In a town northwest of here sits the Tonawanda coke plant – and they don’t produce beverages. My mom says we have too many friends, but I think you can’t have enough of them, including Tom, his better half, Tina and their offspring. They live there and are allergic to gunpowder, so they make themselves scarce around Thanksgiving. They’re very mild mannered, classified as wild so I need not tell you what type of animals they are. If you haven’t guessed by now, they’re not fond of cranberry sauce, stuffing, pumpkin pie or Dallas Cowboy football on the fourth Thursday in November.
“Honey, if you could name a perfume after the smells in Tonawanda, compliments of industry, 21
what would it be?” Tom asked Tina.
“Bloomin’ benzene,” replied Tanya, the pair’s oldest.
“That stuff is nasty and carcinogenic,”
added Tina. “The unfortunate fact about so many polluted areas here, as well as nationwide, is that even if all of these industries were shut down and the areas remediated, who knows how many years it would be before humans or wildlife could safely live there?”
Besides our four-legged friends, there are others who feel the same way as my family and Tom and Tina. Erin Healey is the director of the Clean Air Coalition of Western New York. A Buffalonian who graduated from City Honors High School and Swarthmore College, she has a degree in political science – but we won’t hold that against her. She is part of an activist group that has its sights on the Tonawanda coke plant, owned by JD
Crane.
Sadly, industry has done so much harm to the area – the land, air, water, the people and the animals – that few would want to reside there. Yet, if you own a home in Tonawanda, it may be difficult to move. Besides, would you move to Love Canal – more on it in a later chapter – or Cheektowaga? If you leave the state, you could settle in Woburn, Massachusetts, home of the problems highlighted in the movie, A Civil Action, 22
starring John Travolta. What about the warmth of the south in Texas or Louisiana? You could move to cancer alley and could probably buy a house there for a song.
If you don’t mind pigs – who doesn’t like barbeque, except for the even-toed ungulates within the family suidae – North Carolina has enough farms with the accompanying odors and waste products to remind you to either bring a clothespin for your nose or check your olfactory senses at the door.
Maybe Tonawanda isn’t that bad after all.
Yeah, it is!
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