Lights Out…Time to Shine

When I was born, the Mayor of Niagara Falls, NY, was a businessman…of sorts. His name was E. Dent Lackey. I know absolutely nothing about him – other than the fact that a part of downtown Niagara Falls was named after him.

You see, the city used to have a Plaza, a Convention Center, and an annual Festival of Lights. It was an event where the city and local businesses collaborated to install a combined 250,000 lights in one area of downtown, not far from the waterfall. It drew people…you know, families – the kind with kids.

Indoor Botanical Garden - Amazing Winter Oasis - Gone

When I was little, I was told that the lights could be seen from outer space. I cross-referenced that one with AI tonight – and there are no records of any astronaut mentioning it. There was even an indoor botanical garden called The Wintergarden that was part of the show. I’d actually forgotten about that until typing…this very moment now.

The city shut down its convention center in 2002 – it was the only place big enough to turn into a casino. The Festival of Lights burned out in 2004, and the Wintergarden Indoor Botanical Garden succumbed to suffocation in 2009. There was ice skating at that previously mentioned plaza – that’s gone too.

Honorable mentions for the city here… Niagara Falls used to have a minor league baseball farm team for the Pittsburgh Pirates. And the city still has a fully functioning airport – just no planes to speak of.

Yogi’s son, Dale played in Niagara Falls. Yogi even came to NF to see him play.

Eight mayors have served that city since I was born. Some of them have gotten attention – like the one who faced extortion charges in 2007. And the current mayor – a guy I used to drink beers with at the Como on Pine Avenue – he used to be a judge. As a judge, he made national news.

Once, while sitting on the bench, a cell phone rang from the pocket of someone in the courtroom. There was a strict no cell phone policy, and he asked whoever had the phone to fess up. I’d imagine that out of sheer fear, whoever had the phone sat silent. And because that person sat silent – that judge had every single person in the courtroom put in jail. Yup. He put 46 people in jail because one cell phone rang. Through his attorney, he later apologized. But it was too late – he got removed from the bench for that one. Go ahead and Google it. His name is Bobby Restaino.

That was a wild incident, but his city forgave him when they elected him Mayor in 2020. Bobby made the news again when he closed the city’s ice-skating rink over a contract dispute with a vendor. I guess that’s not so bad – considering it gets cold enough there that the kids can skate on the creek. Actually, I’d be surprised if they still allow that. You can’t charge a fee for use of the creek.

What a shit show.

Sometimes when I think about all of the calamities of my own life, I can’t help but think of the catastrophe from which I came. And I wonder – if I came from someplace different, what would be different? Would I be different? Sometimes we just gotta realize that what and who we are is shaped by the soil in which we grew.

Niagara Falls has been crumbling for as long as I can remember, and yet, it’s still standing. Somehow, the city finds a way to keep breathing, even when everything that once gave it sparkle gets stripped away, sold off, or boarded up.

Shouldn’t there be a casino at the end of every residential street?

I think about that a lot lately. The city has taken more punches than most: factories gone, storefronts shuttered, downtown a ghost of the place that lit up December nights when I was little. And yet, it’s still there. Maybe a little more tired, a little rough around the edges, but still standing.

I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to get away from Niagara Falls. But the older I get, the more I realize it never really let go of me. It’s under my skin, in the cadence of how I talk, in the way I scan a room, in the way I can find a joke in the middle of a crisis. It’s in the way I know how to read people fast – not because it’s charming, but because it was necessary. It’s in the way I don’t flinch at disappointment, because I was raised where things don’t always go as planned.

When I walk with my son, sometimes I tell him stories about this place that raised me. I tell him about how they used to build a festival out of nothing but some lightbulbs, a few sponsors, and a whole lot of faith. I tell him about the rink where kids laced up cheap skates and glided under streetlights, cheeks burning from the cold. I tell him about The Wintergarden, this glass greenhouse downtown that looked like magic to a kid who didn’t know any better. I tell him about the nights we’d pile into the car just to drive by and see it all lit up.

I believed those lights could be seen from outer space. I swear to God, I did. And in a way, maybe they could. Maybe not the astronauts-in-the-sky kind of outer space, but the kind that lives inside a kid’s imagination. When you grow up with a little less, you tend to believe a little more.

I want my son to believe, too. I want him to know that no matter what gets knocked down, boarded up, or forgotten, there’s something unshakable in the people who come from places like that. It’s not about whether the lights are still on. It’s about the fact that once upon a time, we lit them.

Some nights I wonder if things would’ve been different if I’d grown up somewhere else – somewhere where people didn’t have to hustle so hard to keep the spark alive. Would I be softer? Lighter? Would I carry fewer scrapes and bruises than I do now? Probably. But then again, I don’t know if I’d be able to look my son in the eye and teach him what it means to get back up after the world knocks you down.

A lot is learned coming from a place that’s had its heart broken a few times: it teaches you how to keep walking with a cracked heart. It teaches you how to hold hope and hard truth in the same hand. It teaches scrappiness, how to start again, and how to turn nothing into something – because it’s been done before.

I’m teaching my son how to measure a person – not by how bright they shine when the lights are fully electrified, but by how steady they burn when everything is dim.

And when my son turns to look at me – when he’s sitting in the passenger seat, hearing these stories about a city that used to glow like a Christmas miracle – I hope what he really learns is this: we can come from places that fall apart and still build something beautiful. We can lose the lights yet still find a way to shine.