jxmartin

THE BANK It is a single-story, solid little building that sits on the Northwest corner of Seneca Street and Seneca Parkside, on the South side of Buffalo, New York. In the early part of this century, it was occupied by the "German American Bank." The ensuing World Wars made the ethnicity of the name unpopular and it was changed, for business reasons, to the "Liberty National Bank." That is how I remember it through most of my childhood, growing up in South Buffalo. The Bank kept that name, until after several mergers and acquisitions in the 1980's, it became what it is today, part of the Fleet Banking system.

The Pheasant House In the late 1960's,while attending college at S.U.N.Y Geneseo, I worked a few summers as seasonal help in Erie County's Chestnut Ridge Park. It is a thousand acre sprawling expanse of park and woodland some 12 miles South of Buffalo,N.Y.. The most prominent feature of the park is a large hill, atop which sits an attractive stone-flagged casino that is a mirror image of a baronial manor in the Black Forest of Bavaria, in Germany. The enormous toboggan runs and sled hill here have been a source of Winter fun to hundreds of thousands of Western New Yorkers since the park's creation in the 1930's.