We Did It

I had to fly back to Buffalo this week to look for a house for Tina and me and the animals. My flight was Monday evening, the same night the Red Wings were trying to clinch the Stanley Cup against the Penguins. Here’s a summary of the trip and the Cup and the whole weird odyssey of finding a place.

During my layover in Chicago (it was supposed to be Washington, but that’s a different story), I rush to a sports bar to check the score and discover the Wings are already down 2-0 in the first period. Stunned, I sit down over a beer beside a guy from Michigan and some assorted jackasses who seem to take more delight in our (my?) reactions to the game than the game itself.

This, by the way, is why I hate going out to watch sports in “hostile” cities — never mind wearing team gear in public, which I long ago stopped doing at anything resembling a crucial moment for my teams. Granted, there’s a certain superstition about it as well, but I’ve found the odds of someone caustically sneering “They really choked last night, eh?” far outweigh the likelihood of bumping into a fellow fan.

Flash forward to Buffalo. The plane touches down and within minutes I’m on the phone to Tina, without much hope given the score when I left Chi. At almost the same moment I reach her, I notice a small group of guys hovering around a TV in a darkened sports bar. Most of them wear the uniforms of airline employees, and as our plane and another one empties more and more folks gather to watch. The game’s gone into overtime — actually, this is the second OT. So all right, I’m willing to put up with a bit of ribbing in a town where fans can commandeer a TV after closing time.

Everyone’s wondering what happened and I’m able to tell them, thanks to T., that the Wings actually managed to take the lead and the Pens struck back with about 30 seconds left in the 3rd to force sudden death. I stand there transfixed for five minutes, ten, knowing that poor Rich has driven out close to midnight and is waiting to pick me up. But I rationalize my lingering by the fact that I have no bags to retrieve.

After greeting Rich in the lobby and catching up I call Tina to find out if the game has gone to a third overtime, and discovering that it has I talk Rich into heading out to watch even though he could care less about it. We wind up at The Pink, perhaps the sleaziest dive in Allentown, Buffalo’s less-annoying version of Austin’s 6th St.

I can tell Rich is eager to grab some beers and keep talking, and is a bit taken aback by how hypnotized I am by the game, as we stand watching it on a wall-mounted TV with more random dudes of mixed (but mostly Pittsburgh-oriented) allegiance. That’s the thing — you either go in for sports or you don’t. I’m embarrassed at times by how emotionally invested I become — especially during intense finals series — but try though I might to wean myself off of sports I simply haven’t been able to do it. It’s part of me, like my inner mullet and boyish good looks.

The Wings are dominating the OT but an accidental stick to the face gives the Pens a 4-minute power play and it doesn’t take long for them to score. Game over. Most of the folks watching cackle and high-five each other in a way that seems especially cruel to me, given this is Buffalo and not Pittsburgh. Deflated but trying not to show it, I sit down at the bar with Rich and proceed to plow through way too many whiskeys and beers as we talk about music and poetry.

* * *

The next two days are a blur of scrolling through craigslist, calling landlords, mostly being told “No way” when they find out we have a dog, and driving around town to look at houses. It’s odd because Buffalo is full of dogs. And I never once saw one roaming around loose pissing and shitting and running into the street like you’ll see in San Marcos. But since houses are so cheap, I gather most dog owners must also own their homes.

The weird despair of driving around a strange town looking for a place, combined with my natural angst over moving at all and the nightmare prospect of the Wings blowing a 3-1 series lead, nearly causes me to lose it. I find it tough to sleep and only the necessity of moving forward with the housing search keeps me going. Rich and Kara are sweethearts to put up with me, busy as they are with their own work and lives.

Despite these challenges, I basically wind up with three solid offers for flats that I think we could live in. One’s on Parkside overlooking the Buffalo Zoo and the wonderful Delaware Park beyond it. Another’s in North Buffalo near Hertel Ave., which rivals Elmwood as one of the most happening neighborhoods to live in. The third is a house in Elmwood (technically Westside), around the corner from Rich, which I’d been chasing before even getting up here, having made contact with the landlord several weeks ago.

During a long run I decide on the third option, and upon getting home I call the landlord and we work out the details. Tina’s already posted a photo of the house. It feels good — cathartic almost — to get that settled. In the end I pick it because I like the neighborhood and the landlords, as well as its proximity to others in the program and the Elmwood strip, which is really quite lovely and full of cafes and neighborhood stores and generally the type of stuff we said we wanted to live near when we moved.

* * *

That evening I arrange to catch game 6 with Mike, a poet from Michigan I met my last time in town.

Mike had predicted even before the last game that the series would go 6, and his casual confidence that the Wings will now close it out is both reassuring and maddening. We’re supposed to meet another poet at Fat Bob’s, a barbecue joint in Allentown, but not being able to find it we once again wind up at The Pink.

This seems like a bad omen to me, but unlike the previous game the bar’s deserted and the barkeep turns up the volume and even switches to the CBC broadcast, which has way better announcers and the patented but apparently endangered Hockey Night in Canada theme song. Things look up when the Wings score first. We’re having beers and Aaron shows up between periods. He’s wearing a Sabres jersey and rooting for the Pens in a desultory, “I wanna see a good series” sort of way, which I guess is all right — at any rate the Wings score again and folks slowly trickle into the bar and it’s fun and for the first time on the trip I feel like I can really breathe. Sad, right?

Of course things get tight at the end but the Wings pull it out and bring home the Cup. There’s more I could write about, such as the drunk at the bar who claimed to have shined Jack Kerouac‘s shoes and done something I’d rather not repeat with his niece, and my yelling into the phone when Tina called and inexplicably passing the phone off to Mike and Mike’s telling her I’m his new best friend, and both of us arguing with the guy outside who claimed to be a sports writer and kept comparing the Wings to the Atlanta Braves… but in the end it’s just such a relief to have it over with and know that they didn’t blow it and we have a place to live and life can go on.

I’m still apprehensive about the move and the weather and the prospect of having to start over again in another new city.

But I’m also excited about the program, even moreso after locating Fat Bob’s the next evening with Rich and Andrew and downing pretty decent bbq and several pints of Murphy’s, and hearing what they had to say about SUNY and the types of things they’ve been able to do there as poets, editors, and organizers of events. So I’m trying hard just to relax with that feeling and look forward to getting up there.