They say home is where the heart is but my heart is wild and free
My old hometown, Buffalo, NY took a beating at the end of 2022. A snowy left hook to the kidneys in November and then a lake effect upper cut in December left the city draped over the ropes. But it’s a scrappy place. Buffalo is down but not out.
I belong to a Facebook group called, “I am a product of the west side of Buffalo, New York.” That city’s west side is predominately Italian-American, mostly Catholic. It is where I grew up, went to school, and finessed all the rites of passage one maneuvers during those formative years.
Recently, one of the group’s 17,000 members posted an interesting comment. She had moved to Arizona 20 years ago and longs to move back. “Has anyone moved back and regretted it?” she asks. “I know things have changed. I know it is colder but my heart longs for Buffalo. Am I crazy?”
There were 150 replies that were pretty much split down the middle. Here are some examples: “I moved away twice and came back twice. Home is home!”
“I came back from California. Never regretted it.”
“I moved back after twenty years in Las Vegas. I’m sorry I did. There’s nothing in Buffalo except high taxes and snow.”
“I moved away, been back a few times but unfortunately what once was, is no longer.”
The last statement struck a chord. I left home when I went away to college. There were visits back home to see the folks while in school. Even after marriage and settling in Michigan, I returned to visit my parents. After they moved to Maryland there was no reason to go back.
Anthony Bourdain said: I see Buffalo as a very distinct personality, a very distinct culture with its own architecture, its own kinda feel. It’s actually a weirdly wonderful place. Even in the winter. I think it took me traveling around the world to get to that point. Anthony is right. It has special qualities. One is food. Everything from Buffalo chicken wings, beef on weck, sponge candy, peanut sticks, and loganberry juice is either unique or indigenous to Buffalo.
In 2007 an energetic cousin organized our first family reunion. I was spirited back to a city I had not visited in more than 30 years. Much had changed while I was away. Everything was smaller. It was as if I were looking down on the city through Google Earth. I could see it in its wholeness, rather than in the segmented chapters that were my life. The streets were still there, but it took very few strides to cross Delaware Avenue, which as a child seemed wider than Interstate 5.
Three single-family dwellings displaced my grade school. The church I attended was demolished and replaced by a high-rise apartment building. My high school is a commercial training facility for a car wash. In essence, there was nothing of “me” there. I understood what Gertrude Stein meant when returning to Oakland. “There is no there, there,” she said.
I drove past the places where my schools and church were. I drove by a few of the houses where I lived, especially the one that I compare to the house Dorothy was so anxious to get back to from Oz. The one where there’s no place like. I lived there between the ages of eight and eighteen. Many of the firsts in my life happened there. I moved on from short pants and knickers to trousers. I got my first bike; had my first date that included my first kiss that didn’t need confessing. It is where I learned to drive a car with a stick shift, graduated from grammar and high schools, got my first job at A&P. It was home and it was safe because Mama made it so. When she moved, she took home and sanctuary with her.
I had a déjà vu moment as I walked my old paper route on Anderson Place, a route that had been passed down from my two older brothers to me. Anderson dead-ended at Atlantic Avenue, where my grade school was. I was amazed at the number of names I remembered: the Castros, Downings, and Doyles. Patty Butler, one of my early crushes lived at 238.
Could I go back there to live? There are still cousins whom I haven’t seen since the 2007 reunion. But their lives are as different from mine as Carmel, California is from Buffalo. Time has passed, perhaps unfairly. The physical and cultural changes make it easy for me to let go. Yet, echoes of its magic still reverberate. I know you can’t live in the past, but it’s a nice place to visit. I did not find any “my old hometown” magic. Whatever I was searching for when I went back was no longer there. My heart wasn’t there.
“You can’t go home again,” Thomas Wolfe wrote. In my case he was right. Perhaps, the magic only exists in fantasies and misty memories. Now Carmel has all the magic I need. I hope those who have moved away from Carmel will always find it magical when they return. It is my home now. I do not want to go back to what once was, but is no longer.
Contact Jerry at jerrygervase@yahoo.com
