I’d visit Buffalo two or three times a year when I was serving the steamship fleets. American Steamship Co. was based there until recently.
Back in 85 I worked for the summer in a warehouse building down on the Buffalo River. I worked for a developer that had made all his money in garbage. He owned a land fill. He had recently sold his garbarge business to BFI for millions. I think he was a mobster too. He would buy old buildings rehab them and turn them into commercial buildings and rental apts. I worked that summer turning a old victorian house into an expensive mens clothing store with an apt on the third floor. We were refinishing all the old woodwork in the house.
The General Mills Cheerios plant was right next door. There were the big abandoned grain elevators all along that river. It was a pretty rough part of town. The street out front was infamous for night time drag races. At night the rats would come out too. They ate the burnt cheerios that got converor belted out of the factory. They were the biggest rats I have ever seen. Very well fed.
It made me not want to eat Cheerios for many years. A buddie of mine that lived on a farm used to go there once a week and fill up the back of his pick up truck with burnt cheerios. He fed them to his pigs and chickens. They were free.