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| Jane Byrne Interchange |
All honors have teeth. Reach out to accept a plaudit, and it bites you. That’s my experience, anyway. The boring dinner. The stumble to the podium. The plaque.
But an infamous highway interchange? That has to be a league of dubious tribute all its own.
I can’t be the only one who, unfortunate enough to be trapped in the tangle once called “The Spaghetti Bowl,” thinks that deciding to name the crawling knot of sclerotic cars upon concrete after Jane Byrne was some kind of grim joke. The mayoral ghost of Richie Daley, exacting his revenge.
Even though it’s kind of my fault.
It was nine years ago that I wrote an open letter to Byrne on what I thought was her 80th birthday. I didn’t realize she secretly shaved a year off her age, a reminder that she faced the strong headwind of a society that likes its women young, pretty and not in positions of power.
That really hasn’t changed much. Donald Trump loved to say that the only reason Hillary Clinton was able to run against him in 2016 was because she was a woman, when the truth is 180 degrees opposite. The only reason a highly qualified, smart and savvy former secretary of state nevertheless lost to the most unfit individual to ever run for the presidency is because she is a woman. A mediocre man would have whupped him, as Joe Biden illustrated.
The column got the wheels turning to eventually extend small public honors: a tiny park, a knot of congestion. She died in 2014, but her 90th birthday would have been Wednesday, May 24, and reason to consider her anew. The Byrne legacy lives on, and not just in the looping connections between I-90, I-94, I-290 and Ida B. Wells Drive.
Wells Drive. Another odd distinction. Only in Chicago could the powers-that-be create a situation where there would be a corner of Wells and Wells. Fitting in a city where a major thoroughfare, Wacker Drive, goes north, south, east and west.
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Every other day when I hit click here to read more as soon as I do the ST demands my email to show the rest of EGD and in return I will get the morning wrapup. Each time I do and the rest shows up but the wrapup never does.
ReplyDeleteThank you. That's the kind of left-handed compliment of Ol' Joe I can get behind.
ReplyDeleteNot such a mediocre man, and "a terrific president", as Jann Wenner said at the recent party. A lot worse was said about Harry Truman. Both Harry and Joe were ordinary men who dealt with extraordinary circumstances and extremely trying times. Common names...uncommon men.
DeleteYou wrote: "Only in Chicago could the powers-that-be create a situation where there would be a corner of Wells and Wells. Fitting in a city where a major thoroughfare, Wacker Drive, goes north, south, east and west."
ReplyDeleteAnd left off that one street, Elston Ave. Starts & ends at the same street, Milwaukee Ave & for some insane reason, the city calls Bowmanville Ave., a North street, even though it goes more to the West, than to the North/South direction!
As a former cab driver, I can tell you, "Beware of any street coming off of Elston or Milwaukee. God only know what its nominal and what its real directions are." A favored aunt of mine lived on Keokuk or some such street and every time I left her house and got back to Milwaukee Avenue, I had to check my compass to figure out which way to turn to go North or South.
Deletejohn
Those K streets in between Pulaski and Elston are a nightmare. They are set at a 45 degree angle and interconnect weirdly. Never take Wilson Ave through taht section. God know where you will end up.
Delete...and there are three distinct intersections of Broadway & Sheridan...
ReplyDeleteI can assure you that Chicago is not the only place with baffling intersections such as Wells and Wells. Way back in the pre-Internet, pre-GPS days, I was blundering around Minneapolis one foggy night in my rental Olds Cutlass, trying to navigate using only a paper map and a little combination digital clock and floating-ball compass that I had bought on a whim before my flight.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't drive and read the map at the same time, and the floating-ball compass had been stuck on East ever since I unpacked it after its first plane trip, so I finally pulled over to read street signs. I found myself at the intersection of Fifth and 5th, in a grid of streets that was not only numbered along both axes (technically, Avenues in one direction crossed by Streets in the other), but also rotated roughly 30° off of North-South, so that every street was a diagonal. I remember it as the one time in my life when I could find my exact location on the map, but still have no idea which way to go after that.
Minnehapless can be extremely confusing and disorienting. There are two separate sets of numbered streets and avenues, on its north side and its south side. Plus avenues that are laid out alphabetically...Aldrich, Bryant, and so on. Not just ONE set of A-Z avenues, but THREE consecutive sets, from east to west...and they even extend out into the western suburbs.
DeleteAnd then there are streets that veer and change their names, and some of them also have to accommodate the numerous lakes that lie within the city limits. Chicago, by comparison, is a breeze. My kid sister has lived up there for fifty years now. I still get lost. Good thing she lives near one of the street names that begin with an X.
Also an East North Water St. and an East South Water St.
ReplyDeleteWould you like this honor to refuse?
ReplyDeleteI'd do loop-de-loops to have my name on a highway sign while still alive.