Home Town Visit

September 21, 2011

Tonawanda NY

            Rained all night with unbelievable thunderstorms and lightening.  Am glad I wasn’t riding out in that stuff !  Yesterday I broke the emergency parking brake in Sis’ car when I attempted to use it on Clifton Hill…seems parking brakes are not used here in NY.  So this morning we had the brake repaired.

            By midmorning the weather cleared and I saw that Dennis, the upstairs neighbor, was working on his 2011 black GMC Yukon.  He was adding chrome stripping to the door sides so Sis and I went out to join him.  And then Sis got lucky….Dennis used to ride and he still had his spare helmet and gloves!  So, I got out my toolkit and removed the rack that was bolted into the frame so she could sit on the backseat for a quick ride. 

            Off we went down

River Road

towards Tonawanda and what a surprise came before us!

The City of North Tonawanda has dedicated a park to the USMC.  It has a beautiful monument of the

            From there we continued our ride to Tonawanda, the town where I lived for almost 10 years and consider my hometown although I was born in Buffalo.  I drove up to the housing apartments where we lived for 1 year before dad bought the newly constructed house on

Colonial Drive

….saw that house also, it is still there after almost 60 years.  Then we headed down to St. Francis of Assisi where I attended 4^th thru 8^th grades, was an altar boy, and a sometime choir singer.  Mostly I remember the punishments administered to me by the holy sisters for some of my perhaps most blasphemous observations/commentsL.

            It was an early to bed night as we had to drive to downtown Buffalo for an important legal meeting my sis had to attend.

            I’ll have to contact the city parks department to find out how to support the USMC memorial at the park

C ya mañana,
Gonzo
twitter: @GonzoCrossUSA
email: GonzoCrossUSA@gmail.com
Globe and Anchor, reliefs of MOH awardees, and a semi-circular wall with placards of Marines’ names and years of service.  Above it all were the Starts&Stripes, USMC and MIA flags.  What a beautiful setting with the Niagara River flowing behind it.