The Statler and me

I feel bad for those folks at the Statler because that cornice fell off and smashed and now the street is closed off and everyone is blaming everyone, Buffalo style.



Above are pictures Howard took on the scene of the disaster. He is always on the scene of a disaster which is why he was attracted to me and my life! So he took that picture above with that fantastic sky. When Howard came home lastnight there was a car wreck in front of our house and he took a picture of it too.


Back to the Statler. Now the owners will have to replace that cornice. And they have just bought the building. They can still back out. Although they would lose their deposit, which in Buffalo is a real no-no.

I sympathize with them.

It reminds me of when I bought my house!

When I bought my house I was single so I was in it by myself. And maybe the third night I was in it there was this gigantic BANG in the middle of the night. And this huge fireball, right before my eyes.

I sat up in bed terrified!

What had happened was, lightning had struck this tree next door. There was tremendous drama. Fire trucks came whipping around the corner and were sitting in front of the house, which was more or less unoccupied at the time. I remember running downstairs in my pajamas in case the firemen needed to ask me anything. But they did not. Nobody asked me anything and eventually I went back to bed.

But that was not the end of the story! A few days later I was sitting at work and my friend Mike called me.

"That's too bad about your house," he said.

"What?" I said. "What are you talking about?"

"Well, the roof of your sun room," he said.

My blood ran cold. "What about the roof of my sun room?"

And I learned that a corner of it had fallen off.

Just like the Statler!

Mike opined, and he was right, that what had happened was a branch from the tree that had been struck by lightning came down on the roof of my front sun room. Great!

Ten minutes after that my phone rang again and it was my friend Lizzie.

"I just drove past your house," she said. "I can see what you're so upset about!" I always remember that, because it meant my friends were talking about it. Somehow they had it that I was upset. Whereas I had only just heard about it.

That was when I started to cry. I was on the copy desk at the time and my boss kindly said that maybe I should go and see what had happened to my house. So I did. It was not pretty, I will tell you that. I know, things could be worse, I could live in California where they have earthquakes. Leonard Pennario used to tell me about this earthquake that broke a water main where he lived and destroyed a lot of his his stuff. In the grand scheme of things my situation was not that bad.

But it was not fun having to go through the Yellow Pages and find a roofer seeing that I knew nothing about that and I was single as the day was long.

Eventually I found this roofer named Waldemar Tiedemann. That is a wonderful name! It is like something out of "The Ring of the Nibelungs." Well, that is a whole other story.

My point today is, I have to say that after that ordeal, I felt strengthened. If I could deal with that, I could deal with anything!

I hope the new Statler owners come to feel the same way.