Adventures of the Lost Expedition, Part IX: Strength in numbers.

Jan. 21, 1983

Adventures of the Lost Expedition, Part IX: Strength in numbers.

CAPTAIN’S LOG, BAR DATE IX: The Science Officer already was deep into his sample-taking at the designated staging area, the dark, library-like cocktail lounge of the Lord Amherst Motor Hotel and Restaurant at 5000 Main Street, as the Captain and the California Co-Polit found their way in, eager to continue the suburban section of the Lost Expedition’s quest to have a drink in every licensed establishment on Main Street from downtown Buffalo to the Genesee County line.

First order of business was to be a sumptuous Lord Amherst happy hour. Unhappily, it had been overstated. Happy hour runs from 4 to 6 p.m. here and it within seconds of being a thing of the past. So was the small table of hot chicken wings, fish fry morsels and breaded cocktail franks. The serious action was not in the bar, but next door in the Early American dining room, where a reservation was needed to land the popular $4.75 fish fry, complete with a glass of wine or beer.

This leg of the Lost Expedition promised to be just as crowded as the restaurant was. The Captain commandeered a large, round table in a bookcase-lined corner of the lounge, but it was not enough. By the time orders went up for a second round of libations, the safari had swollen to such proportions that chairs were being snatched from the neighbors.

Mastering such an army from this base to the next required extraordinary coordination of consumption, but ultimately all the glasses were empty at once. Through a freshly risen snowstorm, the expeditioners slid on foot to a place directly across the six-lane blacktop, Howard Johnson’s.

Ambiance here leaned toward wood-grained Formica, halfway along the restaurant chain’s evolution from bright plastic to intimate earth tones. The liquor was concealed behind the salad bar. Folders on the tables touted apple pie, the breakfast specials and Lowenbrau. Nonetheless, the hostess was a bit quizzical when a dozen trekkers trouped in just for drinks. Well, maybe a few $2.75 orders of fried clams, too. Tables were pushed together and through sheer numbers and mounting good humor, the Lost Expedition soon was drawing quizzical looks from the entire dining room.

But a crew can’t pub-crawl on clams alone. The Captain dashed to a communicator, dropped a dime and established contact with the next outpost, Santora’s Pizza Drive-In Restaurant at 5271 Main. Two medium pizzas in half an hour, he signaled, one with just cheese and mushrooms, the other with the works.

“Why, hello,” a couple at Hojo’s lunch counter said as the Captain strode back to the encampment. “We just had to see who on earth would be ordering a pizza from the phone in the Howard Johnson’s.” It was Harold and Janis Andersen, parents of folksinger Eric Andersen. Eric’s fine, they related, but wasn’t it terrible about his friend David Blue dying?

Transporting to Santora’s was a perilous business in the snow, but by now the expeditioners were undaunted. They tromped in to find their pizzas piping hot. Paying at the order counter just inside the door, they summoned a $4.25 carafe of Chablis and a $3.50 pitcher of Labatts, then repaired to the dining area, where their lineup of tables formed a virtual barricade across the path to the rest rooms.

Santora’s was the very model of a modern pizzeria – stucco walls hung with oversized kitchen implements, imitation stained glass ceiling lamps, a couple obligatory 14-year-olds at the cocktail-table-model Pac Man game. Good pizza, too. Some claim it’s the best in Williamsville. Its manager may be the most obliging, as well. He handed out complimentary windshield scrapers as the troupe exited into freezing drizzle.

Breaking the ice at the next stop, the Williamsville Inn at 5447 Main, required more than a scraper. Richly wood-paneled and dimly lit, the Red Mug lounge was populated at first by businessmen lingering late, among them former News advertising staffer Doug Harvey, now a salesman for WBEN-FM. The safari shuffled aimlessly for a few minutes, then settled in and around one of the semi-circular booths opposite the bar.

Soon the lights came up behind a mirrored piano bar to herald the arrival of the duo You and Me. As they rendered hits like “Looking for Love (In All the Wrong Places)” on guitar and Farfisa organ, the room began to fill with a different sort of denizen – the mature single. A Liz Taylor lookalike in a fur jacket sidled up to the bar. Somebody’s uncle stood tentatively in his new toupee by the door.

The Captain reckoned there was only one way to seize the initiative in such a universe. It would take the sheer exuberance of youth. First came the rock song singalong with the band, in which he was assisted by one of the new recruits, the Roaring Irish Rigger. Then came the manic jitterbug, abetted by the Rigger’s bonnie assistant. Having astounded the singles and bamboozled the band, there was nothing left to do but transport instantly to the final stop, Kane’s Red Carpet Restaurant at 5507 Main.

The mature singles atmosphere was more mature here. Pianist Freddie Marr and drummer Bobby Deeb set up easy renditions of old standards, inviting their listeners to come up a take a vocal turn on the microphone. Some of them were true talents, like Freddie DiVincenzo, who did “Satin Doll” as blithely as jazzman Mark Murphy.

Though fundamentally unaltered since the Captain’s last visit there light years ago, the Carpet seemed spruced up in many small ways under the regime of former Judge James Kane. Also unchanged was its hospitality.

Kane sat at a table in the rear, shaking hands with visitors and introducing them to his wife, Ellen; his son, Jimmy Jr., and his lovely blonde daughter, Colleen. Another mainstay of the place still in action was waitress Annie Ettepio, beloved throughout the galaxy for affectionate toughness and her remarkable efficiency. A signal to her across the room was enough to guarantee another round.

Many times was she signaled as the expeditioners gobbled through $4.25 double orders of chicken wings and traded boisterous verses of “Waltz Me Around Again, Willie.” At last, they discovered the secret to fun in the suburbs. It helps to bring some of your own.