As World War II comes to an end in 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office. Throughout the country, the greatest generation mourns its leader. A spring snowstorm in Western New York inaugurates the cold war. Chuck Hobbie is just a boy, born on unlucky Friday, April 13th, but fortunate to be a child in Buffalo. As all Buffalonians know, it is not a dazzling city, unless the sparkle of winter snow and the shimmer of reflected summer lights from Erie and Niagara count. Likewise, the city’s citizens, families, and teachers are unremarkable, unless resilience, friendships, and quiet, day-to-day hard work matter. Buffalo’s children are not special at all, except that they were raised in Buffalo, amid the history of the Niagara Frontier, by people who cared for them and institutions that prepared them to fly. Buffalo’s west side is where Chuck comes of age, but his childhood experiences range from there to New Hampshire’s White Mountains, a farm in Lewiston, N.Y., Holloway Bay in Ontario, and Alaska’s Brooks Range. Join Chuck as he recalls in Buffalo Wings the childhood family, friends, teachers, and experiences that shaped his life in the decades before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Buffalo Wings By Charles A. Hobbie iUniverse, Inc. Copyright © 2009 Charles A. Hobbie All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4401-5198-9 Chapter One Childhood Winters 1945-59 Buffalo is the city of big snows. Winds sweep from the west in winter across the more westerly Great Lakes and across Lake Erie, pick up moisture, and dump it as snow at the eastern end of Lake Erie on Buffalo. Or perversely, the occasional, northeastern blow from Lake Ontario has the same "lake" effect. Five miles from downtown Buffalo, the sun will be shining under blue skies, while the city is reeling in a blizzard of snow. The snow swirls and drifts around the buildings and trees, catching on the rough edges of siding, stone, and bark, so that even vertical surfaces are pocketed with white. Buffalo is a city of white in winter. In the late 1960s, teaching as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Far East, when I said I was born in Buffalo, Koreans would nod knowingly and ask how I had managed to survive in the Buffalo snows. I remember snow. How it inevitably first arrived on Halloween evening, complicating whatever costume I was wearing in my trick or treating rounds up and down Bedford Avenue with my brother John Eyres Hobbie (b. 1935) and sister Cecilia Katherine Elizabeth Hobbie (b. 1938). My sister and brother had grown up mostly on Bedford, and for many years after the move to 453 West Delavan Avenue in 1945, we continued to go trick or treating on Bedford. Later, I went trick or treating without them on West Delavan, Ardmore, Baynes, Dorchester, Lafayette, and Richmond Avenues, and the blocks around Colonial Circle, where I grew up, with my gang of Public School No. 56 friends. I was partial to cowboy costumes with white, cowboy hats, especially the Lone Ranger or Hoppalong Cassidy outfits with twin guns and holsters. By the end of several hours of trick or treating, my cowboy hat and holsters would be well dusted with snow. Wherever we stopped, it seemed as though the people in the house knew us and would greet us like long lost friends, especially at the homes on Bedford Avenue, where my brother and sister knew everyone. It was very pleasant to be admired, fawned over, and given candy. The Halloween snow never affected my enthusiasm for that night, which was one of my favorite events, despite the dire warnings of my parents about doctored candy and predatory adults, lurking behind the welcoming doors. I never encountered the old man in our neighborhood, who was rumored to heat a large kettle of shiny, copper pennies every Halloween and to cackle with joy when, at his invitation, overly greedy kids would grab a handful of pennies from the kettle, blistering their hands. The snow would begin to accumulate in mid November. Other houses in our neighborhood were oriented so that the roofs sloped to the sides of the lot. Ours was the only house on our block that was a single family home, turned sideways. The steep roof of our house on West Delavan, where I lived my entire Buffalo life, would hold about eighteen inches of snow, before suddenly discharging an avalanche towards the street side and backside of the house. Visitors and our dogs, until they learned, would usually hear the rumble of the sliding snow, look up, and be momentarily buried, before they could duck under the over-hanging roof. I still remember the unmistakable look of chagrin on Tuffy's face (my second dog), when our family howled with laughter at his first avalanche encounter. There was always a very satisfying mountain of snow under the roofline all winter long, until mid March. In the front of the house, snow shoveled from the side driveway and from the walks was piled onto the mountain, which could stand ten or twelve feet tall by February. My