The Better Wire Building - 40 Years Later

Last night Becky and I went out to an art opening at a new gallery located on Niagara Street. We had been wary about going to art openings after the one at Betty's where no one was masked, it was crowded and we felt uncomfortable. This was very different. Proof of vaccination was required to enter the building and everyone was wearing a mask. We talked with many people throughout the night and felt strange to have so many personal interactions.

The interesting thing about going to this gallery was that it was located in the former Better Wire Products building where I worked from the summer of 1979 until the fall of 1981. I started out at Better Wire as the shipping and receiving clerk and worked in the real of the building where trucks delivered and picked up product. Later on I would be promoted to the Assistant Plant Manager where my main responsibilities were quality control although I was still also responsible for the shipping and receiving dock.

I had an office on the second floor in the office part of the building. This is the place were the new gallery is now located. It was weird to walk around that space where i spent so much time forty years ago. 

One of the things I remembered as I was standing there in the gallery gazing out the window looking on to the newly renovated and updated Niagara Street was sandflies. I was new to Buffalo then and had never seen the sandflies that were all over the place near the Niagara River back then. They were commonly called Canadian Sandflies by the people on the Buffalo West Side but if you went over the bridge to Fort Erie they called them American Sandflies. They covered the windows in my office back then and were everywhere around that building. They attracted spiders and there were webs everywhere too. This was all happening just within a couple of blocks of the river. Weird.