WNY the Poor Relation - Again

 If you are looking for thrilling day-after-the-historic-storm anecdotes from Cattaraugus County, you will be disappointed. I suggest you turn to the BBC News.  Once again, Western New York is the Big Apple and New England's poor relation. We didn't even get three inches, darn it! Let alone three feet! 

  And just a light dusting on the woodpile.

And people had been getting so excited too. A lady grabbed me in the Post Office, half-trembling anticipation in her eyes, the sort where you're about to spread someone else's bad news, "Is the rain turning to snow yet?  The YMCA changing room Jeremiah-esses tut-tutted and shook their heads at the impending catastrophe. I have discovered that no one, no, not even the British, can beat Western New Yorkers at talking about the weather. "Stay warm!" is the normal valedictory.
   I hear the sound of desultory scraping, evidently hubby keeping his snow-shovelling muscles in trim. But it doesn't last long. A long-time Western New Yorker, unlike me, he wonders what all the fuss is about, even in faraway Boston,  "Historic? Come on! It's just an old-fashioned winter storm, the kind we used to get all the time." I sympathise with the media, though, it can be pretty exasperating when a big buildup turns into nothing much. Here, we're told that it was much worse while we were in Florida.  And you know something, while I sometimes miss no longer being at the centre of international drama, I'm not complaining.

Bird Feeder Cabaret: Things Get Serious

  

As we plunge into the "worst storm ever to hit the north-east", which has been a bit of a damp squib so far, the feathered scroungers are making up for lost time.

 I have studied my guide to North American Birds and am getting better at recognising them. The chickadees, which look and behave a little like British tits,  swoop on the feeder from their launch pad, the crabapple tree and the plump, solemn, charcoal grey juncos, with their white fronts, like nonconformist clergy trying, usually without success, to do the same. They're just not built right. One has managed to work out how to perch precariously  on the edge of the feeder, wings whirring and is evidently the athlete of the bunch. The others probably disapprove and make do with pecking on the ground.
 Meanwhile, every so often, a gang of American goldfinches shows up. While the chickadees treat the place like McDonald's - swoop, grab and go - the finches, drab in their winter plumage, chew everything 32 times.

        I do miss blackbirds and proper robins though. The blackbirds here are not the same. While British ones sing enchantingly, American ones sound like a creaky hinge. And some American birds don't look like birds at all.

A Tale of Two Trees

 Nice work when you can get it, especially on a cold day. Outside the village post office, a small crowd (a very small crowd - myself and a chap with nothing better to do) had gathered to watch what the man atop the cherry picker was up to.

   For once he wasn't fixing the electrics.  What he was doing was

chopping down a tree, or sections of one. Another example of Western New Yorkers amazingly going about their ordinary business where their British equivalents would down tools and run indoors at the first dusting of snow.  "At least it's not windy," observed the other onlooker.

I couldn't help but contrast it with my recent sight of a palm tree getting a haircut a couple of weeks ago in Florida.....

                                                
..... several climate zones away. (note their respective apparel). More evidence, if I needed it, of the sheer vastness of America.

Crooked Dick's Cattaraugus County Fan Club

   I was at the hairdressers' yesterday and guess who the gals were all talking about?  It seems stories of royalty and identifying 500 year old bones are far more interesting than raking over Beyonce and the horse commercial at the Super Bowl.
  "Get this," said one of the stylists, they found out who he was through DNA - one of his descendants, or one of his sister's descendants - how cool is that. And they're gonna bury him in this place - how do you pronounce it? Le..."
  "Leicester", I chimed in, "LESSTER"
   "Oh right, but waidaminute, you said he was a BAD guy? You mean like Henry the Eighth? Now HE was a bad guy!"
  "Well it depends whom you talk to of course.  Thomas More said he was a bad guy, so did Shakespeare but if you read this book 'The Daughter of Time' by Josephine Tey, well, she says he was framed."
  The stylist grabbed her diary and wrote it down, "I'm gonna read it."

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Dateline: Cattaraugus County Western New York, temperature 21F

  It has been snowing on and off since I arrived back and the cold bites like a steel rod through the heart.

 I ventured out for a few minutes to refill the bird feeder for the fluttering multitudes (where did they all materialise from after four weeks?) and lug the pumpkins that have been slowly rotting on the porch out to the compost.  I passed the mountain laurel bush I'd tended assiduously since coming here; by last summer it had reached nearly three feet tall, from only two leaves.   There was a gap in the netting around it and the deer had eaten it.  I have to try and console myself by thinking of the beautyberry I left behind in Venice (50 degrees warmer, incidentally).

I expect the cloven-hoofed fiends would salivate at that. But they can't have her.  It will be a long, long while before I see her again.
  Oh and sorry, this is a Super Bowl-free zone, as my feelings about American football are well known.  I did adore the Budweiser Clydesdale ad though, a take on "War Horse", soppy, sentimental, tear-jerking commercial manipulation at its finest.
  And I am rather proud that the power-cut at the New Orleans Superdome lasted longer that the one at Craven Cottage on Saturday. There are some things we Brits still do better.

The Real Groundhog Day

Dateline Western New York.  I am back, on which more later.....

 

Today's the day when groundhogs, furry rodents the size of a large cat,  are said to predict the weather. If they can see their shadow,  there will be six more weeks of winter. If not, spring will come early. (It comes, allegedly, from an old German custom which was related to Candlemas.)

  I have to explain that America doesn't have just one prognosticating groundhog, but several. New York City has Staten Island Chuck; Georgia has General Beauregard Lee but the one you’re most likely to have heard of is Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Phil, whose fame spread after the 1993 film “Groundhog Day”, in which the hero has to relive the day over and over.  Phil reportedly saw his shadow this year when he was hauled out of his burrow, as usual, by several men in top hats, in front of the TV cameras and a crowd of thousands.

  But here I have to set the record straight. None of the above can hold a candle – yes, you heard it here first, to  Western New York’s very own groundhog, Dunkirk Dave. (Dunkirk being one of those local villages that got themselves important-sounding European names. Others include Wales and Sardinia).

   Around here, groundhogs are called woodchucks and they are considered “varmints”,  pests and nuisances.  They’re universally hated by farmers and gardeners for their fondness for vegetable matter and propensity for digging deep holes in awkward places.

  But I feel sorry for them. They always seem to be running away from something.  Once, after we’d been travelling,  I surprised one on our front porch. Thinking he had the place to himself, he was happily waddling around,  when he suddenly looked up, saw me, did a double-take and beat it as fast as he could - no mean feat, considering how fat he was.

    So I have a lot of sympathy for Dunkirk Dave’s handler, Bob Will,  who is quoted as saying that groundhogs  are God’s creatures too.  He has a house full of rescued ones, including “Sidewinder”,  who can only go round in circles, thanks to an irate farmer’s bullet.

  According to local residents, Dunkirk Dave is much cleverer  than Punxsutawney Phil and people should pay attention to him.  Last year,  Dunkirk Dave did not see his shadow and we had one of the warmest springs in memory. 
  This year, Dunkirk Dave, enticed out of his burrow by pumpkin pie at sunrise today, once again predicted an early spring.* He has a 93 per cent accuracy record, I'm told and he'd better be right.

* as did Phil.

How Not to Transport a Picture

There is a postscript to our house furnishing adventure. We were in one of Venice's fabled thrift stores and there it was on the wall, a magnificent abstract painting, looking rather incongruous among the dusty scratched repro dressing tables and headless lampstands. The effect was dawn on the beach - palest blues, greys, a little hint of smoky pink.  One problem though, it was enormous. After we'd handed over the money, we realised there was no way we were going to get it into the car. A rental saloon car, in retrospect is not the best choice when you're buying furniture, especially when it doesn't even have a roof rack.  We should have splashed out on a pickup truck.
   Could we walk and carry it? Probably not, since it was at least a couple of miles. So, persuading the thrift store to hold the picture just a little longer (they're draconian about such things) we came back with a newly purchased rope and a quilt off the bed.  We strapped the picture on the roof, which of course was one of those curved ones and tucked it in. 

  What followed was a hilarious crawl back with the thing balanced delicately up against the radio aerial. Fortunately hubby is a sailor and good with knots. But less good at bed-making and the quilt soon came unstuck and flapped like crazy. I thought we were going to take off.  Well the circus was in town and they probably thought we were part of it. 

Luckily there weren't any police around. And it didn't rain.

And speaking of the circus - Venice, until 1992 was the winter home of Ringling Bros Barnum and Bailey Circus, aka the "Greatest Show on Earth". Nik Wallenda, who recently tightrope-walked across Niagara Falls is a local boy. A neighbour told me how everyone used to rush out to see the elephants parade through downtown Venice Avenue.  Now all that's left of the old winter rehearsal ring is a dilapidated building that still has "Venice Arena" in faded letters. They're trying to save it from demolition but one hardly sees the point, apart from the nostalgia value.. Next to it is a trapeze complex open to the public. It does have a large safety net but you'd have to pay me to try it.