Cold, wet and unhip, but for a good cause

 
     Unlike some employees, I don’t get in trouble for dipping into Facebook at work. In fact, it’s part of my job, placing my thumb on the pulse, cupping my ear to listen for the buzz, as it were.

     So midafternoon Monday, my first day back at the office after a two-week vacation, I hop online, poke around and see what's trending and, oh look, I've been tagged in a video. Let's see what the video is: My older son and his pal Matthew, holding buckets, standing before the little fountain in downtown Northbrook, delivering a speech, in a sort of balled-fist, percussive manner not unlike those Monty Python characters with handkerchiefs knotted on their heads.

     “Thank you Jacob Levin and Jacob Kahn for nominating us for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge,” my son begins. They then nominate a half dozen people: several classmates; Matthew Whipple, director of the Glenbrook Academy of International Studies, their alma mater; plus Elena Kagan (a running gag at their former school; she was also nominated for Homecoming Queen, sending students searching the hallways to inform her of the honor until a teacher explained that Kagan is a Supreme Court justice).
     And me.
     “You have 24 hours to complete the challenge, or donate $100 to ALS research,” Matthew shouts, with a very WWF jab of the finger at the camera. They then fill their buckets with water, pour in a bag of ice and dump it over their heads.
     I was not, like most people apparently, already eye-rollingly aware of the ice bucket challenge, a kind of 2014 cross between chain letters and swallowing goldfish, where individuals are double-dog dared to either give money to fight the disease or dump a bucket of ice water on their heads.
     But I was on vacation, and as astounding as it sounds, I did not spend it trolling Facebook. A quick check in the morning, then off to whitewater raft the French Broad River or swim in the ocean or visit Monticello.
     The phenomenon has been building for about a month. As of Tuesday, the challenge has raised $23 million for the ALS Association, 10 times what it collected in the same period last year. The group battles, which can get lost in all this, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” It’s a fatal, progressive neurological affliction where the neurons connecting your brain to your body deteriorate while your mind stays cruelly unaffected. You lose the ability to move, then to speak, then you suffocate to death, slowly. There is no cure, little treatment; scientists aren’t even certain of the cause.
     Maryilene Blondell, director of development for the ALS Association Greater Chicago Chapter, said the challenge began three weeks ago with Pete Frates, a former baseball captain at Boston College, who has ALS.
     “The rest is history,” she said.
     The challenge has drawn stars from Oprah Winfrey to Bill Gates, from Miley Cyrus to LeBron James. By the time I encountered it, the inevitable backlash had set in: People complained that ALS isn’t as big a problem as, say, Alzheimer’s or heart disease. True, it afflicts thousands, not millions, but it sure is significant if you or a loved one get it. Buzzfeed gathered dozens of inelegant ice bucket dunkings. Not an easy maneuver to conduct gracefully, as you’ll see if you look at the video of me doing it. One does tend to shout.
     Yes, the trend has peaked. My participation in it is proof of that. And yes, compassion fatigue sets in, especially online with its constant pleas and causes. Sure, I could just give the money and stay dry, technically meeting the challenge. But that’s chicken. My kid, who at 12 joined me in the Polar Plunge leaping into icy Lake Michigan, dumped icewater over his head. So can I. (Actually, I did it in Tuesday’s noon downpour, so I was soaked before lifting the bucket).
     As the paper’s former charities, foundations and private social services reporter, I am acutely aware of the contradictions of fundraising. People are human, and wedding the grim reality of illness and need to the fun of pranks and parties is an old trick to draw attention. This silly stuff is important. The old “Why not skip the gala and give all the money to charity?” bluff is naive and easily answered: “Because without the dinner, there would be no money to give.”
     I’m no paragon of virtue. I gave and dumped ice water over my head (it’s presented as either/or, but you do both) — not out of concern for research, but because my boy, who asks for so little, asked me to. I reiterated the challenge to Justice Kagan. She won’t do it, but wouldn’t it be cool if she did? Plus Karen Lewis, because people suggested her. And I called out my pal Eric Zorn, over at the Tribune, just because I like making him uncomfortable. You have 24 hours.

Ed Kelly: Still getting even at 90: Rahm "is not a Chicagoan"

     Edmund Kelly was born Aug. 19, 1924, and is one of the dwindling band of politicians from the Democratic machine era.

     He talks about everything from his beginnings at Seward Park, his friendship with Mayor Richard J. Daley, his relationship with Harold Washington and why he feels so sorry for Rahm Emanuel. He became acting superintendent of the Chicago Park District in 1972. When Washington fired him 14 years later, he said, “I don’t get mad; I get even.” Here, in a sense, he does: 

    Seward Park. That’s where I was born and raised. My dad was a salesman with Pabst. My mother was a housekeeper. I grew up at the park. Things were very tough. Very tough people. The Depression was ’30, ’32, ’33. The family had no money. I said to my brother once, “How come we moved so much?” He said, “Because we didn’t have the money to pay the rent.”

  

     He went to St. Phillip’s High School, where he was a guard on the basketball team and won All-City honors.

     My life was going to school and coming back and living in the park. I was in that park seven days a week.

     [We played] everything. Softball. Football. Every sport. Tumbling. Pingpong. Checkers. Then I’d go across the street and learn how to play dice. Not a choir boy at all. Down there it was survival of the fittest. 

     World War II found him a machine gunner in the Pacific.

     When the war broke out, I just turned 17. I didn’t finish high school until 1942. I joined the Marine Corps. I was the aerial gunner in a Helldiver. 

   

      Having survived the war in the Marshall Islands, he almost didn’t survive the peace because of a show of force delivered to the Chinese. 

     We thought we would be coming home like everybody else. Instead we got sent to Shanghai, assigned because the Nationalists were fighting  the Communists. We didn’t lose anybody in our squadron in the Pacific, but some general had the idea we were going to show the Red Chinese we had air strength. They had all the planes go over and circle the city; we were the last ones in. We were diving on the city, and unfortunately we got caught in an unbelievable snowstorm in the all mountains. We couldn’t operate the radar and were running low on fuel, trying to get back. We lost six of our planes out of 12. We could hear the planes hitting the mountains, the crashes: boom. boom.

     After the war, Kelly attended DePaul, played some professional basketball for the Oshkosh All-Stars, then did what people did back then — went to see his clout about a job.

     George Wells was the committeeman here. My aunt and uncle stood up for his wedding. I didn't know him. George was the one I went over to see. He called and got me sponsored for a job. When I became committeeman, that's who I replaced.

     He worked his way up the ladder in the park district, along the way influencing the lives of thousands of kids, including many who would become famous, from Gene Siskel to Harold Ramis to Wes Pavalon, one of the original owners of the Milwaukee Bucks.

     Wes Pavalon wanted me to be the general manager of the Bucks. Wes bought us a home up there, so that we could come there. I didn't tell anybody at the parks that we were going to go to Milwaukee. I got a call — I was superintendent at Lincoln Park — the mayor's office called. He got me on the phone and said, "I want you to come down, I want to see you." I thought, "What the hell does Mayor Daley want to see me about?" I go down to see the mayor, four o'clock in the afternoon. He says he wants me to run for ward committeeman, and I say, "Oh, Mr. Mayor, I'm not really interested in politics, I want to run sports, coaching and that." After two hours with old blue eyes I come home and my wife says "What did the mayor want?" and I say he wants me to run for ward committeeman because George Wells has cancer. My wife says, "You're going run for committeeman? Well what does that pay?" I says, "It doesn't pay." She says, "What do you mean it doesn't pay?"
     I didn't want to leave the parks. I really didn't want to leave the parks. I loved the sports and the coaching. I couldn't wait to go to work in the morning. I was so enthused. I'd see the kids and coaching. It was a labor of love.

     He rose in the ranks. In 1972, Mike Royko described Kelly as "the ward boss of the 47th, the man who hands out the jobs, and trots out the votes," in a column noting that not only was the executive secretary of the 47th Ward Regular Democratic Organization on the park district payroll, but so were two of Kelly's four children.

     Certainly. When I became superintendent, sure there was patronage. Absolutely. Certainly I helped kids. I have letters from kids, they were terrific workers.

     He managed Richard J. Daley's last campaign and was with him the day he died, Dec. 20, 1976.

     He started reminiscing about the kids, I'm thinking, "Jesus, maybe he's trying to tell me something he don't want to tell me . . ." He says, "C'mon out in the car." I really thought he wanted me to leave the parks and come over [to City Hall]. We were unbelievably close. So I get into the car and he tells Grady to roll the window up. He's sitting there he starts talking about his kids: "If anything ever happens, I don't want nobody to hurt my kids." And I said "Nobody is going to hurt your kids, not if I'm around."He says, "C'mon, take a ride, I got a 2 o'clock appointment." [He] did not tell me it was with the doctor. It was 10 after 1. I said "I can't." He said "why?" I said I have to get that $22 mil for Soldier Field. He said "You're going to get the money." I said, "I don't trust them." I left him.

     On Jane Byrne:

     She was after my ass. She gets elected, next morning she calls my house, my wife answers, she says, "Let me speak to that bum." So I get on the phone, and she says "Eddie, I'm going out to the coast, when I get back, I need you, I want you to stay close to me." I say, "You're the mayor, I'll do whatever you want me to do." The next thing I know she's going to fire me. It's in the paper.
     After, I talked to her. I said, "You crazy son of a bitch." Later she tells me what happened. They were drinking. They were pumping her up I was going to run against her. I had all the votes, killed her. Finally Eddie [Vrdolyak] told her, "Don't screw around with him, he can hurt you." I said, "Don't do this or I'll come out against you personally." She backed off and said put whoever you want in there. I wish I could have helped her, but she never called me. The last few years she trusted me more than anybody. It was a shame. The first two years she was really struggling. The last two years she started to really become a mayor.
     

     But he was accused of lavishing resources on parks in his community and shortchanging parks in black neighborhoods. There was a federal investigation, and Harold Washington fired him.

     I felt really bad, because I know the guy. Harold was pretty sharp. The two guys close to him were saying, "Kelly's against the blacks; Kelly's not done anything for the blacks." We won the suit before a black judge, George Leighton.
     I wasn't forced to any agreement with the government. We weren't forced. We won the suit. We beat them. Before a black judge.
     I put more black kids to work than he ever . . . I told him right to his face. Gene Sawyer wanted me to come back to the parks. He was a friend of mine. I said, "Gene, you'll get killed."
     Harold and I made up four days before he died. He came to slate-making. I was slate-making chairman for 32 years. He came in, gave a hell of a talk, as he got halfway out, he came back up on the platform, he came over said, "Eddie, we've got to be friends, we've got to get together." I said when you want to get together? He said "Monday morning." I said "I'll see you Monday morning." Monday morning never came. But we had made up.

     He grew uncharacteristically silent on the subject of Richard M. Daley but had some choice words about Rahm Emanuel.

     I feel sorry for Rahm, I really do. Rahm had no idea what he was getting into. Rahm's not a Chicago guy. He'll never be a Chicago guy. He's not a street guy. He's trying to be, but he's not. He's a suburbanite. He's not a Chicagoan, he really isn't. He's smart, very smart. I think what he inherited is going to continue on, he's going to find out more problems, money problems and things.

He's baaaaaaaack!

      

     Two weeks, two thousand miles, Chicago to the Atlantic Ocean and back, showing various Southern and Tidewater colleges to the younger boy—more about that later.
     Lot of trash on the roads, particularly ripped apart tire treads. Lot of crosses too: whitewashed wooden memorial markers, some hung with garlands of flowers, emblazoned with names that register for a moment before they flash by and vanish forever. 
     I wondered about the connection, and concluded: slashed local municipal budgets. Less money to repair roads, never mind clean them. The highway around Gary looks like it's reverting to prairie, with goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace crowding the shoulders. They should just stick a sign on it calling it "The Indiana Prairie Reclamation Project" and pretend it's intentional.
    Oh, and the shell of a high rise hotel right next to the City Hall that I've read three times Gary has begun to tear down. It is still up, untouched.           
     Having been on the road for a solid two weeks, pulling into town late Sunday night, news came to me through the great national conduits of broadcast television and USA Today, which is like trying to breathe through a pair of straws.
     Only two big stories happened, knocking Gaza and Ukraine into the memory hole of oblivion, for now. Two American deaths, one famous, one obscure, blotting out all that foreign carnage which, I assume, is still going on.
    Robin Williams, the famous comedian, and Michael Brown, the 18-year-old Missourian. The first died by his own hand, the other, by a police officer's. 
     First Williams, whose suicide sincerely upset people, to judge from the heartfelt tributes and expressions of shock on social media, which thrives on surprise and bathos. We think we know celebrities, we think we own them, and they owe us fidelity. Reading the keening posts on Facebook about Williams, I almost commented, "Hey, save it for someone you actually know." But why stick your hand into that blender? People are entitled to their emotions, I suppose. 
     The media, scrambling to catch up,  gave him what I long ago dubbed "The Full Diana"—well, not quite the black-bordered, special theme music threnody given to the British princess, but a treacly blast of overkill that reached its nadir, at least for what I saw munching Holiday Inn Express breakfasts, when the Today Show flashed photos of Koko, a gorilla whom Robin Williams once met, being sad at news of his death.
    "Wow, that was powerful," a Today Show newsgal chirped, reminding me why I never watch television, and shouldn't even complain about it, breaking my own adage that complaining about the content of television is like criticizing the wallpaper in a brothel: the validity of whatever point you might have is dwarfed by the fact that you shouldn't be there in the first place. TV is crap, you deserve what you get.  If you want to watch models on CNN trying to deliver and report the news, you should take what you get.
    USA Today had the most shocking story on Williams; shocking in that it was in the hotel freebie publication, yet still conveyed something important and factual that I hadn't known before: that the suicide rate is double the homicide rate, greater even than the number of people who die in car accidents.  My respect for USA Today is such that I immediately double-checked the figures, and they held up, a reminder that the things we're scared of—such as being murdered—are often far less of a threat than fears we usually shrug off, like the risk of killing yourself. 
     We get upset over the rare stuff, and ignore the actual problem. 
     Keep that in mind.
     You'd think that would be something every educated person would know. But I'm not embarrassed to say I didn't because I suspect most people don't know either.
     Speaking of fear, and the way the news twists the actual risks in life, enter the Michael Brown story last weekend. An unarmed 18-year-old shot by a cop in Ferguson, a suburb of St. Louis, a tragedy soon eclipsed by the cycle of protest and official overreaction that captivated the nation.  Lots of shots of tear gas and a dozen or two people standing in the street, and no perspective. Was the city burning down? Or one block having a disturbance?
     What is it about a white officer killing a black youth that so captivates everybody? Is it a chance for urban black communities to off-load their frustration over the horrendous toll that black-on-black crime takes onto a villain more acceptable than themselves? Just as everybody would much rather worry about some monster murdering them than the far more likely chance that they'll murder themselves, so black communities seem to prefer focusing on the anomaly of official violence than the daily routine of black-on-black crime, and the media, obviously, prefers chewing over it. Department of Justice figures over a 30-year-period show that 94 percent of black murder victims are killed by other blacks (the figure for whites is 86 percent). Maybe USA Today has a graph on that—the past few nights have been in a Quality Inn, which doesn't carry it.
     If the story is "about" anything truly significant, it seems to be about how legitimate unrest is blown into crisis by hickburg Barney Fifes armed to the teeth with military weaponry.  What do you expect? One of the many unfortunate repercussions of 9/11 is the federal government flooding flyspeck police departments with funds earmarked for tanks and other heavy weapons, SWAT teams and all sorts of superfluous police state gear that, being cops, they are just itching to use.  To a hammer, the saying goes, every problem looks like a nail. 
      Anyway, grim though the news be, it's good to be back home. If the above seems punchy, slapped together by a guy who drove 350 miles up from Covington, Kentucky on donuts, White Castle sliders, coffee and chocolate, well, it was. I'll be more balanced tomorrow, I hope. Thanks for slogging through two weeks of my 2002 kitchen remodeling series. Sorry about that. In retrospect, it was too long, violating another rule of mine: three columns, tops, on a subject, before it's time for move on. The world is too varied and interesting and fast-changing to fixate. 
     Enough. Sunday's New York Times and Sun-Times were waiting on my doorstep, and I think I'll brew some tea and catch up on what else is going on in the world. See you tomorrow, and every day, onward into eternity. 

Hammered and Nailed #14 -- Curtain comes down on kitchen project

   This week marks five months since contractors sealed off our kitchen and began ripping out and remodeling.

     Now, at last, they are finally done—or at least what we consider "done," undeterred by the fact that they are still here, from time to time, and still working.     

     But there are a few tasks ahead—an electrical outlet that doesn't provide electricity, a molding and wall to be painted, a threshold to be sealed—quite a lot, really, yet not enough to counterbalance our fierce, burning, animal passion to have this thing really finished.     

     Just as a hotel will conduct its opening ceremony and let guests check in, even as workers are still tacking down carpet in the lobby, so we're dusting our hands and calling it finito.     

     That said, one task remains: the credit. That might sound odd, but, quiveringly aware of the grunting boorishness of the average suburban homeowner, I have made a point to try to thank people, and this is my chance. If my kitchen were a stage play—and at times it seems that way, something by Ibsen or O'Neill, with lots of shouting and jolting truths uncovered—then the curtain cannot be rung down without the actors, who worked so hard for so long, returning to the stage to take their bows. As with the theater, we'll run them out in reverse order of their centrality to the plot.

     First onto the stage, someone whose appearance was buried in Act One, almost two years ago, is Susan Regan, the Evanston architect we hired to design the kitchen. She offered much insight, such as pointing out we probably didn't want to put the oven where its door would swing open to block the kitchen entrance.

     She curtsies, and gives way to Arne Aabey, our cabinet guy at Home Depot, who handled the numerous cabinet crises—both their fault and ours—with  aplomb. He does one of those quick head dips, and turns away.

     From the left wing comes our appliance guy from Abt—which is a name, it can't be pointed out too many times, not an abbreviation—and from the right, the electrician from Able Electronics. I fumble through the program for their names but give up and return to clapping.     

      They bow, part, take their places stage left and stage right, and are replaced by Jay Sackett, of RocheBelle, the stone company, who babysat us during the excruciating process of picking the three most lush elements of our kitchen—the slate floors, granite countertops and limestone backsplash, handling the transaction with far more tenderness than a person would expect from one's brother-in-law. ("Your brother-in-law is Jay Sackett?" a contractor once said to me, eyes wide in wonder. "He is a god, a god of stone!")     

      Jay is joined by Krasimir Armeykov, of Exotic Marble and Tile, the company that fabricated and installed the stone. The applause swells here, since the stone work was perfect—a word not heard much when the subject is remodeling. Armeykov spent several days painstakingly installing the thousands of little 7/8th-inch square tiles, with the quiet air of a piano tuner. Not one tile was  crooked. He did much to redeem the former Soviet bloc in my eyes, and, after he finished, came over for a solemn handshake that spoke of that elusive quality in this country: pride in workmanship.     

      Then, the stars. Out comes the trio from AMV General Contractors—Lynn Hildred, Marine trim, with his shaved head and his unlit stub of a cigar clenched between his teeth; then Matt O'Connor, tall and smiling, and, of course, the boss, Tom Mulcrone, big and bearded, looking to me vaguely like a Biblical prophet, though unfailingly polite, even when he and my wife were arm-wrestling over the bill. These guys were not only good, but we liked them, which I am told has never happened in the history of home repair.     

      The three join hands ("Eee-yew!" they're saying, squirming in their enormous, well-maintained South Side homes—one of the drawbacks of finding yourself in somebody's fantasy sequence) and bow deeply as the audience begins standing up.     

      The guys turn and fling their arms downstage, in a gesture of welcome, as, beaming, her arms laden with roses, my wife, Edie, sweeps forward—heck, let's put her in a gown and a tiara with a neck full of Harry Winston gems—who oversaw the year of preparation and six months of construction, who listened to my Howard Beale-like rants, and nevertheless pulled it all together into something beautiful.     

      The audience is roaring and  whistling. Edie does one of those dainty Shakespearian flourishes—a very Gwyneth Paltrow gesture—as the ensemble, exchanging glances, bows as one.         

      Someone in the audience cries "author, author!" and, feigning modesty, I allow myself to rise from my seat and jog happily up the aisle where, as the guy who bored you with all this for the past year and, more importantly, paid for the thing, or at least will, in about 20 years, I take my bow. The audience falls to a hush, and I make the obligatory pompous speech:     

      "If a house is a stage where we live our lives, then the kitchen is center stage in our domestic dramas," I begin. "And just as we expect a proper frame--this proscenium arch, these red velvet curtains--in the theater, so it's important to give the scenery of our lives as much pizzazz as we can. I am no better a person now than I was three years ago, when we stood in the ruined, warping hellhole of a kitchen of the house we bought and pondered how in God's name we could fix it. But we did, together. Now, grabbing tea from these maple cabinets, heating the water on this mighty Wolf stove, placing my palms on the cool countertops while it boils, I feel better, finer, and more worthy than I would in a crappy kitchen. And that's what home remodeling is all about."     

     The cheers erupt.     

      "Yes, the play of life is fleeting. Just as my wife and I stood in this kitchen, pitying the aged couple we were buying the home from, so we will someday stand in our own decaying kitchen, 25 years hence, our children grown and fled while we face life in some grim, ammonia-scented senior facility, and be in turn pitied by some smug young couple who eye our kitchen, gagging, and think 'Stainless steel? What kind of people bought appliances made of stainless steel?'"     

     And here, a ripple of laughter.     

    "That is inevitable, and the way of the world. All we can do is enjoy our moments between then and now, moments which will be enhanced by this swell kitchen, and warmed by the memories of the struggle to make it  real, and all the good work of all these professionals around me. Thanks to all of them, especially my wife, and to all of you out there in newspaperland. I hope you have enjoyed yourselves."     

      We step back, the curtain drops, and our remodeling drama comes to an end.

                                   —Originally published May 18, 2003  

Hammered and Nailed #13: Burned in the kitchen

     As always, when I returned from vacation last week, just before our car made the turn onto Walters Avenue, I conjured up the mental image of the smoking rubble of my home--the smoldering foundation stones--trying to brace myself for my worst fears being realized.

      Nope, there it was, roofline intact. Not only that but, trooping inside, we found that the workmen had crept in while we were gone, and installed the kitchen sink, a large, stainless steel bassinet without a divider of any sort (myself, I would have had one of those smaller produce sinks, set into the main sink, because they are useful and look cool. But my wife trumped me and, having scraped my share of big greasy pots into too-small half sinks, I saw her point. But I digress . . .)  

     I turned on the water. It flowed out. My wife and I looked at each other, smiling mightily. Progress, true progress! The pleasure lasted for all of two seconds. My smile froze as the whooshing sound of the water flowing into the sink was joined by another, fainter but unmistakable sound: water dripping, dribbling really, not into the sink, but under it.

     I shut off the water. I opened the cabinet under the sink. Water was cascading down, pooling inside the natural maple cabinet, seeping through pipe holes, gathering on the floor. Already, a puddle began at our feet and snuck under the cabinets. We scurried for towels.

     That sort of one-step-forward, one-step-back is an apt introduction to the start of the fifth month since work commenced on our new kitchen. Without a doubt, progress has been made--the stove, sink, dishwasher and clothes washer and dryer (in the laundry room off the kitchen) are all installed.

     But each step forward is attended with its own crisis--from the sink emptying out onto the floor (a leaky hose, which was repaired), to the stove and its anti-tip device not being installed (we decided to forget about it--our parents lived without anti-tip devices; then again, our parents lived without industrial stoves). The washing machine vibrated like a paint mixer (one of the bolts used to secure the drum for delivery left on) and the dishwasher didn't work at all (a wire jiggled loose).

    Our present, there-but-not-quite-there condition keeps reminding me of one of Zeno's paradoxes, and since this no doubt marks the debut of that ancient Greek mathematician in the Homelife section, I should probably explain:

     Zeno left several puzzles that have occupied philosophers for generations. One is a race between Achilles and a tortoise. To make the race fair, the tortoise, being slower than the mythological hero, is given a head start--say 50 meters, or rods, or whatever they used back then.

     Zeno claimed that Achilles, swift of foot though he may be, will never catch the tortoise, since by the time he reaches where the animal started, it has moved on, albeit sluggishly. And when Achilles reaches that second point, the tortoise will have again moved farther, and so on, the tortoise always remaining a hair, or a fraction of a hair, ahead.

     That's where we are now, kitchenwise. Every day, it seems, the workers finish half the work that remains--trim, knobs, hardware, appliances. The next day--or whenever they come again--they do another half of the remaining work. And then another.

     The amount of work left dwindles, but remains. Progress is constant, yet not only don't I see them finishing anytime soon, I can more easily conjure up a Twilight Zone hell of work continuing forever (perhaps, to continue with the classical allusions, it would be better to evoke, not Zeno's paradox, but Penelope at the loom in the Odyssey, the progress of the day unmade every night or, in the case of the kitchen, progress forward perfectly counterbalanced by new problems uncovered).

      There have been milestones, which I should mention, lest this column become an unrelieved catalogue of woe. We cooked something on the stove--on April 1, history should note. My wife, only the night before, had announced that she would wait, until everything was complete, then stand back in a shimmering moment of cleanliness and perfection, and only then cook something.

     I almost pointed out that I had thought the same thing about the bathroom, then gave it up and joyfully took a shower before it was done. But events proved this for me. The very next morning, our oldest boy expressed a desire for Rocky Mountain toast, and we snapped into action as only people who have not eaten a hot egg in four months can.

     Suddenly I was rummaging through dusty boxes in the basement, searching for a pan, while my wife cleaned away construction debris upstairs. Of course there was a setback. The plastic wrap used to protect the stainless steel of the mighty Wolf could not simply be peeled back. That would be too easy. No, it had been applied by some kind of pernicious cement that could only be removed, it at first seemed, by vigorous rubbing with the pad of my thumb, labor that I'd still be at had not my wife come up with a bottle of stainless steel cleaner.

     Finally, glue banished, we stood around the stove. I reached for one of the massive red knobs, gave a twist, and a burner ka-fwumped into life with a sound like the Hindenburg going up.

    That wasn't the highlight, however. As satisfying as it was to enjoy the first cooked egg served in our home since Pearl Harbor Day, even more--infinitely more--satisfying was to take the plate (an actual plate, itself a rarity, as opposed to paper) befouled with egg yolk and bread crumbs and red splatters of Tabasco sauce, and set it in the sink, then wash away the mess with a gushing river of water, none of which ended up on the kitchen floor.

                                 —Originally published April 13, 2003

Hammered and Nailed #12: Missing safety strip could tip sanity scale

     'Step on the oven door," my wife said. I looked at her, blankly incredulous. We were standing in front of the mighty Wolf stove, in our nearly-but-not-quite-yet-completed kitchen. The stove was brand new, finally in place and hooked up to gas.

     I had just turned one of the deep red knobs and fired up one of the awesome 16,000 BTU burners, which ignited with a dull "whump," like a gas refinery exploding, and burned like a dozen blow torches until my wife pointed out that there was still plastic wrap around the vent hood, and it was beginning to curl up in the heat. I shut the burner off.

     "I'm not stepping on the oven door," I said, regarding her, our faces inches apart, practically in the oven. "I don't care if it's designed to be stepped on. I don't care if it's a trampoline. I'm not stepping on it."

     This discussion originated over something called an "anti-tip device." An anti-tip device is a long metal bar--think of a black steel ruler bent in half along the length. It is designed to screw into the wall and, apparently, keep the oven from tipping over if a full-grown man steps on the door and hops up and down while it is open.

     Now I have never, ever, in 35 years of reading newspapers and magazines and watching TV 24 hours a day, ever heard of anyone, ever, being crushed to death by a stove. My boys are capable of spectacular acts of folly, to be sure, but even they would not bounce on the open oven door and topple it over on themselves. 
     Would they?

     We had just spent a few desultory minutes with the fabled Tom and his crew. The kitchen was nearly done. Several guys whipped out cameras and were taking photos--for a second, I thought it was for insurance purposes, for the lawsuits certain to come. But then I pondered it further and realized they were proud, and wanted to document their work before my family and I got our meat hooks into it and ruined it.

     Now they were gone. My wife had noticed the enormous yellow warning sticker on the stove, advising you to install the anti-tip device before you even dream of using it. Which led her to look for said device and find it, wrapped in plastic, still inside the oven. Overlooked.

      The guys were gone. They wouldn't be back until the stone men had been there, installing our peacock verde bullnose granite countertops. Countertops, it seemed clear to me, that would be wrecked by dragging the stove back out to install the anti-tip device.

     "Maybe," I told her, "you can get the counter guys to install the anti-tip device." She looked at me as if I were an idiot, which perhaps I am.

     "The countertop people aren't going to touch the stove," she said. "I'll be lucky if they speak English. I'll call Tom."

     So a desperate call was placed. I left for work. Somebody has to pay for all this. Eventually my wife called me. The entire thing was moot, she said, because she realized that, if dragging the stove back to put in the anti-tip device had any effect, it would merely scratch the stone and the stainless facing each other, which would be hidden when the stove was shoved back.

     That sounded optimistic to me. I pictured the stove, being moved back by sweating peons, somehow skewing, a corner of the battleship plate metal rising above the counter as they muscled it out, then coming crashing down upon the granite. The stone, quarried in Brazil (or China, or the Moon, or whatever exotic spot it hails from) shattering with a sickening crack. "We're sorry," the stone guys will say, shrugging, "but that was the last slab. You'll have to demolish your entire kitchen a second time and begin again . . ."

     I got a good grip on the Wolf and tipped it--which was rather like trying to tackle a mailbox. But it did move a bit. "Install the device," I said. But as the day progressed, I had second thoughts. We had already vowed that we--unlike our parents--would move our stove and refrigerator back once a year and clean behind them. No more dust logs.

     I called my wife, poised to say, "Tuck the device away--it's insurance we'll pull the stove back in a year. We can install it then."

     "I called Tom and apologized," she said. "I hope you don't mind, but I blamed you, 'My husband is crazed about safety,' I said.'"

     That was a lie, of course, but so unmoored are we, I didn't particularly mind. I was more concerned about the counters--so they were in. This was a week ago Friday.

     "They're in," my wife said.

     "And . . . ." I asked, like a new dad, asking for the gender of the baby.

     A pause.

     "They're very dark," she slowly said.

     "Dark?" I asked.

     "Dark," she said. "Almost black."

     "Black?" I said. "I thought they were supposed to be green."

     "They are green," she said. "But they look black.'

     "Maybe it's too dim," I said. "They'll look green in the light."

     "No," she said. "It's sunny. They're green. But they look black."

     "Bad black?" I asked. "Too black?"

      "No," she said. "They're beautiful. You'll love them."

      I'm not sure if that was a prediction or a command. But as soon as I'm done typing these words, I'm hurrying home to take a look. Probably I will love them because, really, what choice do I have at this point?
               —Originally published March 30, 2003 

Hammered and Nailed #11: The Knob Odyssey

     During our first year in the house, we slept on a mattress on the floor, using cardboard boxes as dressers, while searching for a bedroom set we both liked and could afford. The overall rat's-nest effect was not pretty. "We live like drug addicts," I told my wife, "without the benefit of drugs."

      That phrase returned to me this week, as we marked the third month since workmen arrived and sealed off our kitchen. Things are starting to fall apart. The dining room looks like those rooms in homes where a tornado has taken off one wall--a jumble of boxes and dirty dishes and plastic bread bags and clutter. We've stopped taking things that don't absolutely have to be refrigerated to the refrigerator in the basement, 19 steps away. I don't know what happens to natural peanut butter when it goes bad, but I have a hunch we're going to find out.

     I almost wrote that work has been going on "three months, with no end in sight," but the truth is worse than that. The end is in sight, right there, tantalizingly close, like a platter of food left just out of reach of a prisoner starving to death. The cabinets are in. They look great. The appliances are in, if not quite in their proper spots. The mighty Wolf stove looks fantastic--I've never been so happy to toss money away on extravagance--sitting in the middle of the kitchen, like a god.

     It seemed as if everything was about to wind up. A week, maybe two. Then it didn't. The workmen stopped coming. ("There isn't enough for them to do," my wife said, and I made a little guttural animal noise and swept my hand toward the unfinished kitchen).

     We're waiting--for the granite countertops, which should be ready any day, unless of course they're not. For the frame that was supposed to arrive with the window, but didn't. And for the knobs . . .

     Cabinets need knobs--drawer handles, something. We've known for months that, at some point, we'd have to pick out knobs, but we were in denial. We just didn't do it. Now, having gone looking at knobs, I know why. There are a million kinds of knobs--no, a million billion zillion--made from every material known to man. Wood, stone, ceramic, metals from gold to iron.

   We were in this one store, Designer Kitchen Something on Touhy, that must have had 2,000 knobs on display, and my wife spent so much time looking at them I considered slumping to the floor and dying of exhaustion and hopelessness.

     Knobs also cost a bundle--who knew?--and since we need 37 of them, for our various drawers and cabinets (and that's with deciding that the 14 top glass cabinets won't need knobs, since we're not using them except to display all the expensive stuff we got for our wedding and never use because it's too nice to be pawed over by the likes of us and our friends) every dollar spent on a better knob is multiplied by 37.

     I would have happily bought 37 of the brushed nickel football shapes that Home Depot was offering for $3.99 a crack. But no. The search--through numerous stores, in the suburbs and city--reminded me of the hunt for an engagement ring, when my wife-to-be, in what would enter family lore, managed to visit every single jewelry store in the city of Chicago, examining every single ring set, at least in my perception.

     I had only two convictions, knobwise. First, nothing cute. No tiny forks and spoons as drawer handles, no sunflowers, no teddy bears. Cute, I learned long ago, is what you get sick of before the cashier finishes ringing up the sale. And second, no new colors. My wife was ogling some copper knobs, which were indeed quite pretty, but since nothing else in the kitchen is copper, I put the kibosh on them. Maybe that's a failure of imagination on my part.

     Now that I begin to set it down, the Knob Odyssey is actually too lengthy and involved to present in a column--it would fit better in a Moby-Dick sized novel. Though I feel bad withholding my racing to Home Depot to beg a clerk to unscrew a certain handle from the display so my wife could see it in situ in our kitchen. He did, charging me $50 ransom to guarantee I'd bring it back, a figure that is not really all that Draconian, since the handle itself costs $20 (and $20 x 37 is. . . .)

     There was one bit of progress this past week, which I almost blocked out for reasons that will become clear. The lights were hooked up. Installed by a crew of extremely malodorous Russian electricians, who followed another Slavic crew (apparently, only Russians are allowed in the electrical trades in Chicago) who installed the countless electrical outlets that Northbrook code requires.

     They did the typical fumble-thumbed, fine-for-Smolyensk-but-not-so-hot-here job. The electrical outlets don't all match—they're different types, as if they grabbed whatever was handy. Not a big deal, but when you're pauperizing yourself you tend to notice these things. And worse, to me, the light switches don't toggle the same way. Meaning, that on the pair of switches by the door, toggling one up turns a set of lights ON while toggling the one next to it up turns its lights OFF.

     "They've got to change that," I said to my wife, my eyes watering from all the BO that had been vented into the kitchen like radiation off Chernobyl. I actually worried that we wouldn't be able to eat there—that the smell of armpits that haven't been washed since Gorbachev retired would corrode the stainless steel and seep into the crevices. We'd have to have the place fumigated.

     "You should have smelled the other crew," my wife said, in the flat, 9-yard-stare tone we use now to discuss kitchen matters. "They were worse."

     So there's where we are now. Plagued by body odor and near enough to the end that at first, giddy with optimism, I predicted completion in two weeks. Now I'm thinking more like two months. Maybe.
                                        —Originally published March 16, 2003