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"One ever feels his twoness--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder ... to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture." --W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Soul music drifted constantly through our disjointed Black Niagara Falls neighborhoods. Floating from house to house, from porch to porch, it was the background, the theme that connected us to each other from Griffin Manor to Center Court, Highland Avenue, all the way back to East Falls Street and the Boys Club. We identified with the artists, adopted their styles, wore their clothes, acted like them.
We learned the words to their songs. We knew their dance moves, their names, their life stories. They became the medium as well as the message. The girls wore Supremes wigs and makeup, they made outfits, dressing like the images they saw coming from Motown. They practiced every day, harmonizing, copying dance steps, crooning "Baby Love, oh, Baby Love."
James Brown exploded from our transistor radios, "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud." We learned his dance steps, conked and curled our hair, and competed on the sidewalks in front of our houses to see who could do the best James Brown, "Please, Please, Please" gyrations. The music connected us, defined us and impacted us all.
By the time the streetlights started coming on, it was time for us to get back in our own yards. After a tough game of kick ball in the middle of MacKenna Avenue, dodging the cars that streamed by, running through the high grasses in the vacant lots, chasing foul balls and inhaling clouds of gnats, it was time to go in before the porch lights were turned on, before we heard our mothers warning hail.
Once on the porch, all accounted for, we would begin winding down, bragging about the home runs we made and clowning about the missed catches and tags. In our torn and street-dirty play clothes, we sat for hours sometimes, telling stories, dreaming out loud about our futures and what we would do with our lives when we grew up.
With our stash of wax lips, Mary Janes, fireball jaw breakers, barbecue potato chips, ginger ale and cookies, we spun exciting futures for ourselves.
We all were planning on being rich with big cars, lots of clothes, fancy houses and easy jobs. We were going to build big hotels and restaurants, tourist attractions, parks and picnic areas with huge playgrounds and skating rinks for kids and their parents. We were going to make Niagara Falls famous so everyone in the world would want to come here.
Nobody planned to work where our fathers labored in the factories. Nobody planned on going to Vietnam. Nobody planned to get strung out on crack. Nobody planned on dying.
We lined up against the wall in the hallway outside our bedrooms, waiting to take our turn to soak for two minutes in the lukewarm bubbleless Ivory soap water. Baths in the old claw-foot cast-iron bathtub in the upstairs bathroom Dad built from old parts were a ritual that could not be skipped without detection. The penalty made the crime not worthy. Somehow, Mom could tell when I tried to fake a bath by simply running the water and splashing it around without bothering to get into the tub.
I spent at least half of the $1 an hour I earned from my weekend part-time job at the American Way grocery store on the corner of Main Street and Pierce Avenue to buy as many 45 rpm records and albums as I could afford.
The record store, down the street from The American Way, kept a weekly updated list of the WUFO top 10 records and, every Saturday after work, I bought at least one of them. I had every record the O'Jays ever recorded, all of the Impressions, a lot of Chuck Berry, Chubby Checker and of course, The Temptations. Owning a good record collection helped get me invited to a lot of house parties where a single red light bulb, a big bag of potato chips and a punch bowl of red Kool-Aid were the basic ingredients to success.
The weekend parties were combinations of fashion and talent shows, where we wore the latest styles fresh from the Sam Paul shop on Pine Avenue. The owner there used to let us come in, pick out the most popular Ban Lon shirts and iridescent slacks and put them on layaway, paying a few dollars a week until we could take them home.
Those were the days before Niagara Falls began to change from a city filled with cultural diversity--where we all respected each others' differences--into something else. The so-called urban renewal programs obliterated the neighborhoods, destroyed the central business districts. Falls Street disappeared, Main Street dried up, the neighborhoods were torn down and the mighty Falls itself was roped off by a "parkway."
Perhaps with the best intentions, they did not know that the life of any city depends greatly on the dreams we cast in the heads of the children.