Too Close to the Falls (28 page)

Two weeks later we had a May Day procession for the blessed Virgin Mary since May, the month of renewal, was dedicated to
her. The winning essay was to be read aloud by Father Flanagan and offered up to the Blessed Mother. Each girl carried flowers for the Virgin Mother. I hauled all the peonies in the procession since my mother donated most of the flowers for the May Day altar. Peonies were my favourite flower. I loved to watch tradeoffs in nature and one of my favourite was how the plant was crawling with ants that chewed the wax off the buds in early May, allowing the flower to blossom each year exactly on time for the May Day festival. The procession commenced at dusk and we all carried lit candles as we proceeded from school to church singing “Ave Maria.”

I had insisted on a new outfit and straw hat (not yet ready for a hair shirt) so I could be ready for the presentation. Even though I didn't tell my mother, I was sure that I'd win the contest. Father Flanagan would call me up to the altar, and my essay would be read aloud. I wanted to wear something no one had ever seen before. As Roy said, women couldn't remember how to change a tire, but they never forgot one another's wardrobes. I bought a new yellow dress and wore satin yellow ribbons in my hair and white gloves with yellow trim. The dress had a beautiful pale green satin cummerbund with a yellow satin rose rakishly placed to the side. The rose was protected from being crushed in the shipping and on the rack in the store with cardboard edging. (Dolores actually believed the cardboard edging was part of the dress!) I tried the dress on for everyone at the drugstore for a dry run, and they all agreed it was spectacular. It must have been really frou-frou because even Irene liked it.

On the hot spring night in church with a standing-room-only crowd, the girls led the procession, shortest in front, tallest in
back. I was always the farthest back (we had learned in practice to silently count our steps with the word
steamboat
in the middle to slow us down). The boys shook the incense and rolled the statue of the Virgin Mother, resplendent in her white robes on her own little gurney. Hennepin Hall School filed in and sat in the reserved seats in the front of the church. During the rosary I glanced around and caught the eye of my father in his spring seersucker suit and my mother in her flowered shirt-waist and with her big-brimmed straw hat with the silk gardenia. I wanted to know where they were sitting so I could catch their eyes when I went up to get my prize.

After we had knelt for endless Hail Marys, we were finally allowed to sit in our pews for the presentation. You could feel the electricity in the air. I took off my gloves to receive my prize. When Father Flanagan began, I was sure he was looking at me so I smiled back. He began by saying that he had never realized that there were saints outside of Ireland. This got its requisite laugh and then he adopted his deep slow voice, the one he used when delivering the gospel. “These essays were the most profoundly moving documents I've read in years. When they say ‘innocence from the mouth of babes,' they know from whence they speak. It reminded me of why angels are portrayed as children. Someday when we are all in heaven — at least I hope that will be our vantage point — we'll look down on the goings-on in our own little Lewiston and realize how wonderful and holy it really has been in its blessed innocence. Everything that
seems
to be run-of-the-mill, even boring, in the present, will one day be sacred to us. The change of the season, the little kindnesses, the milkman who stops his cart to congratulate you on the prize lamb.”

There are no milk carts or lambs in Lewiston. He's waxing eloquent on County Cork in Ireland again. Wrong country, wrong county, wrong town, I thought. Sometimes his face was red, his voice was more booming than usual, and he didn't seem to know he was on this side of the Atlantic. I wondered if anyone else noticed it. I'd never mention it since I knew it was uncharitable to criticize another person, and a sin to criticize a
priest
since he brought us the word of our Lord. On that note I forced myself to tune back in.

“The small touches again and again are what make a life worth living. When Frank Beatello gives the extra penny candy, Jim McClure gives the pills for your pain and not your pocketbook, and Crazy Eddie delivers your parcel for once unopened! Mom's Hamburger Shoppe gives you the hamburger of your heart's desire and the Good Lord gives you the lilac air to breathe in the love shared throughout the town. I will never feel the same about any one person mentioned in these essays nor on the sanctity of Lewiston. I had a devil of a time choosing a winner, so in this trough of plenty I was forced to declare a tie. Would the two champions of canonizations please come forward and read their essays aloud: I welcome Patrick Hyla, our first-place winner who wishes to award Robert Moses, the engineer in charge of giving us power as the chief engineer of the Niagara Falls Power Project. As Patrick so beautifully pointed out, it was God who gave us the Falls but ‘the saint is the man who takes what God has given us and shapes it into progress for mankind.'”

The church oohed and aahed over Patrick's words.

Father Flanagan stepped back up to the pulpit and announced that “Edward Fitzpatrick should come forward and read his essay
on the saintly Nick Amigone. We knew the entire family of Amigones, who have been in the funeral business for three generations, had a calling when God named them ‘Am-I-Gone?' What other vocation could the Good Lord have had in mind with a name like that? As Edward has so eloquently stated it, Mr. Nicholas Amigone is the first man in this town to see when a man changes from man to angel. Not only does he
em
balm, but he bombs the ball as the little-league convenor. Never one to ignore the need for Christian charity, he donated the uniforms for the Cataract Midget Baseball League. The Amigone brothers, Nicholas being the eldest — a devoted Yankees fan, I might add — have buried our bodies and watched our souls rise; they have given of their time and opened their tills. So, my good parishioners, whether these men will be canonized or not is up to Rome and to the future, but it has made me see God's light shine upon them.”

My heart was pounding as I sank back into my pew. I felt my face suddenly heat up and blush as only a fair freckled complexion can do and I developed raspberry-stain blotches up my neck. I was fighting off tears that threatened to make my internal humiliation public, terrified that they would spill over and I would bring shame upon my whole family. I had no Kleenex, so I dabbed my eyes with my gloves and then focused on putting them back on, covering each finger with care while the boys read their saintly essays.

In 1957 I was nine years old and the editor of my school's newspaper,
The Franciscan
. I had no idea what Saint Francis had to do with the news, but there he was prominently displayed on the upper-right-hand corner of the masthead, wearing his brown-hooded dress, talking to a bird as it perched on his wrist. I finally
figured out that since he could talk to the animals and they understood him, maybe he was the patron saint of interspecies communication.

My mother, who rarely took an interest in things that other mothers seemed concerned about, such as food, my exact whereabouts, and bedtimes, was passionately interested in my newspaper and my editorship. Since the nuns were too busy offering up novenas to relocate souls who had been marooned in purgatory, my mother volunteered to be the adviser on the paper. We had only two staff members, three if you include Saint Francis: Gordon Deede was the sportswriter who always rooted for his team and covered the World Series with breathless anticipation two weeks after it was over; the other was me, the editor-in-chief in charge of international and local news, businesses, the women's section, as well as all editorials. I had no idea I was supposed to assign editorials to anyone but myself so I cranked up the mimeograph with my purple prose each Monday covering “My Week in Review.” My editorials ranged from “Why girls should be allowed to be altar boys” to one of my mother's favourite topics, “What
really
happens in the African missions.” Fortunately I was not hindered by having on-site interviews such as actually going to Africa, but instead completed all my investigative journalism by relying upon my previous nine years of having lived in Lewiston.

Once, in 1956–57, the sleepy town of Lewiston was actually shaken by an issue of national importance and we hit the big map. We were all mesmerized to see ourselves and our little town spoken about in curt dramatic sentences by Huntley and Brinkley on the national news. Edward R. Murrow sat in his chair, smoked a cigarette, and talked to us, the town of Lewiston. Finally the
Supreme Court became involved and the greatest minds in the land debated about us, wrote opinions about
us
!

The participants were Lewiston and the Tuscarora Indians, and the issue was the same as it was when America was settled — land rights. It was the first land battle with the Indians to come to light since Wounded Knee.

In the 1950s, Lewiston Heights was the chosen site for construction of the largest water-driven power plant in the world. Its location just north of Niagara Falls made it an ideal spot for a hydroelectric power plant. The project required thousands of workers, effectively doubling the population of Lewiston, to chop away the rocks of the escarpment and eventually rein in the power of Niagara Falls and build the largest turbines to date, which would disseminate hydroelectric power for hundreds of miles in all directions.

The man in charge of this massive undertaking was Robert Moses. Naturally he was highly thought of by the town's Chamber of Commerce since their coffers filled as Lewiston filled with yellow hardhats which landed like canaries on every high wire. Moses was known for his efficiency; he actually completed the project within his budget and, to give you some idea of his time management, he was finished on the projected date of completion, which had been forecast seven years earlier. These traits of restraint and reliability were thought to be the paragon of American virtue. As my father said, “You have to hand it to the guy.” This sentiment was reflected by Nelson Rockefeller, who immortalized him by naming the power project and a highway after him.

Naturally, such a punctilious man would be upset when he ran
into a snag in his game plan midstream. He needed a great reservoir which would act as a gigantic storage tank for water that could be used in peak hours to supplement the flow from the conduit and drive the big turbines at the foot of the cliff. Moses wanted a good chunk of the Tuscarora Indians' land from their reservation because he did not want to disturb the white residents of Lewiston and take their land. The taxes that the whites paid would be lost if their land was expropriated. Moreover, it would be prohibitively expensive to purchase the homes and pay the owners for the move. Moses thought the best solution was to take the Tuscaroras' land, much of which was unused. The Indians paid no taxes and their homes were simple. Moses was certain their land would go cheaply. He estimated that the total costs of expropriation would be far less than moving the white residents of Lewiston and he would stay within his budget.

In 1957 the Tuscaroras mounted a campaign that Moses never anticipated. He expected the Indians, none of whom were well off, to jump at his financial offer. Instead, they unanimously voted to veto it, and as the negotiations dragged on, Moses doubled the sum, but the Indians refused to budge.

The Indians had a few supporters among the townspeople, most of whom were on the historical board, who said that Moses was bullying them. However, that trickle of support dried up when Moses pitted the townspeople against the Indians, saying one of them had to give up their land. No one wanted
their
house uprooted and moved on a flatbed trailer to the middle of nowhere, despite the offer of a paltry sum, a new basement, and a spindly sapling for their yard. Not only would people be uprooted, but the town would have a gigantic reservoir with dirt
sides obstructing the view of those who remained. The town, which had wavered only slightly anyway, was suddenly solidly behind Moses, their prophet of progress who could indeed part the waters.

The villagers of Lewiston believed they had a central core or “business district” surrounded by well-ordered streets replete with homes, while the reservation had no central core and only a few dilapidated houses placed randomly throughout what appeared to be largely unused land. In addition to doubling the price of the land, Moses offered to name a generator after the Tuscaroras (the Indians laughed at the idea of firing up the “Tuscarora”) and build a “recreational hall” for them, which left them bewildered. The settlers of Lewiston believed the Tuscaroras were “holding up the show” and Moses referred to the Tuscaroras' blockade as “the braves who are whooping it up.”

These words didn't seem strange to us as they were the same ones our heroes Cisco and Pancho used and we mimicked as we played cowboys and Indians. I loved being the Indian brave because I could be totally bad. I could go back on all of my promises and tie kids up in the fort and go away and forget about them for hours, or tie them to trees and go home for lunch. It gave me a break from the uphill battle of trying to be more civilized than I seemed capable of.