The apple, the saying goes, does not fall far from the tree. Maybe that explains why George Thomas Apfel—the last name is German for “apple” — felt uneasy as a boy when his family moved from here to Las Vegas.

He always saw Buffalo as home.

Though he never visited over the decades, it stayed in the back of his mind—the old house on Linden, the trains barreling past, the sounds, the smells, the feel of Buffalo.

In 2007, he came back for a week, enticed by Buffalo Old Home Days. He began thinking seriously of taking the plunge. His marriage had ended. His children were grown. And a voice in his head began to sing:

Two months ago, recruiters contacted Apfel about a job as chief engineer for Entercom Buffalo. He took it.

He announced on his Facebook page: “On May 20th my Zip code changes to 14209. It’ll be nice to be home again.”

Apfel’s homecoming shows us Buffalo in a new light. It also shows how social media can change how we live, and move.

His Facebook page offers a diary of the adventure. In early May, his friends in Vegas, where he had a distinguished career in radio, held a goodbye party for him. “The Big GT!” one writes. “You were an integral part in allowing me to get on the air in Las Vegas and I couldn’t thank you enough. Take care my friend.”

Someone sends him a picture from “The Natural.” Another friend, a former Buffalonian, writes: “I wish I had the nerve to pick up and go home too. I envy you. Good luck, George.”

Thanks to the Internet, Apfel makes friends in Buffalo in advance. One acquaintance offered him the free use of a house, a historic, vacant four-square on Oxford Avenue.

Finally, the big day arrives. On May 20, Apfel is on the plane with his cat and a one-way ticket. With the plane still taxiing, he tweets: “Touched down at 4 p. m. at home in Buffalo.”

Oxford is a modest street slightly east of Gates Circle. To Apfel, it is paradise.

“Really nice folk live here,” he writes. He posts Norman Rockwell-like pictures of his front porch, his American flag.

Vegas friends drool. “Grass front yards, how cool.”

“I want a porch like that, and trees like that, and a view like that. I am so tired of being a desert rat.”

One friend rhapsodizes: “That is one of the images that pop into my head when I think of the American Dream.”

Having a beer with Apfel on that storied Oxford porch, you get the idea of the American Dream. It is evening. The street is quiet except for a sprinkler across the street and the occasional speeding car. Flags wave lazily from Apfel’s house and the house opposite his.

The owner of the other flag comes home. “Want to water my lawn, too?” she calls out to the sprinkler owner. She waves to Apfel. “Hey, George.”

Then there is silence again. Almost silence, anyway.

“There’s a din to Buffalo that has not changed,” Apfel reflects, lighting his pipe. “The sound of trains. We don’t have that in Vegas.” Before you can argue, a distant locomotive sounds its whistle. And suddenly you hear it — a constant hum.

Our downtown is brighter, Apfel says, than when he was a boy. He remembers the buildings gray with pollution. The south Grand Island bridges no longer smell bad. The elms are gone. “You can see the houses.”

He adds: “Trees that weren’t there before are now huge.”

Apfel is Buffalo’s Rip van Winkle, the character who awakens after a decades-long sleep.

“It’s funny — for him, time has stood still,” says an Entercom colleague, WBEN-AM news anchor Steve Cichon. “He can remember Buffalo 50 years ago. And it’s a bit of a shock, because he has been away for so long.”

Cichon and Apfel connected a few years ago through Cichon’s broadcasting nostalgia Web site, www.staffannouncer.com , and later became Facebook friends. “We both work in radio,” Cichon says. “And we both had this interest in history, in Buffalo’s pop culture history.”

Such is the nature of Internet friendships that, when Cichon heard Apfel was applying for the engineer job, he could not immediately place him.

“I said, ‘The name sounds familiar,’ ” he recalls, laughing.

Apfel is now an everyday presence in the Entercom office. He praises the architecture of transmitters. He posts a photo of “Our Resident Hawk.”

“One morning I was walking into work,” Cichon recalls. “It was rainy morning, dreary, kind of disgusting — it had rained really hard. And he was standing in the rain, with no raincoat, enjoying it. Smoking his pipe, watching the rain. He said, ‘This is beautiful. We get this once a year in Las Vegas.’ I’m like, ‘It is pretty cool, I guess.’ ”

Apfel admits Buffalo has problems. Higher taxes worry him, as do people leaving the city. He learned that the house where he lives had been broken into before he arrived.

He points out, though, that Vegas has worse unemployment and could lose its water supply.

“Las Vegas rush hour lasts from 6:30 to 10 a. m.,” he says. “I used to leave my house at 6 just to avoid it.” Rush hour resumed, he added, at 3 p. m.

Those are just a few reasons why, when he sells his house in Vegas, he plans on buying one here, perhaps in North Buffalo. There are just so many things about Buffalo, Apfel says, that are right.

“I never cook,” he shrugs. “No need to. There are all these great restaurants.” (Sure enough, giving a tour of his historic home, the kitchen is dark, and he can’t find the light.)

His Facebook posts show his honeymoon with Buffalo:

“At Sterling Tavern having a cool brew.”

“On Hertel Ave., later heading over to see the Cuz.” A genealogy maven, Apfel has found a cousin he did not know he had.

“Now at the Anchor Bar—Buffalo is hopping tonight!”

“Heading to Hucklebuckets on Sheridan Drive for a cooldown.”

“Contemplating where 2 go 4 dinner. So many choices.” (Buffalonians jump in with suggestions, leading a Vegas pal to ask, “What’s a Weck?”)

What about the weather? Apfel is a weather nut — he once built his own mini-weather station — and enjoys tantalizing his parched Vegas friends with his “Oxford Porch Temperature.”

“Gotta love a long-sleeve day in June, it was 52 when I left for work this AM and it’s 68 outside now,” he gloats on Facebook.

He gets the reactions he wants: “SOO jealous.” “Combine those two numbers, GT, and thats how hot it is today in LV.”

A friend taunts: “When it starts to snow we’ll tell you about our winters back in Vegas.”

Apfel shoots back: “When it starts to snow I’ll be lovin’ it!”

Until then, his Facebook page continues to tell the story:

“At the Bisons Fireworks show.” “Casa di Pizza on Elmwood, walking

distance from home.” “Census people stopped by, I have

added +1 to Buffalo’s population!” And one big understatement: “George likes Buffalo.”

mkunz@buffnews.comnull