JACK DRISCOL

Boss of a Buffalo grain scooping gang, railroad man and elevator worker

"The scoopers were at the whim of everybody."

A railroad man at age 17 who would soon become the “boss” of a grain scooping “gang” in 1962, Jack Driscol toiled on Buffalo’s waterfront his whole working life. Jack shared memories of scooping grain deep down in the hold of a ship, of working with equipment that stayed the same since his dad's time as a scooper, and about what being the boss of a scooping gang was really like.

STEVE BACZKOWSKI

Musician, music curator at Buffalo’s contemporary arts center Hallwalls and Buffalo grain elevator sound enthusiast

“Banging, creaking, popping, sliding, scraping: every sound you could imagine. Sometimes it sounded like a person screaming, the way the wind moved through there.”

As a kid, Steve Baczkowski sneaked into Buffalo’s abandoned grain elevators to hear what his sax might sound like bouncing around their concrete canyons. So, when the longtime music curator at Buffalo’s contemporary arts center Hallwalls got a chance to keep watch over a robotic electronic sound installation inside a grain elevator, his sound nerd alarm bells rang. Steve camped out inside Silo City’s Marine A elevator for the month of September 19, playing his sax and didgeridoo, hearing ghostly sounds, diverting rain, and even witnessing a Buffalo Bills fan's life-affirming experience through art.

BERT HYDE

First Ward historian and lifelong Resident, curator and co-founder of The Waterfront Memories and More Museum, daughter and sister of Buffalo grain workers

“Girls didn't go by the waterfront.”

Most women and girls who lived in Buffalo's First Ward -- the waterfront community at the heart of Buffalo's once-pulsating grain industry -- never went close to the waterfront or worked among the grain elevators. But the industry was ever-present in their lives, from the grain that their husbands, fathers and brothers blew off their clothes when they came home for lunch, to the grain they sneaked from railcars, to the flour bags that mothers sewed into girls' dresses.