The power went out on Kelleys Island shortly after 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and we hardly noticed. Sitting on a couple of Adirondack chairs under the shade of an ancient weeping willow, reading and drinking cold beer from bottles, the only hint that something was amiss was the stoppage of a fan in a window of the summer place my old newspaper buddy Ken Baka let us have for the week.
The Redhead went to investigate, and came back to report that we were without electricity. I asked her where the circuit breakers were, got a flashlight and checked them out. Everything seemed to be in order, and I sat back down in the shade. We had no phone, and returning to my book and my beer seemed like the sensible thing to do.
A little while later, a lady with a German accent ambled down the dusty lane to ask whether our power had gone out. She had a cell phone and we gave her the number of the local police department so she could make a report. After that, a man came from one of the other cottages and we went through the process again.
Finally, my curiosity got the better of me and I suggested we head down to the ferryboat landings to see what was going on. A tiny spit of sand and rock set out in Lake Erie's western basin, Kelleys has a year-round population of just 250 people and, as in small towns everywhere, news travels fast.
We stopped at the Village Pump, a waterfront dive that serves as a hangout for fishermen and beach bums of every stripe. No sooner had we gotten through the door than we heard the words we'd been trying to forget all week, rippling through the crowd.
"Niagara Falls."
"Niagara Falls."
"Niagara Falls."
I felt like Al Pacino in "The Godfather III."
"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
After learning that the power was out from New York City to Detroit, the Redhead was cheered when I told her we couldn't leave the island until it was restored. We only had a quarter-tank of gas in the car, barely enough to make Cleveland.
"I hope it lasts a week," she said.
It was not to be, of course, and the next morning we loaded the car and began the trip home.
Our old friends, Bob Baxter of the Niagara Heritage Partnership and James Hufnagel of the Niagara Sierrans, have been up to their usual hijinks. Recently, when stakeholders in the relicensing of the New York Power Project used one of Whirlpool Jet Boat Tours' boats for a site inspection, Baxter started calling reporters and Hufnagel hiked down the gorge with some accomplices and unfurled a large banner that said "Jet Boats Suck."
The pair have made no bones about the fact that they would like to see one of the most successful tourist attractions in the region shut down completely, much in the same way they'd like to see the Robert Moses Parkway shut down.
In a recent mass mailing on the parkway issue, Hufnagel wrote, "There is no compromise on this issue. With us, there never has been." Elsewhere in the same mailing, he wrote that "battle lines are finally being drawn."
While I've never stated a position one way or another on either the parkway removal issue or on the jet boats, people who brag about their unwillingness to compromise and go around drawing lines in the sand always make me a little queasy.
They are the sorts of people who start wars and, as a general rule, I've found it advisable to be on whatever side they're not on, regardless of the issue.
If Baxter, Hufnagel or anyone else wants to live in the wilderness, they should by all means do so. But I've been unable to find a single example -- in all of North America -- of an urban, industrialized city with a wilderness preserve running through it smack into its downtown.
Their crowd is supporting Paul Dyster in the mayoral race and have told the candidate in no uncertain terms they would withdraw that support should he advertise in the Reporter.
They are fascists, pure and simple, and Dyster has caved in to their demands.
That their agenda has been allowed to distract from the very real problems facing the region, and the City of Niagara Falls in particular, is simply another example of the failure of our elected leadership, and I use that term very loosely.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 19 2003 |