By Ed Adamczyk
Buffalo, NY – Springtime brings out the reminiscence in me. This week, on a warm April night that somehow felt like a cool July night, I went for a drive around Kenmore, looking for a place where people hang out. It wasn't hard to find one. After driving past Kenmore's two matchbox Dairy Queens and no lack of bars, I headed down Sheridan Drive, to Anderson's Ice Cream, a little fortress of a custard stand with a neon sign atop, in place since the 1940s. Excellent desserts, parking lot ambiance. Generations have pulled in, ordered up, and hung out there.
The classic 1973 film "American Graffiti" took place in southern California, but I recall that it looked so familiar to me. It looked like Sheridan Drive. Anderson's, and a late and lamented place called Pat's Drive-in, had a lock on cool people pulling up in cool cars on hot summer nights, after rumbling up and down Sheridan.
Showing off, hanging out. Families pulled up, too, and Little League teams looking for a place to celebrate a win. The experience probably had a lasting effect on a year-after-year wave of nine-year-old boys. Concentrate on a shortstop's duties all evening, then wrap your lips around a victory ice cream cone, way past bedtime, while watching pretty girls with cool guys and their overchromed, shiny cars. This sort of thing might be why baseball phrases --- striking out, getting to second base --- have evolved so well, over the years, into the slang of young romance.
Pat's specialized in hot dogs and burgers, Anderson's roast beef and ice cream. There were also Cokes, Pepsis, cigarettes, and enough French fries, I suppose, to cover Sheridan Drive. Clothes, hair styles, tastes in rock and roll, all changed, but at a certain time in their lives, everyone needed a place to hang out.
What has rolled down Sheridan Drive, over the years, is like a movie montage in one's mind. Forty-eight Mercurys. Fifty Fords. Fifty-seven Chevies. Sixty-three Corvettes. GTOs and hot-rodded Volkswagens and Dodge Chargers with hemi motors. MGs and Triumphs. Later, 351 Mustangs and upholstered vans. Lately, customized, personalized Hondas.
The last hot dog was served at Pat's in September, 1983. A Walgreens now stands where three generations of people stood around and munched and talked about cars and swatted mosquitoes and hung out under fluorescent lights (a Walgreens seems to stand where a lot of things used to happen). The old cars, and the old cruisers, still emerge on selected summer evenings as though they're seeking their old hangouts. The Dunkin' Donuts on Sheridan welcomes them, as does Alice's Restaurant, but it's not the same. It seems more like rolling museum pieces have settled in the parking lots.
On this warm night in April, a corner of Anderson's parking lot was filled with overpowered Japanese motorcycles, and their owners. The men hung out together, chatting, while a trio of young girls sat a distance away, eating ice cream and not taking their eyes off the bikes, or the riders. Will any of them remember this night, years from now? Yes, I think they will.
Listener-Commentator Ed Adamczyk is a retired autoworker who is now a columnist for the Tonawanda News.