Author: Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.

On WBEN’s 90th birthday, the station’s longest-serving announcer is still on the air…

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

WBEN signed on the air September 8, 1930—90 years ago today.

The station’s birthday is important to me because the station has played such an important role in my life as a listener, employee, and now alumni of the station.

I first walked into the station as a 15-year-old intern, and would spend the next five years working my way up through the producer ranks up to what was the highest profile producer job in radio—producer of Buffalo Bills Football with Van Miller and John Murphy. I also met and worked alongside the woman who’d become my wife during those days on Elmwood Avenue.

Five years later, I returned to the station, this time in the newsroom—and over the next decade I worked my way up to news director.

Through all my years in media, I always took special pleasure in being able to share my passion for Buffalo and Buffalo Broadcasting with the listeners of WBEN, and the station’s birthday, I’ve dipped into the archives to share some of the stories I wrote and produced about WBEN and the people we all listened to at 930am.

Steve Cichon- WBEN celebrates 80 years-1

Steve Cichon- WBEN celebrates 80 years-2

Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Aud-1

Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Aud-2

Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Statler-1

Steve Cichon- WBEN at the Statler-2

Steve Cichon- WBEN says Goodbye to Barbara Burns-1

Steve Cichon- WBEN says Goodbye to Barbara Burns-2

Steve Cichon- Brian Meyer inducted into Broadcast Hall of Fame-1

Steve Cichon- Brian Meyer inducted into Broadcast Hall of Fame-2

Steve Cichon- Remembering WBEN on 9/11 ten years later-1

Steve Cichon- Remembering WBEN on 9/11 ten years later-2

Steve Cichon- John Zach celebrates 50 years in Broadcasting-1

Steve Cichon- John Zach celebrates 50 years in Broadcasting-2

Steve Cichon- John Zach covers Martin Luther King-1

Steve Cichon- John Zach covers Martin Luther King-2

Steve Cichon- John Zach lived the Jersey Boys-1

Steve Cichon- John Zach lived the Jersey Boys-2

WBEN’s longest serving announcer

The 90th anniversary of WBEN’s first sign-on brings to mind many of the stable and authoritative voices which have unflappably informed Buffalo over those decades at 930am.

The longest tenured of those voices remains a daily fixture.

From her early days of airborne traffic reporting from the Skyview 930 helicopter to the last two decades as morning drive host, Susan Rose has been a steady, unwavering, and professional voice on WBEN and a clear connection to the great news voices of generations past.

**Susan Rose with current co-host Brian Mazurowski**

Rose is not your typical “radio star.” She’s never wanted to be. It’s exactly that which makes her a fit in the pantheon of WBEN greats.

“A superb anchor,” wrote Buffalo News critic Anthony Violanti. “Reads the news with journalistic style and skill.”

After graduating from Buffalo State College and starting her radio news career at Lockport’s WLVL, Rose joined WBEN in 1985.

***WBEN Newsteam 1988: Brian Meyer, Ed Little, Susan Rose, Tim Wenger, Monica Wilson, Mark Leitner***

Her blue-collar approach to journalism combined with 35 years of continuous, daily broadcasting on the station puts her in the same rarified company as past WBEN greats, many of whom she regularly worked with across the decades.

Mark Leitner and Ed Little were WBEN stalwarts and frequent Rose co-anchors through the 80s and 90s.

***Rose was hired to join the WBEN news team by legendary news director Jim McLaughlin.***

The legendary Lou Douglas was at WBEN for 30 years before retiring, overlapping a couple years with Rose.

After three decades at WKBW, John Zach spent another 18 years at WBEN, including 16 years co-anchoring “Buffalo’s Early News” with Rose.

***John Zach & Susan Rose, WBEN, 2002.***

While she doesn’t have that booming voice— once considered the most important hallmark of the then all-male radio news profession— Rose’s even and reliable presence has been featured on the station longer than any broadcaster, including Clint Buehlman, who hosted mornings at WBEN for 34 years.

Perhaps that’s part of the secret why Rose’s approach and sound is still as upbeat and fresh as the day she walked through the studio doors 35 years ago.

***Rose’s husband, Tim Wenger, was her co-anchor on evening drive news program “Buffalo’s Evening News” in the early 90s.***

She doesn’t project her personality into the news. Through her career—rather than stand out in front— she has allowed her writing, editing, news judgement, and steady on-air presence to support the team.

It’s even fair to say Rose avoids the spotlight— but it’s also fair to say when crisis strikes in Buffalo, there aren’t many voices on the airwaves today which bring credibility and calm like hers can.

A recent WBEN bio said “it was always her dream job to work for the number one news station in Buffalo.”

She’s taken it one step further to personify it.

100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting, Vol.1 1920-1970

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The newest book from Buffalo Stories & Steve Cichon!

ORDER NOW at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore!

Meet and reacquaint yourself with the people and stations that have created and reflected who we are as Buffalonians with this 432-page in-depth look at the first 50 years of radio and television in Buffalo.

Packed with more than 600 photos, it’s a look at the stories of the people, places, and events that have entertained and informed generations of Western New Yorkers over the airwaves– and under our pillows, into our cars, into our living rooms, and into our hearts as a part of what makes us Buffalonians.

From the scholarly to the nostalgic, the earliest pioneering days of Buffalo radio will come to life with new research on Buffalo’s status as one of the birthplaces of modern radio—and then the birth of rock ‘n’roll radio here a decade later, about the same time television was wrangling more and more of our attention.

We visit Clint Buehlman and Danny Neaverth; Uncle Mike Mearian and Rocketship 7; The Lone Ranger & KB’s War of the Worlds; Meet the Millers and Dialing for Dollars; John Corbett & Chuck Healy and Irv, Rick & Tom; The Hound and John Otto and so many more of the great broadcasters who were there as we experienced the best (and worst) times of our lives.

The book’s covers by themselves are a study of the century of broadcasting in Buffalo, with another 269 images, showing some of our favorite stars in action.

Sales of the book benefit The Buffalo Stories Film Conservation Initiative, which funds the storage, maintenance, digitization, and interpretation of thousands of hours of discarded Buffalo film and video from the 1960s-1990s.

Author Steve Cichon has spent three decades in Buffalo media in radio, television & print. His journey started as a wide-eyed 15-year-old at WBEN learning about radio, journalism and life. The lifelong Buffalonian sees this, his sixth book, as a kind of family history– as these are the stories of the people who made him the person he is today.

Available for pre-order now in The Buffalo Stories Bookstore.

Books are expected in stock by mid-September.

The Marv Levy voicemail prank, c.1994

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Today’s Marv Levy’s 95th birthday, and I was reminded by Greg Bauch on Twitter about a tape editing prank I did 25+ years ago.

Marv Levy: *why do these people keep calling me?*

Marv left a message for Howard Simon on the WBEN Sports voicemail along the lines of… “Hi Howard, it’s Marv Levy with the Bills, please give me a call back at 648-1800. Thanks.”

I edited out the “Howard” and left that on dozens of other people’s voicemails and answering machines. At least one friend forwarded it on to other people’s voicemails as well.

Listen to the actual message below:

The editing isn’t perfect, but it was also done before the days of digital editing. This was done with a grease pencil, a razor blade and Scotch tape– which, if I do say so myself, makes it even more incredible.

More on Marv Levy: http://blog.buffalostories.com/at-bills-vs-new-england-in-1994-patriots-fan-heckles-marv-levy/

Read more about Greg Bauch: WGR’s Biggest Loss Since Shane

Jacobi’s, Abbott near Ridge, 1966

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

South Buffalo has been a Buffalo pizza hot spot for decades.

Some of the first pies served up in that part of the world were served over the counter of The Plaza Pizzeria in LB Smith Plaza on Abbott Road near Ridge.

In 1966, Plaza Pizzeria moved to a stand alone building on the other side of Ridge Road and was renamed Jacobi’s.

It was the first pizza many in Lackwanna and South Buffalo ever tasted.

Buffalo officially becomes 716 on Sept. 29, 1960

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

It took months to phase in the use of three-digit area code 716 for direct dialing across all of the Buffalo area, but quietly, a switch was flipped on Sept. 29, 1960 — and telephone users in Buffalo, Akron, Alden, Amherst, Boston, parts of Cheektowaga, Derby, East Aurora, Eden, Holland, Lackawanna, North Collins, Orchard Park, Tonawanda, Wanakah, West Seneca and Williamsville were all able to use direct dial service for long-distance calls.

Until that date, Western New Yorkers had to call the operator to be connected long distance.

Folks in Angola, Clarence, Grand Island, Hamburg and Lancaster had to wait a few more weeks, but soon, they too, were officially part of the “716.”

As a part of the move to direct dialing, the old exchange names for phone numbers were replaced with numbers. In Buffalo, the Amherst exchange became TF-2, and eventually 832. Grant became TT-4, eventually 884. Evergreen in Tonawanda became NX-4, which a few years later evolved into 694.

This list, as printed in the Courier-Express, was clipped and left near phones for years.

In November 1960, the work was complete.

“Through the wizardry of electronic marvels, the 244,000 customers of the New York Telephone Co. in the Buffalo area will be able their own long-distance telephone numbers starting precisely at 2:01 AM Sunday,” reported The News a few days before the final switch.

Our identity as members of the 716 tie into that day, when people gushed about the jet-age ability to simply pick up the phone and call any of the 60 million phones in the U.S. and Canada without the help of any other human beings.

Getting around to a big project, 30+ years later

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

I posted this in a few of the pop machine forums on Facebook. It’d be great to get it out of the garage and keeping drinks cool…

I was nine years old when my ol’man drove me to a barn an hour away to buy this 1964 Lacrosse Pepsi machine, as seen in a classified newspaper ad, for $25.

It has no vending or refrigeration guts, and hasn’t since I bought it in 1987.

To collectors, I know it’s a worthless boat anchor— but you didn’t load it into the back of a 1985 Dodge Caravan with your dad and have it in your bedroom growing up.

It’s been relegated to the garage since I bought my own home 20 years ago, but I’d like to shine it up and get it cooling to keep beverages in my basement.

La Crosse Cooler Co., Model LC ILL 54 6. This machine dates back to at least 1964, which is the year that receipts inside the machine were dated.

I’ve read the Lacrosse systems are difficult to find. I’m not looking to create a showpiece here, and willing to try any harebrained scheme to be able to keep some pop bottles cold in this sucker.

It’s obviously less about having a soda machine and more about putting this one to use, finally, after more than 30 years.

Any ideas to rig up something would be appreciated.

Little Richard plays Buffalo at the Zanzibar, 1956

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Rest in Peace Little Richard. Buffalo’s loved him since 1956.

His influence is heard on every single pop song recorded since rock n’ roll was called rhythm and blues or “race music.”

He was George “Hound Dog” Lorenz’s favorite musician. He was The Beatles favorite musician.

Don’t believe the campy persona he lived because he had to because it was just about impossible to be a black gay man in America.

From a song writing, music, and showmanship perspective– he invented rock ‘n’ roll.

A-wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-wop-bam-boom!

Great-Grandma Wargo’s potato pancakes

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

My German ancestors arrived in Buffalo in 1827, and probably brought some version of this potato pancake recipe with them.

I know the recipe I use goes back at least to my German great-grandmother, Jeannette Greiner-Wargo.

Potato pancakes are a messy pain to make, but well worth it, especially when none of the local restaurants that make them don;t taste anything close to this.

GREAT GRANDMA WARGO’S POTATO PANCAKES

5 or 6 medium potatoes
one medium onion
one egg
flour
salt and pepper
vegetable oil for cooking

Peel 5 or 6 medium potatoes, and peel and trim onion.

Using the larger of the two shred sizes of a hand grater, shred the potatoes and the onion in a big bowl.

Add the egg and salt & pepper and mix.

Add enough flour to soak up any liquid in the bowl, stir well. (You will likely have to do this again as more liquid shows up in the bowl while you’re frying.)

Heat a heavy frying pan (I use cast iron) to medium-high, and coat the bottom of the pan with oil.

When the oil is hot, make 3-4 inch pancakes. Let the edges brown, flip once.

Put pancakes on paper towel covered plate to allow grease to drain.

Coat bottom of pan with oil again, repeat. Add flour and mix well if there is liquid in the bowl.

Grandma Coyle always served them with homemade applesauce… which was deliciously easy— apples cut into inch cubes into a sauce pan, covered with sugar, and then covered with water, turned on low and let it simmer.

Cigarettes and mustaches

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Other kids wanted the coolest toys, the latest sneakers, and the newest video game consoles.

There was only one thing I wanted as a kid. And that was to be an adult.

I wanted it so bad I could taste it, and within my little-kid view of what it meant to be a grown-up, I was ready to do whatever it took to get there.

I insisted on wearing a suit to my first day of Kindergarten. My only request for my 9^th birthday was a brief case. It was about that time I got by first job in a used book store.

But man, the two trappings of adulthood that were just out of my reach left me twitchy with anxious anticipation.

As far as I could tell, the final and temporarily unattainable steps to full maturity were growing a mustache and smoking cigarettes. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.

From 1978-1989, I singlehandedly kept the stick-on mustache industry in operation.

I probably wore hundreds of costume mustaches through the years. One time, Grandma took us on the bus to George & Company on Main Street next to Shea’s. There was a real Hollywood fake mustache in the plexiglass case behind the counter, $29. It became a minor obsession.

On TV, Mr. Dressup was always making and then wearing fake mustaches. As soon as the show was over, I would be running around the house looking for black pipe cleaners or black yarn or for a big black marker that would make the same kind of squeaking sounds that Mr. Dressup’s made on tagboard as it squeaked out the outline of a “big moos-taache,” as he’d say with flair.

*Mr. Dressup, Casey, and Finnegan make mustaches*

Once in passing my dad suggested that burnt cork was good for drawing on beards and mustaches. From that point forward, when I wasn’t thinking about the Cadillac of mustaches from George & Co., I was looking everywhere for a cork to set on fire and smear on my face.

Speaking of fire, the only way to make a mustache even more amazing, I thought, is to put some kind of lit tobacco product underneath it. I learned my colors studying the different logos and packages of cigarettes in the vending machine at my ol’man’s bar.

It wasn’t just colors. There was a lot about smoking I studied. The ways different people held their smokes. The different brands people smoked. The different ways they carried around packs. Aunt Peggy had what looked like a coin purse, but it was just the right size for a pack of smokes and a lighter. I was always excited when she’d ask me to go get her cigarettes.

Just like with the mustaches– bubble gum cigars, bubble pipes, and candy cigarettes were all favorites. Candy cigarettes were a frequent treat—they were really cheap, and lasted quite a while. I was always excited to see mom unpack the groceries and to see her draw a “carton” of candy cigarettes out of the brown paper bag.

Back then, the candy cigarette packs were exact replicas of real cigarette brands, except the boxes were cardboard instead of the soft packs that most people I knew smoked.

There were fights about choosing who got which packs. Marlboro was always the first pack gone. Everyone loved Lucky Strikes. We all liked Pall Mall, because it looked like a trick when Uncle Mike “Hooker” Doyle would open his Pall Malls using the only hand he had on the end of his only arm.

I liked Chesterfield, because my dad said his grandpa used to smoke them, so they must have been OK. No one really wanted Lark, but Lark was still better than Viceroy.

There was always hope that I’d come across a pack of Parliament candy cigarettes—that was Dad’s brand. Never did, though.

So not only did candy cigarettes teach us how to smoke, they built multigenerational brand loyalty.

Some kids would suck the little white sticks into a point, just like a candy cane. I’d suck on it a little while, hold in in my fingers, flicking imaginary ash with my thumb. Then I’d loudly crunch down the whole thing with the same satisfaction as mashing a butt into an ashtray. Then I’d grab another one right away. When I had a pack, you know I “chain-smoked” those sons of bitches, just like a real nicotine fiend.

Smoking was so wholly ingrained as some inevitable and desirable part of adulthood, my yearning to pick up the habit hasn’t completely gone away.

In fact, if tomorrow, the Surgeon General said Just kidding about those cigarettes! Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em!, I’d probably start a two-pack-a-day habit.

Maybe then I’d finally feel like a grown up.

Grandpa’s wall of 8-packs… and other warmly remembered childhood oddities

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Doing ’80s research is dangerous for me. Any time frame earlier is “history,” and I love it… but it’s hard to be clinical when every turned page of a 70s or 80s Courier-Express or Buffalo Evening News is dripping with images and ideas that leave me drowning in nostalgia.

I could write a short book about when the bottom shelf of the pop aisle at every Buffalo grocery store was filled with Coke, Pepsi, and RC Cola in tall, thin glass bottles.

Pop tasted so much better in those 16oz glass bottles. Those eight packs were always on sale, and even when they weren’t, it was the cheapest way to buy the name brand.

That’s why Gramps loved ’em.

Grandma Cichon lived a few doors from Seneca Street in a worn out, but grand old house. When you walked in the front door and looked straight ahead, you looked through the front hall, then a more narrow hallway, and then right into the kitchen.

If Grandma wasn’t at the stove cooking, she was the first thing you’d see when that door swung open, sitting at the head of the table, with a cup of coffee in a gold butterfly mug and Kool 100 burning in the over-full ashtray.

When you creaked open that big door and looked slightly to the right, if Gramps wasn’t working (which was a lot– he still had three jobs when I was little), he was sitting in that comfy chair right just on the other side of the beautiful leaded glass doors which lead into the parlor.

Grandma generally would see us first, and start to say hello, before Gramps– who was much closer– would take his eyes off of Lawrence Welk or Bugs Bunny to intercept us for a minute.

“Ha’oh dere, son,” Gramps would say in a pretty thick standard Buffalo Polish accent. I had no idea there was anything to notice about that. Isn’t that how everyone’s Grandpa talked?

“Can I get you a glass of pop or a sandwich?” Gramps would ask, and immediately piss off my ol’man.

*Royal Crown: the definitive “big name” cola of Polonia.*

“Jesus Christ, Dad, it’s ten o’clock in the mornin’,” Dad would say, walking toward Grandma in the kitchen.

Ignoring my ol’man completely, Gramps would give an inventory.

“Well help yourself. In the ice box we got two kinds of baloney… Polish loaf… olive loaf… pimento loaf… ham…”

The sound of his voice would trail off as we walked through the narrow hallway on the way to the kitchen.

Now I wouldn’t think anything of this hallway until twenty years later, when the girlfriend-who-became-my-wife asked me about it after visiting Gramps.

In the same way I never thought anything about my grandpa’s Polish accent, I never thought anything about his hallway filled with pop.

When I say filled, I mean the entire length of the ten-foot long walkway had pop pushed up against the wall, stacked two or three deep and two, three, or four high in some places.

It was mystical and mystifying. Gramps’ pop display was far more impressive than what you’d have seen at Quality Food Mart, half a block away at Seneca and Duerstein.

There were 2-liter and 3-liter bottles; flat, mixed-flavored cases of grocery-store brand cans; some times a wooden case or two from Visniak, but more than anything else, 8-pack after 8-pack of glass bottles.

Now Gramps had ten kids, but there weren’t ten kids living there at the time. And even for ten kids– hundreds of servings of soda pop lined up waist high, the first thing you see when you walk into the house… well, it was one of many things that made Gramps a true Buffalo original.

I’m sure there was something about taking advantage of a good sale… or getting one over on a cashier with an expired coupon… or (put a star next to this one) getting under my grandmother’s skin by buying things she’d say they didn’t need…

But Gramps really didn’t drink. He wouldn’t want a beer, but would relax with a coffee or a pop.

He also really wanted to share his pop, and make sure you knew it was OK to take it. He wasn’t just being polite in offering it. That wall was there to prove, “I got plenty! Go ahead and take one!”

You could expect to refuse a pop at least three or four times while visiting with Gramps, and then one more on the way out.

“Sure you don’t want a pop, son? Why don’t you take some home? I’ll get you a bag.”