Shuffle Off to Buffalo
In 2000 I had a problem to solve. For four years I had owned a vacation home in Ithaca. I was coming up on my 25th Reunion and I wanted to use the house for exactly what I had bought it for. I wanted to use the house to gather all my friends and have a nice place to party and make the reunion special for everyone. The problem I had was that having a vacation house requires having a person you can rely on to manage the house for you. Home management and upkeep is no mean feat and it is fraught with lots of challenges. The most important ingredient is trust. I had been lucky in Utah in having a trusted person who had graduated from being my massage therapist to a wonderful house manager and even now a wonderful friend. I will not go into the good and bad managers I have had over the years, but suffice it to say that I have owned Ithaca for twenty-four years and for over twenty of those years I have been blessed by a great manager for that home.
I had met a woman at a University function who had told me that she was the wife of my cousin. Ithaca is my family home. Technically, it is my mother’s family home and it was a place our family went back to with regularity. My mother had five siblings, one of whom perished in a raging flood as a child. That left her two older brothers, one younger brother and an older sister. Two of her siblings went through life childlessly and the other two had five children among them. That means I grew up with five first cousins. One of those cousins, Patty, has spent her whole life in Ithaca. She married a local (Pete) and the two of them went into the saloon business, which was a family business started by my mother’s brother (Peter) and his wife (Louise). Patty and Pete had two sons and two daughters. The woman who had introduced herself to me at the University gathering was Nancy, and she was married to Patty’s oldest boy, Pete. Pete and Nancy have two sons, Pete and Anthony. If this sounds like My Big Fat Greek Wedding where you get introduced to Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick and Nicky, you can be excused for that.
That makes Pete (the Pete that is Nancy’s husband) my first cousin once-removed. His sons (Pete and Anthony) are my first cousin twice-removed. To my children, Pete Sr. (Actually Pete III, but he goes by Pete Sr.) is a second cousin and Pete (Actually Pete IV, but he goes by Pete Jr.) and Anthony are second cousins once-removed. My granddaughters are third cousins with Pete Jr. and Anthony. Phew, that cousin shit is complicated and hard to follow, but I can thank Nancy for introducing me to Pete Sr. and thereby obligating me to learn about proper cousin protocol. Nevertheless, we just call ourselves cousins so as not to invoke a whole genealogical argument with whomever we bring from the outside into the conversation. This cousin thing happens to be very controversial for some reason.
But more than that, I owe Nancy a real debt of gratitude for bringing Pete Sr. and me together. It has been good for me to have had a trusted house manager for a house lived in at various time by all three of my children. I think Pete Sr. Has enjoyed having the added income from the work (he is one of those guys who is always working five jobs, businesses or angles at all times). Mostly, I am happy that Nancy brought this relationship into focus because we have all become great friends. We have traveled all over the U.S. with Pete & Nancy and their brood, and have been to Morocco, Italy, France and Ireland with each other. Pete Sr,, Nancy, Pete Jr. and Anthony have become inner circle family to us and are favorites of all of both my family and Kim’s family. They are also now close with all of our close friends. Every time we are taking a group trip, everyone argues about who gets to be with Pate and Nancy, who gets to be in the car with Pete & Nancy and who gets to sit next to Pete & Nancy at dinner. I have literally never seen Pete and Nancy not smiling and being pleasant with some pretty whacky family members and friends that both Kim and I bring to this table. It is quite amazing and a testament to their character.
My youngest son is about the same age as Anthony. Nancy & Pete acted as in loco parentis for my son during his college years in Ithaca. Anthony came to New York City for a few months to live with Kim and me as he went about launching his career, executing a triple gainer dismount from a life as a full-time baseball player of considerable accomplishment. This is all to say that we are all very close to one another and would likely do anything for one another as close family tend to do. It’s only a bit funny because I am nowhere near as close to Pete Sr.’s siblings, who, of course, are also my first cousins once-removed. We may even be closer to several of Nancy’s sisters (Nancy is one of eleven kids) and it is as though our cousin relations are very focused on Pete & Nancy for some reason. Modern families are all different and are equally hard to explain.
All three of my kids went up to Ithaca to go to college. Interestingly, in a seemingly purposeful move to continue to be MORE upstate than my kids, both Pete Jr. and Anthony went to college in Buffalo, New York. It don’t get more upstate than Buffalo.
Both Pete Jr. and Anthony have followed their college careers with work careers also in Buffalo. Pete Sr. & Nancy are regularly going to Buffalo to visit their boys, to help them move into their new homes, to stay close to them in all the ways good parents do.
Anthony got a job with a money center bank that had moved a lot of its middle and back office activities to the Buffalo area. This was outsourcing to a kinder and gentler community where the education levels and the availability of talented young people was strong. He started in the Derivatives middle office and since I was one of the first generation of derivatives geeks (writing my first Black-Scholes models in 1983), I jokingly gave him my condolences. He survived that over a few years and has been promoted to the Municipal Bond area, which I have told him will get dicier than derivatives in the wake of the current financial difficulties. But Buffalo seems to be treating Anthony well.
Pete Jr. has chosen to go into law enforcement. It was a calling for him from the middle of college onward. He served as an EMT until a spot opened up on the Buffalo PD and now he is a veteran police officer on the Buffalo PD. He comes to mind tonight as I watch the altercation that occurred with a protester on the streets of Buffalo. Two Buffalo PD officers are on international news pushing an elderly protester down (they might say he tripped, but there was a laying on of hands and batons that make that a hard case to make). I give our embattled law enforcement a large quotient of hope for two reasons. First of all, we need our police. And I know that if people like Pete Jr. join the forces of law enforcement, they stand a better chance of doing a better job of not abusing our trust and the power we entrust in them over us and not put their knees on anyone’s neck.