WHAT THEY'RE SAYING: Native daughter lauds Lockport

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March 2, 2010

By Paul Lane The Lockport Union-Sun %26 Journal Tue Mar 02, 2010, 11:44 AM EST

One of Niagara County’s most famous natives took some time recently to write about her home region in Smithsonian.

Author Joyce Carol Oates, a Lockport native, penned a piece about her link to the Lock City in the magazine. In it, she noted that she, like most other prominent authors in history, draws a lot of inspiration from her roots. While she’s lived in many places, Oates said she considered Lockport to be, in at least one respect, her true home.

“What I most love about Lockport is its timelessness,” she wrote. “Beyond the newer facades of Main Street — just behind the block of buildings on the northern side — is the Erie Canal.

“For residents of the area who have gone to live elsewhere, it’s the canal — so deep-set in what appears to be solid rock (that) you can barely see it unless you come close, to lean over the railing of the wide bridge at the foot of Cottage Street — that resurfaces in dreams: the singular height of the falling water, the steep rock walls, the gritty, melancholy smell of stone, froth, agitated water; the spectacle of the locks opening, taking in water and closing; the ever-shifting water levels bearing boats that seem miniaturized in the slow, methodical ritual-like process.”

The bulk of her expansive piece was spent recalling her younger days in Lockport, including her experiences catching the bus, her fond recollections of the Palace Theatre and her love affair with the city library. She also took time to recall her October appearance at the Palace — to which she humorously noted the title “historic” has now been attached.

“Fifty years since I’ve left Lockport, more or less — and now for the first time I have been formally invited back to ‘speak’ — I can’t resist telling the audience that I hope this will become a custom, and that I will be invited back again in another 50 years,” she wrote.

•••

A recent USA Today story named Buffalo as a housing market on the rebound.

Citing numerous positive factors — including the overwhelming showing of community support during the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” that was filmed here — the paper said that the Buffalo area is primed to see a housing comeback. That rebound might be slow, though, since the volume of local home sales has dropped in the past year.

Even so, the fact that Buffalo never experienced the worst of the housing crash means that the region is poised to more quickly rebound. The paper cited Elmwood Village among the region’s hottest neighborhoods.

“The city is coming back,” Phil Aquila, president of the Western New York Multiple Listing Service, told the paper.

•••

A former Tonawanda town employee was interviewed for a Parade magazine feature on ice fishing in Wisconsin.

The piece, centered in the state capital of Madison, references Ken Linneborn, a 38-year town employee who just moved to Wisconsin to be closer to his grandchildren.

“It’s beautiful here,” he said of a lake in Madison, the iced-over surface of which he occupied. “There’s nothing like it.”

Contact Paul Laneat 693-1000, ext. 116.

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