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Life had become crazy for me in New York City, too much partying and not enough working. So when my father invited me to Niagara Falls to work on his new paper, I gladly accepted the invitation.
Little did I know I was walking from one circus straight into another, less understandable one. I admit, this was my first real journalistic experience, but even being a rookie I realized Niagara Falls was a gold mine for a writer.
Unfortunately, it seemed to be much less for the average working person. Upon my arrival, I spent a week getting to know the place as best I could and getting familiar with the local people.
At first, I was shocked that all anybody talked about was how messed up Niagara Falls was. But I wrote it off as people just complaining about life as they usually do.
Soon after, I found a job at the Misty Dog Grill as a counter person. My job was to take orders, work the register and put out the food. This gave me the opportunity to meet hundreds of people a day, some locals but mostly tourists.
"Is there anything to do around here?" became a question I had to answer with almost every order.
There was a constant stream of confused tourists, having come to Niagara Falls expecting fun and excitement. Instead, they had found a town on its last legs. Even the Splash Park wasn't open for business!
After a few weeks of working at the Misty Dog, I got tired of trying to answer that question. My response was to simply point across the street to the bridge to Canada.
My first big assignment at the Reporter was to interview a band, Stemm. These were guys who had grown up in the Falls, and they had nothing good to say about the city. It took me days to try and find a positive twist on that story.
Later, a friend told me that the police were giving the B-Bar trouble. We took a ride out there, and, while interviewing the owner, I couldn't help but wonder why anyone would give this successful business trouble.
But then again, the powers that be in the Falls also had given Bill Glasgow at the Misty Dog trouble when he was trying to open it. And these were two of the most successful businesses I had yet seen.
My time at the Reporter was constantly spent trying to find the positive side of a story. But the people, from rockers and barflies to cops and politicians, just weren't giving me one single positive piece of information on the Falls.
So the summer pushed on, and the endless stream of confused tourists continued. Befuddled foreigners unable to understand why this city, standing on the edge of one of the natural wonders of the world, had so little to offer.
But my understanding of this problem had begun to become clearer. Working side by side with my father, I was meeting some of the players in city politics. But I might as well have been speaking to any citizen of the city. All were equally disgusted. Disgusted with the incompetent people who ran the city and the crooked businessmen who had ruined it. It started getting depressing.
Then I saw a picture of Falls Street taken in 1953. At first, I thought it was New York City. People crowded the streets and traffic was almost at gridlock. It looked like Coney Island circa 1953, but this was Niagara Falls in its glory. The Falls Marilyn Monroe had visited while filming Niagara.
I was meeting people involved in both politics and business who actually cared if the city got better, not just about their wallets getting bigger.
And I was working for Bruce Battaglia, a guy who had invested more than half his life in trying to improve conditions in Niagara Falls. His daily optimism began to rub off on me.
So things started looking better; maybe there was hope. But my bosses at the Misty Dog informed me that they were getting ready to close for the season, and they were cutting back. I was out.
With no more money, and no wish to search for some minimum wage job, my only move was to come back to New York City. College was waiting for me, anyway.
But to my surprise, within a week of my return, I began to miss Niagara Falls. Not just my father and my friends at the Press Box and the Arterial, but the whole city.
I never fully understood what the Reporter's motto, "To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable," stood for. Not until I had spent a few months in Niagara Falls.
On one of my last days in the Falls, I was walking down the alley towards my father's house on Rainbow Boulevard. At the end of the alley, a sign read "Dead End," with the Nabisco factory standing in the background. Of all the many times I had walked this path, this was the first time I was struck by the irony in the symbolism of this picture.
This was a city that people once flocked to. But now it had become a virtual ghost town, a hollow shell of its former self. My father and others had opened my eyes to how the town had been destroyed, ruined by ignorant people wanting to make a quick buck.
Now, back in New York City, I watch the sun set over the skyscrapers of Manhattan. The freighters rolling in on the East River, business at an all-time high. And I think back to my summer in Niagara Falls. I think of a city in despair, and the people trying to save it.