Clinton gets the real Buffalo

12/16/2005 By DONN ESMONDE

Bill Clinton got us right. Returning a favor to Sabres owner B. Thomas Golisano, the Bono of politicians came to town on a no-mercy, 13-degree Wednesday with snow piled knee-high along every curb.

Unlike a lot of outsiders, he saw the real Buffalo. It is the winter Buffalo of muckluck boots and quilted parkas. It is the Buffalo that most folks don't fly in for, the one the outside world thinks it takes a dogsled and a compass to navigate.

And in true Clinton quick-study, down-home fashion, he came to the right conclusion, right away. He implicitly saluted the place that reupholstered his psyche with a huge rally right after his 1999 impeachment.

After flying in Wednesday, he told about 600 Democrats in the Convention Center: "You can't live here and stay here if you're a "wuss.'( Editors note: weakling, doormat, wuss ) This is no place for the fainthearted."

The comment was partly about our trench-warfare politics and working-class heroes. The bigger part was a nod to the elements, a recognition that plowing through the snow and the cold to make our daily rounds four months a year builds the one thing you need to survive here: character.

There is no faking it when the wind howls off the lake and the snow comes in horizontal. Winter is not just a season but an attitude. Everybody - rich or poor, white or black, suburb or city - has to deal with it. Everybody has to slog through the snowpack and everybody - even 20-something beauties who in summer bake on the beach in bikinis - owns a pair of big, ugly fashion-assaultive snow boots.

I remember coming here from downstate in the snow-bound winter of 1982 and being struck, more than anything, by just how real this place is. I'd take visiting friends up the Niagara Thruway at night to show them the fire blowing out of the top of smokestacks near the Grand Island Bridge. Coming back from the Falls, I'd detour past the giant Nabisco grain elevator. I'd marvel at the small mountains of snow on every street corner and the hardy souls who daily headed out in it.

Maybe it takes an outsider to see it, to appreciate the rarity of it and the character of place that it all conveys. A lot of folks who have lived here all of their lives look at it and shrug. To me, it shouts might and muscle, character and uniqueness.

The idea that anybody who lives here has anything to apologize for is absurd. When the wind blows and the snow howls, it takes guts and heart to get through any day. That's what Bill Clinton was talking about.

In an ever-more homogenized nation, from the relentless diet of pop pablum on the radio to chain restaurants with contrived hominess and Styrofoam soul, Buffalo stands as anything but processed and plastic. We are not immune from stretches of Anyplace sameness, but for the most part, we're the anti-L.A., the real deal.

There are times, even now on the far side of 50, when I'll pause from shoveling to turn into the howling wind and pelting snow and scream from the bottom of my lungs into the blast and belly of Nature. There is no denying its ridiculous power and absurd force, its awesome strength and its beauty. Beyond anything else, you cannot stand in the middle of it and not feel alive - more alive than when sitting in front of the TV or staring at a computer screen or schlepping the kids to school.

I think Clinton grasps that, recognizes it, appreciates it. Whatever your political bent, you have to give him credit. For all intents and purposes, it makes the guy from Arkansas an honorary Buffalonian. One of us. As far as I'm concerned, he can come back anytime the wind blows cold and the snow piles high. Clinton is a lot of things, and different things to different people. But one thing you can't ever accuse him of being is a wuss.