Buffalo Dreamin'

My summer odyssey continues. I am back home. Buffalo, that is. After two straight days of driving, with the second day consumed with endless roads up, down, and around mountains in Pennsylvania (never tell mapquest "avoid toll roads"), I made it here Monday night. My first order of business was to go to Anderson's and get myself a Beef on Weck. Yum. Actually, I had two of them. Today, I spent a fair amount of time visiting the cemetery. I bought some purple flowers for Bert's grave and to put in front of my mother's niche. I sat there for quite a while, listening to Elvis sing gospel songs. Bert loved to hear Elvis sing gospel. The weather was beautiful. It was an emotional time.



I also wanted to visit my grandparents' graves in the Old German and French Cemetery, which is down the road from where Bert and my mother are. I found the spot fairly easily despite the fact that the Drive-In that was next to where they are is gone, and the fence that surrounded it is gone, as well. There's a big stone by the road with an Italian name (go figure) that usually catches my eye. There are two larger stones with the names "Hartwig" on them. The one is for my great grandmother and grandfather. The other is for my Uncle Ed, his brother-in-law, his wife, and his wife. I guess he was married twice. My grandparents have two flat markers behind those. Try as I may, I could not find them. Feeling all over the area, I finally did locate them; they were totally covered by grass. Obviously, no one has been there since I was last time. Pulling the grass up by hand, I did manage to clear some of it. I finally went and bought a grass shears to finish it. It still took me a good half hour to free them both.

Later, I drove around some old neighborhoods and then visited my old elementary school and church, Our Lady Help of Christians. I talked to someone who was working around the shrine for a little while. She said the school had been closed about five years and combined with another school. The shrine looked very nice and was well-cared for. The original chapel is a national landmark. The shrine was built by the Batt Family in the 1800s. They were at sea when a terrible storm broke out. They prayed to Mary and said they would build a shrine to her if they were saved. They were, and they did. They are all buried on the site. I didn't realize that the cemetery there is still active. There is a mausoleum where the rectory used to be, and the rectory is where the nuns used to live.



August 15th (The Feast of the Assumption) used to be a big day there. The church is outside Buffalo, and people, especially Italian Immigrants, would walk from the city line to come to the shrine. Sometimes several thousand might come by in the course of the day. There would be mass and then blessings with various relics. The rectory basement used to be full of crutches, wheelchairs, and other things that people had left behind after being blessed and "cured." Hey, I know what I saw as an alter boy there. The lady I spoke to said she had asked the pastor to try and rekindle that interest, but he seemed to think it was too much work. Too bad.

I did more sightseeing after that, ending up downtown. It's one thing to see limited pictures of what people hail as projects that signal a rebirth in the city. It's another thing to see a few neat buildings surrounded by blight. Even areas like Hertel Avenue and Elmwood Avenue seem rather small compared with the sprawl of abandoned buildings and run-down sections of the city. Maybe it is impossible to bring this city back. I'll look around more tomorrow.



City Hall still stands tall and majestic against a pure blue Buffalo sky.