The Spirit of Buffalo
Embodied in one photo
In the midst of this cold January weather, and in anticipation of the Buffalo Bills-Kansas City Chiefs AFC Championship game tonight, I refer you the above photo of my father as a young boy in the early 1930s.
He stands with a certain élan, smack in the middle of the street.
He is barely taller than the 3-foot metal shovel he holds with a practiced hand.
It was probably the same shovel his father used to load coal into the furnace in the basement.
His costume is the classic one-piece snowsuit that was de rigueur for children of the Niagara Frontier.
Behind him, the street he grew up on, Granger Place, looks like a snowy boulevard in Paris. Thinking of Buffalo in winter, Paris might not be the first city that comes to mind, but Frederick Olmsted left a distinct stamp of elegance on Buffalo.
I suppose it’s a stretch, but for me the photo is emblematic of the spirit of Buffalo. In the face of constant snow and a seemingly endless Depression, the city shrugged it off, confident that it would all somehow work out.
If in the long run.
The Depression did end—although Buffalo would later face other challenges from which it is now beginning to recover. Its population is growing again. And it sits beside Lake Erie, one of the biggest bodies of fresh water on earth. An ocean of fresh water.
Buffalo is also, perhaps, less at risk from nature’s wrath than many other places. Snow, for most of us anyway, is not as scary as fires, floods or hurricanes.
The Bills will win the Super Bowl, eventually.
The snow will melt. Spring will come. But first, there’s shoveling to do.
Those were the days, my friend.
Great story and great photo. You can see that he's squinting from the reflection of the white snow on the ground. But the self confidence and can do attitude are shining through.