Birthright citizenship opposition puts the lie to 'illegal'

Haters pretend they have no problem with legal immigrants, when of course they do.

     Thursday morning, when I was having coffee in the kitchen and talking with my sons and daughters-in-law, with regular pauses to make sputtering noises at the baby, I was really, really glad I took the day off. Good for me, bad for you: no column in the Sun-Times today. Though I do have thoughts on one of the nine big stories of the week.   

     Bullies are cowards. They rarely are willing to face consequences for holding and expressing their stunted souls. They rarely come out, anymore, and say, "I need to hurt people to feel good about myself,: or "I have to hate ..." and then add whatever group has stuck in their craw.
     So they speak in code.
     For example, D.E.I., the effort to break the lock on society that white culture had, by including marginalized groups, was turned into a negative buzzword, almost a slur. You aren't against Blacks, or women, or gay people. Oh no! You are anti-DEI — against Blacks, women or gay people being admitted into universities, or included in histories, or partaking in society in almost any way other than subservience. The same trick that turned fighting fascists such as our president  into the scary imaginary group "antifa."
     Consider "illegal." People who hate immigrants often take pains to explain they are against illegal immigration. Ignoring a) their concern for illegality stops at immigrants. It certainly doesn't extend to our president and his administration of corruption and crime.
     And second, that they're really against all immigrants, illegal or not, as illustrated by ICE yanking law-abiding immigrants off the street, people who came here legally and were, in some cases, attending their hearings in courts of law, or trying to. "Illegal" is a figleaf, like calling Jews Communists and international cosmopoles. Ya hate 'em anyway, yer just fishing around for reasons, as a dumb show of rationality. 
     The easiest way to illustrate the lie of waving illegality is birthright citizenship. Children born in this country are citizens, thanks for the 14th amendment, put in place to make sure that children of freed slaves would became citizens, just as their parents were. That's both the law and good social policy. Among the many good effects of birthright citizenships is it prevents the legal limbo that immigrants find themselves in from being extended into perpetuity, as it is in other countries.
     So while the children of non-citizens became citizens, legally, for 160 years by being born in this country, the Donald Trump tried to scrap it anyway by declaring, basically, the law is wrong, he's right. It's been misinterpreted by everybody, he suggests. Good thing he came along...
     Opening arguments were heard Wednesday in the Supreme Court, and shockingly — a word worn down to a nubbin at this point —Trump showed up, in person. The first president ever to do so. I was reminded of when he hovered menacingly behind Hilary Clinton during a presidential debate in 2016. (If only she had spun around and snarled, "Back off creep!" The election might have turned out very differently. Alas, she wasn't the sort. That eight second delay of hers).
      Anyway, Trump's presence did not have its desired effect. The justices picked apart the government's argument that what worked for the children of slaves somehow doesn't work for the children of immigrants. Another what I consider "ruby slipper moment" with Trump. So many people submit to him, out of a mix of misguided self-promotion, fear, star-struck wonder, whatever. Only later do they find the advantage momentary, the harm permanent, as they are chewed up and spat out, the Attorney General, Pam Bondi, being the latest to take the Walk of Shame. They could have refused. The power was in their hands all along. 
     Expect the ruling in June. But every legal mind worthy of the term is certain Trump will lose because the notion is ludicrous, the Constitution, clear. Trump is losing a lot in courts of law, lately. Which is good and bad. Good because every ounce of power taken from him is returned to the American people, where it belongs. And bad because a beast is most dangerous when it is wounded.

Passover 2026 — remembering one difficult time in another difficult time

     This ran in the paper Wednesday, while here I deployed the mandatory April Fool's post which, I'm pleased to report, did catch some readers napping. Running a day late — or a year, or 10 — alas won't undercut the topicality of today's column.

     Passover and April Fool's. On the same day! The possibilities are endless. I feel compelled to greet our guests at Wednesday night's Seder with a hearty, "Welcome! Let's eat!"
     Not laughing? As with all jokes, it's only funny if you know the set-up: Seder means "order" in Hebrew, and the meal only comes after a protracted span of praying and storytelling. Some years we don't eat until 9 p.m.
     Makes no sense, right? Then you're probably not Jewish, like 97.5% of Americans. Jews are a shrinking shard. Rather than control the world, we can't even control our own children, who wander off, as kids will.
     My wife, in her infinite wisdom, introduced a new Seder tradition: preliminary soup. We say a few throat-clearing prayers, and then her excellent, cannonball-dense, matzo ball soup is served, to fortify participants for the hour or two until the festive meal proper begins, the exact time being a tug-of-war between grey-bearded traditionalists and the younger generation, who want to eat and race back to their real lives.
     I suppose the strictly religious might view early broth as the kind of canonical slippage that leads to Christmas trees and, eventually, even fewer Jews. I consider it kindness toward hungry relatives who have consented — heck, some traveled long distances — to endure this dusty rigmarole in return for a hearty meal, eventually, and all the wine they can hold.
     My late colleague Roger Ebert once said that his entire political view can be summed up by "kindness." I'd like to extend that to religious orientation — if your religion doesn't prompt you to be kind, first and foremost, then it's just another tool for oppression, like the others. All religions are the same in that regard, or as I've said before: religion is a hammer: you can use it to build a house, or to hit somebody in the head. Same hammer.
     Focusing on cosmetic differences seems so strange to me. "Oh, you've got an Estwing? Well, MY hammer is a Stanley. I believe the wooden handle absorbs shock better..."
     Thus fortified, antisemitism rolls off me. All bigotry is ignorance married to fear. How much mental energy should be spent getting upset that the person viewing life through a keyhole caught sight of you? Someone who has lapped up the vile poison trickling through gutters for a thousand years now wants to upchuck a bit on my shoes. How hurt am I supposed to be? "Oh boo, frickin' hoo. The knee-jerk hater who bought a load of idiotic bilge doesn't like me..."
     Maybe I'm hardened, as a newspaper columnist who hears from haters daily. I don't want to underestimate the scary turn the country has taken after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, and the current war in Iran, in lockstep with our good buddy, Israel. The latest twist on antisemitism — that Israel is a monstrous evil that should have never existed in the first place and must be stamped out by force — is certainly frightening, for its popularity, though it's really just a new set of steps to a very old dance, the classic Jews Don't Belong Here Polka. Don't know the words? You can hum along: "Life ... would be great ... but we've got these Jews here ... infesting ... INSERT LOCATION ... where they don't belong ... and we'd all ... be so much happier... if only they'd go live in ... INSERT SOME SPOT FAR AWAY.... " 

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Dante on EGD: 100 Days, 100 Cantos

 

               Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
               mi ritovai per una selva oscura
               che la diritta via era smarrita.

    Lately, with work becoming more and more demanding ... well, not really. Just the same three columns a week, though it feels harder. Anyway, with the news so grim... No, that isn't it. As grim as usual. Maybe it's just the author, so old and tired. That sounds more on point. Plus having to then migrate the columns here, and also think of something to dispatch the remaining four days, the whole process began to seem an intolerable burden, for me, and probably you too.

     So I've been thinking, lately, "How can I perk up EGD? Make it more, you know, fun." For me and, it would follow, you as well. Happy host, happy guest.

     Which led me, as always, back to Dante. As longtime readers know, I am a fan of the dour Florentine, and drop references to his epic Commedia now and then. I know how much readers love him. 

     Okay, maybe not. I know what you're thinking: what's fun about Dante? C'mon, his famous book (he does have others) is Commedia — "The Comedy." Something that begins in crisis but ends happily. (And, to be thorough, because he wrote it in Italian, instead of Latin, which at the time was seen as truckling to the masses. It can be argued that Dante invented modern Italian).

     Mostly now and then. A little Dante, I assumed, goes a long way.

     But what if I'm mistaken? It occurred to me: why limit myself? Self-restraint is so 2016. It's bad enough the Sun-Times expects me to march grimly from topic to topic, never spending much time on anything, assembling 795 words on some ephemeral news development that came out of nowhere and is forgotten just as quickly. Then 48 hours later, do it again, turning a spotlight on a puff of fluff.

     What if, instead of doing that, I settled in and really deep dived into something significant, timeless and eternal? Something that has held the thinking world in rapt attention for more than 700 years. Something like the Commedia. The perfect subject for a blog, when I am unconstrained by space considerations, or the need to either generate money or hold readers' interest. It's my hobby blog — shouldn't I be able to do as I please? To have fun?

     The Commedia offers so much. Demons and angels. Popes and Muslims. Satan and God. As you should know, it takes place over 100 cantos — chapters, basically, from cantus, Latin for "song" —  over three books. Inferno — the most famous one, with the pitchfork-wielding devils  — Purgatorio, or Purgatory's mountain, no font of fascination, true, but not without its merits. And Paradiso, aka heaven. Lots of light and swirling glory.

     Why not devote a day to each canto? Sure, news and current events and whatever piffle I put in the paper will be overlooked. But think of what is to be gained. By a careful, line-by-line analysis of the text, including the original Italian, as seen above, the famous opening lines.

     What could be more enjoyable Nothing that I can think of, that's for sure. So let's get to it.

     Nel mezzo del camnin — poet Robert Pinsky translates that as "Midway on our life's journey." Me, I would be more literal — "In the middle of the journey of our life." That more closely tracks the original. (Someday I have to assemble clunky translations of Dante, staring with Henry Francis Cary's, "In the midway of this our mortal life," though "midway" does allude to the carnival aspect of existence).

     Be honest. That "our" sticks out for you, in each translation, does it not? Me too — I was hoping you would notice. Is Dante being grandiose? One one hand, that would suit him. Full of himself, he is. Speaking in the first person plural does drip of regality, Queen Victoria's "We are not amused."

     Particularly when Dante immediately shifts into first person: "I found myself in a dark woods."

     Why the inconsistency? A mere mistake? Wouldn't a good copy editor leap to correct that? Impose parallelism. What are we to make of that shift? Luckily, like Dante, we are not alone (sigh, because he's soon joined by Virgil, who acts as his guide. One way of viewing the Commedia, perhaps unique to me, is as the original buddy adventure). 

By Gustave Dore

     Francesco Mazzoni's devotes 12, count 'em, 12 pages to analyzing this very couplet, in his essential Saggio di un nuovo commento alla “Divina Commedia”: “Inferno” –Canti I-III (Sansoni, 1967). 

     Summarizing mightily, Mazzoni says the shift is done to direct the reader from a universal human condition — feeling lost in middle age — to a specific personal experience of being dragged through hell by a dead Roman poet.

    Prue Shaw, whose new book I wrote about recently, puts it well: "But it is our life as well as his (nostra vita); we are implicated in the story. This double focus is present from the beginning. Dante stands for all of us, as a representative of humanity, an everyman figure."
     Dante is us. Okay, me anyway. And, admit it, probably you too. Sure, we don't all have our property confiscated while being banished form our hometowns, by the pope no less, after seeing the love of our lives marry someone else and then die at 24. But we all have our disappointments. 

     Dante returns to this shift later — in the opening Canto of Paradiso, for instance, when he says, basically, he's not smart enough to convey what he's seen: nostro intelletto si profonda tanto,/che dietro la memoria non può ire. or "our intellect sinks into an abyss /so deep that memory fails to follow it" before shifting back to the first person. The idea of sinking into an abyss is very 2026, is it not? Another reason I love Dante — always relevant. 

     But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Not jumping ahead is going to be a challenge. Patience. Returning to the opening tercet. To be fair, since I've previously commented on the general unreadability of John Took's Dante, I feel duty-bound to observe that he agrees with Shaw, assembling a moment of coherence when he points out, "Dante registers the journeying character of his own humanity and, as the understands it, the journeying character of humanity as a whole." Given the slim odds of many readers struggling over the 322 pages Took needed to get to this point, I feel I'm doing a service by sharing this with you now.

     Since some of you, hard as it may be to believe, are perhaps new to the Commedia, I should probably mention the terza rima rhyme scheme, which Dante invented, being a fan of rhyme, calling it concatenatio pulcra — "beautiful linkage."  The cantos are divided into stanzas of three lines — each line having 11 syllables, though only of course in the original Italian. 

     The first and third lines — ending vita and smaritta — rhyme, obviously, while the end of the second line, oscura, introduces a new final syllable that rhymes with the opening line of the second stanza, Ahi quanto a dir qual era e cosa dura," which in turn rhymes with the end of the third line, paura, while the second line introduces a new sound, forte, which links to the opening line of the third verse, morte. 

    Locking the whole thing together and giving it strong propulsive force.  Think ABA, BCB, CDC, and so on, for you diagramming at home.

    While we're giving backstory, I need to elaborate on mezzo — middle. The Commedia, while fiction, (it might seem odd to point this out, but otherwise you find yourself slipping into thinking that Dante actually did go to hell and report back what he found there) takes place over a specific period of time, Easter Week, 1300. So Dante, born around June, 1265 (he doesn't specify a day, but does say he's a Gemini, as am I, which I find very cool) was 35 years old, meaning that if we take the biblical lifespan of three score and 10, he was precisely halfway through his life (precision, as we will see, being a central value in Dante's writing). 

     Looking ahead, the opening line is the first of 575 biblical citations that Peter S. Hawkins counts in the Commedia.  Or as Hawkins explains:

    "A case in point is the very first line of the Commedia, coming immediately before Dante tells the reader of his terrifying experience in the dark wood and of his resolve to recall it, 'because of the good that I found there'. . . he also echoes King Hezekiah in Isaiah 38:10, whose song of thanksgiving is written down in the prophet's book to commemorate a rescue from mortal illness: 'I said: in the middle of my days I shall go to the gates of hell'."

    Indeed, as Hawkins continues: "the opening line of the Commedia reveals in miniature the biblical matrix of Dante's imagination. He assumes the Psalm's estimation of our lifespan, draws not only upon a single sentence, but upon a narrative moment in the book of Isaiah, and then adapts for his own purposes an ancient exegetical tradition on what it means to face Hell in the middle of one's days."

    Moving on to the second line, mi ritovai per una selva oscura, which Pinsky translates as, "I found myself/In dark woods." Charles Ross has it, "I found myself within a shadowed forest," which makes it seem like he's wandered into the Cook County Forest Preserve. (Cary's must be remembered; there is a mesmeric power to a bad translation: "I found me in a gloomy wood astray.").    

      Much thought has been expended on those trees.

     "Here the forest precedes the journey through Hell," Charles Ross and Allen Mandelbaum write in Lectura Dantis. "It is the dark wood of life on earth when lived in sin; it is Dante's interior wood; and it is the wood of political darkness, of Florence, of Italy, of papal corruption, of the absences of imperial authority."

     Reminding us that it isn't really a forest at all. The trees are, for want of a better word, notional.

     "We find ourselves in a forest that is not a forest, we see a hill that is not a hill, we look up toward a sun that is not a sun." Benedetto Croce writes in his La poesia di Dante (Bari: 1920).

     Hmmm ... it occurs to me, just now, that we've been going at this for quite a while, and not only have we not dispatched Canto 1, as planned, but we've only discussed the first line and started in on the second. There are 134 more to go, not to forget the 14,097 lines waiting beyond Canto 1 in the rest of  the Commedia. 

     Plus I'm not done with everything I have to say about that second line — I'm looking at nine more pages of notes.

     At this pace, well ... okay, let's be frank: 100 days are not going to do it. We'll try to be briefer tomorrow when we pick up with line four, Ahi quanto a dir qual era e cost dura. 

    Daunting? Not at all. As the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam writes, "Above all, the reading of Dante is an endless labor, for the more we succeed, the further we are from our goal. If the first reading brings on only shortness of breath and healthy fatigue, then equip yourself for subsequent readings with a pair of indestructible Swiss hobnailed boots. In all seriousness the question arises: how many shoe soles, how many oxhide soles, how many sandals did Alighieri wear out during the course of his poetic work, wandering the goat paths of Italy."  

     In that spirit, strap on your stoutest footwear, your Redwing boots, lace 'em up good and tight, and let's join Dante wandering around the back alleys of Ravenna. Thank you for embarking upon this adventure with me, this massive undertaking. I'd feel stupid doing it alone, and knowing that my EGD readership is right there with me, eagerly awaiting each new installment, is a great comfort. Truly, I'm blessed that you would agree to accompany me on such a massive undertaking. I'm sure when we are finished, some months or, heck, to be honest, years from now, we will find the effort well worth it.  Until then: onward!

     Oh, and to encourage brevity, I've kept my footnotes and sources separate, but if you want to read them — only another six pages — you can find them here. 

Tomorrow: Lines 4, 5 and 6.  

     

Swinging into spring

Truth in advertising — the Waterlily Tulip, a central Asian flower is known as being first to bloom in the spring and, good to its word, was the only tulip we noticed on display at the Botanic Garden. 

     Monday was a fine day — 80 degrees at O'Hare, a record for March 30 in Chicago, with hardly a cloud in the sky. I did not shuck my responsibilities, initially. In the morning, I made progress on the advance obituary of an alderman who was much more impressed with himself than history will be. A common enough failing and I tried to treat him with a certain mortuary tenderness. Plus, worked out a few of the knots in Wednesday's column.
     But I didn't let work absorb my entire day. That would have been tragic. By noon I was heading to the park with a young lady of my acquaintance, accompanied by her parents, stopping first at Little Louie's for a char dog and a salad, eaten al fresco at a picnic table next to the playground, where dessert was pushing my houseguest on the baby swing, a new passion of hers, discovered yesterday. 
     Well, dessert was really a raspberry chocolate chip cone from Graeter's. But it wasn't as sweet as the swing time was. Then we walked toward the Basin.
      Later in the day, we all headed to the Chicago Botanic Garden which, despite the fine weather, was not particularly crowded. My son met a school friend, and just listening to their conversation was a treat. Smart kids. 
     When evening came, and I had to think about today's post, I realized I had utterly nothing to say, about the political situation or anything else. I was pleased how easily it was all shucked. Not that it isn't important; it is. It just wasn't important today. As scary as the times are, it is good to be able to set them aside for a memorable afternoon. A luxury achieved by not being afraid of anyone or anything, and having resources and family and living in a good place. None of them were accidental, or even easy. None are permanent. But they're all here now, for a time, and I'm glad to be able to appreciate them while they are. What's the Crosby, Stills & Nash  lyric? "It was a long time coming; it'll be a long time gone." Tuesday morning I'll have to get that column into final form and off to the public, like meat tossed into a river of piranha. 

     But that isn't so bad either. Monday's column on immigration drew a ton of feedback. I appreciated the praise, and gave the boggled outrage the attention it was due, which was far less consideration than I devoted to my job as a kiddie swing attendant. A man needs to have his priorities in order.
     

There is no debate over the ongoing abuse of immigrants

"The Last Yankee," 1888

     Journalism is failing America.
     At least mainstream media, newspapers and TV networks and such, the remnant still chugging away.
     What's our job? To report the news, to convey what’s happening.
     And what do we do? Describe fantasies, ghosts, processes that aren’t occurring.
     Consider the recent murder of Loyola student Sheridan Gorman, out with a group of friends at a beach in Rogers Park when approached by a masked man, shot in the head and killed.
     That was all too real.
     But the moment the suspect was identified as a Venezuelan immigrant, the MAGA outrage machine started to whir. Led by President Donald Trump, who called him “an animal.” The murder was waved about as confirmation. Because one member of a minority group always represents everybody in that group. While white folks, naturally, are individuals, each unique in his or her own way, hardly responsible for their own actions, never mind stand-ins for anybody else.
     And how did the media present this deceptive carnival? This acrobatic leap from one crime on the North Side of Chicago, one victim and one suspect, to the entire country and all immigrants everywhere? 

   A conversation. An argument. The Sun-Times called it “a national immigration debate.”
     There is no conversation. No argument. Nobody is debating.
     What is going on is dehumanization. The officially designated pariah group — nowadays, immigrants — is being stained with false rationales to justify their abuse: they are violent; they are diseased, they don't belong. If these rationals are contradictory — they are lazy and take all the good jobs — that doesn't matter. In 1930s, the Jews were both dirty vermin crouched in the shadows and jewel-encrusted millionaires secretly running the world. Few Germans seemed bothered by the contradiction.
     The nation is busily building ... let's call them “detention camps” ... for this despised group. Billions are being spent ramping up a paramilitary force to snatch people off the street. Don’t be fooled by the hesitation after Minneapolis. A temporary setback. The Democrats trying to get ICE under control is what the entire airport nightmare is about. Air travel in the United States is being throttled so we can deport more immigrants. A reminder that racism blows back on the racist. Trying to hurt others, they hurt themselves. Ask the Germans.
     Why doesn't the media hit this point harder? Our error comes from a 7th grade civics class, how-a-bill-becomes-a-law mindset. It's our job to list the excuses given, noting, eventually, how inaccurate they are.

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Chicago History Museum, 2018

Mesmee-rized

 

  
     Is AI writing advertising now too? I saw the above over Wordle, and instantly thought that, then decided, no, it sounds more like a translation issue.
     Which actually was fairly perceptive, and a reminder that social media means it is you and whatever native intelligence you've managed to develop and retain against the world. Spoiler alert: the world is winning. Then again, it usually does.
     Click on "LEARN MORE" you go to an enormous page, with many pictures of the shoe contorting, and a countdown timer urging you to buy now ("Hurry up!" is what they actually say) while this fabulous sale is going on.
     "Buy now!" is always a good indication that you should stop, think and most likely buy never.
     What they don't say is the name of the shoe — well, eventually, yes, way down the page, in a photo caption: Mesmee. Looking for an actual company, I found a review page with remarks like this:
     "0 Star Rating For Cheap China Crap Falsely Advertised As MADE IN USA!"
     "Complete rip-off and "got cheated" and "9 weeks and no shoes. 2 emails no response. these 
people are crooks of the worst ilk. do not order a thing from them." So we have consensus. The message is: always know what you're buying and who you are buying from. Cave canem.
     Oh wait. That's "beware of dog." I mean Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware.
Since I never criticize someone's headline without offering an improvement, even a paltry scam, let's throw "Walking shoes for elderly with poor balance" on the cutting board and see what we can do with it.
     Hmmm...how about "Stable shoes for striding seniors"? Or "You won't wobble walking in these floor-grippers." Or "Shoes for walking, not falling."
     A reminder that the problem with artificial intelligence is that it's heavy on the former and light on the latter.

Works in progress: Jack Clark on drugs

Sign, San Ignacio, Belize.

     Turns out Jack Clark and I have more in common than I thought. Back in the day, we both took a dim view of drugs. He favored beer. To me, beer was a temperance beverage; make mine Jack-on-the-rocks. That was enough.

     Like him, my stumbling block was that if I bought drugs, then I'd be a person buying drugs, and that struck me as loathsome. So while I'd partake for free, now and then, I didn't particularly like the effects, and never sought it out. Thank heaven for small favors.

     Anyway, I'm taking up space that should go to EGD's favorite pinch hitter, with a memory of the altered life. Take it away, Jack:

     I’m probably one of the last guys who should be writing about cocaine. I tried it once — or who knows? Maybe two or three times. But the night of the Super Bowl is the only time that stays in memory, that night, and the morning after.
     When cocaine came on the scene at the Lincoln Park bar where I was hanging out in the ‘70s, I’d already heard how expensive it was, so I was too cheap to even give it a try. What if I ended up liking it? I was a domestic beer drinker. That was my price level. Every so often, I’d splurge and get a bourbon on the rocks. I would never do shots of anything. I could go out with $20, drink the night away, feed the jukebox, leave a reasonable tip, flag a taxi, and still have enough left to pick up a morning newspaper on the way home.
     When people would say, “You want to take a walk around the block?” That was shorthand for Let’s go smoke a joint. I usually shook my head unless it was a pretty girl, and then I’d take the walk just to keep her company. I wouldn’t partake or at least not much. I liked that simple beer buzz so much better.
     The first time someone invited me to meet them in the washroom, I didn’t get it at all.
     My friend must have seen my confused look. He opened his hand to show me the vial in his palm. “A little blow?” he said.
     “Thanks,” I said. “But no.”
     Before long, I seemed to be in the minority. At least, in this particular bar. On my birthday in 1979, Harry invited me to the washroom. I shook my head. “I don’t do that stuff.”
     “Yeah. But it’s your birthday.”
     A few weeks later on New Year’s Day, he tried again. “I already told you, I don’t do that stuff,” I said.
     “But it’s the ‘80s now,” he said and predicted the flavor of the new era.
     Some call the ‘80s the decade of decadence but where I hung out it was definitely the cocaine decade. It started with the thought that this was not an addictive drug and ended with the realization that if you used it frequently, when you stopped, you found yourself depressed for no apparent reason.
     I believe, given enough time and a large enough grant, I could figure out the missing link.
     Before the ‘80s were over, Harry had lost his business, home, and marriage. But he never lost his sense of humor. When I reminded him about what he’d said on the first day of the decade, he didn’t remember saying it, but he was proud of himself and found it quite amusing.
     I was in my own little bubble half the time and didn’t really pay much attention to what was going on around me. I’d stopped listening to the radio around the time of Grand Funk Railroad. But I didn’t mind pumping quarters into the jukebox and getting lost in the music. Three plays for a quarter or seven for a half dollar. That seemed pretty reasonable compared to what some of my friends were spending to keep themselves amused.
     A good bar is like a decent church. It needs music, lighting, comfortable seats, an interesting congregation, and something to drink. Oh, and a religion, of course. I decided that my druggy friends thought they were outlaws. That was their religion. All that sneaking around, whispering, money changing hands or being tightly rolled, those were their rites.
     But what was I doing there? That’s probably a question that anyone who’s spent too much time in a saloon asks.
     It was a comfortable room. Everyone looks better under amber bar lights. The jukebox was great. I don’t remember most of the songs anymore and they changed records regularly, which is one sign of a good box. It was the first place I ever heard Merle Haggard’s "Rambling Fever." The B side was his great rendition of "When My Blue Moon Turns to Gold Again.' Mink DeVille's, "Just to Walk That Little Girl Home," was another favorite. The opening line: “It’s closing time in this nowhere café.”
     It’s a great song but it doesn’t explain what I was doing in a bar where I was becoming an outsider. I was there for the moments when it all came together, the light and the music. The buzz. If you could just hold it there, right there, you might finally understand something important. This feels so good, you think. This is how it should always be. I almost feel normal.
     It never holds, of course. The room tilts, the lights get too bright, someone’s playing mediocre songs on the jukebox, it all slips away, and you’re back to being you.
     The mix of clientele at the bar reminded me of the West Side block where I’d grown up. There were doctors, lawyers, truck drivers, cops, mechanics, salesmen, waiters and waitresses, carpenters, janitors, and everything in between. A wannabe writer, moving furniture to pay the bills, fit right in. People talked about books, music, politics, anything you could think of. There were always new, interesting people stopping by.
     As the years went on, much of that diversity went away and it became, more and more, a cocaine bar. Some of the old regulars disappeared, others rarely came in. The level of the conversations dropped considerably (along with my IQ, I’ve always figured). Often, they weren’t conversations at all but a series of monologues. It was no longer a very inviting place for new people. "What’s he doing here?" was the typical feeling. Is he a narc?
     I didn’t do cocaine but I found myself being suspicious of strangers all the same. It was no longer such a comfortable place.
     One night one of my non-druggy friends invited me to the washroom. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re buying that stuff now.” I’d always thought he was a fairly intelligent guy.
     “You know, if you don’t buy now and then,” he’d said, in a very serious tone, and changed my opinion with a single sentence, “people stop inviting you in.”
     I started to expand my horizons. But if I was out and about, I’d sometimes try to make it to my old home for one last drink at closing time. One bartender liked to joke that she laid out milk and cookies for me.
     One year, I came in on Super Bowl night. I hadn’t seen the game or heard the score. “Who won the Super Bowl?” I asked.
      “Bruce and Gary,” the milk-and-cookies bartender said. These were two regulars. (I’ve changed names here to protect the living and the dead.)
     “No really?” I said.
     “Really,” she said. “Hang around. They’ll be back.”
     It wasn’t long before they were back with a cast of thousands. Well, maybe it was only twenty. I finally found out the answer to my question. Bruce and Gary had won the Super Bowl. They’d gone to some high-end bar for a big-time Super Bowl party. They’d split a $1,000 square, putting up $500 each. With 100 squares on the grid that meant the total pool was $100,000. I don’t remember how the payout worked but they’d ended up winning two of the four quarters and walked away with something like $37,000 and a TV.
     So I joined the hangers-on as we went from one late-night bar to another. I refused all invitations to the toilet but was happy to take free drinks when they were offered.
     We eventually ended up in someone’s living room, all sitting around a huge coffee table with a pile of cocaine in the middle. To me, it looked like someone had upended a 2-pound bag of flour.
      Oh, what the hell? I thought. This was a special occasion, which meant I wouldn’t have to feel guilty for never offering them some of mine.
     At dawn, there weren’t that many of us left, so I finally got to do a bit of talking. But every time I said something, a guy I didn’t know very well said, “That’s a given, Jack.”
     I’d always heard that cocaine made you feel smart. It was having the opposite effect on me.
     After a while, I’d had enough, not of the cocaine but of that guy. I left the survivors still around the coffee table. The sun had been up for a while when I made the long walk home. It was a pleasant spring-like morning and all the birds were singing the same damn song: “That’s a given, Jack. That’s a given.”
     Later, as I recounted the night to a friend, I said I’d never felt so stupid.
     “Oh, you idiot, don’t pay any attention to him,” she’d said. “He says that to everyone.”
      I probably should have thanked him. If nothing else, it had cured me of any further interest in the drug. All these years later, I don’t remember his name or even what he looked like. But I still hear those birds now and then.