Shuffling off to Buffalo

I'm in Buffalo, New York, for a few days, visiting family.  I haven't been here since my grandmother's funeral in late 2002, which is way too long.  Although I never lived here, it's a kind of second home to me.  Both of my parents grew up here, and as a child, I spent lots of time here with grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins--my whole extended family, really.  I'm staying with my Aunt Toby and Uncle John in their beautiful contemporary home that my uncle--a very accomplished architect--designed, and it is a real pleasure.

My aunt and I begin the morning with a short driving tour of the city.  A lot has happened since I've last been here.  Like many Rust Belt cities, Buffalo has been down for a long time.  Even when I came as a boy, there were lots of abandoned warehouses, decaying infrastructure, dilapidated neighborhoods.  The steel mills and other heavy industry left in the late '60s and early '70s and the bottom fell out of the economy.  Folks moved away, largely to warmer sun belt cities.  Young people departed in droves.  When my grandfather, Joseph Fink, was a rabbi here, Buffalo was a major American city, in the nation's top ten most populous urban areas.  Today it doesn't crack the top fifty.

But the city is experiencing a renaissance.  As we drive through the streets of downtown, I see some of those abandoned warehouses being transformed into urban condos, where young people want to live.  There are micro-brew pubs on many corners and a renewed sense of civic pride.

Our first stop is Forest Lawn Cemetery.  It's a huge place, a city of the dead, including quite a few historical figures of note.  I go to my paternal grandparents' gravesite and leave two stones.  My grandfather, Rabbi Joseph Fink, died when I was a small boy and I have only the dimmest memories of him.   Yet many folks here still remember him fondly and vividly, and I like to think that some of his spirit lives on in me.  I hope that I have some of his gifts as a rabbi and a teacher.   By contrast, my grandmother, my Oma, was a powerful force in my life.  She was the unquestioned matriarch of our family: incredibly smart, tough, gracious, loyal.  She encouraged me to be a writer, to stand tall in my beliefs, to speak my mind.  It is a great honor to visit their graves.

My maternal grandparents, Ray and Inez Hoffman, are also in Forest Lawn.  But they are not buried.  My grandfather hated the thought of being in the earth, so he bought vaults in the mausoleum or, as he called it, "The Condo."  I went there, too, but did not take a picture, as it felt weird taking pictures indoors in the mausoleum.  They were both enormously influential people in life.  My Papa owned a prominent printing press in town.  He was quite the character: strong, opinionated, sometimes prickly but a very loving grandfather, and a master story teller.  We loved hearing his tall tales and I like to think that some of that wore off on me.  My grandmother was the hostess par excellence, a superb cook and baker, generous and kind.  A good friend, a wonderful listener.

All of my grandparents gave me extraordinary gifts.

After the cemetery, we go to the Albright-Knox Gallery.  One wouldn't know, from the neo-classical exterior, that it is one of the finest contemporary art galleries in the country.  Aunt Toby and I have lunch in their very hip cafe and then take in the collection: Jackson Pollack, Rothko, Calder, etc.  I see a lot that I like but my favorite is the piece outside, made up entirely of old aluminum canoes.  The first boat I ever owned as a Grumman, which I bought for $50 from a suite-mate my freshman year of college.  There's nowhere I'd rather be than on a river, but this was pretty close: a kind of wild flowering of canoes!

In the afternoon, I go for a walk down Elmwood Ave, which is at the heart of Buffalo's urban renewal, a strip that features old houses, new boutiques, restaurants, and parks.  It feels to me like the heart of this city, the combination of old grandeur from its urban heyday at the turn of the 20th century and the grit that has sustained it through more difficult times.  There's a kind of beauty in the decay, too--and I've always been drawn to that kind of beauty.

I pass the house where my mother's parents lived just before she got married to my dad.  It's still pretty grand.

Then I walk by so many classic Buffalo vistas, houses and pubs and grungy streets and elegant avenues.

Dinner is back at Toby and John's, with my cousin Lynn Hirsch and the new rabbi at Beth Zion and his wife, who is an accomplished ketubah artist.  It's a great evening of conversation, laughter, shared memories, new perspectives, fabulous food and thought-provoking discussion.

It's good to be back here.