My thanks to all of you who have been following along with me. I spent three weeks in Western New York, and I have a bunch of little bits and pieces that I wanted to include in the Official Record, but never quite got them fit in. So here it is:
LAST CALL FOR BUFFALO!
Buffalo is a great place to eat!
There’s Andersons:
Of course, there are many great places for beef on weck.
There was so much meat on this sandwich that I took some off and asked for a to-go box. I took home enough for two more sandwiches!
Just in case you don’t know what “weck” is, allow me to explain. It is a German style hard roll with rock salt and caraway seeds baked on top. In German, kummel means caraway and weck means roll. So a beef on weck is a thinly sliced roast beef sandwich on kummelweck.
Best of WNY 2010. Have they been resting on their laurels?
The other great bar food mainstay is Buffalo style chicken wings. I didn’t get around to the Anchor Bar this trip. If you are going to have chicken wings in Buffalo, you might as well go to the place that started the whole thing off. But, no wings for me this time around.
Bocce’s Pizza. It’s always been a family favorite. And, it was voted one of the top 33 pizzerias in America. You can read it right on the box.
And then there’s Ted’s. High school chum Susan suggested Ted’s when we were trying to decide on a place to go for dinner. I never really cared for Ted’s, so we picked another place. But, I got to thinking about it. I was out and I was hungry and I said, “Why not?”
They grill the dogs right over the charcoal. I could never understand why people in Kalamazoo got so worked up about The Root Beer Stand and their boiled hot dogs.
Pretty good presentation. I liked the tray liner that looks like glowing charcoal. Unfortunately, I guess I really don’t care for Ted’s all that much.
But I did like the meal I had with Susan and Kay at Crav on Hertle. I had Handkerchief Pasta. I was intrigued by the name.
Unfortunately, my flash didn’t go off.
And, if you can’t find a restaurant you like, you can always buy great food at Wegmans and cook it yourself. (I’ve been told that some people do cook.)
When I am in Buffalo, I always have to at least go by the Darwin Martin House. It is one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpieces finished in 1905
They have done an absolutely fantastic job of renovating it. In fact, they tore down buildings and recreated parts of the estate that had been demolished to make way for apartment buildings. It’s difficult to tell the old sections from the new.
Living in a house like that would make being someone’s gardener a pleasure!
My first visit to the house was back in the 70’s, before it was renovated. In fact, it was in desperate condition. I take special joy in going by and seeing how beautiful it looks.
Since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to take a trip through Forest Lawn Cemetery. The first statue that greets you as you enter is Red Jacket.
I have been doing a bit of reading to try refresh my memory regarding Red Jacket. What I am sure of is that he was a powerful Seneca orator and negotiated on behalf of the Wolf Clan with the new United States. He died in 1830 and was buried near a church in South Buffalo. His remains and those of some of his compatriots were reinterred here and this monument was erected in 1890.
More Millard than you can shake a stick at! I did a bit of research on him, and I think this understated marker is completely as he would have had it.
Nerd Alert! Skip down to the next photo if you don’t want to read about our 13th president.
In an earlier post I mentioned that he had been apprenticed to a cloth maker. He managed to buy out out his apprenticeship and got some schooling. He married his teacher, read the law and established himself as a lawyer in East Aurora. He was self-taught, in large degree. He served three terms in Congress and had hoped to run as Vice President with Henry Clay. Thurlow Weed, head of the NYS Whig party “convinced” him to run for governor, but he lost.
At the Whig convention in 1848, General Taylor, an under-educated slave owner from Louisiana, was their choice for President on the ticket. To appease the faction in the party that disapproved of Taylor, Fillmore, a man opposed to slavery but promoting compromise as the solution, was included on the ticket.
He was elected as Taylor’s Vice President, but they got on so poorly that he was all but excluded from participating in government. Taylor came down with cholera that he caught at a Fourth of July celebration in 1850 and died shortly after that. Fillmore became president. He supported the Compromise of 1850, which was an attempt to resolve the issue of slavery. It didn’t succeed. He didn’t run for a term after completing Taylor’s term. It sounds like he was just disillusioned with politics.
His wife died shortly after he left Washington. He took an extended tour of Europe, and when Oxford heard he was in the neighborhood, they wanted to award him an honorary degree. He declined the offer, saying that he was uneducated and that since the degree would be written in Latin, he wouldn’t be able to read it.
Which brings me back to his grave marker. It is in keeping with his humble nature.
If you want to know more about Millard, I suggest you check out the information about him at The Miller Center.
*Whew!* Back to our normally scheduled content.
Frederick Law Olmstead laid out Buffalo’s beautiful system of parks and parkways. The parkways were lined with towering elms. Due to the Dutch Elm Disease of the 1960s and 1970s, the parkways were left bare. I was thrilled to see how the replacements have grown and filled the spaces left behind by the elms.
Oh, and see that building at the end of the street? That was Millard Fillmore Hospital.
I hear that this plot of land is going to be redeveloped as a multi-use building – apartments, condos and retail. It’ll be interesting to see what is in its place next time I am in town.
It was a great treat to be able to spend time with family and friends. I got to help out Amy and Steve with driving Katie to practice. Her team won!
Two lovely young ladies!
And, with that, I hitched up and headed out of town.
