Audio storytelling from the people of Buffalo’s grain elevators

Ever 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? The people featured in Spilling Grain have. They’ve worked in and around Buffalo’s magnificent grain elevators -- hauling grain in railcars, shoveling it deep down in the holds of enormous grain ships, milling it into flour, or puffing it into breakfast cereal. Some studied and evangelized their architectural magnitude, or even made music inside them.

These are the people you'll hear in the Spilling Grain stories. Spilling Grain was created and produced by Kate Kaye, a longtime journalist who was born and raised in Buffalo. 

Spilling Grain features first-person stories from Steve Bazkowski, Bruce Carter, Joel Carter, Don Dodd, Jack Driscol, Bert Hyde, Pat Needham, and Lynda Schneekloth. Special thanks to Tim Bohen, Fred Brill, Mark Goldman, Sam Kolodziej, Bob Roberts, and Gene Witkowski for helping inform this work. And thanks to D. Rives Curtright for providing his original music for the Spilling Grain audio stories, and to the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library for preserving the Spilling Grain stories and photos in its Digital Collection.

BRUCE AND JOEL CARTER Former Buffalo flour mill workers "My father said, ‘Here’s a bottle of whiskey. Go tell that guy I need about a three-second spill.'"With a dad nicknamed Fearless Freddie who worked in and around the grain elevators throughout his life, Joel and Bruce Carter were indoctrinated into Buffalo's grain culture as kids. They both went on to work in the mill themselves, but an industrial accident in the mill sidelined their father and put an end to the family's flour milling days.

PAT NEEDHAM

Buffalo grain scooper and grain ship engineer from Alabama Street

“When we were kids we’d go to Concrete Central – just fields over there, old railroad tracks. And we'd hang out."

Some of Buffalo’s grain elevators had already shuttered by the time Pat Needham was a kid, but he worked hauling and scooping grain for decades in Buffalo and around the Great Lakes. A tragic accident down in the hold of a grain ship put an end to his working life. Pat didn’t have to tell us what it was like getting pulled out from a ship hold without being able to feel his legs. But he did. Note: This story involves graphic injury descriptions.

LYNDA SCHNEEKLOTH University at Buffalo architecture professor emeritus and grain elevator preservationist “They are so out of scale to anything that you see in your life that they are like a distant landscape right in front of you all the time.” More than a grain elevator enthusiast, Lynda Schneekloth is a scholar of these giant concrete and steel structures. On a frigid and windy Buffalo day in February 2020, she braved the cold to point out their inner-workings, why they were built the way they were, why they’re considered architectural wonders – and why so many of us are intrigued by them.

DON DODD Longtime General Mills worker “It's like walking next to a jet, that's how loud they are.... That thing was just whistling and screaming.” Don Dodd got his start at General Mills in 1969 and worked there for decades, taking on all sorts of roles. For a time, he was a gunner - literally shooting Cheerios out of a pressurized chamber that created a deafening sound. In the early days churning out breakfast cereal and cake mixes, there were distinct roles for men and women at the plant. And, even though work there could be hot, noisy and grueling, Don and his coworkers often managed to find time for a break, sometimes dashing across the bridge for a 25 cent "adult beverage" at nearby Swannie House.

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.

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.

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.