Ever walk across a river frozen thick to get to a whiskey-soaked work lunch? Stood atop grain piled so high it was like trudging in deep snow? Ever spend a month camped inside a leaky grain elevator — or fought to keep one from being demolished?

The people featured in Spilling Grain have. They’ve worked in and around Buffalo’s magnificent grain elevators -- hauling grain in railcars, shoveling it deep down in the holds of enormous grain ships, milling it into flour, or puffing it into breakfast cereal. Some studied and evangelized their architectural magnitude, or even made music inside them.

These are the people you'll hear in the Spilling Grain stories. Spilling Grain was created and produced by Kate Kaye, a longtime journalist who was born and raised in Buffalo.

Spilling Grain features first-person stories from Steve Bazkowski, Bruce Carter, Joel Carter, Don Dodd, Jack Driscol, Bert Hyde, Pat Needham, and Lynda Schneekloth. Special thanks to Tim Bohen, Fred Brill, Mark Goldman, Sam Kolodziej, Bob Roberts, and Gene Witkowski for helping inform this work. And thanks to D. Rives Curtright for providing his original music for the Spilling Grain audio stories, and to the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library for preserving the Spilling Grain stories and photos in its Digital Collection.