Buffalo Gal

by Laura Pedersen

  Another sign of the strong Catholic heritage is the goodly number of older adults in my hometown who are ambidextrous. The pro-right nuns were still converting lefties to righties in the late sixties, more often than not by tying the offending hand behind the back of the chair to relieve them of temptation. The Latin word for “left” is sinister, and so it’s painfully obvious why this was necessary. Judas, betrayer of Jesus, sat to his left.

  The main difference between children who attended Catholic school and those who went to neighborhood public schools is bladder control. The nuns believed a bladder could be trained and constrained just like every other part of the mind and body. Thus from the first day of kindergarten, Catholic kids were conditioned to pee only once during the school day, right after lunch. Despite some embarrassing accidents early on, it’s worth noting that the nuns were correct on this point. In any group of adult women, the one skipping the bathroom break is a Catholic-school graduate.

  At Christmastime, my Catholic friends made Advent calendars, arranged mangers underneath their trees, and attended midnight Mass. The mangers were an endless source of fun. We’d rearrange them so the donkeys and sheep were biting the wise men in the ass, poor, tired Joseph was doing headstands, and we’d hide the baby Jesus or send him on endless train rides around the base of the tree, hanging off the back of the caboose by his tiny plastic feet.

  ***

  In small suburban neighborhoods like mine, families lived in ranch, split-level, and two-story houses with three or four bedrooms and one or two bathrooms, purchased for between $15,000 and $40,000 in the fifties or sixties. Adjacent to the driveway was a front lawn with a few trees and shrubs, and in the back, a yard large enough for a garden, shed, and swing set, or an aboveground swimming pool. There was also a grill and a redwood picnic table for that suburban specialty, the Summer

  Barbecue Olympics. Gentlemen, start your briquettes.

  The backyard was where kids were sent to shuck corn, shell peas, peel spuds, and hull strawberries. And, of course, eat watermelon on warm summer evenings, during which monumental seed-spitting wars erupted. These were the days before the big black seeds had been hybridized out of the melon (along with the flavor) for eating efficiency, and prior to the advent of the mini-watermelon; if you dropped one of these industrial-sized footballs, the result was a broken foot, a hole in the floor, or a dead dog. Meanwhile, the grown-ups had a separate watermelon, one inside of which a bottle of vodka or champagne had been poured the day before.

  Lawn statuary was popular and consisted mostly of faux deer and a generous sprinkling of Madonnas. In the heavily Polish neighborhoods of Cheektowaga (sometimes called Cheektowarsaw), Depew, and Sloan, one could often find a Mary on the half shell—the Virgin Mary in a shell grotto or, more commonly, a partially buried upright claw-foot bathtub, or a hot pink flamingo.

  If Dad’s job was steady, you might eventually add on a Florida room, a glass-enclosed greenhouse for sun-starved humans. Otherwise, most homes had a rumpus room where the kids could lounge on beanbag chairs, engage in active play that mothers referred to as roughhousing and constantly warned against, and watch TV (most sat atop a large wooden console containing an older TV that was too costly to repair). This area was either a family room on the main floor or a basement redone with knotty pinewood paneling, indoor/outdoor carpeting, a spring-shot sofa, and a dartboard. Though in large Catholic families, the luxury of an extra room was not something to be enjoyed until the oldest children began moving out.

  The mantel over the fireplace held a few Hummel figurines, and the coffee table was home to a snow globe and souvenir ashtray from someplace warm, with S & H Green Stamps stored in the drawer below. A particleboard bookcase was laminated with faux walnut veneer and filled with a set of encyclopedias that stopped at World War II and was devoid of pages containing information that had to do with sex. Catholic

  homes had a picture of Jesus somewhere, along with a few statues of Mary, small wooden or plastic crucifixes over the beds, and usually a plaque inscribed with grace above the kitchen table. Being modern meant track lighting on the ceiling and a bottle of Blue Nun on the Formica countertop.

  There was one telephone per house (no cordless phones, cell phones, or car phones), and this resulted in much synchronizing of watches, designated meeting places, and waiting in the freezing cold for people who never showed up. It was a decade before answering machines, so if no one was home, the phone just rang and rang and rang. Large families fought over whose turn it was to answer the phone, especially if everyone was lounging in front of the television, and the phone could easily ring a dozen times while this was being resolved. Or you could pretend not to be home and let it ring until the caller eventually gave up.

  Call waiting, Star 69, voice mail, and e-mail were just a glint in some electrical engineer’s eye. When we phoned someone and the line was engaged, we heard a busy signal, which sounded like a dryer buzzer going off over the phone. People regularly capitalized on the busy signal and the fact that there were no answering machines. It was easy to fib and say that you’d been trying to call someone for weeks, and there was no way for them to prove you hadn’t.

  A call from outside the area code was expensive, oftentimes bad news, and almost always for parents. Everyone knew that these exchanges should be kept brief to avoid a big phone bill, and so we ran scattershot through the house shouting, “Hurry! It’s long distance!”

  If someone phoned and we didn’t write down the message or else forgot to tell the person, especially a parent, then we were in big trouble. A constant refrain was “How would you like it if we didn’t remember to give you your messages?” Sometimes a younger child scrawled down the message and it would forever remain a mystery due to his undeveloped listening skills, poor spelling, or disastrous penmanship (for example, “M. Flub canxl turs”).

  In homes containing one or more teenagers, it was possible for the phone line to be engaged for hours every night, and callers would give up trying to get through, deciding instead to drive over or write a letter. In large families with older children expecting calls from girlfriends and boyfriends, the fights to use the phone were monumental. Eventually a moratorium would be declared after a grown-up had been unsuccessful in trying to make contact with Dad about a work matter and he found out about it the next day at the factory or office. Fortunately he hadn’t seen the episode of The Brady Bunch where Mike installed a pay phone inside the house.

  Teenage girls were constantly scolded to get off the phone. They also received a good tongue-lashing for absentmindedly twisting and pulling the stretchy cord while talking (and applying Bonne Bell Lip Smacker). In an effort to dodge eavesdroppers, it was necessary to sequester yourself behind a door, in the pantry, or under a table, and this left an extended spiral cord about ten inches off the ground, perfect to trip Mom as she carried the laundry basket up from the basement, or to clothesline little brothers and sisters.

  Kids developed phone signals with their friends because it was so difficult to talk with any degree of privacy. If your phone rang only once and stopped before anyone was able to answer it, a parent could be pretty sure that something was up. And if right after the single ring one of the kids disappeared from the table, Mom and Dad definitely knew that there was a bad moon on the rise.

  By the time I entered junior high, sledding was no longer considered a cool pastime, but my longtime friend and classmate Debbie Kohnstamm, who lived up the street, and I loved it so we’d head out at midnight, when the hill was empty. Because parents didn’t like the phone ringing after nine, if you wanted to rouse a pal late at night it was necessary to go to her house and toss gravel at the window. This looks easy enough in old movies, but in real life there’s a good chance of hitting the wrong window; plus, a small stone tossed with the necessary force to ensure accuracy had enough velocity to crack the glass.

  Back then, a computer was a building-sized contraption in a

  science-fiction movie. Calculators had ju
st become affordable to the

  general public and were selling at Kmart for $7.99. Parents and kids alike were thrilled to toss out complicated slide rules and adding machines that were heavier than today’s portable computers. A few well-heeled families were just starting to buy these newfangled appliances called microwave ovens and install second phone lines to keep chatty teen-agers from tying up the main one.

  Many people tended flower and vegetable gardens in their backyards. In the rich Western New York soil, just about anything you plant and water will grow. And also a lot of stuff you didn’t. Acres of buttercups, Queen Anne’s lace, and daisies could be found gracefully swaying in empty fields and along roadsides; goldenrod, bachelor’s buttons, cattails, and pussy willows grew wild down by the creek. The tomatoes and zucchini in our gardens all seemed to ripen on the same day in early August, and after fantasizing about them for eleven long months, we were suddenly inundated and couldn’t give them away. By the beginning of October, our backyards held pumpkins the size of medicine balls (a large piece of athletic equipment that served no apparent purpose, but was much favored by gym teachers back then). In fact, this mineral-rich soil in which cabbages grow to the size of meteors was one of the main reasons the Indians had originally made their homes in that region. It certainly wasn’t the sunbathing.

  The only drawback is that the growing season is a short ninety days, give or take—mostly take. However, beer and bingo eventually alleviated the tedium of staying indoors throughout the long winters.

  There still weren’t any video games—handheld, arcade, or otherwise. Just pinball machines, skeeball, foosball, and, when the carnival came to town, shooting galleries, the ring toss, and the baseball throw. Pong arrived in 1972, when I was in second grade. It was followed by Space Invaders in 1978, and in 1979 there were Asteroids and Galaxian. However, these games couldn’t be played in the comfort of your own home. You had to go to an arcade or 7-Eleven or the bowling alley, and usually wait behind some guy who played video games all day like it was his job and could make a quarter last an hour. His initials filled every space of the on-screen high-score chart. Pac-Man came on the scene in 1980 and Donkey Kong in 1981. That’s as far as most of us got, aside from some minor flirtations with Tetris in college.

  I was in elementary school when designer sneakers became a cultural phenomenon, with Nike, Adidas, and Puma using new technologies and introducing fresh styles that incorporated leather, suede, stripes, and nonprimary colors. Nike struck a particular chord with its introduction of the waffle outsole in 1974. We’d all been playing hide-and-seek in boring old canvas Keds and Converse up until then.

  Even vending machines were still somewhat primitive, constantly stealing your change or spewing out a windfall. The most sadistic were the beverage machines that let you watch your soda, coffee, or hot chocolate squirt into the drain and then plopped the empty paper cup down as an afterthought.

  The Good Humor man parked his ice-cream truck at the end of our street every summer afternoon and played psychotic merry-go-round music to announce his presence. The Kirby vacuum-cleaner man appeared by appointment and showed housewives his wares. Moms on a budget knew that if you were having a party and your household allowance was gone, you could get at least one carpet cleaned for free by requesting a demonstration. My mother remembered the Fuller Brush man, and my father told stories about the iceman, but they had both cleared the landscape by the time I arrived. You could often tell the old-timers who had been around for the iceman because when it hailed in the summertime they’d run out with a bucket to catch the hailstones in order to make their own ice cream. And they always referred to the freezer as the icebox. Encyclopedia peddlers still traipsed from door to door, along with a few Bible salesmen, but not so much of the latter in our part of the country. The Catholics didn’t have the same appetite for scripture as the Protestants and Baptists farther south.

  A trip to the Erie County Fair signaled that summer was coming to a close. Begun in Buffalo in 1819, and moved to nearby Hamburg in 1868, it has since become the second largest county fair in North America. The only other local event that could compare on an entertainment scale for a child was going to Crystal Beach Amusement Park across the border in Canada, where you rode the famous Comet roller coaster and stuffed yourself with sugar waffles.

  The Erie County Fair featured pie-eating contests, midway rides, fireworks at night, clown school, horse pulls, barrel racing, roasted onions, corn dogs on a stick, loganberry, goat dressing, dairy cattle, pig races, beef cattle, sheep contests, rabbits, chickens, llamas, wood carvings, vegetable displays, afghans, knitting, needlepoint, crocheting, and quilts. And of course the moo-ternity barn, which housed expecting cows.

  My mom wouldn’t ride the Ferris wheel because once someone had vomited on her from above. Dad told me not to play the arcade games—tossing hoops over stuffed animals, racing ducks, throwing Ping-Pong balls into fishbowls, rolling balls at wooden pins, and shooting baskets—because they were rigged so that you didn’t have much chance of succeeding. And even if you did win, the prize wasn’t worth the cost of playing. But if I really wanted a stuffed dog, he would carefully place his cigarette on the counter so the ashes would fall onto the ground and win one for me by clearing out the red star with an air rifle in the shooting gallery. The Korean War had been good for something after all.

  Campbell’s soup played a starring role in many dishes, making them into “an occasion all on their own,” as housewives liked to say. Tomato soup enhanced chili and stew, cream of celery soup went into tuna casserole, and cream of mushroom soup was used for pretty much everything else, such as Tater Tot hotdish (spread crumbled potato chips on top for desired level of sodium) and any entrée that contained the word surprise in it. The more adventurous chefs experimented with aerosol cheese and Parkay Squeeze margarine. Frozen fish sticks were basically the only fish you could get a kid to eat, and even that could be a struggle without strawberry-flavored Nestlé Quik to wash them down.

  When Mom left the kids with Dad, they usually heated up Swanson TV dinners or picked up a pizza from Bocce or Santora’s. Children left to their own devices made sandwiches, anything that came in a Chef Boyardee can, or homemade “pizza”—slices of Wonder Bread slathered with ketchup and topped with a slice of bright orange

  American cheese.

  Most moms baked regularly, and dessert was usually apple pie, apple crisp, apple upside-down cake, apple turnovers, apple cobbler, or apple strudel. We were comforted with apples not because of the Bible, but because New York State has about seven hundred varieties, they’re inexpensive, and readily available. There was plenty of apple cider to drink in the fall, and apple-mint jelly could be found in most refrigerators. Boys liked to put firecrackers into mushy crab apples and throw them into open windows.

  If you didn’t like apples, God forbid, there was chocolate pudding or Jell-O. Jell-O was often tarted up with canned fruit or tiny marshmallows. It wasn’t until you headed west to Michigan and Minnesota that they started adding vegetables, like carrots. School lunch desserts were homemade cookies or one of the recently introduced Hostess snack cakes, such as Suzy Qs, Ho Hos, Twinkies, and Ding Dongs.

  In the summertime, kids lived for frozen Kool-Aid pops, more Jell-O,

  and lots of Buffalo’s own Perry’s or Charlap’s ice cream with extra jimmies (sprinkles). At the candy counter one could find everything from licorice whips and Dubble Bubble to wax lips and candy cigarettes.

  Saturday mornings were synonymous with cartoon characters, such as the Road Runner, Fat Albert, Scooby-Doo, and Prince Planet. Tots liked Mr. Rogers, Captain Kangaroo, and, of course, Sesame Street, which went on the air in 1969. Rocky wasn’t Sylvester Stallone, but a flying squirrel that was pals with a dim-witted moose named Bullwinkle.

  After school, kids watched reruns of The Three Stooges, The Partridge Family, Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch, and The Little Rascals.

  We looked forward to the televised jumps of mo
torcycle daredevil Evel Knievel, who performed such stunts as riding through walls of fire and vaulting over live rattlesnakes, tanks of sharks, mountain lions, and even canyons. The high ratings were due not so much to the exploits themselves as to the fact that they often ended badly. Moms disliked such televised spectacles since they provoked copycat stunts among us kids, many more of which ended badly.

  Then there were the commercials. The crying Indian taught us not to be litterbugs, while Smokey the Bear warned that “Only you can prevent forest fires.” A person born in America in the sixties may not know who was president then, but he or she can score 100 percent on the following matching quiz:

  1) Lucky Charms a) They’re Greeeeeeeat!

  2) Frosted Flakes b) Toucan Sam

  3) Rice Krispies c) Are for kids.

  4) Froot Loops d) Magically delicious.

  5) Trix e) Cuckoo for them.

  6) Cocoa Puffs f) Snap. Crackle. Pop.

  A kid had one commencement, and that was from high school, not kindergarten or any other grade. You didn’t graduate from junior high—you finished it, the same way you finished dinner. The only way to get a graduation other than from high school was if you completed a vocational program like cosmetology school, or else college. Nothing in between mattered.

  The only rite of passage upon completing junior high school was to avoid the librarian on the way out the door. The book gestapo, who’d gone to school with Mary Todd Lincoln, believed that a full body-

  cavity search was not unwarranted if she had reason to believe you were still in possession of one of her tomes.

  The most fun to be had starting a new grade was examining the inside front cover of your textbooks to see if any older siblings, babysitters, or neighbors had once possessed them. Some kids had all new school clothes, but many received hand-me-downs from older brothers and sisters. However, it didn’t matter much because there weren’t any cup holders in cars or movie theaters back then, so we all went around with dark stains on our crotches.