Buffalo to Butler: Birthdays, Baseball, and Buggies

Published on Saturday, 20 August 2011 16:42

Written by by Doug & Polly Smith

Arcade Restaurant in Titusville, Pennsylvania — one of several stops on our road trip from Grand Island, New York to Butler, Pennsylvania. (All photos by Doug & Polly Smith) We once made a living on the road, originating the concept of the One-Tank Tour for Buffalo's Courier-Express in 1980. Destinations varied from junk shop to formal gardens, but the real fun was trolling the back roads. Mind you, this was 30 years ago. Mapquest? Get lost.

So on Aug. 5, our anniversary weekend (52 years, but who's counting?) we set out again, destination Butler, Pennsylvania, about 200 miles, to rendezvous with a grandson at a ballgame.

A tad time-constrained, we figured on a quick launch off via I-90, but an accident forced us off into a funnel of fumes at Dunkirk, along with four miles of other motorists. In line, Doug maintains a car-length buffer, and this caution blew the fuse of the pickup driver behind us, who honked and gestured for him to close the gap.

He finally veered into another lane. A minute later, so did we, five cars ahead of him. Gloating is good.

Cake and Confucius

With US 20 jammed westward, we diverted southward, tracing a lattice of blacktops across the Chautauqua County landscape, a delightful detour that would have given a Garmin a migraine.

Lunch came out of the blue on Pennsylvania Route 8, a snack stand bearing the word "Smith's" in a valley far from other habitation except for the porta-potty in the woods. The menu included a "sea dog," a frank-shaped fish filet served by a lass whose sweatshirt swore to a recent triumph in a math smackdown. She added up a bill of $8.

Young Doug celebrates his birthday at the China Palace in Butler with a cake the proprietor gladly stored in her cooler. We'd arranged to meet up with the grandson, an aspirant, road-wise traffic engineer once the younger half of the "Double Trouble Dougs," at Butler's China Palace, 140 West Jefferson. It had credible Internet recommendations but its exterior held little promise, a shabby cubbyhole in a neighborhood that probably had never seen better days.

"Never judge..." Did Confucius say that? It wasn't royalty but the China Palace was just fine. Tentatively, we carried in Young Doug's birthday cake. Not only did the proprietor welcome it, she volunteered to store it in the cooler while we consumed what we could of huge, succulent portions of lemon chicken, chop suey, mu shu chicken and, well, tofu, Doug's choice. He said it was fine. We believe him.

As we made our selections she had warned us, "You order too much," a caution without precedent in our lifetimes. Our leftovers fed us all another day and the whole bill didn't reach $30.

Game time

Of Butler's 15,000 citizens, 10 per cent packed Pullman Park, built in 1934 by a railroad-car company, in its time "The Berth of the Nation." (Sorry). The Blue Sox play in a summer collegiate leagues on the order of the Cape Cod. They lost, 10-3, every pitch studiously chalked onto a blackboard by a young man with some developmental disorder which in no way impaired his enthusiasm, love and knowledge of the game. Counting our Doug, this was our third math wizard of the day.

The main gate at Pullman Park in Bulter, Pennsylvania, home of the Blue Sox.

The Jeep was born in Butler. Most storefronts displayed replicas. At a Route 8 stoplight we pulled alongside a real one, bearing two attractive ladies, perhaps a mother and daughter. "If the man who invented the Jeep could see you two, what would he think?" Doug asked. "He'd be impressed," said the elder. Indeed.

Homeward bound were roads even less traveled, Pennsylvania 308 and 89. We bought doughnuts from the jolly baker at B's in West Sunbury (but "no B-s," she later told us by phone), rare Straub's from Butcherine's Beer in Boyers (Pennsylvania allows suds sales only by the case) and pickles and shoofly pie from an Amish lady who asked us to call her "Katie" as she bore our treasures across a stone driveway in her bare feet.

The Amish abound. We swear we saw a buggy at a car wash. Further on, at Buells Corners on Route 89, buggies of three different sizes were parked at a country store, one, kid-sized, hitched to a pony, whom the youngsters were diligently brushing. We could not resist photographing, from a distance.

We briefly rejoined Route 8, an admirable four-lane ("much too good for the territory, I wonder who got paid off?" our budding traffic engineer observed) into Franklin and Daffin's Candies, where two thoroughbred ladies of admirable vintage polished our collective sweet tooth.

Century of Service

They were of a different breed from our waitress at Missy's Arcade Restaurant in Titusville, a happy gal with more tattoos than Groucho Marx's "Lydia."

When Doug ordered the chicken-salad sandwich, we were reminded of the Jack Nicholson's diner scene in "Five Easy Pieces." Since our tattooed server had never heard of it, we recreated for her, right up to the punchline: "Yeah – hold that chicken between your knees!" She said she'd never serve chicken salad with a straight face again.

Inside Missy's Arcade Restaurant in Titusville, Pennsylvania. Ask for the chicken salad.

Incidentally, the chicken salad was wonderful, as was Polly's egg salad and a rich cauliflower soup, plus just-made raspberry pie and bottomless iced tea, all for about $14.

A definitive NADBOB (not a diner, but oughta' be), Missy's Arcade Restaurant boasts a century of service. Lucy, Elvis and vintage Coke ads line the walls, a surplus of kitsch, except that the its ancestry justifies the excess. A slightly barreled ceiling belies its status as a first-floor niche in a three-story building, largely unoccupied. On Diamond Street, a broad, empty thoroughfare bypassed by routes and time, the Arcade still gleams, though it's mainly open only in daylight, rendering its neon redundant.

The odyssey also included Doug's high school reunion, the 59th, in Jamestown, New York. The next morning brought manhole-sized pancakes in the Diamond Restaurant on Route 394 in Lakewood. We sat at a table for six, the only opening. Presently two gentlemen asked if they might join us, and within moments we were all involved in a deep conversation assessing the state of baseball, Judaism and governance in a county 500 miles to the east. Only on the road...

Then, in the shadow of home, on a billboard 100 feet off Buffalo's perilous Skyway, attorneys O'Brien and Boyd declared: "We sue distracted drivers." Fair enough, but who then sues distracting lawyers?

You can go home again – but then you gotta' unpack. Like an Amish cookie?

Missy's Arcade, 116 Diamond St., Titusville

Daffin's Candy's, 1231 Liberty St., Franklin

Fairmount Motel, 138 W. Fairmount, Lakewood

Butcherine's Beer, 2319 W. Sunbury Rd.

Doug & Polly Smith live in Grand Island, New York and have regularly contributed to Roadside almost since its founding. To contact the intrepid Niagara region reporters, click This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .