Chicago, Chicago ...
Thursday, November 29, 2007 at 11:00PM For some reason, today and for the past few days, I can't stop thinking about Chicago. Several things have prompted this. For one, you might as well know, I love that city and even though I consider myself a Southerner, the quintessential Midwestern metropolis is never far from my mind. I have said many times that if I could live anywhere in the world I wanted, I would live right in the middle of downtown Chicago. Maybe in a swanky condo at the Marina Towers on the Chicago River, or better yet, at One Magnificent Mile, overlooking Lake Michigan. I could shop at Bloomingdale's every day! Oprah and I could be neighbors! Sounds crazy, I know. Traffic's awful; weather's even more awful; it's an expensive place to live. I could never afford it. Yeah, yeah, I know all that. I still love it. I don't even really know all the reasons why I love it, but since you asked, I'll try to tell you.
When I was a little girl we lived all over the place. Always running here and there, like crazed gypsies. Poor, itinerant, and displaced. We lived in Phoenix, Arizona; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Hollywood, California; Seattle, Washington; Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; and Fort Lauderdale, Florida ... just to name the places I distinctly remember. We lived in most of those places more than once, and I think there were others too, but you get the general idea. I was in college before I went to the same school two years in a row; the trend was for my sister and I to be on the rolls of two or more institutions of learning during any given school year. Although I went to only one school per year beginning in tenth grade, I attended a different school for each of my last three years of high school. It was the norm for me; I seldom if ever questioned it. Always the new girl. Always the outsider. Always the one who had no idea what was going on.
My stepfather, even though he despised cold weather on account of his sinus problems, would always point the car toward Chicago when we were really down and out. Which was most of the time. He used to say that you could tool into Chicago around noon and by nightfall you could have a job and a place to live. My mom was a professional waitress, and apartments in our price range (I'll thank you not to snicker) did tend to be plentiful in the early to mid-'60s. We'd cruise into town in our stolen baby-blue Nash Rambler and stop at the A&P (where with our grocery order we got a sheet of perforated S&H green stamps, the sheen of unlicked glue on the back just crying out to stiffen a gridded page) to purchase a loaf of bread, a package of bologna, a quart of milk, and a copy of the Tribune. If Mama was in a good mood and if we had the funds, we might also get a Spanish Bar cake. Holy moley, was that ever good with the cold milk! Dense dark raisin-studded molasses cake with sweet white frosting thickly blanketing the top in a wide-wale corduroy design ... I can taste it!
While dining in our car or, in clement weather, in a neighborhood park or something (this was before the age of gangs), the "want ads" would get decorated with pencil circles. Feast over, research done, we'd locate a pay phone, make a few calls, drive around some more, and sure enough ... by bedtime we'd be the occupants of a few shabby furnished rooms in a tenement building, with plastic curtains hanging at the grimy windows above oily linoleum, and a few big-city roaches already comfortably en suite. Home, sweet home. The next day pretty Mama would leave for a while and come back with a couple of scratchy rayon acetate uniforms and aprons in a size four. She'd wash and set her hair in sponge curlers, carefully apply her makeup and smile at herself in the medicine cabinet mirror, dress in the uniform (accessorized with gartered nylons and nursey shoes), and traipse off to her job. Sometimes Mama rode the "el" to work, and she told me that once, on a summer day when she sat in her seat beside an open window, a beggar-type man spit on her right through the window. She never knew why.
As for my sister and me, we were swiftly (to our great chagrin) matriculated in whatever art-deco rockpile of a school happened to be nearby, where we were once again awkwardly cast in the role of "new girl." I have vivid memories of Goudy Elementary School on the north side, near the lake ... I think I was in third grade. My teacher was Mrs. Sullivan. It was exceptionally cold and snowy that winter, even for Chicago. A few years ago my husband was interviewed for a job in Schaumburg, Illinois, about 25 miles west of Chicago. We were there several days, and one night my husband took me for a drive into the city. We were pretty far north, and as we approached the inky void of Lake Michigan, my husband turned south on an avenue maybe one or two streets over from Lake Shore Drive. As we drove we neared an overpass type of thing, and suddenly I was gripped with a sense of profound recognition. I KNEW I had been there before! I could "see" Mrs. Sullivan walking under that viaduct on a frigid day, the entire landscape white and gray, she a drab-coated and heavy-booted figure trudging along, shoulders hunched against the icy wind. I know that's where it happened; I remember seeing my teacher on that street!
When I got home from the trip, I spent a long time studying maps of Chicago until I concluded to my satisfaction that we did indeed live in that vicinity at that time. I located Goudy Elementary School at 5120 North Winthrop Avenue, and I could tell from its proximity to the lake that we had lived around there. We used to walk over to the lake shore all the time in warm weather; the fluffy golden dandelions that nodded in the dense grass seemed to me to be the size of saucers, and their perfume was like a cross between honey and butter. I can still smell the breeze off the azure-blue water and feel the shimmery buzz that cloyed the atmosphere when warm weather returned to the great northern city. As soon as summer came, my sister and I would start clamoring for a trip to Riverview Park. Chicago was electric and vital; it suited me; I felt at home there. I was always certain that whatever I wanted or needed could be found in Chicago. It was not my home, really ... but I wished that it was and I imagined that it was. I was always sorry when the only view I had of it was out the back window as we once again moved on.
When I was seventeen I went to college in Northwest Indiana, about thirty miles from Chicago. I met my husband while living there, and our first date was in Chicago ... at old Comiskey Park on the south side, for a major league baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the Kansas City Royals. After marrying in 1979 we continued to live near Chicago until 1991, when we moved back down south. I have such wonderful memories of the years my husband and I worked and lived in Indiana, but played in Chicago. We went to the city often and developed many "haunts." For several years he was a student at DePaul University in the downtown area, taking night classes to earn his Master's. We used to get a babysitter and I'd go with him, and after class we'd go out to dinner. Our favorite places were R.D. Clucker's in Lincoln Park (no longer there) and Hamburger Hamlet on Rush (no longer there) ... we also loved Giordano's on Rush for pizza, and Bennigan's across from the Art Institute for eclectic dining. For infrequent "formal" dates, we'd get a reservation at Lawry's the Prime Rib on Ontario Street. Those were the days. My mouth is watering.
Shopping in Chicago -- whether at Marshall Field's on Wabash and State, or at any one of the hundreds of marvelous stores at Water Tower Place, or on Oak Street, or at all the shops in between -- is all a shopper could ask for, and then some. And I'm a shopper. I shopped early and often, alone or with others ... it was so much fun to ride the South Shore Line to the end of the line (Randolph Street), debark, walk over to Field's, and take in the bargains, stopping only for coffee breaks and lunch. Heavenly ... the people there are so nice. Someone will always talk to you, discuss a subject with you -- not just blow you off -- in Chicago. People are not snooty there; they'll help you in a heartbeat.
As you might imagine, I could go on and on. I could write reams about the delights of a picnic and open-air concert at Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, just north of the city, during the summer months ... the air show on Oak Street Beach in July, which my husband and I rarely missed ... Navy Pier, where you can catch a boat for the wonderful architectural cruise on the river ... the Wendella boat ride, down the river under all the bridges, then through the locks and out onto the lake, the vast, luminous city so breathtaking from there ... the lights of Buckingham Fountain turning colors under a starlit summer sky ... the Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza, and all the pigeons ... reading the "stones" that dot the gothic splendor of the Tribune Tower ... the Wrigley building in floodlit white-marble magnificence at Michigan and Wacker ... standing in front of Grant Wood's American Gothic at the Art Institute ... seeing Les Miserables at the Auditorium Theater and Annie at the Shubert ... Brookfield Zoo, where we used to take the kids every Memorial Day ... walking in Grant Park listening to music floating from the Petrillo Bandshell as the sailboats bob in the harbor ... the great museums, the planetarium ... Wrigley Field on a hot day, Comiskey on a hot night ... all of it. All of it. I love all of it.
We're going for a visit in June of 2008, God willing ... I promise plenty of pictures, and I promise I'll be smiling. I promise I'll look right at home.
Reader Comments (2)
Lovely. Having taken my first trip to The Windy City this summer, I can agree with a lot of what I read here. The people were nice, the air show was praciticing as we ate at Bubba Gump's at the Navy Pier. We also enjoyed the giant silver bean! It was all lovely. I just didn't get to stay long enough. I'm sorry your childhood was nomadic, but, hey, at least you can claim "kinship" with darling Johnny.
Ah yes ... that I can! I'm so envious of your trip but so glad you got to take it. My time will come. The trip we'd planned for late summer got scrubbed, as you know, so next June is looking good. Thanks for reading!