Buffalo Memories: Gone but Not Forgotten, by George Kunz. Canisius College Press. 344 pages.
George Kunz, who died in February of 1995, had an amazing memory, laden with things everyone else has long forgotten. Reading "Buffalo Memories" is almost like traveling back in time and staying there for the duration, as you read his 342 vignettes about life in the slow lane, when things seemed so much kinder and gentler.
Kunz remembers it all, the small everyday events of life as well as the larger ones, bringing to life so much that has been forgotten by the rest of us. It's an engrossing read that is hard to put down once you pick it up.
In a foreword, his daughter, Mary Kunz, who writes for the Buffalo News, describes her father as a sentimental man concerned about the passing of things. When the old Crystal Beach Boat was about to be scrapped, he walked her and her sister onto the boat. "We grew up living and breathing this kind of nostalgia," she writes.
George Kunz was born in 1923 in South Buffalo. After attending local schools, he received his Bachelor of Arts Degree and eventually his master's degree in education from Canisius College. In 1985 he retired from Williamsville South High School, where he was a distinguished teacher of Latin and English for 33 years. During his retirement, he began writing about his recollections of the Great Depression and his early memories of Buffalo. His reminiscences were published regularly in the Buffalo News and some in The Wall Street Journal, "Buffalo Spree" and "Reminisce" magazine. "Buffalo Memories" brings all these stories together for the first time.
Kunz writes about things that you know nothing about or that you have simply forgotten. "Good Old Days at 998 Broadway" is all about the discount department store before anyone knew what a discount store was. Kunz remembers the jingle sung on the radio, the basement sales, the advertising. "Those Coal Furnaces Did Strange Things to People," makes us realize just how hard it was to maintain a coal furnace, what it was like to wake up to a cold house because your father forgot to bank it before going to bed the night before. Then there's the drudgery of Monday morning washday, when your mother disappeared into a dank basement and struggled with a wringer washing machine. There's another story on canning and one on growing tomatoes. There's a story on Buffalo's long-gone department stores. Who remembers Flynt and Kent? Does anyone remember the trolley cars that ran all over Buffalo? What about the year that Niagara Falls stopped flowing? Kunz tells about it in detail. He remembers in uncanny detail stories about Prohibition, about the days when Buffalo had "movie palaces," about going up the Lewiston Hill when it was such a hazardous trip that water barrels were placed along the route. He remembers all about Crystal Beach in its heyday, with its rides, its cinnamon suckers and trips aboard the Canadiana. He remembers real telephone operators saying, "Number, plee-az," and the Hotel Statler Ballroom.
The book is available at www.wnybooks.com.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | April 22 2003 |