lying. Maybe they don't think I'm lying. Maybe they don't give a fuck. That's fine, I don't give a fuck about them either, or their stupid blue van cab service. Need a lift? 875-3500. And this is not downstate elitism, I've always felt this way: any cab service you need to call defeats the purpose of being a cab service. In my opinion. And any cab company other than NYC Taxis is a joke.

No, I don't care about the cabbies, but I do wish that I had given that woman more time of day then I did. I didn't even lift my head up, I could have smiled. Looking at her I realize that while in New York she would seem like a shady character, in Buffalo she is just a normal woman, a hardworking woman: short stature, stringy dyed red hair, and a scrunched up face with a few good hard lines pressed into it, probably from years of working mornings like this; years of Buffalo lockjaw. Yeah, she's just normal, yet too much time in the City made me treat her like a bum, which is ironic 'cus I've been a bum (in New York, handing out flyers puts you on the same level as a pan-handeling drunk to pedestrians). I feel bad, I've forgotten where I came from.

No, that's impossible. That's something I've learned from Ames and from life: you can never take the Buffalo out of the Buffalonian. It's there forever, whether its showing your friends on Long Island how to dig a car out of the snow, or when you scoff at chicken wings at a restaurant. And Buffalonians always seem to run into each other, you'll find them happily sprinkled around everywhere. Youths mostly, trying to escape their fate and the ironing of hard lines into their face by the lockjaw.

My mother has arrived. It's taking her longer to figure out how to open the door these days it seems. Or maybe not, maybe that's a petty observation, but if you've read Ames' book, which is also about coming home to witness his dying mother's last stages of dementia, you would understand why I am concerned. I am not much of a literary buff (no pun intended), but Buffalo Lockjaw is probably not the most stellar piece of literature. Buffalonians will love it however. Not just because they are looking for the shoutouts and insiders on every other page(which unfortunately Ames often has to explain for those other readers), but also because of the sentimental understanding each chapter has of the city and its people. And rightly so, it's written by a man who knows how the cold goes straight to the morrow, how sometimes you find the majority of life's answers driving around aimlessly on the West side, and how the 27-blocks of Elmwood avenue break hearts, save lives, and become a backdrop for the climb from childhood to young adulthood. My mother has just run a red light. Not even one of those speeding right through the yellow, but she genuinely looked at it and still did not notice it was red until she was under it.

"Mom!" I cry out, but then I notice that someone has opened a new coffee shop on Broadway. Right across from the library. Good for them. The wind is whistling through my window. That Buffalo cold still trying to get at me. It's relentless I swear. One February to March I saw it play with our hearts, bring sun and signs of grass and new buds one day, then killing them all the next with a harsh frost. We are not suppose to be on Broadway. "It's too early for you isn't it?" "Yes," laughs my mother " You're really risking both our lives by having me out this early." I believe her, I blame it on the time.

Humboldt Parkway. My mother told me that when she was younger, this use to be a glorious stretch of actual park. Two sides of the road were separated by a giant island full of trees and grass and foliage that went all the way through the city. Now they're separated by a vast, noisy, and very ugly expressway. A piece of highway infrastructure that when built, during the days of city expansion and population growth, was a great idea, but now, after deindustrialization, is just a rarely-densely populated stretch of pavement and columns that makes getting anywhere never take longer than 10 minutes. Back then, the city got swept up in the national highway craze during the glory years of the 50s. Now, it's a sight of contention. Politicians debate about tearing it down, as if that will make the city better. Even if it would, this hasn't happened. It doesn't and probably never will. That's a Buffalo mindset for you.




My mother forgets the keys to the door in the car. I need to stop taking notes of these things. But I'm happy she did. It gives me a chance to look at my street. Covered in a blanket of snow, it's silent. The little sleepy homes resting peacefully. There's the standard one house with sorry excuses for christmas lights blinking, the smell of winter in the early morning air that makes your nose tickle. The pink-grey sky hugs the neighborhood, my breath the only thing I can hear. I love being home.




Inside it's like I never left. I go up to my room to turn on my heater to bump that lofty chill off. My mother has turned on the radio. 10 years ago, right at this time, I would stumble downstairs, rubbing sleep out of my eyes, and ruin my mother's bathroom time. We only have one bathroom in this house, and she was never finished getting ready before I was just getting started. The same radio station would be playing in the background, the same coffee pot roasting under the same fluorescent lights in the kitchen. Some things never change.


Though things do change. Around the time I post this, my grandmother would come hopping up our steps, I'd let her in. Eventually my Papu would be the one to get me, and he would honk his horn. Then later, it was my grandmother again, with that silly leopard printed hat on her head, her glasses, and shifting teeth that always made a smile when she saw me. She would come in and start fussing with my grandfather. Then my mother would take me to school.


Now all three of them are gone, and I watch my mother hop up the steps of our porch, in her silly fuzzy hat. If she weren't so tall, I'd think I was looking at a ghost. It would make sense: my grandma passed in what is now my mother's office. I wonder if on early mornings, or late nights, they keep each other company without even noticing. I go down the back hallway to let my dog in. He looks like a black bear. I did this all the time, every morning and night. Sometimes I'd even go out barefoot. Today, I have on slippers.

In my room the sun has not yet poked through the window. My fake fireplace pops. When there were snowdays, I would climb back up here, laugh at the cold for loosing this battle, and lay in bed, a bit too awake but very happy to be home. Then slowly, I'd drift right back to sleep.



Some things never change.