Another Description of Westfield

Westfield stays with me. It's inside me, a part of my conscience that will always be there. It is who I am and I am at ease with who I am because I love Westfield. It is an amalgamation of the land, the lake, the people, the time, and the things I was taught. Things that are true and things that are false. I am Westfield and it will always be that way.

Westfield is a township with a village at the center. The township is the country. Along the lake it is a flat coastal plain about a mile wide. That is where most of the grapes were, and grapes were where the money was; money for the farmers who grew the grapes and money for the people who worked at Welch's Grape Juice Company. Welch's made Westfield special. It gave Westfield a notch up on the economic scale. It gave Westfield a library to be proud of and a good school.

Coming inland off the lake about a mile the land gives way to an escarpment that rises probably 500 feet or more. It isn't a mountain but a distinct line of hills that forms the primitive boundary of the lake as it was before the glaciers melted when it receded to its current level. The township lies within this landscape and it is here where all the farms and wooded land are. Grape farms and dairy farms and fruit orchards and vegetable farms. Cows and cattle and pigs and corn and hay and silage and manure and tractors and mud and dirt and streams and creeks and waterfalls and woods and rolling hills and railroad tracks and ponds and lakes and old dirt roads and the Chatauqua Gorge which is almost like its own secret Grand Canyon. And not very many people. And that made Westfield special. Not many people. Just enough to know. No extra people to clutter up the landscape, the social scape, the mindscape. Just a cast of characters that inhabited the hills and farms of the Township of Wetfield that surrounded the Village of Westfiled.

The Village was the center of the world. It was small but had everything you needed. It had a business district about three blocks long and it was surrounded by a grid of tree lined streets and mostly wood framed houses. Some were made of stone and some were made of brick. The houses are old now. They were old then. But they were nice neat houses. Some little and some not too big. A couple of them were grand. They were built by craftsman who paid attention to detail in a time when even an average family could afford some real style and design. "Ginger-bread," "built-ins," a real display of the artisans' expertise.

If the township gave a kid room to explore the wild world on his bike or by foot, the village gave a kid a place to explore commerce and relationships and social life. The village had Joe Ricket's butcher shop and Shorty's shoe repair, and the bus station with the Western Union Office and hardware stores and pharmacies and churches and doctor's offices and the Town Hall and the Greystone Hotel and even a hospital. It had W.T. Grants, a department store, a Loblaws grocery store and a Quality Market, a police station with a jail and its own newspaper, the Westfield Republican. And it had its bars and taverns; Lambs, Anthony's, Larry's Cantina. It had clothing stores and a bakery and a soda fountain and a movie theatre that played movies every day of the week. It had the Westfield Diner, and Calarco's Venetian Room and the Bark Grill. The village was rich with life and with people engaged in trading goods and money.

And always their was Welchs, with its big brick office building at the intersection of U.S. Highway 20 and New York State Route 17; the location of one of the two traffic lights in town. Welchs put Westfield on the map, so to speak. It made Westfield the self-procalimed "Grape Juice Capital of the World," which was advertised on a sign as you entered the village, and if you were a kid you believed in that mantle and you were proud of it. Most towns aren't the capital of anything but Westfield was the capital of something ... Grape Juice. Westfield made you feel good about yourself.

I never realized how small Westfield was until I moved away from it. My mom and dad divorced and our family just sort of disippated out into America. My mother went one way and my father went another way. My two brothers and I each went our own way. That was 37 years ago. But I found out that noone else in America knew anything about Westfield or where it was. Noone knew that it was the Grape Juice Capital of the World. Noone knew about the little girl Grace Bedell from Westfield who told Abraham Lincoln to grow a beard and how William Seward, the man responsible for the United States purchasing Alaska from the Russians in the 19th century, spent his summers in Westfield. Noone knew about Lou Dimuro, the American League umpire who used to live in Westfield and who became momentarily reknowned when he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated during the 1970 World Series between the "Amazin' Mets and the Baltimore Orioles and the famous shoe polish call. Noone knew about an infinitesmally small town on the shores of Lake Erie in western New York. Noone knew there was a "western" New York or even a Lake Erie. And that's fine, because I know where it is and the people there know where it is, and it is still the center of the world and the beacon of my life that shines its light to let me know where I am from and what I know.

I stop in Westfield at least twice a year on my way to visit my mother in Youngstown, N.Y., on Lake Ontario below Niagara Falls, when I make an 11 hour drive from where I live in southwest Virginia. I usually call on Connie Strozzi at her florist shop on Main Street. She is my best childhood friend's aunt, and between my friend Greg and Connie we vicariously share and enjoy the stories of each others' lives and families. Sometimes I pay a visit to Rosie Thompson, on West 2nd St., who gave me a home in my late teen years when I was still trying to hang on in Westfield. I almost always call on my close friend Bob Olindo, who grew up in Westfield, but who now lives in Fredonia. Noone recognizes me anymore so I can be anonymous. I walk along Main St. in the center of town and look for familiar faces but don't recognize anyone. Time blurs all of our features. I drive around town and get out and walk. Almost every step I take, anywhere in town, conjures up a memory, a person, a story from the past. It is powerful in its own quiet way. It's good. It is my home.