Seen Through Black Eyes

Hello everyone. This is Darwin at Seen Through Black Eyes.

In my first couple of episodes. I talked about trips that I had taken with the family. One was a trip to Miami with the family, and the other was a trip that we took up to a Bethel Sunshine Camp, up in the Catskills Mountains in New York.

Today, I’m going to talk about a trip that I had taken by myself. This was the first opportunity for me to travel by myself…and I must have been in my late teens, or early twenties. And this was a trip past the Catskills Mountains, up north in New York, up to Niagara Falls New York.

So this was the fall of 1983, and I had gotten up there via Amtrak. I remember it was about an eight and a half hour ride up there. And I went up there, because I was going to attend college.

Now, full disclosure… here in my youth and I don't think I've ever corrected anybody, I said that I went to Niagara University, but it was actually Niagara Community College. University sounded so much better. So why did I go up there? Well, it was after High School obviously, and to be quite honest with you, it was a very small way for me to satisfy my wanderlust. I wanted to get away…

And it’s interesting as I was thinking about this, it's interesting that it wasn't that I wanted to get away from anyone or anything. I just wanted to go somewhere that I have not been, and this was a good opportunity. So I went up there and enrolled in classes, and my first experience with I guess you would say, race and identity occurred there. Because I… let me take a step back.

Around the neighborhood, we were all athletes as we considered ourselves, played sports. I’m 6’3” but believe it or not, never really played basketball, didn't get into it. My game was baseball and football…American football. So I considered myself to be a pretty good athlete, and a pretty good baseball player.

So I decided to go out for the baseball team, and it was interesting because when I walked into the meeting room, and people turned and looked and immediately I asked if I was looking for the basketball team. And I said, “no… I was looking for the baseball team.”

So that was really it, I could have been oblivious to anything else that is definitely possible. I did not feel any tension or anything like that, but I was known to be oblivious to those kinds of things… especially back then. So I just told you that story just so you can understand the full breadth of my experience.

So I was up there in Niagara Falls and enrolled in classes and it was a different experience, especially in the ‘80s, when you had… it was more Laissez Faire type of experience between the professors and yourself. I do not recall there being attendance being taken… you showed up, you got your lesson…and if you didn't show up, you didn’t get your lesson, you didn’t pass the test, or…you did.

Looking back at it now, that was the experience that I had, and it was eye opening to be on my own. I actually rented a room in someone's home, so I was really on my own and I was surviving off of moneys that my mother was sending me, and the Pell grant. Which I don’t think came in for me until the middle of the semester, so I really learned how to stretch a dollar. So I became my mother. That was the experience that I had there.

I did not have a vehicle. And not having a vehicle in the small town of Niagara Falls, was not advantageous for most things. Most definitely not the social life. Spent a lot of time either on campus, or at home. Interestingly enough, I'm pretty sure I was on campus when Motown 25 came on, and for people that are not of my generation, which by the way, I’m at the very end of the baby boomer generation. That is where Michael Jackson performed, and that's when he did the Moonwalk, I believe it was the first time that it was shown on live television… or reported to be. I do remember that I was on-campus for that.

I also remember that I was there when Niagara Falls, the Buffalo area…

So, I am interrupting myself because something kind of… as far as this podcast is concerned, something tragic occurred…

I completed the entire episode, and I was in the process of adding a music file to it. For the individuals that are familiar with this whole process, you go through the whole on your file and edit it so it looks like a EKG, where is a central line and the needle oscillates above and below that center align…well that's what the wave look like for 8 or so minutes and then all of a sudden it flatlined…

It was completed, and I had listened to it. I obviously did something wrong, and that’s my mentality. While I am familiar with these “interwebs”, I’m not exactly an expert but…I know my way around it but, I’m pretty sure it’s pretty easy for me to do something without realizing I'm doing it and screw things up… so that is what occurred, so…

The first half that you listened to so far, was the original that I had recorded, and everything from my interruption of myself is the new recording, because I was unable to salvage what I had done.

I believe I was at the part when I was talking about being in Niagara Falls during the winter and spring of 1983, when a massive snowstorm hit the area. My understanding before resuming this recording, I did a little bit of research, which I should do a lot more of…

I saw that the snowstorm occurred in May of 1983, and it also affected…if it was the same one… Actually, I did not check to see if it was the same one, because I did not check the specific date of the snowstorm in Buffalo.

But I saw a video clip of 1983.. I think it was April 16 when there was a massive storm that affected New York City, and I was just wondering if it was the same storm that just traversed the state of New York. Anyway, so I do remember that… this actually gives me the opportunity to add a story I thought about after I finished recording, and I was trying to figure out a place that I could splice it and put it in. Well, this gives me that opportunity.

I mentioned how that there wasn’t many fun activities to take place. Life was pretty tough, don’t get me wrong, I still relished the experience, but things were pretty tight, so there wasn’t a lot of money for socializing.

So, as I said, I rented a room in the home of a woman that I did not know. No one I knew knew her, but she had put her name in with the School. Anybody that was looking for board, she would rent out a room, so that’s what I did. And I had mentioned that she had a son. It may be a moot point, because that part of the recording was destroyed… I did not mention that she had a daughter but she did have a daughter… Anyway, he would come by once a week or because

Anyway he would come by once a week or so, something like that, and it was probably once a week, a Friday and or Saturday or something like that.. Because…he would come by and get some cheap alcohol, and come by and just bring a friend so, and we would hang out, and just talk and stuff.

And anyway one time, he had asked me if I wanted to get some buffalo wings. I've never heard of… remember this is 1983…I had never heard of Buffalo wings and my first thought was, and I fortunately kept it to myself, “I didn’t think Buffalos had wings?”

Not even thinking that the name derives from the city, and not from the animal. So once I said I had never heard of Buffalo wings… And I’m going to imitate him,

“What? You’ve never had no Buffalo Wings? I can’t believe this! You're from New York City and you’ve never had no Buffalo Wings?”

And I just said, “No, I hadn't had any Buffalo wings”

“C’mon, we’re going to get some Buffalo wings!”

And that man gave me some alcohol, and quite possibly seeing if he can find some of the ladies that he said that he had at his disposal…

So… we did go out and get the Buffalo wings, came back, as I said we chipped in money and that was the night. That was a good weekend for me. So while what I just described doesn't sound terribly exciting… it does not seem as if it would lead to anything good, or great, it was the foundation. So while not much really happened there in the outside world that I interacted with, but internally it did.

In the next episode, I'm going to talk about my first International trip, on Air Afrique to Dakar Senegal.

END.