Saturday guest: Bob Katzman Didn’t Disappear Forever

      Saturdays are a day to sleep late, kick back, and let the gears of modern life grind without you for a few hours. As someone who works continually, I like to offer the Saturday slot of EGD to worthy writers who cross my path. Today we feature an essay from a Chicago stalwart who will be known to many of you, Bob Katzman:

     I am that Chicago guy from long ago. Your parents or grandparents knew about me, if you are under forty.
     Maybe if you are old, you may remember my original 4x4 foot wooden Bob’s Newsstand which opened in Hyde Park in 1965 when I was 15, to pay my tuition at The University of Chicago Lab School.
     I ran away from a terrifying, violent home at 14 and had to rebuild my life somehow.

"You weren't kidnapped, were you?" I 
I asked after Bob sent this photo. He 
was illustrating how to fold a paper.

     I grabbed the chance to open a newsstand. I was a good enough carpenter to build it, using tools inherited from my Byelorussian-Jewish grandfather Jacob, who was a carpenter in Chicago.
     That tiny shack eventually became an international newsstand, with 3,000 world periodicals, famed across America with five stores across Chicago. One of the five was that now-vanished newsstand at Randolph and Michigan atop the IC steps, on the north side of the old Chicago Public Library, now a landmark.
     The five stores employed 55 employees at its brief peak, and as Fate turned on me, the stores closed one after another, with the original Bob’s in Hyde Park being the last to go. Turning out the lights in that place was for me the beginning of two years of damning unemployment. No one would hire a former entrepreneur. Many told me, I would leave them the minute I had “two nickels to rub together.” My former fame turned into an anvil.
     I got two jobs, regular jobs – horrible jobs with dress requirements, the worst being after meeting with a head-hunter whose blind ad I’d responded to, and I was hired to manage, of all things, a limousine company.
     But at the end of my tortured year there, through an old friend, I was hired, then bought the old Europa Bookstore at Clark & Belmont. It was a dirty, shabby place; a dimly lit store carrying cheaply printed paperbacks from Europe in five languages. But after 17 years in business, it had very few customers.

     I figured out what to do with it, now Grand Tour Bookstore, adding bright lights and air-conditioning. It had 100 language-learning systems, thousands of travel books from 150 countries, 200 world flags, foreign candy, imported cigarettes, international newspapers and magazines. Then I got this idea: Printed coffee mugs that would say, “Kiss Me I’m Greek”, etc. It was easy to find Irish mugs like that, but what about Kiss Me, I’m Ethiopian? Queer? Lithuanian? Luxembourgian?
     That idea, unique in America, became mugs about 70 nationalities. I sold thousands of them. Then I made matching buttons and T-shirts. Everything sold. I received publicity and my sales tripled.
     But then came the Black Death for bookstores, from the east. The giant chains rolled across the country killing 5,000 independent stores, including mine, there from 1988 to 1994. At 44, I felt damned. Now what?
     After some scrambling among childhood friends, I acquired enough jack to open a 600 ft. back-issue magazine store at 6400 W. Devon. This grew and grew and grew and then became Magazine Memories in Morton Grove. 5,000 sq ft with 150,000 old periodicals and newspapers back to 1576. 30,000 old posters.
     I ran it until cancer cursed Joyce, my fine wife of 40 years. At 66, I closed my last store in Skokie in 2016. I cared for her for 13 months. Joyce died in 2017.
     Long before all these parts of my life happened, I’d always been a writer, a poet beginning in 1958, at 8. I should mention that between 1951 and now, I’ve had 42 surgeries. As I grew older, my sometimes emotionally wrenching experiences gave birth to story after story – never any fiction.
     Then after brain surgery – twice — in 2004, I was terrified that I’d lose my memory.
     A lifetime Chicago friend, Rick Munden, told me to write down my extraordinary life story.
     When I protested to him, “Who would care about my miserable life?”
     He responded, “Many people are like you. They too have fallen down, then gotten back up, no matter how hard their struggle. Like you, they never gave up.” I was stunned. He offered to pay for printing my first book. This led to book after book after book, selling 7,000 of my first four books from 2004 to 2008. Some first editions of them are still available.
     Neil Steinberg kindly gave me 800 words. I am now 74. Quite forgotten. I’ve completed 25 new books. With my amazing wife Nancy, I created a cool website. I’ve written about Chicago corruption, fighting back against bullies, child abuse, love, sex, Judaism, cops, friendship, Queer rights, anti-Semitism, my Deli-Dali Delicatessen, how to create a store, and more. My Facebook site is Bob Katzman. I’m also a speaker for hire.

     E-mail robertmkatzman@gmail.com Contact: dontgoquietlypress.com