Originally posted on FB, 15 March 2023
• Written by Lesa Quale Ferguson•

Filed under, sometimes I forget where I live.

My cousin Maggie, who works at the West Seneca DMV, sent me to the police station to check the plates on a car Dave junked over a year ago. As my uncle used to say about getting to South Buffalo, “Just follow the junkyards home.” West Seneca is the go-to DMV for South Buffaloians, as we all seem to have been issued a cousin who works there (for many of us, the same cousin).

At the police station, the grumpy lady who ran my plates yelled at me that there weren’t enough digits on the VIN number Skyway Auto Parts had given me. I wanted to say (but didn’t), “Take it down a notch, Colleen or Kathleen or whatever first Communion-worthy name your dear departed mother gave ya, and slip yourself a pull from the flask of whiskey you have hidden in your desk.” People in South Buffalo are still so salty that the state of NY stopped letting them smoke inside 20 years ago. I gave her the correct VIN and sat in the wee lobby.

This guy strolled in looking like an aging, lost extra from “The Lords of Flatbush,” complete with the 1950s Greaser haircut: Pompadour, Duck’s Ass, and grey strands.

He sat beside me and said, “What you here for?”

I said, “Just some bureaucratic thing.”

“What’s that, like you’re in politics?”

“Huh? No, my husband forgot to take the plates off the car we junked. What are you here for?”

“My bitch ex-wife…”

Of course. Again, I wanted to say (but didn’t), “Did she come with the outfit, or did you get her, buy one, get one free with the sunglasses, Andrew Dice Clay?”

Fortunately, Colleen didn’t take too many pulls from the flask because she ran the plates in short order. As I left, I gave the aging Fonzerelli a thumbs up and said, “AYYYYYYY. My husband? I guess I’ll keep him to save the world one less bitch ex-wife.”

Eventually, I gave Mary Pat, our local insurance agent whose aunt was my boss and this year’s Grand Marshall of the Old Neighborhood Parade, the needed paperwork to take the car off our insurance.

So, to recap: the junkyard, the DMV, the police station, and the insurance agency – our Blarney Stones, Happy St. Patrick’s Day Week to me – South Buffalo style.