bwauthors76, Author at Big Words Authors

A Look Back at the Yale Cup: Section VI’s Basketball Diamond in the Rough

“The Yale Cup teams developed the reputation for not playing defense or with structure of any kind. It was considered a renegade league!”

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“It’s an altogether different picture from when you played at Tech to when I played, and it’s even more of a different look for the kids who are playing in the Yale Cup now. Back then the Yale Cup was not represented in Section VI. There was no state title representation or anything. This was in the late 1960s. I think they went to Section VI in 1971. Our group of athletes and the kids the year after me, we were really upset that in 1971 or 1972, they allowed the Buffalo Public Schools to play in Section VI and compete for the state championship. It was around 1971 and 72 or something like that.”

“That was one of the downfalls or pitfalls which kept our schools from being recognized because there were quite a few kids who could’ve played Division I football or basketball that were not seen at the time. You either had to be a Bob Lanier or a Gil Harmon, who were the biggest and the most athletic – Bob Lanier was 6’9” in high school; or like Marty Cott who went to Tech the same year that I did. He ended up playing baseball for the Houston Astros.”

The Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team: My Introduction To The Yale Cup

This story is another promotional piece for my two-part book project entitled, The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. The previous piece paid tribute to the late Kevin Roberson. I’ve created a page here on my writer’s blog for the book, if you’re curious to learn some more about it. In the numerous pieces I’ve already created surrounding the book, I’ve shared that I’ve conducted 30-40 interviews for the project. These discussions with former players and coaches from Section VI have revealed several interesting facts.

One of the focal points for my story is the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. Our school nickname was the Engineers, for which the books are named. During my freshman year at the school, they went on a magical run. They first won the city league championship, the Yale Cup, with a 13-0 record. They then won the Section VI Class B championship, coming within one game of a berth in the Class B State Final Four in Glens Falls. From my vantage point at the time, it was a big deal, and I dreamt of doing what they did.

The Yale Cup And Section VI

While my story focuses on the Hutch-Tech Engineers, it also involves other teams from Western New York. Many of the teams are from our league the Yale Cup. It also tells the stories to a lesser extent of some of the other teams in Section VI. Even today, Section VI is the western most section of the New York State Public High School Athletic Association (NYSPHSAA). There are 12 total sections spanning from the Great Lakes to the Adirondack Mountains and finally down to Long Island.

Section VI of the late 1980s and early 1990s was comprised of many city and suburban public high schools and leagues. They were located in the numerous Western New York State counties including Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, Erie, Niagara, and Orleans. Our league was called the Yale Cup. It was a 14-team league comprised of schools within the Buffalo Public School System. At one point the Yale Cup was considered the best high school basketball league in Section VI. However, like the City of Buffalo and our region in general, it went through hard times which were arguably rooted in the loss of steel industry. This essay is a tribute to the Yale Cup as I and others knew it, and to a lesser degree Section VI.

Oh, by the way, the private school teams played in the Monsignor Martin League. I must mention them because they had some of the best players and teams in Western New York every year. Some of the schools included Cardinal O’Hara, Canisius, Turner/Carroll and St. Joseph’s.

A League Named After An Ivy League School But Wasn’t Ivy League

One of the more interesting things about the Yale Cup, was its name. I don’t know who named the league, but it seemed to have been named after the prestigious Ivy League institution of higher learning in Connecticut, Yale University. Coincidentally, our city football league was named the Harvard Cup, I guess after Harvard University. The girls’ basketball league was called the Canisius Cup, most likely after Canisius College. I don’t know who named the leagues and why, but ‘The Yale’, now affectionately referred to by some of its former players, was anything but Ivy League in quality as I’ll describe.

14 Schools Of Varying Sizes

There were 14 schools in the Yale Cup of the late 1980s and early 1990s. The lineup of schools in general changed over the decades. Like the private schools, some of the Yale Cup schools were closed or consolidated for economic and logistical reasons. I think the core line up of schools remained the same though. During my youth, I heard numerous stories of an East High School. During my teen years, it was converted into the Buffalo Vocational and Technical Center (BVTC). City Honors (described below) played its home games there. The schools comprising the Yale Cup of the late 1980s and early 1990s, their nicknames and school colors were as follows:

• Bennett: The Tigers, orange and blue
• Burgard Vocational: The Bulldogs, red, blue and white
• Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts (aka Buffalo Arts or Performing Arts): The Cavaliers, black and gold
• Buffalo Traditional: The Bulls, navy blue and gold
• City Honors: The Centaurs, burgundy and gray
• Emerson: The Eagles, red and white
• Grover Cleveland: The Presidents, green and white
• Hutch-Tech: The Engineers, maroon and gold
• Lafayette: The Violets, violet and white
• Kensington: The Knights, lime green and gold
• McKinley Vocational: The Macks, orange and black
• Riverside: The Frontiersman, purple and gold
• Seneca: The Indians, dark green and white
• South Park: The Sparks, red, black and white

If you watch the documentary Hoop Dreams or its sequel Hoop Reality, both take place in Chicago. Watching them, you’ll see that most metropolitan areas have city leagues where most of the student athletes are black. The bigger cities actually had multiple conferences within their boundaries. With Buffalo being a smaller city, there was only one conference.

Three Phases Of The Season

“What’s about to start after the New Year is the meat and potatoes of the season! Our non-league schedule was just the gravy!” In my first year on the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team, our coach, Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones told our team this after a lackluster start in the ‘non-league’ portion of our schedule. He further told us that our Yale Cup league play was the most important phase of the season. It brought with it the potential for a league championship. Our league record would also dictate our qualification for post season sectional play. There the final destination were potential state and federation championships for the truly elite teams.

During the next three years, as I learned about high school basketball on the fly, I realized something interesting. We only played our opponents once in league play. That is the location of the games would alternate yearly. In my first year on the team for example, Hutch-Tech hosted Riverside in our gym and that was it. This was the game that clinched the Yale Cup title for the Frontiersman that 1991-92 season, coincidentally. The next season we played in their gym.

Playing Each Other Once A Year In Conference Play

In the private and suburban school leagues, the teams played home and home series meaning that each team played in the other’s gym during league play. Likewise teams would play each other twice in one season. In some leagues, there was also a potential championship game where the top two teams in the league would battle it out for the league title. With the Yale Cup, you only got that one shot at your opponent in league play and that was it. In those days the final records determined the champions as well. This was probably because of the size of our 14-team league.

If you were in the same preseason tournament, scheduled a nonleague game or were in the same sectional class, there was the possibility of seeing certain teams again. If you were a Class A or B team in Section VI though (described below), you only got one shot at teams like Buffalo Traditional. The Bulls were the perennial power in our league who played in Class C sectional. It wasn’t ideal, but it’s what we had at the time.

The Gyms We Played In

Another aspect that made our league unique were the gyms in which we played. Most of the gyms were less than stellar compared to our counterparts in private and suburban schools. City school gyms were old and antiquated. While many of us look back on it with nostalgia; the gym at Hutch-Tech was essentially a box with a shortened court. It amazingly transformed into an electric venue during games and when fans filled it. It was a less than ideal facility though. The backboards were solid white with non-breakaway rims and the seating was minimal.

At Hutch-Tech, we also had a ‘small gym’. It was a smaller box with one basket which you could barely cram 15-25 student athletes into. Our boys’ basketball team practiced there for the first hour or so of practice after school. The girls’ basketball team used our ‘big gym’ (described above) for the first hour of practice and then we swapped.

It was nothing like the modern facilities at my alma mater right now. Today there is a regulation-size court, window backboards and breakaway rims. Nor was it anything like the three gyms at my best friend’s high school, Cleveland Hill in Cheektowaga. Cleveland Hill High School was in one of the suburban conferences, the Erie County Interscholastic Conference VI (there were four of these conferences). Still, there was something special about our little old gym, and the Hutch-Tech gym was not alone, or the worst.

Playing In Older And Antiquated Gyms

“You play in some of the gyms in some of these schools and it was like you were playing in a bowling alley (laughing)!” In my interview with Buffalo Traditional legend Damien Foster, we discussed the gyms we played in for Yale Cup play. I think the gym he was referring to was at Performing Arts. It was the most unusual of all the gyms in the league. It didn’t have a regulation width, so it didn’t have a complete three-point arc. The floor was concrete-like, and it was in a room very similar to a theater. Other high school gyms, like those at Lafayette and South Park, had those cumbersome tracks overhead. They were similar to the East Ferry YMCA, so you couldn’t shoot the corner three-point shots.

The largest gyms at that time were at Grover Cleveland, McKinley, and Seneca High Schools, and maybe Emerson. This is probably why Coach Jones always had to host our Hutch-Tech Tip Off Tournaments at other schools. Safety and security were reasons why we couldn’t host sectional games. This would have involved teams and families from the suburbs coming into Buffalo at nighttime. All these factors are why it was amazing to go into the college, private school, and suburban gyms as a player and see how well equipped they were. They had bleachers on both sides of the gym, window glass back boards, breakaway rims and complete three-point arcs.

Playing In Uniforms With No Name

Now admittedly you must typically go to the Division I level to get players’ names put on the back of their jerseys like in the pros. Typically, in the lower levels, you would at least get the school’s name and/or nickname on the front of the uniforms. Except for City Honors, Grover Cleveland and South Park, most of our uniforms in the Yale Cup, it wasn’t that way.

“It takes a little bit more to be a Champion!” The uniforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s were made by the sports apparel company Champion. The only thing that differentiated them between the schools were the school colors. Because the pictures in the Buffalo News were black and white, you couldn’t tell the teams apart without reading the caption when the teams were featured. If you were familiar with the teams and players, you knew who was who. The uniforms all had the same block numbers and were all made with the same thick polyester or nylon, non-mesh fabric. I have fond memories of our old maroon and gold Hutch-Tech uniforms though.

A Lack Of Feeder Systems For The Varsity Teams

In my research for The Engineers, the above-mentioned Coach Ken Jones and I talked about was the lack of a feeder system for the Yale Cup varsity basketball teams. The Buffalo News coincidentally wrote about this a season or two after I graduated from Hutch-Tech. Simply put, there were no official modified or junior varsity (JV) programs to feed the varsity programs. Thus, most of the players had to make the varsity team and learn on the fly if they weren’t receiving any training outside of school. See my interviews with Jason Rowe, Damien Foster and Tim Winn. That said, the best team in any given year could have been the most athletic team, the most talented or the healthiest team (or some combination of the three).

Some of the coaches at the time, including Coach Jones, attempted to create ad hoc JV teams and the games. They did this for the most part with no extra pay, and there was thus no official JV league. Most of the games were likewise played on Saturday mornings. All our classmates were still at home sleeping or doing something else, and thus few people saw them. For suburban schools the JV games were often scheduled and played at night before the varsity games. This was significant becasue classmates, relatives and the entire community could come out and support them which was a big deal as a player.

One Of Many Legendary Yale Cup Coaches

“You don’t know who Romeo McKinney is?” One of my interviewees for this project was Carlos James Gant from City Honors. City Honors was the other ‘academic’ school in the Yale Cup. They experienced their own basketball resurgence during my four years with players like Gant himself, Shaun Nelms, and their highly talented big man Larry Gilbert. During our discussion, Gant shared with me that the legendary Romeo McKinney helped coach their team during the 1992-93 season. He taught them a trapping style of defense which contributed to their increased level of competitiveness that season. By their senior year, they had an exceptional team, but they ascended at the same time as the above-mentioned Jason Rowe– and Damien Foster-led Buffalo Traditional Bulls.

I believe Coach McKinney was the coach of the South Park team that was involved in the infamous fight with Christian Laettner’s Nichols team at the Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium. I think he finished out his coaching career at Kensington. Carlos Gant was surprised that I didn’t know who he was. A recurring theme of my story is that I only started learning about Section VI basketball in the early 1990s, and even then, my coach never talked about him. There were several legendary Yale Cup coaches over the years just like Coach McKinney.

Varying Qualities Of Coaching

My coach at Hutch-Tech, Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones, called himself a ‘true student of the game’ and was in fact a basketball junkie. His program was an extension of himself and was very organized and textbook. The suburban and private school coaches were likewise amazed by the disciplined style of basketball Coach Jones’ majority black rosters played. The Yale Cup teams had developed the reputation for not playing defense or with structure of any kind. It was considered a ‘renegade’ league as stated by Adrian Baugh, another key contributor on the above-mentioned Buffalo Traditional teams.

From the interviews I conducted I learned that the quality of coaching in the league also varied from school to school. While researching The Engineers, I found that not every coach in the Yale Cup was in fact a trained coach, who approached the game as a craft. Some of them were simply faculty at their schools or gym teachers. Likewise, not every coach taught the game and treated it like a craft. Not every coach genuinely cared about his players, or what happened to them once they left the doors of their schools. The coach you got was arguably a matter of fortune and luck.

Playing Different Numbers Of Games

“We were one of the only city schools to play a full 20 games. Remember, at that time there were 14 high school teams in the city, and you only played those 13 teams if your coach didn’t give you another 6-7 games to fill out your full 20 games. Russ did that,” said Ed Harris, a star guard from Riverside’s above-mentioned Yale Cup and Class C Section Team in our interview. Ed attributed his Coach Bill Russell’s dedication to his playing development. “He had us playing the Frontiers, the Oleans, the Fredonias – going out there and playing John F. Kennedy (JFK), Williamsville East, South and North.”

Harris’ words described the fact that not every Yale Cup coach scheduled games outside of their 13 Yale Cup league games. This meant that their players didn’t get exposure to other styles of basketball and may not have started playing games until the new year. After interviewing Coach Russell, he turned out to be a lot like my coach at Hutch-Tech in that he put together a complete non-league schedule. He also cared about his players and did extra things for them like getting them into summer leagues and taking them with him to scout opponents.

Our League Games Were Immediately After School

Another interesting thing about the Yale Cup is that our games were immediately after school. If students were allowed into the games, this was advantageous for the home teams. Students weren’t allowed into games at every school though, due to safety considerations.

But what about the players on the teams; the visiting teams in particular? If you were the visiting team, you had to leave your last class early, which I’m sure none of the students took issue with. Unfortunately, none of the city schools had their own buses so players had to catch public transportation to the opposing school. This meant that team members could trickle in at varying times, sometimes after the games had started unless the coaches had a way of transporting the entire group.

Another consequence of this was the difficulty for many of the parents and relatives to come to our games. Many were still working at 3:30 pm in the afternoon. If they worked a 9-5 job, many parents could not get out of work early. As a player, having relatives in the stands can be very, very important psychologically.

Visits From The Trainer Once A Week And Wasted Talent

As described, none of our schools had their own individualized transportation. Nor did we have our own athletic trainer. We had a student trainer who came in from Canisius College to check on injuries once a week. It was better than nothing, but if a student athlete didn’t have the proper specialized medical care at home, injuries could linger and destroy whole seasons altogether. I experienced something like this during my journey.

Some of the players I interviewed suggested that there was a lot of wasted talent in the Yale Cup of the late 1980s and 1990s. The lack of a feeder system was mentioned earlier in this piece, but there was also academics. Some of the more talented players also didn’t receive the proper academic guidance to prepare to play at the next level. Specifically, some players weren’t prepared to take and achieve competitive scores on the standardized tests (SATs and ACTs). As a result, they never went on to play college basketball, and if they did, they had to play in junior college first. Some of them didn’t get to play at the Division I level at all, which they may have had the talent to do.

The Players That Emerged

The opening excerpt for this piece was from my interview with my cousin, Coach Phillip Richardson. When we spoke, it was amazing to hear that he and his peers didn’t compete in Section VI postseason play. Thus, they didn’t have the opportunity to compete for the state or federation championships. They simply put their basketball uniforms away and prepared for baseball or track after a league champion was determined. A few years after Coach Richardson graduated from Bennett High School the rules changed. Competing in Section VI’s postseason play was commonplace for the Buffalo Public Schools 20 years later when it was time for me to go to high school.

In this snippet, Coach Richardson stated that there were several talented players who didn’t get the opportunity to play Division I basketball because of the lack of exposure. Some players did make it though over the years. Among them were Bob Lanier (Bennett), Ray Hall (McKinley), Curtis Aiken (Bennett), Lester Rowe (Lafayette), Cliff Robinson (Riverside), and Keith Robinson (Grover Cleveland). There was also Trevor Ruffin (Bennett), and Jason Rowe and Damien Foster (both from Buffalo Traditional). After I graduated, there was Damone Brown (Seneca) and Mark Price (Riverside). There were also numerous Yale Cup players who played at the Division II and III levels.

I also must acknowledge a couple of guards. There was the great tandem of Ritchie Campbell and Marcus ‘Ice Cream’ Whitfield (Burgard). There was also Antoine Sims (Grover Cleveland and Turner/Carroll) and Jeremiah Wilkes (Burgard and Cheektowaga Central). I don’t know where their paths led after high school. They all played at a high level though. There were so many players and I may have missed some names. If so, please mention them in the comment section below.

Competing In Section VI

In my era, Yale Cup schools competed in Section VI Classes A, B, C in postseason play. Again, the letters designated the size of the school. Classes A and B designated the larger schools and C the smaller schools. The Buffalo News made a similar distinction in its weekly ‘Cage Polls’. None of the schools competed in Class D.

Postseason sectional play was arguably the most magical part of the season because we were now competing with the suburban teams and potentially teams from places like Grand Island and Niagara Falls in a one-game elimination format. This post season play could ultimately lead to a game with the Rochester area champions in the Far West Regionals. There a trip to Glens Falls was at stake. Only a few teams ever made it that far.

A Look Back At The Yale Cup Of Years Past From A Former Burgard Bulldog

“But going back to the junior year, when Gene exploded onto the scene and made All-High and Honorable Mention All-Western New York, the scouts came out and whatever. As a matter of fact, when Gene was a junior, we were playing Tech. The scouts came to scout a guy named Roger Brown because he was Mr. Everything that year. Gene played a good game, but we lost to Tech.” One of the most powerful interviews for The Engineers was with my Uncle Anthony (Tony) Harris. Uncle Tony played at Burgard in the 1960s with the legendary Eugene Roberson and corroborated much of the same information shared by the above-mentioned Coach Richardson.

“Tech had the Cott brothers, Orv and Marty Cott, back then and they had a couple of other stars. Gene had a spectacular game, but we lost.” My Uncle got excited talking about those days and I became equally excited listening to him reflect. As a part of my story, I learned that our family patriarch had a basketball history himself – he was All-High Honorable Mention! This is an important part of my story. I found out about it after my playing days.

“I mean there were some bad people (in a good way) back then. There were a couple who were really good like Bob Lanier. Bennett just ran over everybody, and East had some really good players too. Bennet’s team was so strong that all five guys should have made All-High, but they couldn’t.” Uncle Tony continually emphasized the number of strong players in the Yale Cup season he played in, and you could just feel it when he spoke. We spent a lot of time discussing Bob Lanier and the Bennett High School teams, and so many others.

“My main claim to fame was that Lanier was averaging 26 points per game, and I held him to 24 (laughing),” my uncle joked. “Of course, they took him out, so he sat on the bench in the last quarter. He almost sat out a whole quarter.”

Section VI’s Basketball Diamond In The Rough

“I always wanted to play against each of the city schools. When I was a ‘youngin’ just learning how to play the game – if you go back to when I was a freshman, I can tell you every school had a guy or two guys that could ball. At South Park, you had Damone Solomon along with those Hutchinson boys,” Riverside’s Ed Harris enthusiastically said about the Yale Cup during our era. It was like what my Uncle Tony said about his era 20 years earlier.

“You go to Emerson, and you’ve got Shawn Cunningham. You go to Burgard and you’ve got Ritchie (Campbell) and you got the Pat Jones kid. Each of those teams had guys on them that could play,” Ed Harris continued. “That’s when city ball was city ball. You had a chance to do something, and I looked forward to playing those guys, you know?”

Celebrating The Yale Cup

I’m hoping that this piece came off more as a tribute to our beloved league and not a pity party. I personally still get butterflies thinking about those games in the old gyms, our uniforms, and the school colors. We played in lesser conditions than our counterparts at the private and suburban schools. Still, there was nothing like that feeling of competition no matter where it was and who it was against. Those were fun times.

Again, the Buffalo News covered much of this in writings by Jerry Sullivan, Mike Harrington, the late Allen Wilson and others. While working on this ambitious project it was necessary to revisit the Yale Cup and all its aspects. As a writer, promotion is a major consideration. You also must set the story world for your readers, and the story world for my project is the Yale Cup and Section VI.

Playing Yale Cup Basketball

I’m closing this piece out with one more Yale Cup coach some of you may be familiar with. Bob Mitchell (pictured) was the Head Coach of the Kensington Boys’ Basketball Teams in the early 1990s. Just as in the picture, the times we played Kensington, I remember him wearing suits and being a fiery coach. Names I think of when I think of those Knights teams are Taka Molson, Radaun Hill and Kilroy Jackson who were all stars on their squads. The Knights were generally athletic, long, physical and tall. They played zone defenses and liked to get out in the open court and run like racehorses. Furthermore they liked to score the ball in transition via dunks and layups. They played Yale Cup basketball.

One of my many interviewees likewise played on the Kensington Boys’ Basketball Team, Coach Samuel “Quinn” Coffey. I thus got a feel for what it was like to wear the green and gold. In another promotional piece for The Engineers, I plan to discuss the difference between coaches who set out to build basketball programs versus simply assembling teams. As described earlier in this piece, it was different for all of us, depending upon which schools we attended, and which coaches we played for.

Closing Thoughts

Thank you for reading this piece. As you’ve seen, I’ve used numerous pictures from the Yale Cup and players from the 1980s and 90s. These images came from an archive of Section VI basketball, carefully assembled over the years from issues of the Buffalo News. Dr. Kenneth Leon Jones, my first Coach at Hutch-Tech created this archive. Coach Jones was a mentor, a father figure, and is a central in my story. None of this would’ve been possible without him.

While this piece focused on the Yale Cup and Western New York high school basketball in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the themes are universal. They thus may apply to the basketball league you played in as a youth wherever you grew up. Thus, feel free to share your high school basketball experiences and memories in the comments section below. And especially if you played in the Yale Cup, please share any of your experiences below.

More Promotional Pieces On The Way

I’m creating more promotional/teaser pieces for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. These will be via print and video as I journey through the final steps of the book’s completion. I created a page here on Big Words Authors for the purpose of giving a background of the book and grouping all the promotional narratives such as this in one place for interested readers. On my first blogging platform, the Big Words Blog Site, there are interviews with some the most accomplished Section VI players from my era including: Jason Rowe, Tim Winn, Carlos Bradberry and Damien Foster. I also interviewed legendary LaSalle Head Basketball Coach, Pat Monti. Finally, there are more essays related to my book project. If you liked this piece, please share it on your social media and feel free to leave a comment.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter. It will promote written and video content from the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. If you sign up, I promise that I will protect your personal information and privacy. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. If there is an issue with the sign up form, you can also email me at [email protected] . Regards.

Reflections On The Other White Meat: Dad’s Pork Stories And Becoming What You Eat

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“I want to eat some of those HOG MAWS! I want to eat some of those PIG FEET!”

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An Introduction To Pork: The Other White Meat

The genus and species for the pig whose meat ends up on our dinner tables is “Sus Linnaeus”. As a scientist, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to add the scientific name of the pig to the opening of this piece. It’s classified as an “Omnivore” which means it eats both animal and plant matter itself. The meat I referred to in the opening sentence is the “other white meat”, pork. I’ve actually never considered pork to be in the company of poultry, but a commercial from earlier this century described it as such. Throughout my life, the other white meat has stirred numerous emotions in those around me and has frequently been a discussion piece. With Thanksgiving 2021 approaching, it will likewise serve as the basis for this humorous reflection/story.

Pork In Children’s Media

“Th-Th-The…..Th-Th-The….THAT’S ALL FOLKS!” Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this piece, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the celebration of pork in pop culture. Perhaps the most famous cartoon pig is none other than “Porky Pig” from Warner Brothers “Looney Tunes” gang. Porky’s iconic ending for the cartoons featuring the famous cast of characters came to mind as I was close to preparing this piece for publishing.

There’s also “Ms. Piggy” from The Muppet Show and the “Pigs In Space” skit. “Piglet” was also one of “Winnie the Pooh’s” sidekicks. There was also the popular children’s story Charlotte’s Web about a pig which was eventually going to be used for a meal and a spider it befriended.

Perhaps my most memorable pig caricature didn’t come from TV though. It came on a summer visit to Atlanta, GA. My eldest cousin and an auntie had one of their many legendary dust ups while a bunch of us stepped out. When we returned to the house there was a picture of a cartoon pig in a colorful plaid shirt covering up a hole in the dry wall. Whatever the conflict was, my cousin unleashed her frustrations there. Ahhhhh family.

Pork In The Movies

“My God. You killed a fucking pig!” In one of my favorite movies of all time, the original Predator movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dutch Schafer, a pig became the topic of discussion. Late at night while trying to trap the alien predator hunting them down, a wild boar sprung one of the traps created by Dutch’s gradually shrinking elite special missions team. “Poncho” played by Richard Chavez observes that “Mack” played by Bill Duke has bludgeoned and killed the wild boar, instead of the alien he has become obsessed with.

Breathing heavily Mack returns a f-bomb to Poncho as “Billy” played by Sonny Lanham bellows out his characteristic laugh. The pig in this movie was more of a supporting character if you will, but there are also movies where the animal was featured in the title. Two examples are Wild Hogs starring John Travolta and Ray Liotta. There’s also silly early 1980s film Porky’s.

“We have some tomatoes, sausage and nice CRISPY bacon!” This classic line is from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring movie. In this iconic scene, the four Hobbit protagonists camped out at “Weathertop”. They were in the early stages of the quest to destroy the one ring. Frodo played by Elijah Wood wakes up to see Merry played by Dominic Monaghan (quoted), Pippin (Billy Boyd) and Sam (Sean Astin) preparing a hearty snack which unfortunately alerts the Nazgul (the Ring Wraiths) to their presence.

“I want to eat some of those HOG MAWS! I want to eat some of those PIG FEET!” This final iconic movie scene that I’ll cite comes from Ice Cube’s classic comedy, Friday. In this early scene in the movie, Craig (Ice Cube) is in the refrigerator foraging for food. Mr. Jones played by the late John Witherspoon, finds Craig and mischievously chastises his son for eating up all the food and for losing his job.

Hail The Hogs And Hog Heaven

This may all sound absurd to you as the reader, but pork has also been celebrated in the sports world. During the former Washington Redskins championship run under Head Coach Joe Gibbs, their offensive line was nicknamed “The Hogs”. They were large and imposing and ‘hogged’ the line of scrimmage to the benefit of their many great running backs. While many people lamented the Native American symbolism, many passionate Redskins fans also wore pig snouts in the stands to show their support for their beloved franchise.

Finally, the University of Arkansas-Fayettville’s sole national championship on the basketball court was nicknamed “Hog Heaven” by Sports Illustrated. The school mascot for Coach Nolan Richardon’s Arkansas basketball team was the “Razorback” which is basically once again a wild boar. An avid college basketball fan at the time, that was a memorable championship for numerous reasons. One of the biggest was President Bill Clinton, an Arkansas native and his wife Hillary attended the national championship game. Okay now I’ll get on with the main discussion of this piece which involves pork as a food.

Our Early Diet And Proteins

Mom, who cooked for us most of the time, never prepared or served pork to my brother and me when we were growing up. That said, we could have it on occasion, particularly on our pizza (pepperoni) on Friday nights. Those Friday nights in Buffalo, which I have fond memories of, were our designated eating out nights where the cuisine was either Burger King, Chinese food or pizza and wings.

For those of you who don’t know, one of Buffalo’s signature cuisines is pizza and wings. You can get them on pretty much any of the main arteries of the city. My brother and I readily ordered pepperoni on our pizza and it’s still something I order on my pizza these days, along with mushrooms.

If you ever go to Buffalo, by the way, you must get the pizza and wings with blue cheese. Most any restaurant will do, but some of the bigger pizza restaurants are the Anchor Bar, Bocce’s, La Nova’s, Leonardi’s and Santora’s. There are also lesser-known pizzerias like Avenue Pizza and Just Pizza. You know you’ve got the real thing when the pepperoni slices curl up into little cups with oil pooled in the middle. Seriously.

Oh. One more Buffalo/Western New York-related treat you absolutely must try if you haven’t, is the “Sahlen’s” hotdogs which are made with pork and beef. I have wonderful childhood memories of consuming the long and flavorful hotdogs at church picnics and barbecues. When grilled over coals, the casings develop a signature ‘crunch’ when you bite into them. Many Buffalonians fiend for the Sahlen’s hotdogs when they move away and even order them for consumption at their current home.

My family had beef more readily when we ate out, but our proteins at home consisted mostly of fish and poultry. Though you might not expect it, Buffalo also has its share of steak shops similar to those found in Philadelphia. The “City of Brotherly Love” is known for its cheese steaks, and we also have them in Buffalo.

A Porkless Diet

Some of you may be wondering how one could grow up not eating pork chops, pork ribs, pork bacon or “souse“, but it is entirely possible. For those who don’t know what souse is, it’s pickled, specially seasoned chopped pork parts (ears, for example) held together in a gel-type of substance. If you ever go to Miami for example, you can get it at most barbecue rib shacks along with “rib sandwiches”.

By the way, a rib sandwich isn’t a sandwich per se. At one of these shacks, I actually asked how you could eat a sandwich with the bones still in the meat, and they looked at me like I was crazy. It’s just a portion of ribs served with white bread on the side in a styrofoam container.

Finally, pork never made it onto our holiday dinner tables. There was no holiday ham, or chitterlings (aka chittlins). To this day I’ve never tried chitterlings. My late grandmother made them for the above-mentioned anonymous aunt one time. It might’ve been Thanksgiving. They stunk up the entire hallway and from childhood on, I was never interested in them.

For the older generations, other parts of the pig were popular too such as pickled pig feet. I was never interested in those either. It’s also worth noting that vegetables like collard greens were often made tastier when cooked with pork, but there are other methods today.

Dad’s Aversion To Pork

“There’s no pork in this right?” I’d made a pot of Jambalaya with chicken and sausage as the featured proteins, one of Emiril LaGasse’s succulent recipes. Before scooping some out, Dad saw fit to verify that I wasn’t about to poison him with the “swine”. In Black Muslim circles, pork is referred to as swine. I knew of Dad’s aversion to pork and wouldn’t dare think of feeding him the other white meat.

“No Dad, there’s no pork in it,” I said, partially smiling. Knowing of his disdain of pork, I was both surprised but not surprised to hear his suspicion that I would attempt to feed it to him.

I don’t recall when Dad became averse to pork and pork products. One of the many books he had laying around his home was How To Eat To Live, by the legendary Honorable Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam. I first heard of the book in the song Beef, by the rapper KRS-One in my teens, a song that I might still have mostly memorized. In any case, yes, Dad became averse to anything pork-related at some point.

Any of you who have read my writings up to this point know that my Dad has told me interesting stories over the years. Several have involved pork. One of my favorites that I first heard was when I lived with him in my early 30s as I was transitioning into my federal science career. Read on to see it for yourself. During that two-and-a-half-year stretch, we got how shall I say, better acquainted, as my parents divorced when I was three years old.

Beef Chop Suey: The Breakfast Of Champions……For A Little While At Least……

Dad was a man of routines, especially when it came to his diet. Part of his routine involved getting Beef Chop Suey from one of the local Chinese restaurants. He would have it for breakfast on Friday mornings. In fact, he was so regular that he said they knew what he was going to order whenever he walked in the door.

“What’s Up?”, I’d wake up seeing him bent over his kitchen counter in his undershirt and boxers, eating the protein, vegetables, and rice out of the Tupperware he warmed it up in. He was in a state of euphoria as he gobbled it down. It would be his biggest meal of the day because he, “Ate breakfast like King, lunch like a Prince, and dinner like a Pauper!”

Dad’s kitchen smelled good on those Friday mornings when he nuked his Beef Chop Suey. Just like the Long John Silver’s fish planks he ate on Thursday night; it was like clockwork. Then one day, the beef chop suey stopped abruptly.

“I think they put pork in my Beef Chop Suey. After I ate it, I could feel little things running across my body!” He acted out the sensation, moving his fingers in a piano-playing motion from his right side to his left side. He was convinced. It’s one of my favorite father-son moments of all time and it makes me laugh every time I think about it. It was possible, I guess. I also noticed that he would change his routines every now then just to ‘do something different.’

Dad’s Most Astounding Pork Story

Dad’s most powerful pork story, though, involved some of relatives from down south. I never met them because of the divorce. He told me that these people ate pork all the time, in addition to putting mayonnaise on everything. By the way mayonnaise, just like cheese, does make most everything taste better, though it is loaded with calories. I think using them together in a meal on a burger, for example, is considered “doubling your fats”.

“My one cousin ate so much pork that he started to look like a hog!” This one claim from Dad is forever etched into my mind verbatim. It also makes me laugh every time I think about it. It was like a classmate from South Carolina at Johnson C. Smith University. This individual insisted that he witnessed someone’s limb regrow as the person was prayed over during a church service. Like Dad’s pork story, I wondered if this classmate was delusional, imagined it or if the story was true.

“His face started to elongate into a snout, and his ears actually started to become pointy like those of a pig,” Dad said with conviction, once again affirming that he saw what he thought he saw. If it sounds like a fantastic story to you, the reader, imagine how I felt listening to it in real time.

You Are What You Eat

In any case, maybe the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was right in that you are what you eat. In closing, I’ve never officially sworn off pork myself. I still like it on my pizza, and there’s nothing like the crunch and the taste of pork bacon or a fried pork chop every once in a while.

My best friend and my Uncle “Ice” also both prepare very, very tasty barbecue pork ribs albeit in different ways. The Midwest is in fact known for its barbecue which includes the afore mentioned ribs, but also pulled pork sandwiches. Finally there’s also nothing like a Sausage McMuffin with Egg (and cheese) from McDonalds; again, every once and a while.

Pork is also a popular protein in the cuisines of other countries and ethnicities. Look at pretty much any Asian or Latin American menu for example, and you’ll see several pork-based dishes available. As a postdoctoral scientist in a lab with mostly Chinese colleagues, I noticed that pork was a very popular protein at our lab gatherings. I recall a Canadian friend of West Indian descent ordering some “Jerk Pork” one night in Toronto, ON. Chicago is known for its Polish Sausages, which are very, very good. I’ve also heard individuals from Pennsylvania discuss a Dutch pork dish called “Scrapple”. Finally, there’s the stereotypical whole roasted pig with the apple in its mouth at Hawaiian luaus.

The Author’s Post Thoughts/Reflections

“I WON’T GET MAD AT YOU IF YOU DECIDE NOT TO EAT IT. BUT DON’T TELL ME NOT TO EAT IT EITHER!” If you haven’t deduced it from this piece, pork consumption can be a big deal depending on your values and the circle you come from. At a church service years ago, a clergyman whom I’ll call Pastor Gray of the Jordan River Missionary Baptist Church in Buffalo, NY started passionately preaching about eating pork.

It was probably a bit of a pushback on the resurgence the Nation of Islam’s doctrines at that time. One of their biggest teachings of course involved not eating pork. Those doctrines were reenergized by the conscious Hip Hop music of the time (the late 1980s and early 1990s). When he got deep into his sermons, Pastor Gray became very passionate. His high-pitched voice ascended to a bit of a scream or a wail, a hallmark of many black preachers. His passion would startle you back to consciousness if you just happened to doze off for a moment.

I told this story here on Big Words Authors partially out of humor. However, it also is a bit of a thought piece. My mother was very vigilant about our diets early on. I’m very grateful for that as the majority of her dietary habits have stayed with me. We never got sick much and to this day I still don’t. As we all age, it’s also important to be mindful of our diets and incorporating more fresh fruits and vegetables.

I didn’t always understand his eating habits and his eating schedule. That said, Dad’s avoidance of pork may be a contributor to a relatively healthy life. Perhaps it is true that, “You are what you eat!” The opening quote of this piece, by the way, comes from the afore-mentioned song by KRS-One Beef.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

Thank you for reading this piece. For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign up button at the bottom of the announcement. Regards.

Realistically Thinking And Poetically Speaking By Poetess Tamara Coleman

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“Many People Will Never See Your Vision…….”

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The third poem published on Big Words Authors once again comes from poetess Tamara Coleman. It is one of her many creations and involves the art of poetry itself. It is entitled, Realistically Thinking and Poetically Speaking, and discusses how people view you, your visions and your life. Tamara’s bio and contact information are immediately after her poem.

Many People Will

Never See Your Vision

Many People Will

Never Understand

Your Thoughts

Many People Will

Never Experience

Your Pain

Many People Will

Never Feel What’s

In Your Heart

Stay True To Yourself

And Know That God

Is With You And Together You Are One

Author’s Post Poem Reflections/Thoughts

This poem allowed my emotions to do the writing for me. Not everyone will see your vision. Your vision is for you and you only. Those are your thoughts. No one will know your pain. Your pain is your pain. And your vision is your vision.

About the Author

I am CREATIVELY CREATING CREATIVE DESIGNS. I am POETICALLY thinking. I am POETICALLY speaking. I am a POETIC being. I don’t CREATE to impress, I CREATE to express! Tamara Coleman is a talented poet and graphics designer from Buffalo, NY. To see more of Tamara’s poetry, go to Poetess Tamara Coleman on Facebook. Tamara can be contacted at Tam [email protected].

The Exchange Street Tunnel and Growing Up Traveling on Amtrak’s Empire Corridor Trains

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“Just then the tunnel lit up slowly as did the tracks at the bottom of it. And then the train appeared; a massive, large, gray, squared machine barreling towards us.”

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Some of My Fondest Childhood Memories

Some of my fondest childhood memories are of Dad coming to get us on the Amtrak trains. Like many kids in Generation X, my parents divorced when I was young. Afterwards Dad settled down in the Capital Region of New York State, while we grew up in Buffalo. That’s where Mom was from and that’s where most of my childhood took place. But this story isn’t about that per se. It’s about a yearly ritual that came about due to this circumstance.

Waiting for Dad’s Letter and Traveling New York State by Train

Dad had visitation once or twice a year and as time went on, it ended up being in the middle or end of the summertime. As a preteen during those months, I’d watch the mailbox for a letter from Schenectady, NY, the Electric City. It was given that nickname because the General Electric corporate offices were based there. Before my parents split, we lived 20 minutes east in Albany, the state capital. I don’t know exactly why Dad settled in Schenectady, but he did.

Dad initially called Mom to announce his intention to come get us. A formal man, he used that word a lot, and eventually he just sent letters. They’d agree on the dates and the length of our visit, and then he’d show up. The early visits were by car. He’d drive five hours to Buffalo on Interstate 90 (I-90) in his red Volkswagen bug. He would take us to Schenectady, and then bring us back usually in two weeks. Then, at some point, he decided to come get us on the train.

I don’t know what made Dad decide to start using the train for our visits. It could’ve been the grueling four-to-five-hour drive to Buffalo. Maybe it was my love for trains. It developed when playing with the toy train sets Dad had. He had a miniature N scale train set, a medium sized HO train set and finally a Lionel train set with the third middle rail. His father, my grandfather whom I never met, constructed that HO train set we played with. Dad said his father had been a cook on the railroads.

Making the Exchange at the Exchange Street Train Station

Mom agreed to drop us at the Amtrak Exchange Street station in downtown Buffalo. In hindsight, the street and station names were coincidental, but accurate. The station was underneath the Interstate 190 expressway (I-190), across from the Buffalo Bison’s Baseball Stadium. Dad typically arrived in town the day before and stayed at the Travel Lodge Motel on Main Street. He’d go out to the famous Anchor Bar to listen to jazz and get food. I’d be at home in bed, anxious to see him the next day and for the trip.

My most vivid memory of him meeting us at the station was a day when Mom, and her then boyfriend, got us there early. Dad wasn’t there yet, and I eagerly looked around for him. In the tiny station I looked out of the window and up the hill. I saw him turn the corner and got excited. He descended towards the station with his luggage dressed in his signature short sleeve button down shirt, slacks and shoes. I darted out of the station up the hill and jumped on him, while my older brother patiently waited in his seat. My parents were cordial during those exchanges.

“Now you know you have to come back to Buffalo in two weeks, right?” Now just the three of us, Dad sternly made sure that we understood the terms of the agreement he and Mom made for the visit. He especially made sure I understood.

Waiting for Our Train

We waited for the train to arrive. Our tiny station consisted only of a lobby, an enclosed office for the ticketing agent, restrooms, and vending machines. There was one exit to the station’s single track which was for the most part covered by shade from the I-190 skyway above.

Dad usually bought tickets for east/southbound Train No. 64, the Maple Leaf, which originated in Toronto, Ontario. When I studied the free paper schedules available in the station, I saw that it stopped at places like Grimsby, St. Catherines and Niagara Falls, Ontario before crossing over the border to Niagara Falls, NY, the stop before Buffalo. This passage through customs made the train late every time by an hour or more.

Most of the trains in the Empire Corridor had names and numbers. In addition to the Maple Leaf, there were train Nos. 283/284 the Niagara Rainbow, and train Nos. 48/49 the Lake Shore Limited. Both trains made journeys to Western New York and beyond from Grand Central Station, and back again. The even numbered trains were eastbound, and the odd numbered counterparts were westbound trains (Nos. 64 and 63, for example). Trains like the Bear Mountain and the Electric City Express only seemed to journey to the Albany area from New York City. Some operated daily while others operated on specific days. It was all fascinating to me.

Seeing the Train Emerge from the Tunnel

The station attendant alerted us when the train was near, and we’d all file out onto the platform. Because the station sat below the skyway, you could hear the cars and trucks passing over head which created an ambient sound. I eagerly focused on the tunnel though, anticipating the arrival of the train No. 64. I still get butterflies thinking about it.

At that time there was one single track. To the west, it extended straight and then curved into the tunnel. Looking in the opposite direction from the platform, it extended eastward and then curved and disappeared in the distance behind a random building. At some point you could hear an increasingly intense hum which competed with the noise from the skyway. The hum was accompanied by the sound of an air horn, a very distinct high-pitched sound. The engineers typically blew it twice to let you know the train was approaching the station and to stand back.

The EMD-F40PH Engine Leads the Charge

Just then the tunnel lit up slowly as did the tracks at the bottom of it. And then the train appeared; a massive, large, gray, squared machine barreling towards us. There were two windows at the top of the engine car where the engineers sat, the engine’s cabin or “cab”. Two singular vertical running lights were at the front of the chassis, the ‘nose’ if you will. There were two more blinking lights below them on the right and the left, both flashing in an alternating manner. Red, white, and blue stripes wrapped around the body of the locomotive. In the front right half of the lower chassis, in those stripes, was the name Amtrak. The chassis was square shaped, unlike the General Motors (GM) Electro-Motive Division’s (EMD) classic FL9 passenger locomotives from earlier in the century. They were featured in movies like ‘Superman: The Motion Picture’.

After researching this, I later learned that this was a modern “EMD-F40PH” locomotive, also made by GM. Its distinct hum was accompanied by a loud bell which rung at a slow cadence as the locomotive rumbled past us like a goliath. The large beast of a machine literally shook the ground and kicked up dust and rubble as it slowed to an eventual stop. There was the distinct smell of the diesel exhaust fumes combined with the smell of the rails and the ties upon which the trains travelled. The side of the locomotive also read Amtrak, but in larger letters. As directed, we all stood behind the yellow line of the weathered platform, but you still felt the might of the engine.

The initial final draft of this essay affectionately discussed the F40PH engines but had no pictures of them. Amtrak retired them years ago and I had no pictures of them. My mother edited this essay and pointed out that there were no images of the engines in the final essay. In the fall of 2022, I found an interesting channel on YouTube one night entitled, AmtrakGuy365. The content creator is one of many rail fans on YouTube and created impressive highly detailed historic videos on the engines used by Amtrak over the years. To get an understanding of my love for the F40PH engine, watch the following embedded video. Please read the rest of my essay as well. Also, salute to AmtrakGuy365.

The Regal Silver Amfleet

As the mighty locomotive emerged from the tunnel, you could see a sleek fleet of stainless steel, curved cars or coaches behind it. They also wore the same red, white, and blue stripes. These were Amfleet coaches built by the manufacturer Budd. They contrasted the locomotive because their sides were curved, not straight. Also, the body of the locomotive was a dull industrial gray. The top was painted black.

With the train stopped, you could still hear the hum from the engine down at the front end, but the cars made noises themselves. It sounded like a fan or something running similar to an air conditioner which made sense as there was machinery underneath each coach.

At each end there were four bare wheels with springs in the middle. Technically, these were the coaches’ trucks. In between these coaches were connectors through which people could pass. There were also the actual couplers connecting each coach, the air hoses and then electric cables running between each coach. Lining each car within the red, white, and blue stripes were rectangular tinted windows with round corners that were cut in half by separators.

Boarding the Great Silver Coaches

The complement of cars was typically five or six with one ‘café’ car. In the summer months, Amtrak extended the Maple Leaf Train to seven or eight cars, with two engines operating back-to-back when necessary. As the train slowed to a stop you heard another high-pitched sound, almost a whine, as the air brakes kicked in. As the train slowed, the doors at the ends of selected coaches slid open with conductors standing in their vestibules. They lifted hatches revealing stairways which unfolded down to the platform creating stairwells for the passengers. The conductors descended to direct and greet us.

“Schenectady is two cars down. If you’re going to Grand Central Station, get into the forward coaches. The food service car is at the center of the train,” the conductors would say. Most of them were men. You saw some female conductors on the Empire Corridor later, but most were men, both black and white. They wore military style hats, with Amtrak printed on them, short sleeve button down shirts, dress pants and shoes in the summertime. In the wintertime they wore overcoats.

Because the platform at the Buffalo Exchange Street Station sat at track level, passengers literally had to climb up into the coaches with their luggage, which was part of the fun. Looking down at the locomotive as I often did, I could see exhaust fumes emanating from its top side, like a whale and its blowhole. The interior of the coaches smelled like air freshener. The seats were a red color as were the coaches’ upholstery, and there were overhead racks for luggage. Sets of four facing seats were usually at the ends of each car near the restrooms. Because there were three of us, we usually sat there.

The conductors eventually came by and collected our tickets. They used some sort of hole punch and tore them in half. They then gave us each green, orange, or yellow generic Amtrak stubs with scribbles from a black magic marker which were placed above our seats signifying our destinations. Since we were going to Schenectady, our tickets read, SDY. On the return trips to Buffalo, they scribbled, BFX for Exchange Street, or simply BUF for the Depew station. Rochester was ROC and Syracuse was SYR. You get the idea. If you were going all the way to Grand Central Station, your stub read, GCT or NYC.

From One Single Track onto the Mainline, and from the Inner City into the Frontier

The ride itself was magical. The train took us from downtown Buffalo literally into the countryside. From the Buffalo Exchange Street Station to the Buffalo-Depew Station, we passed the old Buffalo-New York Central Terminal, then the Conrail train yard along Broadway, the Thruway Mall area and then out to the suburb of Depew. I was unaware of Depew until taking those rides. The single Exchange Street track literally merged with Contrail’s mainline right around the old Buffalo Terminal. From there we rode a two to four track network from Western New York to the Capital Region.

After leaving the Depew Station, we immediately passed the Attica State Prison and then passed through an endless series of small towns and villages which included farmland, forests, and marshes enroute to our sister city, Rochester. Between Rochester and Syracuse, the largest stretch of the trip, there was yet more farmland, forests and marshes. You could also interestingly see that we were traveling parallel to I-90.

After leaving Syracuse and heading to Rome and Utica, like magic, the Adirondack Mountains and the Mohawk Valley emerged. New York State was very geographically diverse and beautiful, and this was the ideal way to see it. From Utica to Amsterdam there were more small towns, villages and train yards with old, retired freight and passenger cars. There were even older broken-down structures on land and built into the sides of the some of the mountains. The Mohawk River also appeared, and we rode along its banks until the final stretch between Amsterdam and Schenectady.

“We don’t own the tracks between Buffalo and Albany. We just rent them from Conrail, and their trains get priority.” I once overheard a conductor telling another passenger why we had to stop occasionally to let the Conrail trains pass by. When we were in motion Conrail trains regularly came thundering past us. When we were headed in opposite directions I could feel our train shake. Occasionally we’d also pass westbound Amtrak trains. Along the entire route to Schenectady, there were freight train yards in each of the other cities which were once owned by Conrail and are now owned by CSX, confirming the conductor’s words.

Disembarking in Schenectady

“THE NEXT STOP IS SCHENECTADY IN 25 MINUTES,” the conductors announced walking through our coach snatching the appropriate stubs as we departed Amsterdam. “THE EXIT WILL BE THE REAR OF THIS COACH!” In some instances, announcements were made in person and in others they were made using the train’s public announcement system.

At Schenectady we disembarked from the train onto the station’s elevated platform and entered the fantasy world that was our summer visit with our father. I also liked watching the train depart so we stayed and watched it. Once the conductors took on new passengers they climbed back into their coaches, and the doors slowly slid shut; the opposite of their routine in Buffalo.

With two blows from the engine’s airhorn, the train slowly started back up and disappeared around a curve behind a building heading south to New York City. The two red lights on the last coach were the final parts of the train I would see along with the sound of the wheels on the rails. I often wondered what it was like to ride all the way down to the famous Grand Central Station.

When it was time to go back to Buffalo, we’d do the exact same thing, but in reverse. Early on I’d cry my eyes out. It was hard going back, not because I didn’t want to go back to be with my mother, but because I wouldn’t see my father again for another six months to a year. But that’s a different story. As I got older, I stopped crying. Just like the trip to Schenectady the train would disappear, but this time into the Exchange Street tunnel. The two red lights on the last coach were the final parts of the train you would see as it disappeared into the darkness.

Thinking about the Empire Corridor in Buffalo

Those trains departed from and arrived at the Exchange Street Station daily. In the mornings they arrived in Buffalo on that single track and journeyed east to New York City. In the afternoons and evenings, they arrived and then departed for either nearby Niagara Falls or further north to Toronto.

Though I only got to ride on them a handful of times per year, I thought about trains regularly. I daydreamed about riding on those silver curved coaches. With my grade school being on the westside of Buffalo and my high school being downtown, I’d hear the trains announce their arrival in Buffalo. It was during the warm weather months when the windows were open when I’d hear that distinct sound of the airhorns the most. As a teen I thought about them along with basketball, girls, and peer acceptance.

Even as an undergraduate and a graduate student in states far away from the Empire Corridor, I still dreamt about travelling back and forth on it. Nothing was ever like watching those trains emerge from the Exchange Street tunnel. While more convenient timewise, air travel never compared to train travel for me personally, nor did bus rides or car rides.

Always thinking about new technologies, my brother once speculated on magnetic trains, which would hover over rails with little or no contact with the ground. In contrast, I always loved the bumpiness, the roughness, and the sounds of those rides on the Empire Corridor – the subtle sway of the cars from side to side, hearing the hydraulics of the coaches, the roughness of switching tracks; all of it.

Riding the Maple Leaf and the Niagara Rainbow

Dad took us to Schenectady on the Maple Leaf probably for scheduling purposes. Because it originated in Canada, when you boarded there were already lots of passengers on the train and they could’ve been from Africa, India or any of the countries in the Middle East in terms of diversity. Since the Niagara Rainbow started in nearby Niagara Falls, NY, it usually ran on time. And because Buffalo was its second stop, I always got my seat of choice, though the train usually filled up the further east we traveled.

As I grew older, I rode the Niagara Rainbow more often, which departed Buffalo early in the morning. Both trains had food service cars where you could choose from an assortment of items on Amtrak’s menu including cold and hot beverages, breakfast sandwiches, burgers, kosher hot dogs, potato chips and mini pizzas. When getting us, Dad often brought cold Kentucky Fried Chicken (no sides) and we’d snack on that for the five-hour journey to Schenectady. That’s right, cold Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The Empire Corridor

Oh, I got so into my story that I didn’t describe the significance of the Empire Corridor. Years ago trains were the primary mode of travel in the United States. There were numerous individual private railroads in multiple states like the multiple airlines today. Examples are the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, the New York and New Haven & Hartford, the Reading (pronounced Redding) and the Southern. These were just the eastern lines. Out west there was the Central Pacific, and the Union Pacific, among others.

There was also the New York Central Railroad. The Empire Corridor is basically the remains of the New York Central Railroad. It is now the New York State portion of Amtrak’s national system, spanning from Niagara Falls to New York City. You might be able to throw in the Adirondack route up to Montreal as well, but the main trunk is the route spanning from Western New York to New York City. The New York Central also extended to Chicago, Illinois and the above-mentioned Lake Shore Limited which, in a way, keeps that part of the old railroad alive to this day.

In Buffalo, the old terminal located on Paderewski Drive, off of Fillmore Avenue, is a relic of that system. Grand Central Station in New York City was once the heart of the system, but Amtrak’s Empire Corridor trains now start and terminate at Penn Station where passengers can easily connect with the electrified Northeast Corridor. Amtrak’s modern system consists of the remains of the feasible routes of the old railroads. The other parts have been sold off or dismantled altogether.

Have I ever completed the journey to New York City along the banks of the Hudson River? Yes, I have. In fact, I’ve done it several times, but I’ll cover that in another piece.

The Author’s Post Thoughts/Reflections

During those times, Amtrak also used a couple of turboliners on the Empire Corridor before retiring them due to technical issues. They were of European design and had engines on both ends of the train like the modern-day Acela Express. My brother preferred them, but I always preferred the single engine with the fleet of coaches.

In case it wasn’t evident from this piece, I know a lot about trains (laughing). They’ve always fascinated me. While in graduate school at the University of Michigan I started collecting issues of Trains Magazine and loaded my brain with more and more trivial railroad facts. Most of the articles were long just like this one. That said, there is a whole demographic of railroad enthusiasts, as is the case with everything else.

If I’ve written this piece correctly, I will have conveyed a sense of innocence to you the reader. My childhood was an innocent one, and in general, that was a much more innocent time for our country and our world compared to what we have now. Though my parents split early in my life, my father wanted to remain a visible part of my life, to which I’ll always be grateful. He did a lot of things for me including helping me develop a love for trains which has lasted a lifetime. It was something we did together, and it helped me to start to see other parts of New York State, and indeed the country, outside of the eastside of Buffalo.

Just as when I was a kid, I don’t get to ride the trains every time I take a trip, but I’m always thinking about them. Whenever I see train tracks, I wonder where they’re going and where they’ve originated from. Furthermore, before I leave this world, I’d like to ride in a locomotive just to know what it feels like. In the Washington, DC area, where I now live, commuter, passenger and freight trains are everywhere, coming and going. Nothing, however, is like the Empire Corridor.

Most of the images used in this piece are from the first decade of this century. Interestingly, I didn’t know how I would use the photographs when I first took them. Like all of the upstate New York stations, the Exchange Street station has been renovated. It’s now larger with a train-level platform and two tracks. Again, there’s nothing like that old station of bygone days.

If you’ve read this article to the end, thank you. I like to tell stories of all kinds on this platform, and before it’s all said and done, I think there will be a collection of stories specifically about trains. I’m also working on a book. If you have a moment, please check out the page for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Finally, I’m also a YouTube content creator. There’s a page on my original blog with links to each of my four channels. Regards.

RailFan76 on YouTube

I shared a channel from another railfan earlier in this post. I started my own railfanning channel entitled, RailFan76. The initial trailer I created for the channel is below. Please consider subscribing to my channel if you have read this essay to the end. I plan to make a video about the Exchange Street Tunnel in the near future.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

Thank you for reading this piece. For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter. It will be for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. In it, I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. Your personal information and privacy will be protected. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. If there is an issue with that form, you can email me at [email protected]. Regards.

A Tribute to Kevin Roberson: The Hutch-Tech Engineer who Started it All on the Basketball Court

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“K was a good dude. Yes, trust me. It was one of the hardest days of my life when he passed. That was tough for me. That was tough.”

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The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story

Up to this point I have left subtle hints that I am working on a book project chronicling my high school basketball journey, what it taught me about life, and what sports teaches its participants in general, both in and outside the lines. Well, let me tell you some more. The title of the book is The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. It is a two-part project.

Writing-wise, it is a creative non-fiction piece based upon real life events and many of the names will be changed. If you were there and are not averse to being a character in the story, feel free to reach out as it is not finalized yet. As recommended by author John U. Bacon, I have changed the names of most of the people who were not interviewed. People mentioned in the newspaper were fair game and all the 30-40 players and coaches I interviewed, all agreed to be characters, major or minor.

A Project of Discovery

The project has admittedly taken a while for a myriad of reasons. I am convinced though that the finished product will be quality and will have been worth it. A major component of this project has been the research, particularly the above-mentioned interviews of players and coaches who were there in Western New York in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

From my vantage point, my story initially started with seeing Michael Jordan hit ‘the shot’ against Cleveland in the 1989 NBA playoffs. I then saw Coach Ken Jones turn the Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team into city and sectional champions during the 1990-91 season, which was my freshman year at Hutch-Tech High School. Both were important events for me. The truth though, which I did not know when starting this project, is that the story started before Coach Ken Jones and the players on the 1990-91 team all arrived at Hutch-Tech High School.

It started with one young basketball player from one of the neighborhoods in the Central Park area of Buffalo. He influenced his peers from multiple schools, some of whom I knew before I got into high school myself. He mentored them in the great game of basketball and in life. That player was the late Kevin Roberson.

The Kevin Roberson Award

As I describe in my story, I did not learn about Western New York high school basketball and its rich history until I was in high school and looking to earn a spot on our varsity team. That was admittedly on the late side for a prospective basketball player. Thus, I did not hear of the likes of Ritchie Campbell, Marcus Whitfield, and Trevor Ruffin until I was part way through high school and beyond. You can also throw Christian Laettner in there whom I did not become familiar with until his legendary four years on the basketball court at Duke University.

Likewise, I did not hear of the name Kevin Roberson until my senior year at Hutch-Tech when my basketball dreams crashed and burned and were in tatters. I, personally, was unable to get anything significant done on the hardwood and I had no city or sectional titles to show for my time in the maroon and gold, which is what I aspired to in my freshman year. I did, however, win an award late in my senior year, interestingly the Kevin Roberson Award.

It was great that I won another award. I won the Best Practice Player Award as a sophomore and Most Improved Player Award at the Ken Jones Basketball Camp just before my junior year, so I had won a couple of basketball-related awards. But who was Kevin Roberson? And why was I winning this award in his name?

Pictures Of Kevin Around Our School

There was a picture of Kevin on a plaque on the first floor of Hutch Tech High School with other trophies, awards and pictures. I recall it being posted during the 1993-94 school year, my senior year. The picture of him was on the basketball court at the University of Vermont standing under the basket looking up for a rebound (see the initial image for this essay). The range of years beneath the picture indicated that he had died recently. Unfortunately, there was no announcement at school that I recall and none of my coaches had talked about him. Being a senior myself in 1994, any basketball alumni from the late 1980s were long gone and had not really come back to the school to mentor the younger players.

I also found a picture of Kevin on the fourth floor of the school with the other senior portraits near the cafeteria (pictured above). In my final days at Hutch- Tech, I actively sought out his picture with his graduating Class of 1988, and often stopped and looked at it. Sure enough, there he was, smiling in his black jacket and bow tie like the rest of the boys in his class. The girls wore pearls and black dresses.

A Great Guy Who Left His Mark at Hutch-Tech High School

“He was a great guy and played basketball just like you,” said Ms. Bonnie Unger, my sophomore year math teacher. A great guy just like me? I do not think Ms. Unger, or her family, will mind me mentioning her in this story. Ms. Unger, by the way, taught me a critical lesson or two about how to approach my academics, but that is a different story. In any case, Kevin made a lasting impression on her, and other faculty at the school it seemed.

So, he was a great guy like me, or the other way around. But what did that mean? What was great about me during my senior year? What seemed to make this Kevin Roberson great was that he had the skills to go on and play Division I Basketball at the University of Vermont. I did not have that. It turns out though, that there was more to him than his basketball skills.

A Leader and An Inspiration

Years later when working on my book project, my interviews and research interestingly revealed a common figure. He inspired quite a few basketball players at Hutch-Tech, and other schools, such as Turner/Carroll High School. This figure was none other than Kevin Roberson. That is right. The guy whose name sake award I won in my senior year, was the inspiration and mentor for many of the guys I played with and or looked up to at that time. The following are words about Kevin Roberson that came up in my interviews. They give you feel for his character, leadership, and selflessness.

Curtis Brooks, Player, Hutch-Tech High School, Class of 1991

“Kevin Roberson, I’ve got so much love for that man. He had that horrendous car accident and was taken from us short. He was the best athlete and could’ve possibly been in the league!”

Ronald Jennings, Player, Turner/Carroll High School, Class of 1994

“And then across the street from me on Manhattan Avenue, there was a guy named Kevin Roberson. I’m sure you’re familiar with Kevin Roberson. He lived across the street from me. As I got older and Kevin came home for the summertime getting ready for college, I was his workout buddy. He would get me up and make me go ride the bike with him to shoot free throws. He saw something in me that I didn’t quite see in myself and just brought that out of me in terms of basketball. It just increased my love of sports in general, but in terms of both basketball and football. He was the one that really got me playing ball.”

Quincy Lee, Player, Hutch-Tech High School, Class of 1991

“The guys getting most of the minutes in my first year were Kevin Roberson, who died in a car accident, Kevin Lee, ‘Rabbit’ Jackson whose name I think was Anthony – I think he was the point guard. Those three, but I can’t think of who the other starters were.”

Jerrold ‘Pep’ Skillon, Player, Hutch-Tech High School, Class of 1991

“I knew I was going out for the team. Actually, I had a friend on the team, a guy I grew up with from my neighborhood. It’s not like I had an ‘in’ or anything like that. He just told me what to expect. It was Kevin Roberson. Me and Chuck grew up in the same neighborhood with ‘K-Robe’ and we used to go to the park together. K was a good dude. Yes, trust me. It was one of the hardest days of my life when he passed. That was tough for me. That was tough.”

Charles ‘Chuck’ Thompson, Player, Hutch-Tech High School, Class of 1991

“The only thing I did was play for Campus West and I played for them my sixth, seventh and eighth grade years. But really where I learned all my skills was in Central Park at the basketball court. I used to play ball with – you ever heard of Kevin Roberson? If you want to say he was my mentor, he was my mentor, because we were in Boy Scouts together. We grew up together and I played a lot with him. He and his sister passed away in a car accident right here on Kensington. You know what, we played a little bit as freshman, but it was mostly watching because we already had a good team with Kevin Roberson.”

Leaving His Mark at the University of Vermont

During his senior season at the University of Vermont in the 1991-92 season, the Buffalo News wrote a feature on him entitled, Roberson Matures from a Scrawny Kid into a Top Shot Blocker (see the image above). Robert J. Summers wrote it and discussed his senior season at the university and his potential NBA career. He averaged 17 points, 10 rebounds and five blocks per game that season. In 2020, the Burlington Free Press published an article on what would have been Roberson’s 50th birthday. The paper shared that he and his sister died in a head on car crash with a drunk driver on the east side of Buffalo on May 18, 1993. It was two weeks before he was going to receive his diploma from the University of Vermont. That coincided with the ending of my tumultuous junior year at Hutch-Tech High School.

Concluding Words

This will conclude my piece about Kevin Roberson. Just as I was surprised to win the award in 1994, I had no idea that this project would lead back to him. I want to thank the 40 players and coaches I interviewed. I especially want to thank the five gentleman who shared their stories about Kevin Roberson. No. 21, Ronald Jennings was my first ever point guard and our leader at the Campus West/College Learning Laboratory on the middle school team, the Bengals. He assisted my first ever basket in an organized game which I still remember to this day. He went on to play basketball and football at Turner/Carroll High School.

The other four gentleman were No. 13 Curtis Brooks, No. 11 Quincy Lee, No. 32 Pep Skillon and No. 55 Chuck Thompson. They were key cogs on the 1990-91 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. They won the Yale Cup Championship with a record of 13-0, and the Class B sectional title in my freshman year, also a major inspiration for my story. Again, the stage for all of this was set by the late Kevin Roberson. Salute to you sir and rest in power.

Learning Yet More About Kevin’s Life

I want to finally acknowledge Michael Rivera from the Tech Family Facebook group. I think Michael was from the Class of 1991. He sent me pictures of Kevin from his senior year after I initially shared the essay in the group. I further understood afterwards why Kevin was so beloved at our school. He participated in multiple activities besides basketball.

Kevin played the trombone in the band. He was a part of the Electrical Engineering Society, and he ran track and field. Michael also shared images of Kevin’s senior portrait and the 1987-88 Hutch-Tech Boys’ Basketball Team. He wore the No. 23 most likely in tribute to Michael Jordan. I heard stories about the 1987-88 team, but never saw pictures of it. Many say social media causes a lot of problems to which I agree. It also does some good as is in this case. Thank you again Michael.

Future And Related Works

I intend to create more promotional/teaser pieces for The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. These will be via print and video as I journey through the final steps of the book’s completion. I created a page here on Big Words Authors for the purpose of giving a background of the book. On my first blogging platform, the Big Words Blog Site, there are interviews of some the most accomplished Section VI players from my era. They include: Jason Rowe, Tim Winn, Carlos Bradberry and Damien Foster. I also interviewed legendary LaSalle Head Basketball Coach Pat Monti. Finally, there are several other basketball-related essays related to my book project. If you liked this piece, please share it on your social media and leave a comment beneath this piece.

The Big Words LLC Newsletter

For the next phase of my writing journey, I’m starting a monthly newsletter. It will be for my writing and video content creation company, the Big Words LLC. I plan to share inspirational words, pieces from this blog and my first blog, and select videos from my four YouTube channels. Finally, I will share updates for my book project The Engineers: A Western New York Basketball Story. I will protect your personal information and privacy. Click this link and register using the sign-up button at the bottom of the announcement. You can also email me at [email protected] if there is an issue with the sign up form. Regards.

I Don’t Hate You By Poetess Tamara Coleman

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“You can’t love someone else you love yourself first!”

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The second poem published on Big Words Authors once again comes from poet Tamara Coleman. It is one of her many creations and involves love and relationships. Tamara’s bio and contact information are immediately after her poem.

I don’t hate you, but I don’t love you anymore!

The things you do make me question if you love yourself!

You can’t love someone else you love yourself first!

I don’t hate you, but I don’t love you anymore!

It’s not my forgiveness that you should be seeking.

It’s our heavenly father who needs to forgive you!

I don’t hate you, but the love I had for you went out the door, when you showed me love didn’t exist anymore.

I will continue to pray for you. That’s all I have left to give.

Life goes on.

I don’t hate you, but I don’t love you anymore!

Author’s Post Poem Reflections/Thoughts

This poem was kind of personal. I was putting my feelings out there and I was expressing myself at that moment. I didn’t want to cuss, fuss or fight. I didn’t want to say anything that I would regret. And there was just something I was just doodling in my journal. I was just writing down my thoughts and how I was feeling instead of starting and argument and being disrespectful.

About the Author

The Last Time I Walked The Eastside Of Buffalo After Dark

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“It was my first time learning that trouble can come find you, even when you haven’t done anything to stir it.”

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This short story on Big Words Authors comes from my hometown of Buffalo, NY. It involves something that most everyone who has grown up in the inner city has experienced. Sometimes situations in life come find you, even when you are not looking for them.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley in the shadows of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” Psalms 23:4

The last time I walked on the eastside of Buffalo after dark was in the late 1990s. It was definitely after high school and it was before I started graduate school. I was an undergraduate in my late teens and early twenties. Like Detroit, my hometown of Buffalo, NY had started developing its own reputation for violence and deviant behavior, a hallmark of many of the deindustrialized cities in the United States. If you’re curious about such things, a good book to read would be “The Code of The Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City” by Dr. Elijah Anderson who describes this phenomenon in Philadelphia.

Hanging Out on Chuck’s Street

It was a summer night like so many I’d experienced growing up in my beloved hometown. I was on my friend Chuck’s street, Martha, which was near the Suffolk Street intersection and the 33 (Kensington) Expressway. It was the summertime, the sun had set and the streetlights came on after 8 pm. I was no longer a child so I could technically hang out as long as I wanted to with no recourse from my mother. We’d started doing that in high school anyway. I was home on summer break, and was living unsupervised most of the year now already because I was attending school down south.

Chuck was one of many ‘class clowns’ at Hutchinson Central Technical High School (Hutch-Tech) while I was there. He just happened to be one from my graduating class. We befriended one another in our freshman year and were tight ever since, along with another friend by the name of Hestin. Our friendships lasted long after we received our diplomas in the mid-1990s. Starting in high school, it was nothing for me to wander over to Chuck’s house from my own and come back after dark as it was only a 10–15-minute walk.

While at Chuck’s house we’d hang out on his porch, shooting the breeze with the other kids on his street. We would indulge in ‘ribbing’ on each other and talk about all kinds of things in the sports and hip-hop worlds, people we knew around town, girls we wanted to get with – everything. There were always lots and lots of laughs and jokes, some of which Chuck authored and some at his expense. It was always a good time.

A Buffalo Summer Night Unlike Any Other

One night after dark I left Chuck’s porch, I headed for home but this time with a different outcome than previous nights. It was a night I would never forget. That particular night I turned up Millicent Avenue and planned to walk down Orleans Street back to my mother’s street. As I strolled carefree up the street, not far from the corner a car pulled up alongside me, starting events that would forever change my life.

“WERE YOU TRYING TO BREAK INTO MY CAR, MAN?” The driver of the car was a menacing-looking black man who could have been in his twenties. If my memory serves me correctly, he wore a short afro and was brown skinned. He might have been wearing all black and maybe not. At nighttime, most dark colors look the same. It was one of those instances which triggers your “Fight or Flight Response” because you know there is imminent danger. It all happened so fast that I didn’t ponder trying to run. Had I tried, he had a clear advantage. By default, I chose trying to reason with him.

“WERE YOU TRYING TO BREAK INTO MY CAR MAN?” He stopped his car and got out, crossed the street, and approached me. I felt my chest pounding and my breath shortening in anticipation of whatever was going to happen next.

“NO, I WASN’T. IT WASN’T ME,” I said holding my hands up in surrender hoping that he would recognize that I was the last person who would try to do such a thing to his car.

“WERE YOU TRYING TO BREAK INTO MY CAR MAN?” I felt something hard collide with the side of my head, knocking me back. Is this really happening to me? My mind raced is the situation continued unfolding.

“WERE YOU TRYING TO BREAK INTO MY CAR MAN?” Something else collided with the side of my head further disorienting me. I looked around for help on the street, but this was the one night no one seemed to be out on their porches. Even if they were out, would someone have helped? To the casual onlooker, me and my assailant could have been a drug dealer and junkie, a bookie and someone who owed him money, or a man seeking revenge on someone who sought to break into his car. We could have been any one of the now ubiquitous statistics involving violence and young black men in the United States’ inner cities.

I turned and ran at first out into the street hoping that someone would see us. A car speeding down the street slammed on its breaks and honked, and then kept going. Again, this could have been an altercation taking place for any number of reasons and why would someone else look to get involved?

My assailant caught me, and I waited for him to present a weapon in that early Buffalo twilight. Something else slammed into the side of my head, this time dropping me to the ground. I waited for what I thought was certain death. I laid still on the ground as the world went silent, waiting for my fate which I just knew was going to involve a gun. After moments of silence, I looked up slowly, and my assailant was gone. I got myself together and then hurried back home.

As I scurried up Millicent to Orleans and then my mother’s street, I turned and looked around every corner. My hands burned slightly from some scrapes on my skin. I probably got them when I fell on the ground. My mind continued racing. Is he still out here? Is he going to come back for me? Why is this happening?

As I entered the house, Mom was in her bedroom praying, just getting up from her bedside if my memory is accurate. In those stages of our lives, she had progressed on her spiritual journey. She told me that she was praying around the time that I described my altercation. It was the second time, she experienced one of her sons coming home after a near life and death experience. The first was my brother’s second or third year of high school when he and some buddies went to a party on the westside of Buffalo where they didn’t know anyone. I remember that night vividly as well.

Getting Closure

In the aftermath of it all, I was a bit shaken up mentally. It was my first time learning that trouble can come find you, even when you haven’t done anything to stir it. All you have to do is look like someone else. This is what’s called a crime of mistaken identity, and I recall my Dad telling me a similar story from his youth in the New York City subway system. I suddenly didn’t feel safe in my neighborhood or my city. What if I ran into this guy again?

One of Mom’s approaches to help me get past the incident was to physically walk with me down Millicent Avenue so that I could mentally confront the incident and get closure on it. I recall feeling a sense of resentment and not wanting to go back there. She was right and it was for the best, to at least get past the fear that was dominating my soul.

“I’ve been walking these streets for years and nothing ever happened to me,” Chucky said afterwards when I told him what happened. I didn’t hear any compassion or sympathy in his voice. I didn’t know if he was just saying that to be a smartass or just making an observation. In hindsight it could have been either, but it sounded like because he’d never experienced it, what happened to me was somehow invalid.

“Well Bro, it’s no secret that some folks in the family question your toughness.” In what was one of many such declarations throughout our lives, my brother put his gift of delivery and counsel on display. It was my first ever visit to see him in “Sin City” (Las Vegas), a lively visit in which our best friend left within one night over some silly spat with my brother.

We ended up in a spat too, and in my case, I resented my brother for a while after he made his judgement on me and the remainder of that trip was ruined. I remember getting on my flight and making eye contact with him as I walked into the jetway with everyone else. I felt bad about being angry with him. He looked back at me wondering what he’d said wrong. My visit to the desert shouldn’t have finished that way. We were brothers and we were all we had as Mom often said then and years later. Over time I got passed it.

Walking The Eastside of Buffalo After Dark

“I walk the streets of Buffalo at night and have been doing so for a while,” my then stepfather said. “I see some streets and when I look down them, they might look dangerous and I don’t go down them. If some trouble comes towards me, I feel confident that I can get out of it or handle it, but I’ve never been discouraged from walking the eastside at nighttime.” He was an older man and a Vietnam veteran, so I imagine he’d seen much worse than the eastside of Buffalo after dark.

In any case, that was the last time I walked the eastside of Buffalo after dark. Would I do it if I absolutely had to today? Sure. But like so many inner cities described in the above-mentioned book by Dr. Elijah Anderson, I won’t do it if unnecessary. If I do, I’ll follow my father’s sage wisdom. A child of upper Manhattan, at some point he started telling us to, “Keep your eyes moving at all times!”

If I had to walk the eastside of Buffalo after dark today, I most certainly would. I’d walk it knowing that trouble may come to find me, even I’m not looking for it. I would know that there’s the threat of violence, and potentially death for me or someone else.

Post Story Reflections/Thoughts

Some experiences permanently become a part of us. This experience is one that I will never forget. We may gain closure and heal from the negative experiences in our lives, but some things you never forget. Furthermore, in the United States’ inner cities, for everyone there is the threat of violence. Dr. Elijah Anderson covered this in his book “Code of The Street”. Finally, to this day when I visit Buffalo, my mother reminds me every time I go out to, “Be careful out there!” I likewise try to get in and out of the city without anything bad happening whenever I visit.

Fearless By Poetess Tamara Coleman

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“I kept telling myself, ‘I am safe! I am in God’s hands! Just have faith, and you won’t have anything to fear.'”

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The first ever poem published on Big Words Authors comes from the very creative Tamara Coleman. It involves the importance of God and prayer. It is one of her many creations. Tamara’s bio and contact information are listed immediately after her poem.

As I was walking, I felt as though I was being followed, but every time I turned around to look behind me the man would turn his head so I could not see his face.

This happened several times, so at this point in time, all I could do is pray.

It was late and he was dressed in dark clothing not to mention my phone was completely dead.

The closer I got to my destination I kept telling myself, “I am safe! I am in God’s hands! Just have faith, and you won’t have anything to fear,” but I was really scared because he kept getting closer, and closer and I was walking faster than ever.

When I got to the corner it so happened the police was sitting at a red light.

I smiled and said to myself, “When do the police ever stop for a red light?” But when I turned around that time, the man was nowhere in sight.

It was like he vanished in thin air. I then heard GOD whisper in my ear, “You have nothing to fear! I am here!”

Author’s Post Poem Reflections/Thoughts

The meaning behind Fearless was me testing my level of faith. Knowing and trusting in God through a fearful moment/experience. I thought it was something someone could relate to. It was the scenario of someone being followed but you can use it in any situation. Just from knowing who God is, we know that he protects us at all times – just having that level of faith.

About the Author

I am CREATIVELY CREATING CREATIVE DESIGNS, and am POETICALLY thinking. I am POETICALLY speaking, and am a POETIC being. I don’t CREATE to impress, I CREATE to express! Tamara Coleman is a talented poet and graphics designer from Buffalo, NY. To see more of Tamara’s poetry, go to Poetess Tamara Coleman on Facebook. Tamara can be contacted at [email protected].

Destiny Love Jones Vol. 1- Book Excerpt

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“You would get the impression they were sisters by blood, but then the three would chuckle and tell you, no, they were closer—their souls were one.”

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The first ever book excerpt published on Big Words Authors comes from Canadian author Nicole White. It is from her new book entitled, “Destiny Love Jones Vol. 1”. Below the excerpt, there is also the press release for Nicole’s book (including the purchase information), and her bio.

Folks in the rustic, coastal town of Cliff Harbour would say Pearl, Augustine, and Holly were thick as thieves. You would get the impression they were sisters by blood, but then the three would chuckle and tell you, no, they were closer—their souls were one. Holly was the self-proclaimed sophisticated one, Pearl was the rowdy, spitfire one, and Augustine was dubbed the church girl. The three teenagers became fully acquainted back in the third grade. They bonded by their time and place in history and circumstances beyond what their young, carefree minds could fully comprehend. The three personalities just naturally aligned.

Times in the late ’40s and early ’50s in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada, had numerous challenges, as did the world. World War II had ended, the civil rights revolution was still being fought, and the local politics of race and class was an uphill fight for many black Nova Scotians. Nevertheless, through everything, the three girlfriends felt fortunate to have each other. Their friendship allowed them to escape the real world and form their own exclusive reality.

Holly was considered luckier than the other two because her family was wealthier than most in the mid-sized farming and fishing community. She was the daughter of the renowned Bradley Bennett of the Henry Bennett Tool Company. A descendant of escaped slaves and freed blacks from the United States, Mr. Bennett carried on his long-held family business of manufacturing metal tools for not only coal mining but also for farming and building construction. Life didn’t get considerably easier for his ancestors living in Canada, but his family fought, struggled, and was determined to live a quality life; now Mr. Bradley Bennett was one of the few successful black businessmen in the area. He made sure to teach his own family that business independence was the only way for blacks to be truly free. His lighter skin colour (given a combination of white and black running through his family’s bloodline) also gave him the advantage of doing business with some whites as well. But the Bennetts despised being labeled by their own people as “privileged” due to their outward appearance. They claimed to have fought and suffered like any other blacks during these times; however, they were able to persevere. Regardless of Mr. Bennett’s stance on their true success, he and his equally complexioned wife embraced both of their families’ mixed heritage and were determined to prosper and secure wealth for generations to come.

Pearl’s father, Walter Spencer, became a fond acquaintance of Mr. Bennett through their businesses. Mr. Spencer, a son from a line of proud farmers, was a local farmer who owned his own produce farm, and business was thriving. His ancestors dated even further back, as they were amongst the first slaves from Africa brought to the province via the West Indies. He purchased and leased his farming equipment from Mr. Bennett, thus maintaining a magnificent personal and professional relationship. For this reason, their families, especially their daughters Pearl and Holly, were close.

Augustine’s father, Brother Richard Bowes, was an elder at the local church. Years ago, he had served in the Canadian military until a landmine in Europe ended his battle career. Severely injured and having lost most of his hearing and his lower right leg, he was honourably discharged. But it wasn’t the physical injuries that truly impacted this former veteran—it was the emotional toils of war. It was the sight and smell of bloody, mangled, burnt bodies of deceased soldiers and civilians around him. It was witnessing comrades being obliterated before him. It was the ear-piercing blast of shells and the haunting screeches of fighter jets falling from the skies. It was the disheartening fact that he could no longer carry on the honour of serving in the military like his father.

Indeed, Brother Richard was no longer the man he used to be before the war. He became reclusive, overprotective, and resentful. His wife, Gloria, and four children were all he had left, and his mission was to safeguard them at any cost. To uplift his spirit, Gloria encouraged him to attend church with her and the children. That was when Brother Richard regained purpose—a life devoted to God, who spared his life from a war that ended countless of his comrades’ lives. North St. Church of Higher Praise became his life. He and his family never missed a service, and on days where there was no service, there was Brother Richard—devoting himself to a calling larger than himself and helping his elderly pastor bring souls to the Lord by being the pastor’s righthand man and assisting him in any way possible.

Augustine sang in the choir and was Brother Richard’s eldest daughter. She also aided in the church’s administrative office and dreamt of becoming a secretary one day. Brother Richard and Gloria wanted Augustine to be a role model for her younger siblings, Thomas, Andrew, and Eve, as well as all the young people in the community, by exemplifying what a sanctified Christian girl should be. They preferred that Augustine not have unsaved friends like Pearl and Holly; they would much rather she stay at home or only associate with other like-minded youths in the church. But not even her parents or their prayers could stop Augustine from being with her gal pals. Augustine was forced to hide who her true friends were to her parents, and sometimes she would sneak out of the house to be with them.

Regardless of being young, being told what to do, and being born into a time where peace, justice, and equality were still being fought for, like many others, the girls tried to make the best of life as they grew up in the bustling town. They had school and their studies, they had their families, and they had their families’ legacies and reputations to uphold. They also spent some days roller skating at the segregated rink, snacking on ice cream from the local ice cream parlor, and socialising with other peers. On picturesque summer days, the girls would ride their bicycles everywhere, go hiking in the countryside, explore the endless seashore, or go swimming in the lake. Sometimes the trio would merely spend time at Holly’s house, playing board games or dancing to the latest songs, like Amos Milburn’s “Chicken Shack Boogie”.

Certainly, the threesome were inseparable friends—more like sisters forged from gold, they would correct others—and it appeared that nothing would ever come between them: not family, not the times of war and racial division, and not even their diverse personalities, until the most inconspicuous entity happened—boys.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New Canadian Author, N. R. White, Brings You a Compelling, Coming-Of-Age Novel Focusing on the Issues of Race, Class, Gender, Love, Trauma, and Romance Through the Lens of Black Sisterhood

DESTINY LOVE JONES VOL. 1
“sisters and the plight with boys”

Three stories spanning three generations of women, the tale of Destiny Love Jones “sisters and the plight with boys” will take readers on an intricate journey where blissful fantasy collides with unfortunate reality. Uniquely Canadian, this profound coming-of-age narrative begins in the 1940s and ’50s in the rural, coastal town of Cliff Harbour, Nova Scotia. Pearl, Augustine, and Holly are black teens forced to live in the reality of war, segregation, classism, and patriarchy; however, their faith in sisterhood and bond of friendship strengthens and unites them. Subsequently, their friendship is tested to the cusp of utter devastation. With an impish twist of irony, forward forty years later in the late ’90s, and as fate had once aligned Pearl, Augustine, and Holly’s sisterly bond, so it does with Destiny and her friends Olivia and Tiffany. Although society has progressed since the ’50s, being a black teen girl in modern times continues to present its unique challenges. Will their sisterly bond be fortified among adversity, or will they be pulled apart like the women of two generations before them?

“This book is to entertain but to also shine some light on the intersectionality and unexplored lives of black women and girls, with hopes that every reader, from all walks of life, can understand, appreciate, empathize, and more so relate to the universal element that connects us all – being human.”

Destiny Love Jones VOL. 1 “sisters and the plight with boys” is now available to purchase in paperback and eBook versions on Amazon. Visit www.nrwhitebooks.com or email [email protected] for more information.

~ N. R. White

About the Author:

Nicole R. White is a Canadian author who expresses her passion for writing in various forms. Her zeal for books and the art of storytelling emerged at an early age, and she was swept away in the infinite world of imagination and creativity in storybooks. In her adult life, she has written various plays and directed and produced several theatrical productions. Destiny Love Jones: Vol 1. “sisters and the plight with boys” is part one of a seven volume series of novels.

The Happy Couple Who Commuted On The Metro

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“Once they made eye contact, he jumped on the metro car and they happily sat next to one another for the ride back to Huntington.”

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My first short story on Big Words Authors reflects on the pre-Covid-19 world. It involves the importance of human-to-human interaction. It focuses on people and a specific couple I used to see on the metro, among others.

In the Washington, DC metropolitan region, thousands of federal employees, military service people, contractors and other workers commute daily. They use the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA) trains and buses to travel to their places of business. Likewise the metro system is arguably the lifeblood of the region upon which everything runs. Depending on what time you start your commute, you can see familiar faces. Adjust your time just a little bit, and you’ll see a whole new set of faces. You’ll in fact see the same commuters at the same time daily unless there’s a change of some kind. It could be a doctor’s appointment, a meeting, an emergency – anything in that person’s life that day.

The Twice A Day Eight Car Mixing Bowl

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a couple I saw regularly on the Yellow Line train. I normally commuted to and from Crystal City, VA when I saw them. I actually saw a lot of people on the trains in the mornings and evenings. Many got on the train at specific hours. Whenever I went into the office earlier or later than my usual time, I saw different commuters on my route.

As a single man, obviously the women stood out to me the most. I saw many that I wanted to talk to of varying races and ethnicities. The metro however wasn’t always the optimal place to ‘cold approach’ them. In terms of learning ‘game’ for which there are courses now, cold approaching is simply striking up a conversation with a woman you don’t know who has sparked your interest.

Sometimes, you can wait because you’ll probably see the woman again, but in a city like Washington, DC where people are constantly coming and going, you might have to make your move when the opportunity is there because the woman may be visiting from out of town, or she may only be on your side of town for a meeting that particular day. In short, you may never see her again if you don’t make a move. Whatever move you make, you must be confident and classy to get the best results, especially with other commuters around, sometimes in earshot of your conversation.

Many people are into their morning rituals, getting ready for the daily battle ahead at their respective government agencies. In the evening people are looking to just go home and relax after a day of battle. Like at the gym, seeing a woman with earbuds on is a bit of a deterrent from going over and saying hello. Some openly converse on their phones and disturbing them would be awkward or rude. The fear of looking foolish in those moving enclosed spaces was also a bit of a deterrent. As a single man this is the reality and you have to decide as the clock ticks, like a quarterback looking for his target as the pass rush closes in.

The Happy Couple on the Metro

In any case, there was one couple I randomly thought about late one Pandemic night when driving to Herndon, VA to watch a Buffalo Bills game. On the 37-minute drive, I decided to not listen to any YouTube podcasts, livestreams, or playbacks, but instead to the rainy-day piano jazz station. As my phone’s GPS guided me to my destination, I listened to the music and my mind drifted off into my creative space and the couple popped into my mind. They were two of hundreds and maybe thousands of people I hadn’t seen since COVID-19 swept around the globe and inflicted lockdowns on our country. It made those of us who were fortunate to do so, work remotely from home 100% of the time.

Some mornings, or evenings, or both, I would see the couple. I lived near the Huntington Metro stop, the southern terminal of the Yellow Line. The couple would arrive at the station together in the morning, sit next to one another and make their morning commute. They were a middle-aged black couple. I can tell you that he wore glasses and I think she did too. Both were always dressed professionally. He might have worn a mustache and he had a studious look about him. She was an attractive woman.

As I waited for the train to take me home one evening at Crystal City, I saw her seated on the Yellow line as it pulled into the station. She caught my observant single man’s eye. I noticed she was looking for someone on the platform. It was him. He too was looking for her from the platform.

Once they made eye contact, he jumped on the metro car and they happily sat next to one another for the ride back to Huntington. They coordinated their evening commutes so that they could ride home together, a sign that these two people were genuinely in love with one another. One of my ex-girlfriends and I had something similar before our relationship turned for the worse, but that’s a story for a different day.

Appearance vs. Reality

This is what made me think about this couple. They looked so happy as they made those commutes together. I don’t know if they had children. I don’t know if this was their first, second or third marriage. Perhaps they figured it out on the first try, unlike so many other people in these modern technological times where families are different, both genders are educated and the gender roles have been blurred. I don’t know. What I can tell you is that they genuinely looked both happy and peaceful as they rode from stop to stop.

They could have gone home and fought like cats and dogs. When they got into their car, she might have started giving him the business and talking his ear off about her day. They may have gone home and partitioned themselves into different rooms for the remainder of the night. They may not have been the couple portrayed as dutifully riding together in the morning and the evening. After all, from experience, I’ve learned that you never know what’s happening with a couple behind closed doors, no matter the outward appearance.

I did sense, however, that they were genuinely happy based upon the energy they gave off and what my spirit discerned. They had figured out something that had been forgotten for a significant number of the rest of the population in the generation before and after mine. They were happy, or at least looked so on the outside for all of us to see.

The Author’s Post Story Reflections/Thoughts

There are several significances to this story. First. While our morning and evening commutes were burdensome and tiring on some days, they were a way of life. Furthermore there was value to seeing faces you both did and did not recognize. In the Washington, DC area, I especially disliked the commutes in the mid-summer humidity which lurked even at nighttime. Again though, there was value to those commutes.

Second. During our work days, there’s a lot going on. Whether its commuting, going to lunch or going for coffee at Starbucks, you never know who is watching you. I’m certain the couple in this story on the metro, had no idea I noticed them. I did however notice the harmony and love for each other they displayed outwardly. They were rare in today’s world. They probably never would have thought that I would remember them on that random Saturday night. If I see them again, perhaps I will share this with them.