Elements of Stale, with Luke Mazur: The Mayor of Lovejoy

So last week I was wondering to what extent, geographically speaking, Beggars' Night was celebrated. Growing up in Buffalo, we always went trick-or-treating the night before Halloween, October 30th—Beggars' Night. And on Halloween…well I don't really remember what we did on Halloween. Watch Home Alone? Maybe we went trick-or-treating again? As a kid, I pretty much thought that the way we lived was the way everyone did. Our nasal, elongated vowels. Ordering chicken wings together with pizza. Living in the same place as basically all of your relatives. Six-years-old-me believed Beggar's Night was everywhere.

I finally realize now that we sound weird, that lots of people only order wings at sports bars and pretty much nowhere else, and that moving to where jobs are—even if family isn't there—is fairly common. When I checked Wikipedia, I wasn't too surprised, then, to learn that Beggars' Night is a term "broadly but not exclusively used in Ohio, in many parts of Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and in Western New York (specifically East Lovejoy and Kaisertown)." What did surprise me, however, was that East Lovejoy was linked to its own entry. Lovejoy, you should know, is a small neighborhood named for a street not far from my, and then my parents', and now my (again) house. East Lovejoy is, I guess, begins on the east side of that street.

Maybe I'm so starved for any recognition of my city—whatsoever—that stumbling upon a Wiki entry of one its neighborhoods will excite me, and get me to email my friends about it. I can only assume that with the snow, and the Tim Russert and the four consecutive Superbowl losses, whatever you think about Buffalo is somewhere between "The Bills still play in there?" and "Shut the fuck up, already." But we as a city sort of collectively freak out whenever we're mentioned by the national media, which most certainly includes the Wiki. The rest of you don't notice the mention, or maybe, when you hear/read it just remember that too drunk friend/that guy from college who chanted "Let's go Sabres" off-handedly, and obnoxiously, at dorm parties.

That said, even most of my own friends from Buffalo didn't care that East Lovejoy had an entry. When I emailed a bunch of them with the discovery, most ignored me. One friend replied "Did you go in and write East Lovejoy and Kaisertown yourself?" Ha. (Please know that I did not.)

But whoever did write the entry has an intimate knowledge of those couple of blocks. S/he included that the neighborhood was originally home to Italian-Americans, and that its nickname is "The Iron Island" because it is surrounded by train tracks. Like any good Buffalonian, the author also left out the parts about the racial tensions prevalent there, or how Lovejoy is where many Buffalo teenagers and twentysomethings (yes, but not me, I swear) take their driving tests. Why make the Island look anything other than an oasis of two-family houses/bars open until 4 a.m. full of good drivers? Spike Lee joints and DMVs are for other places. This is Lovejoy. As in, love and joy.

The author even noted that the street is home to "three pizza parlors, numerous bars, Petrucci's, Wilson Farms, Rite Aid, HSBC Bank, and other personal businesses." I am pretty sure one/all of the pizzerias might be closed, but Petrucci's is a dry cleaner my family's been going to for years, and it's still chugging.

The proprietor Don Petrucci is, at least in my family's characterization of him, an institution. An institution the way "The Price is Right" is one: both have evolved but both have basically stayed the same. In his younger, more lucid days, Don was like Bob Barker. He'd run his shop in that earnest, grabbing-ass way that Bob would bring contestants over to the Showcase Showdown. Part mayor of Lovejoy, part philandering salesman, Don was the type of person that you could one day imagine running the state of California.

Today when you'd pick up your shirts, they still smell chemical-y, like the inside of Your. Brand. New. Car. But Don, through the inevitable process of aging, has become more like host Drew Carey. He's phoning it in now. While he still asks us to make sure our pets our spayed and neutered, it's not with the same verve, or the same gusto. He's a slower, more lumbering version of his old self. He calls out the dick contestants who bid $1 more than the last contestant, for being the dicks that they are, when Bob used to just stand by and let the kids from UC-whatever have their fun. He's older now.

"Why do you still even go there?" my sister Malina asked last week, after Don had misplaced six of my shirts. And it's a good question. Why do I go there? Don loses my shirts, and fucks up the pleats on my other sister Julie's school uniform, and can only take my pants out less than inch when G-d knows I could use at least two. He makes up prices, and he always has food dribbled down his front side.

When you walk into Petrucci's, you might hear the same story you've heard three times before, but you might also hear how his heat has been turned off both here at the storefront and at his home. And that—how that came to be—has to be a fucking story and a half. Don is a character, yes. But, as an institution, he is also a metaphor: one person who could represent a whole block. A block someone thought significant enough to write a Wikipedia entry on. A block that could represent a whole city. And a city which could stand for a region which could stand for an economy which could stand for a recession which could stand for a people. Don is the type of person that Tim Russert would write a book about. Through him, you can understand so much. He's like Ragtime.

Eh. The only people Don could represent are the six old guys who sit in the back of his store and drink coffee and eat donuts and bitch about the neighborhood. They look like Drew Carey now, but even they don't know the price of one laundered shirt at Petrucci's. And love joy? They don't. Though that's probably overstated. Who doesn't love joy?

Previously: The Big Book of Friends

Luke Mazur is waiting this recession out at his parents' house in Buffalo.