Flashback 2002: Cabbie has a story, and you should listen

Library of Congress

     I heard from Jack Clark Monday. He's a writer and former cab driver whom I've known for ... gee ... decades, and I'd asked him to submit something for my periodic "Works in Progress" Saturday feature. 

     Reading his prose sparked a single memory — sitting in the Billy Goat together — and I realized I'd written a column about him, 21 years ago. I thought the column would be a good way to introduce him to you, and prime your for his Saturday piece.

     Jack Clark is a cabdriver. He lives in Lincoln Square, though finds it getting a little hoity-toit for his taste. "They took down the Laundromat and put up a Starbucks," he said, disgust flitting about his face.
     As with most cabbies, Jack is overflowing with stories. No sooner had we settled down at a red-and-white checked table than our setting — the Billy Goat Tavern — inspired a good one. I can't quote it, sadly, as it would be too cruel, even toward a competitor across the street. But take my word for it. The next story, happily, is sharable:
     "The only cab trip I ever took in reverse was to here," Jack said, reflectively, looking about the place. "A lady called from Riccardo's. She got in, and said she wanted to go to the Billy Goat. So I put the cab in reverse and backed around the corner. God, she was embarrassed."
     His mother, Mary Jo Clark, is also filled with stories. Most moms are, I suppose. Her stories were the mythologies of the family, tales both universal and highly particular. Both the classic immigrant arc from Ireland, and the individual eccentricities found in all families: Aunt Nell, who gave her children away; Aunt Maggie, who couldn't read.
     As Mary Jo Clark got older — she's 88 now — her son realized that if he didn't collect her stories, they would die with her. So he dutifully interviewed her and compiled a 160-page manuscript, intended to be passed around the family. A family history.
     But Jack has moxie — another trait common in cabdrivers. It dawned on him that there was more value to his mother's stories than a mere family heirloom.
     "These stories have a lot of history with this town," he said. "Almost all of them take place in the first half of this century. This is a great middle class city, and the book is like a history of the move from blue collar into the middle class."

     So he showed his mother's storybook to an editor at the Chicago Reader. The tales ended up published as a series there and, now, as a book, "On the Home Front," published by Plume.
     The book itself is a marvel of writerly restraint. Jack, for all his opinionated brio, fades into near-invisibility, as his mother narrates, in her own no-nonsense voice, brief episodes. Some are private moments — being 4 years old, getting shiny new shoes and remembering looking down at them as she toed circles in the sawdust on a butcher shop floor.
     Others brush against history— news of Pearl Harbor, or the Dorchester, a World War II troop ship sunk off the coast of Greenland. It was famous for the four chaplains who gave up their life vests to other sailors, but Bill, who was dating Mary Jo's younger sister, wasn't one of the lucky survivors.
     "She was a wreck after that," Clark writes. "She'd read every paper looking for articles. . . . They never found Bill. They found some of the men frozen on rafts. There were some that survived, I believe, but not too many. She watched the newspapers for months."
     The book's strength is that it doesn't stoop to Greatest Generation mythologizing. The Clarks are real people, and Mary Jo doesn't try to make them heroes.
     "All of our people were drafted," she admits. "Nobody joined. I don't know anybody who was a volunteer. Nobody I know. They all had a number. When their number came up, they went."
     The book captures the meekness and daring of being low on the economic pecking order. After Mary Jo's father blows half his pay on a spree, her mother is so angry she storms out and blows the other half on a fancy hat. Another time, teenage Mary Jo brings her birth certificate to the Sears at Homan and Arthington, looking for work. But the woman doing the hiring holds it to the light and sees it has been tampered with. The next day Mary Jo returns, in the same dress, and hands her older sister's birth certificate to the same woman, who hires her. The tough part was reminding all her high school friends working at Sears to call her by her sister's name.
     Like most authors, Jack is trying hard to push sales of his book.
     "It's frustrating not to get a review in a Chicago paper," he said. "It's a Chicago book. A real Chicago book."
     He does have the book in his cab, and is not shy about pressing it on passengers.
     "I had a romance writer in the cab the other day, and she said that publishers expect you to do your own publicity," he told me.
     Toward that end, Jack Clark has a plan. He would like his mother's memoirs to be picked as the next book for "One Book/One Chicago," like "To Kill a Mockingbird" or, recently, "Night."
     "What could be more perfect?" he said. "A Chicago book by a Chicagoan about Chicago. Only I don't know how you submit them. I don't think there's any place you send in nominations."
     He was wrong. I called the Chicago Public Library and not only found they take nominations on their Web site, but that the committee that picks the books is meeting today. So I nominated "On the Home Front," which really is a very moving book and, while I was at it, since I am not without moxie myself, I nominated my own new book, "Don't Give Up the Ship." It's a tough business, and a guy has to do all he can.

         — Originally published in the Sun-Times, May 31, 2002