![]() 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. JACK DRISCOL Boss of a Buffalo grain scooping gang, railroad man and elevator worker "The scoopers were at the whim of everybody."Ī 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. Unlike many industries whose buildings and machines are long gone, Buffalo’s grain industry past lives on in the 15 nearly indestructible grain elevators that still dominate the landscape. There was a time when Buffalo was the most important hub in the world for storing, milling and transporting the stuff. They are remnants of another industry - one a lot of people don’t realize had a profound impact on the Great Lakes city: grain. The thing is, the massive monuments dotting the waterfront are not there in memory of steel. They’ve worked in and around Buffalo’s magnificent grain elevators, toiled in their shadows, studied their architectural magnitude and even made music inside them.īuffalo, New York is known as a rust belt city - an old steel town. The people featured in Spilling Grain have. Oral histories of life and work among Buffalo’s grain elevatorsĮver 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?
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