Filed under: New York | Tags: Salamanca, self portraits, seneca nation, Western New York
dudley hotel
The strip of New York that borders northern Pennsylvania is like a secret part of the country. When we told people we were headed to New York for the weekend, their faces would light up, then fall as we corrected them — not City, but Olean and Salamanca. It’s frustrating when people have no curiosity about a state outside of the cities that mark it on the map. I want to see the places that nobody has heard of. I know what it’s like to live somewhere that nobody knows. It makes you feel protective of your little town, even if you have a complicated relationship with it.
watchtower
there are so many large, old homes like this in salamanca
seneca theatre
morning shadows
for sale
It’s always strange to go home again, but even more so when your home isn’t your home any longer. Jeff often feels this way when we travel to the Olean/Allegany area of New York since his family now lives in the South. This last visit was to deliver #13 to one of Jeff’s friends from high school. We met Kevin and his wife Kelley at Kevin’s parents’ home. I loved their quiet street strewn with leaves, and inside, the sunburst clock above the television, family portraits hanging on the stairwell wall. It was one of those moments where I wanted to take a picture, but was afraid to ask for fear they would think I was being intrusive. The rest of the evening filled me with Beef ‘N’ Barrel for dinner, a late night walk in the rain. It seemed like everyone in Olean was still asleep when we left on Sunday morning.
vacancy
empty
east, west
red doors
former K-Mart parking lot
Filed under: New York, United States | Tags: Allegany, Buffalo, I-90, maps, Olean, road trips, Rochester, rural, Salamanca, snow, Western New York
–which sucked because Jeff and I never made it to Rochester. Our plan was to tour the George Eastman house and spend the night in a seedy motel (the Towpath, which may charge us a whole night’s stay for cancelling without 24 hour notice, the bastards!), then spend Saturday in Jeff’s hometown of Allegany. But in Dunkirk, about 54 miles outside of Buffalo, the toll booth lady instructed us to take the next exit. I-90 was closed for 105 miles because of a freak snow storm that hit the city area. Long rows of semi’s stretched on the side of the road like the trucks you’d see at border check points going into Hungary or Croatia, or anywhere in Eastern Europe. We exited and pulled into an Aldi’s parking lot, studying the map for an alternate route. Wind rattled the car windows, but the sun made it warm enough for us not to have our jackets. Sunny and clear, and only an hour from Buffalo. There had to be another way. There was nobody in Aldi’s who could help us, so we trekked across the highway to a gas station attendant who couldn’t help us either. What about Route 39? I said to the woman, highlighting the pink line to show her. It might go to Rochester, she said. But I don’t want to take you the wrong way.
Doesn’t anyone know where they’re going in America?
We decided to hit Allegany/Olean on the way back to Pittsburgh. Imagine part of Monroeville about two hours away from the nearest city. And the nearest cities were Buffalo and Rochester. Welcome to Allegany/Olean. It is rural. It is like most forgotten parts of America, bruised and swinging on its hinges from a dying industry. I kept asking myself, what do people do here now? When you don’t see the hustle and bustle of a city, it’s as if you’re trespassing into private property. You get a glimpse of people’s lives, walking along the main streets, or in the mall, which is now mostly a vast space of empty store fronts. We played skee ball to kill some time, which Jeff used to do when he was in junior high. We took pictures of the house where Jeff grew up. The red door is now a natural wood color, and the backyard is filled with a pool. Everything had changed. I could feel it, even though I had never been there before.
On our way out of town, we took pictures in front of the church where Jeff was an altar boy. I scored a great find at the St. Vincent de Paul, a Spanish souvenir doll from the 1960s, which we got for a buck. Driving back, there was lots of wind and pending snow, cheap cigarettes on the Salamanca reseravation, and a horse and buggy hitched to a sign post outside of a convenience store. We had a pink sunset, and later, a full bright moon that we were lucky enough to guide us home.
(10.16.06)
