Niagara [Prat]Falls
By
John P Hewitt
©2025
From the crisp autumn of 1953 to the waning summer of 1963, the Niagara River was the western edge of my world. I ate, slept, and schooled within a half mile of its relentless current as it surged past Buffalo’s Riverside neighborhood—pouring out of Lake Erie, racing north over Niagara Falls, and pressing onward to Lake Ontario. It was more than scenery; it was a presence. The river framed my childhood streets and parks, offered adventure, and occasionally lured me into trouble. Some exploits were solitary, some involved my parents, some were fueled by friendship and illicit drinks, and others—once I had a driver’s license—were inspired by the legendary "submarine races" rumored to unfold where the lake flowed into the river near the foot of Porter Avenue.
My adventures with the Niagara began in the summer after my family moved to Buffalo, when I fell in with the Molnar brothers from down the street. In the early 1950s, reaching the riverbank was easy—too easy, really—since the state had yet to carve through the landscape with the New York Thruway extension, which would later devour the grassy slope that slanted down to the water. Riverside Park sprawled along Niagara Street, running a third of a mile from the city line at Vulcan Street to Crowley Avenue. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted—not that we had the slightest clue—it boasted a cavernous swimming pool, ideal for wasting away summer afternoons. But the river was always there, just across Niagara Street, murmuring its invitation, luring us to its banks. Out in the current sat Strawberry Island, little more than a sandbar crowned with a few scraggly trees. On modern satellite images, it has the look of a South Pacific atoll—minus the romance, minus the palms. Beyond it lay Canada, foreign and close enough to touch.
One day, the Molnar brothers and I abandoned the pool in favor of the real thing. They led me to a spot they swore was safe, a place where the river, for all its heft and history, supposedly softened its grip. It took seconds to realize they were wrong. The water hit like a blade—icy, quick, alive in a way I wasn’t ready for. I had swum in reservoirs, in abandoned strip mines turned still, narrow ponds, even in the Cold Stream Dam in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, where the water had a bite, but nothing prepared me for this. The river didn’t just sit there; it had intent. It knew where it wanted to go, and it was more than happy to take me with it. After a brief, shuddering immersion, I declared my retreat. I was heading back to the pool—the warmer, safer, tamer option. The Molnar brothers might have seen it as cowardice, but if my reputation took a hit, I barely felt it. Before long, my world would stretch beyond them anyway.
The swimming pool had another undeniable attraction: girls. By the time my family moved to Riverside in the fall of 1953, I was just shy of twelve, but I’d already begun—back in Morrisdale—to take note of the changes in their bodies. I was a keen observer of secondary sex characteristics, though not without some trepidation, especially when many of the girls had the audacity to shoot up taller than me. Still, the pool provided a prime vantage point for studying the mysteries of the (then very) opposite sex, their swimwear both concealing and emphasizing what I was only beginning to understand. It was worth enduring my own embarrassment—my gangly frame, my ill-fitting swimsuit—to bask in the water and the spectacle of summer afternoons.
On its journey from Lake Erie to Niagara Falls, Grand Island cleaves the Niagara River into two branches, east and west. Today, it’s a tangle of suburban developments and open land, but back in the 1950s, it was mostly farmland and scrub, cut through by a pair of bridges linking Buffalo to Niagara Falls. Grand Island has had its share of grandiose ambitions. In 1825, Mordecai Noah—a New York politician, playwright, and Jewish leader—purchased the island and declared it Ararat, envisioning it as a sanctuary for Jews. But the dream fell flat. Jews had another place in mind. Next year in Jerusalem, not Grand Island. After World War II, another bold idea surfaced: turning Grand Island into a World Peace Park, with the United Nations headquarters on nearby Navy Island in Ontario. That didn’t happen either. Instead, the mid-1950s brought a Nike missile base—less utopian, more Cold War. But even that, like most of Grand Island’s big ideas, eventually disappeared.
Along the west branch of the Niagara, much of the land belongs to New York State, including Beaver Island State Park at the southern tip. This was the site of another small adventure. In our early Buffalo years, my parents would occasionally load up the car with a charcoal grill, a picnic spread, and me, and we’d head to Beaver Island for the day. Sometimes we ate at a table, sometimes on a blanket in the grass, grilling hot dogs, enjoying the river air. I’d wear my swimsuit, eventually drifting toward the water—warmer, gentler here, its edges neatly contained by ropes and buoys. I’d take a dip, paddle out a bit, then return to bake dry in the sun. But on one visit, boredom—or maybe the quiet humiliation of spending the day with only my parents for company—got the better of me, and I went off in search of something more interesting.
At the far edge of the swimming area, the sandy beach gave way to tall grasses and thick reeds. I pushed in, following the damp, squishy ground toward the river. I was about to turn back when something caught my eye. A rat. A dead rat. No—worse. A dead rat with its head jammed inside a discarded can. Maybe it had been lured by the scent of old dog food or corn or whatever had been left inside. Maybe it had panicked, thrashed, suffocated. Either way, it was a grotesque sight. I retreated quickly from the muck and the reeds, back to the reassuring normalcy of sand and sunlight. I had braved caves where we kids imagined criminals lurked, crept through dark woods on imagined missions—but always in the company of other kids, shielded by our collective bravado. This was different. This was just me, alone with the smell of rot and river mud, with death slumped at my feet.
I’m not a particularly squeamish person. Roadkill doesn’t bother me. A decomposing deer on the roadside is sad, but not stomach-turning. If given the chance, I’d gladly observe open-heart surgery, lean in for a knee replacement, watch the body laid bare and its inner workings revealed. I am more curious than repulsed by most things. But even now, seventy years later, I can still summon the image of that rat, its head locked in rusted metal, the uneasy shiver that ran through me then—and, if I let myself dwell on it, still does.
Adolescence brought new friends, a driver’s license, and perhaps less wisdom than would have been ideal. And so, two tales—both featuring cars, friends, and ill-advised drinking.
The first unfolded on Grand Island’s West Parkway, behind the wheel of my father’s 1955 Chevrolet, Model 210—not as flashy as a Bel Air but a step up from the lowly 150. A few friends and I decided to take a drive, the Parkway offering turnouts along the river where we could park, talk, and—let’s be honest—drink beer. We considered ourselves an intellectual bunch, so our conversations likely leaned toward politics (the 1960 election loomed) or world affairs rather than cars and sports. But yes, there was beer.
I had been drinking beer for a year or two before I was legally allowed—always under parental supervision, in front of the TV, where my father maintained an unspoken rule of moderation. The drinking age in New York was 18, and when I finally hit that milestone, he took me out for my first legal drink. At the time, I found it charming. Later, it occurred to me that he may have simply wanted a beer and was now free of the inconvenience of an underage son. In any case, I had experience with beer. Usually, I drank responsibly. Sometimes, I didn’t.
That night, we sat in my father’s Chevy, discussing the world, our futures, and enjoying our drinks—until red and blue lights flared in the rearview mirror. There was no time to panic. Maybe I discreetly lowered my bottle out of sight, but the officer had already seen enough. He walked up to my side, peered through the window, then circled around to the passenger side.
“What’s that you’ve got there, son?”
“Beer, sir.”
My friend in the backseat was nothing if not polite. We all were—clean-cut, well-mannered, not delinquents. We must have looked appropriately chastened because, after a moment’s consideration, the officer leaned into my window and laid down the law.
“Listen carefully,” he said. “I’m going to follow you down the highway to make sure you’re sober enough to drive. But if I see you sucking on a can, I will nail your ass to a cross, and you’ll never drive again.”
Point made. He stepped back, I pulled onto the road with the precision of a stunt driver, and for the next mile or two, I drove with an awesome level of focus. When the officer finally overtook us and disappeared down the highway, we let out a collective breath. Not one of us so much as glanced at a beer until we were safely home. That’s not to say we never again mixed beer and my father’s car—only that we were more careful. Or so we thought.
Later that summer, or maybe the next, we swapped beer for something stronger—poor boy ruby port, a taste for which one of my friends brought home from college and thoughtfully shared. This time, we needed more cover, so I steered my father’s Chevy down a nearly invisible dirt road along the Niagara River, north of Riverside. It was rough going, the kind of road only teenagers with bad ideas and no money would consider. At one point, we hit something hard—a sharp jolt, the car rattling in protest. I stopped, got out, and found the culprit: a manhole cover, jutting several inches above the dirt. But the car seemed fine, and the night was young.
So, we drank. And we talked. And we drank some more. By the time I started the car to head home, we were well past the stage of philosophical discourse, not to mention the stage of poor decisions. I dropped off my friends at a parking lot on the southern edge of Riverside Park. We lingered for a few more minutes, then I turned the key, expecting the familiar purr of the Chevy’s straight-six engine.
Instead, I unleashed a mechanical apocalypse.
The noise was an unholy blend of clanking, thrashing, and ominous clicking—the death rattle of a farm machine that had seen far better days. I shut the engine off immediately. There was no question: the car wasn’t making it home.
I locked the doors, walked the mile back to my house, and braced for my father’s reaction. Whether the reckoning came that night or the next morning, I don’t recall. What I do remember is that my explanation was… selective. I admitted to the rough road, the manhole cover, the alarming noise. The ruby port? That detail didn’t make the cut. Given how long the smell of that wretched stuff lingered on one, my parents must have had their suspicions.
But there was no explosion. My father listened, nodded, then walked to the car, assessed the damage, and arranged for a tow. The verdict: I had dislodged the oil pan, drained the last drop of oil, and could easily have destroyed the engine. Miraculously, there was no real damage. The only lasting consequence was the discovery that my father’s Chevrolet, like many of its era, had been built without an oil filter. He had one installed, along with a new oil pan, and that was that.
My father could be stern, when necessary, but on this occasion—and others—he surprised me. He didn’t rage, didn’t lecture. Just handled the problem and moved on. Even when, in another incident, a cigarette I flicked out the driver’s side window somehow boomeranged back in, igniting the back seat, he remained calm. I had to replace the seat (after extinguishing the fire in the only way possible, by peeing on it), but he took it in stride. Many times, he drove me up the wall with opinions I found maddening. And somehow, a son who nearly destroyed his car—twice—earned not his fury, but his patience. He was a good father.
As for the “submarine races,” that’s another story for another time!
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