Making room for Dr. King’s dream to live on

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Of course, Dr. King was talking specifically about race when he hoping for a country where we judge someone on their character– what is in their heart and how they let that shine forth– rather than the color of their skin.

But my dream expands that a little.

What if we started to look into the hearts of everyone we encounter, instead of judging them by some group they belong to? If we want America to continue to be great, we have to stop thinking that because someone doesn’t look like us, or doesn’t agree with us on an issue, that they are terrible and need to be crushed.

The country I want to live in, and the country I think Dr. King dreamed of, is one where we look past our racial, political, religious, geographical, and economic differences…

A place where we look into the hearts and souls of people of every race… every religion… every political, sexual, and economic persuasion… and we find good-hearted smart people to help us build a good-hearted smart America that brings together all of us into a place where anyone can succeed and feel welcome and not feel the hatred of another because of the color of their skin or the people they choose to love or the way they worship or the amount of money they have in the bank or the place they live or the political party they belong to…

But also that we find space in our good hearts to make room for acknowledging the hardships and struggles that so many have to overcome to even get to the starting line, let alone run the race.

Because this is America, you have the right to carry hate in your heart… but it’s not the best way.

God Bless Martin Luther King and his dream for his people and all Americans and all humans everywhere.

–Martin Luther King Day (observed) 2016

Buffalo in the ’70s: Bob McAdoo and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar tangle at the Aud

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

It was an overtime thriller in a battle of two of the NBA’s premier big men as Bob McAdoo and the Braves hosted Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Lakers at Memorial Auditorium.

Buffalo News archives

It was Nov. 9, 1976, and McAdoo was showing the stuff that had won him the NBA MVP Award a season earlier.

Down by 20 heading into the fourth quarter, McAdoo led a comeback — including hitting a basket with two seconds left to tie the game. Randy Smith’s eight points in overtime cemented the Braves’ 121-116 victory.

Abdul-Jabbar led the game with 37 points in the losing effort; McAdoo had 34.

Buffalo fans were getting one of their last looks at McAdoo in a Buffalo uniform. Exactly one month to the day after this photo was taken, McAdoo was traded to the New York Knicks along with Tom McMillen for John Gianelli and cash.

McAdoo and Abdul-Jabbar ended up teammates on two Los Angeles Lakers championship teams where McAdoo was the sixth man on the club that also featured fellow Hall of Famers Magic Johnson and James Worthy.

Buffalo in the ’80s: Transit Road’s rooftop punch bug

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

If you were a kid riding in the back seat on Transit Road in the 1980s, you quietly waited, hoping that your sibling forgot about the “sure thing” that was coming up.

Buffalo Stories archives/Buffalo News

Just past Cambria’s and Ralph’s Food Valu heading from the north — or just past Zorba’s and Lucki-Urban Furniture from the south — was a free, no-doubt-about-it punch for the kid who was paying attention.

Of course, nearly every set of siblings from the ’60s through the ’80s played the “punch bug” game with the original Volkswagen Beetles, produced for American drivers from the 1950s through 1977. Millions of Bugs meant millions of punches — as the game went, the first to see a “punch bug” was able to lawfully, under kids’ law, punch the person next to them as they exclaim “punch bug!”

It was about 1980 when Jim Abdallah, the Jim of “Jim’s VW Service” on Transit Road, took the engine out of a 1968 Volkswagen Bug and hoisted it up onto the roof of his repair shop.

From the small blurb in a 1985 Buffalo Sunday magazine, it’s unclear whether or not Abdallah was aware of the thousands of instances of physical violence he’d be precipitating in the back seats of family cars in the greater Depew/Lancaster/Cheektowaga area. There, however, the punch bug remained until some point in the ’90s — when the roof-borne bug was replaced with one painted on the side of the building. That still might be enough for some brothers to punch one another.

What It Looked Like Wednesday: Grocery shopping at Elmwood and Summer

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

A new shopping plaza on Elmwood Avenue brought the ease of modern supermarket shopping to the families of that part of 1960s Buffalo — and shoppers have been on a ride ever since.

Buffalo News archives

Now a Price Rite Market, the store first opened as Loblaws in 1961. It became Bells in the 1970s, then Quality Markets when the Bells chain was sold in 1993. Quality closed 10 years later, and Latina’s opened and closed within a decade. Price Rite opened there in 2008.

Torn-Down Tuesday: Delaware Avenue, north of City Hall

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Shot in 1962, probably out a window in the Statler Hotel, this view of Delaware Avenue has evolved slowly but changed drastically through the last 54 years, essentially creating a new gateway to Buffalo’s City Hall and Niagara Square.

Buffalo News archives

The building we see the front and center still stands with some changes. It was built as the Federal Reserve Bank in 1955, and it remained so until it became the headquarters for New Era Cap in 2006. The most substantial change came in the years immediately after the photo was taken, when the block of 19th-century mansions was cleared for the building of what would become the Thaddeus Dulski Federal Building, now known as the Avant.

 

The most remembered and revered building on that block was, in 1962, the Normandy Restaurant — one of Buffalo’s more swank dining spots.

It was built by Dr. Walter Cary in 1851. Cary was one of Buffalo’s cultural elite, and for more than a century, his home was considered one of Buffalo’s finest. It was also the boyhood home of Dr. Cary’s son George, one of Buffalo’s leading architects at the turn of the century. He designed what is now the Buffalo History Museum for the Pan-Am Exposition, the Pierce-Arrow building on Elmwood and the gates and offices of Forest Lawn Cemetery, among others.

These few blocks saw many of Buffalo’s elite diners during this era.

The Normandy is front and center, but across the street and out of view was Foster’s Supper Club. At the very bottom of the photo is the Chateau Restaurant, which lives on in the ghost sign still visible on the side of the only 19th-century home that still stands on that part of Delaware Avenue.

The Chateau offered a “Choice of 25 entrees,” and it painted the offer on the building’s brick façade. The words “Choice of 25” are clearly legible today. Later, as the Roundtable Restaurant, the building at 153 Delaware Ave. served as the venue from which shipping magnate and restaurant co-owner George Steinbrenner announced that he was purchasing the New York Yankees.

Toward the top of the photo, we see a corner that has undergone massive changes in the last 15 years.

The Hotel Richford, previously known as the Hotel Ford, was torn down in 2000 to make way for the Hampton Inn & Suites on the corner of Delaware and Chippewa. Just past Chippewa is the Delaware Court Building, which was torn down in 2014 to make way for the 12-story headquarters of Delaware North.

The northwest corner of Delaware and Chippewa was once the southeast corner of Dr. Ebenezer Johnson’s large estate. He was Buffalo’s first mayor in 1832, and his home, at the time, was on the rural outskirts of the city.  A home built by Philander Hodge on that corner in 1835, which later served as the home of the Buffalo Club, was torn down to make way for the Delaware Court Building in 1913.

 

Buffalo in the ’70s: Surrounded by top Democrats, Dulski gives his final victory speech

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Flanked by State Sen. James D. Griffin, Erie County Democratic Chairman Joseph Crangle and County Legislator Dennis T. Gorski, Rep. Thaddeus Dulski made his final of eight victory speeches upon being elected to the House of Representatives for his eighth and final term in 1972.

Buffalo News archives

A UB-trained accountant, Dulski worked for the IRS until being elected to the Buffalo Common Council first as the Walden District member, then to an at-large seat. He went to Congress following the death of Rep. Edmund Radwan in 1959, and he spent the next 15 years representing Buffalo in Washington.

Dulski was a powerful figure in Washington as chairman of the Post Office Committee, and he was influential in crafting the laws deciding what could and what couldn’t be mailed legally.

Dulski bill defines ‘obscene’ in attack on smut mailings

Rep. Thaddeus Dulski (D., Buffalo) said today that trying to control obscene mail ‘is like trying to empty Lake Erie with a pail.’ 

As the chairman of the House Post Office & Civil Service Committee, Rep. Thaddeus J. Dulski (after whom Buffalo’s Dulski Federal Building was named) had a lot of power of deciding what you could and couldn’t receive in your mailbox.

He made railing against pornography and “continued unsolicited mailings to our young people” a priority and placed “a heavy accent on putting a ban on the mailing of smut into homes where minors reside.”

 

 

After he died in 1988, Buffalo’s federal office building — which Dulski was credited with gaining financial support in constructing — was renamed in his honor.

For more about the checkered and interesting history of that building, now known as the Avant, check out BN Chronicles’ look back at June 10, 1969.

 

Buffalo in the ’30s: Nearly a blizzard on Main Street

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Snow-covered streetcars, buses, cars and pedestrians share the 400 block of Main Street with Hengerer’s, Shea’s Century theater and Buffalo Savings Bank’s gold dome in this shot from 77 years ago.

Buffalo News archives

On Jan. 30, 1939, Buffalo was dealt a surprise 8.5 inches of snow. Two people died as a result of the storm — both as they drudged through the weather on downtown sidewalks. The fact that news accounts mention that the weather event was not an official blizzard, leads one to believe the storm was wicked enough to use the shorthand of “blizzard” whether it strictly fit the meteorological definition or not.

What It Looked Like Wednesday: Eduardo’s on Bailey Avenue

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Eduardo’s Restaurant on Bailey Avenue at LaSalle survived long enough to be remembered differently by different generations.

Buffalo News archives

The Tarquini family started what wound up being a chain of seven restaurants in 1953 on Bailey, and it quickly became one of Bailey’s most popular pizzerias.

Steve Cichon/Buffalo Stories archive

Before Eduardo and his wife, Alice, retired from the business in 1980, the original Eduardo’s had been a pizzeria, a 1960s-style nightclub with live music, and a 1970s-style club as well.

Steve Cichon/Buffalo Stories archive

The address that was Eduardo’s for a quarter century is now a mental health services clinic.

Torn-Down Tuesday: Signs of Bethlehem Steel along Route 5

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

For decades now, thick weeds have enveloped chain link fencing right up to the roadway along Route 5 in Lackawanna.

Buffalo News archives

Thirty-two years ago, even as Bethlehem Steel’s operations were winding down, there was no room for weeds. This photo shows the trappings of steel manufacturing, familiar for generations along that stretch of the lakeshore.

This photo was taken in 1983, as part of a story talking about traffic tie-ups on Route 5.