Since finding a pair of suspenders in the attic the other day, I’ve been walking around singing the parts of a song that Grandpa Coyle used to sing all the time– only I couldn’t remember all the words.
Here’s Gramps drinking Red Dog wearing suspenders, c.2008
la la la la la la suspenders… la la la la la la la dance… .la la la la la la la la la….. Hey Mister, you’re losing your pants!
After spending an hour or so with Google and a couple of online archive sites, I finally came up with the song.
Here are the lyrics from as printed as “an oldie” in a 1940 newspaper.
"One night I forgot my suspenders, and took my girl out to a dance. While dancing I heard someone holler, Hey Mister! you're losing your pants!"
Grandpa Coyle was born 90 years ago today. This is him on the diving board on his 57th or so birthday.
He was born on the 4th of July and created for himself the American dream: He was raised in utter poverty in a broken alcoholic home, but persevered to learn a trade, become a professional, and along with my grandmother, create a beautiful family that honors his story by our very existence.
Of course, if he was here with us, I’d have to sum that all up with, “Happy Birthday, Gramps… can I get you a beer?”
Can’t say for sure this is her birthday, but we spent quite a few of Grandma Cichon’s birthdays at the cottage she’d rent every year at Sunset Bay.
(L to R that’s me, my ol’man, cousin Tracy, Aunt Sue, and Grandma.)
Grandma Cichon was born on July 4, 1928– which was a shock to my dad to hear after she died… he always thought she was born in 1926.
She was only 16 when my uncle Mike was born, and apparently what you did then was make yourself older to make it less scandalous (or to get a better job to help feed your kids).
I think a lot about what had to have been a beaten up heart behind a tough as nails exterior. I think about the personal sacrifices she swallowed for her 11 children, including putting the second of those kids up for adoption and keeping that pain and sacrifice alone inside her heart.
I used to think it was funny or weird that she would refuse to say goodbye– it was always happy, and it was always , “Toodleoo!” and, of course, she was right. She knew the people you loved never leave you, so there’s no reason to ever say goodbye.
Grandpa Coyle took this picture of his girl while they were dating some time in the late 40s. Today, they’re celebrating her birthday together in heaven. She’s no longer here, but the love she gave to us continues to grow and flourish every day. She was about as good as they come. Happy Birthday, Grandma!
June Marie Wargo, late 1940s.
People have told me my grandpa was the toughest guy in Seneca-Babcock.
Jimmy Coyle, the toughest guy in Seneca-Babcock, in front of a gin mill with an Iroquois Beer neon light.
He was a bouncer at the Southside Athletic Club and ran the Seneca-Babcock Boys Club.
Today is Grandma Coyle’s birthday in heaven… But I think she’d be OK with me sharing this great pic of the love of her life which popped up in my Facebook memories today.
eating breakfast in Lackawanna.
The love and devotion they felt and lived rivaled any of the great love stories ever told. How deeply blessed we– their children and grandchildren– are to have had such love and such an example of love in our lives.
Backyard, 841 Tifft Street
Somewhere on high, Grandma’s birthday is perfect– her lil body snuggled in perfectly against Gramps’ big frame, his big meaty arm draped around her shoulder, gently squeezing her in tight.
Side door, 109 Hayden Street
It’s just like grandma– giving the gifts of beautiful memories on her birthday.
Regardless of what the temperature is or how much snow is in the forecast, the Bisons’ first home game is as sure a starting point for Buffalo’s spring as any other measure.
Buffalo News archives
Part of what makes a trip to the ballpark so enjoyable is the communal nature of thousands of baseball fans getting beers from the same vendors for decades.
Buffalo News archives
Conehead:
One of Buffalo’s all-time most popular sports personalities, Conehead — known as Tom Girot when deconed — has been wandering the stands of Buffalo sporting events with ice cold beer since the early ’70s. His all-time record sales day came at a Bisons exhibition game at the Rockpile. Fans tossed back 59 cases, all served up with the Conehead guarantee, as the Bisons played the World Series Champion Pittsburgh Pirates in 1979.
Buffalo News archives
The Earl of Bud:
Though he’s been gone from the stands for almost two decades, Earl “The Earl of Bud” Howze is still a household name and a testament to how much Buffalo loves its beer and beer vendors.
He started hawking beer to Bisons fans in 1979, the same year the team returned to the field after a decadelong hiatus. For almost two decades, it was his style as much as his product which endeared him to a generation of thirsty sports fans. His white tuxedo tails with his nickname emblazoned in red were sponsored by Heidie’s Tuxedo.
Even my unflappable, no-nonsense grandfather — a longtime season ticket holder for the Bills and the Sabres, a man who was rarely impressed with any notion of pageantry or exhibition beyond what the game on the field or the ice, was really impressed with The Earl of Bud.
“They should get rid of that Pee-Wee Herman,” grumbled Gramps, “This guy is 10 times the dancer.”
Of course, as little as Grandpa Coyle liked nonsense, he loved ice-cold beer — which likely explains it all.
Buffalo News archives
There have always been beers on the concourse, too. In fact, that’s where most of Buffalo knows they can find Conehead at the arena these days. In 1989, choices on the concourse were limited to only a few bottled varieties not carried around the park by roving vendors.
Today, the selections include a dozen or more local craft brews if that Blue or Blue Light — even served by the Conehead — doesn’t get the job done for you.
By Steve Cichon | steve@buffalostories.com | @stevebuffalo
It’s never been a conscious effort to replicate the junk piles of my ancestors, but even when I was young, I was fascinated by the grandparents who surrounded themselves with interesting stuff.
Grandpa Wargo’s house was a packed menagerie of wonderment, made even more special by the fact that everything was at least 30 years old and in like new condition. It was very neatly kept, but there was a lot of it, and much of it very exotic to my eyes. It was also the smell, which was something akin to, but not quite, anise-like. When we’d visit, he’d make me sit on the newspapers that he would pile up on the springy couch so that I could “flatten them out.” My dad and I painted his front railing once, and the can of black paint he procured from the basement looked like something he smuggled out of his job at Pratt & Letchworth in the 1930s.
For as tidy, new, and organized as Grandpa Wargo’s stuff felt, Grandpa Coyle’s was just as messy, piled, and chaotic. The 1880’s basement on Hayden Street was filled with old dishwashers, a ringer wash machine, my uncles’ old sporting equipment, and hundreds of scraps of wood, door knobs, bits of glass plate, and rusty tools. It really would have been a childhood paradise were it not for the healthy dose of fear created by the medieval looking rat traps hiding around most corners.
The moment you walked into Grandma Cichon’s front door, there was an overloaded, wall-to-ceiling bookshelf. It was in the little foyer between the screen door and the heavy door in the Seneca Street Victorian– in the place where most people might put coat hooks. It was an eclectic haphazard collection– one of many eclectic haphazard collections spewn throughout the old South Buffalo house. Our coats would go on the carved oak newel post.
Even though I admired the gargantuan clutter clatches of my grandparents, I fostered no plan to replicate them. Yet here I am.
Having lived in our own big old house for 15 years, I’ve collected enough rubble and detritus to make the junk-accumulating pioneers in my life proud. I don’t think the pride would come from the stuff, though– it’s the type of thinking the stuff represents.
How am I supposed to fix something when it breaks, if I don’t have a basement crushed to the gills with useless bric-a-brac which could one day be the missing piece in making sure the door knob stops falling off the front door? I’m sure people do it– fix without junk– but I learned how to fix stuff by watching Grandpa Wargo and Grandpa Coyle. Step one was always go stare at your junk for a while, and hope a solution jumps out at you.
A small portion of my basement work bench.
I would love a clean, sanitized basement without frankly embarrassing piles of mad-scientist/Rube-Goldberg-looking junk everywhere… But I’m afraid– and it’s a real fear– that I’ll lose some part of who I am without the stuff. How do I move onto step two in the repair process without step one?
I’ve been thinking about how to fix the door knob for weeks, and the answer is not in the basement junk. Both grandpas would be happy with my solution, I think… It’s going to start with the same long stare– not in the cellar, but on the “nut and bolt” aisle at Home Depot.
It seems to work more and more like that these days, with my rusty old stuff in the basement acting as more of a security blanket than as useful things. If I can continue to think this way, the upcoming basement clean out should be easier. (LOL.)
What started me writing today, though, is my books. I’ve always had books and always had a bookshelf. For as long as I can remember. When we bought our house, I built and stained immense wooden bookshelves on both sides of the exposed brick of the chimney in our office. I loved idea of being surrounded by books, and that one day I’d have those shelves filled.
Of course, now it looks like a ladies guild buck-a-bag sale in there. Books are piled on the floor and on the desk and, in a trick I learned in Grandma Cichon’s front hall, sideways on top of books properly upright on the shelves.
Most of the books I buy these days are Buffalo and Western New York histories and reference volumes. These are all keepers– Both old and new– all filled with information you can’t find online. Online. There’s the rub.
The first quarter-century of my book collecting came before the Internet and the e-Book. I have half a shelf of really great dictionaries, thesauruses (thesauri?), and wonderful language resource and reference books which have gone untouched for at least a decade. Wonderful history texts, too. Spine literally not exercised in ten years.
There are also the paperbacks which for decades I so vigorously foraged. Classics, interesting old biographies, best sellers of decades’ past– anything that might make for a good vacation or rainy weekend read down the line. Most are now dust-covered and more forlorn-looking than when I plucked them from a yard sale or library fundraising pile.
A gift from Grandma to Dad… the inside cover of a hardcover bound collection of Superman comic books.
The most complicated group of books are the ones that mean something to me. Not the stories; the actual books. Some are transplanted from that mythical shelf at Grandma’s… Some even have her writing in them. Plenty were Dad’s, annotated in his very heavy handed, unintelligible scrawl. With still others, holding the book takes me to the place where I read it. Physically, mentally, emotionally.
The problem with all these books are they are as much bricks as books. They are of little tangible use to me, and they actually take space away from my Buffalo book collection which I use quite vigorously and enthusiastically.
I know I won’t be using them as books– well, only insofar as anyone uses books as window dressing to look learned when their bookshelves are examined.
I’m not exactly happy with myself over this, but I’ve completely forsaken the smelly paperbacks with degrading paper for the tablet. A piece of me has died just writing that sentence, but it’s true. And there isn’t likely any going back.
And while I have warm memories of dictionaries and thesauruses (thesauri?) in every room of my house, for better or worse, the World Wide Web is really a remarkable resource in these areas. I’m not sure what Grandma Cichon would have thought of this, but it’s the cold truth.
I sat down to write this tonight as I was having an existential crisis while trying to cull out the jetsam and flotsam of book collection. I don’t want to be someone without great books, but I don’t want to be a phony, either.
There will certainly be room for the Buffalo books and most of the meaningful ones, too– although I may have to find a less reflective day to decide where that meaningful line is drawn.
Each of these silly paperbacks are a tangible reminder of many things– including that I probably need some sort of therapy.
Maybe a box or two might make it to the attic for further reflection, but those smelly paperbacks (which believe me, I still love!) will likely be boxed up and shipped out for their next rescue. I’ll drop them off with the same hope that people have when they drop off dogs and cats at a shelter, but the reality will probably be the same.
I hope my paperbacks– some of which have made 4 or 5 moves with me– will find a good home on a good bookshelf somewhere. Maybe they’ll even be read on the MetroRail on the way home from work… or maybe they’ll be read as the big raindrops hit the window and the smell of percolated coffee wafts through the air inside the slightly muggy-but-now-cooling-off state park cabin.
But we know the truth. Anyone who wants to read Huckleberry Finn can either download it– or at least find a copy where the pages don’t disintegrate and break from the binding with each advance in the book.
I always loved that struggle, and felt somehow more high-brow in the low-brow of it all. Now I feel high-brow when I read great novels on my phone instead of cruising on Facebook.
It’s not better or worse. It’s the same and it’s different. It’s a soul crushing crisis.
By Steve Cichon
