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| Ken Taylor |
As a student of both recovery and hot dogs — a proud graduate of both the Chapman Center, when it was in Highland Park Hospital, and Vienna Beef's rigorous two-day Hot Dog University — I couldn't refuse an invitation to slide by and check out Mac's Deli.
Ken Taylor was dead. Or close enough to dead. Overdosed, on a hospital gurney, motionless, waiting for a doctor to make it official."I had an accidental overdose of fentanyl and cocaine; I literally died," said Taylor, 60. "All of a sudden, my breath came back. I gasped."
"Welcome back, Mr. Taylor," a doctor said. "You're one lucky man."
People can make their own luck, and Taylor decided to get busy.
"That was a wakening moment for me," said Taylor, supervisor at Mac's Deli, the cleanest hot dog stand in the city of Chicago, opened last November and run by recovering drug addicts and alcoholics at Haymarket Center in the West Loop.
Every addict has a story they tell to keep themselves honest, and Taylor shared his as the half-dozen workers under him prepped Mac's Deli for the lunch crowd, pregrilling burgers and wiping down already clean surfaces.
On June 8, Taylor got out of prison after more than a decade behind bars for robbery. A drug habit is expensive.
"I've been in and out of prison for the better part of 30 years — my whole adult life," said Taylor. "I used to live and lived to use."
On June 10 he went back to his old stomping grounds. Waiting for him there was his old friend cocaine, laced with the fentanyl that is now mixed into everything.
"That was not my intent to go use," he said. "I went down there just to be social. Next thing I know, I was ready to be pronounced in the hospital."
He ended up at South Suburban Rehabilitation Center, which recommended Haymarket, the city's largest provider of addiction and mental health services, treating 12,000 Chicagoans a year — 95% earning less than $10,000 a year. It's a busy place.
"When I came down to Haymarket they didn't have a bed open," said Taylor. "It was on a Saturday, and he told me, 'Come back Monday morning and I'll get you in.'"
Do you see the flaw in that plan? Taylor did.
"I told that guy, if you let me leave here I will not make it back here Monday morning," said Taylor. "He saw that I was serious. He said, 'Let me see what we can find.'"
"That guy" was Jose Castro, manager of central intake at Haymarket.
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Thank you for educating me about Haymarket and the good that it does.
ReplyDeleteWe all know someone who is or has been addicted to something. Usually we simply aren’t aware of it until they either clean up or die. Professional people are the easiest to miss because it’s easy to assume that addiction only affects “those people.”
ReplyDeleteIt’s good to know that there are places out there like this.
Thanks for this great column, and for informing us about Mac's Deli. Nice to read something positive this morning. I will make the effort to visit there. I wish ongoing success to Mr Taylor and I thank God for people like Mr Jose Castro.
ReplyDeleteKen Taylor is a lucky man, so many helped save him and never gave up on him and he didn’t give up on himself.
ReplyDeleteNeil, I remember many, many years ago you would occasionally visit a West Loop hot dog stand. Somewhere on Lake Street? And you would chat with the 100-year-old proprietor and report back to us? And then the hot dog stand closed and the man kept working at a Greek breakfast restaurant somewhere up by the Edens. Maybe I imagined all of that? Or some of it? They were excellent columns. You did some of your finest reporting with those slice of life pieces. I always felt the same way about Mary Schmick. I loved it when she'd get out and visit a woodworker making furniture from dead fall trees. Mark Brown, same deal. When he'd go out searching for a cosmic pepper & egg sandwich. I hope those folks are well. Anyway, when you brought up hot dogs today I thought of the old gent with the West Loop stand.
ReplyDeleteHarry Heftman! Good memory. Thank you. I just reread this one — you're right, quite an accumulation of detail. Though the column was longer back then. https://www.everygoddamnday.com/2022/03/flashback-2001-hot-dogs-with-ketchup.html
DeleteA rising tide lifts all boats.
ReplyDeleteGreat piece, Neil.
ReplyDeleteIt kind of takes me back to ideas of reforming the criminal justice system to make it more focused on helping rather than punishing. Drug addiction is a disease, of course, and drug addicts should be helped by these kinds of rehabilitation programs, not shoved in prisons, even though drug use is illegal. So this trend is a highly welcome one and I hope it spreads.
But I also think these kinds of programs should be expanded to perpetrators of at least some other crimes. Maybe someone caught for something more minor, like robbery or burglary would benefit from working in a special retail store that faces the outside world, with a mentor who could talk to him with some respect and understanding and guidance. That might have a better effect at rehabilitating a person back into society rather than spending a year doing laundry in a prison and networking with gang members before being released only to restart the cycle again.
Mark, that's something Republican's have actively voted and legislated against. They own, operate, and profit from a number of prison systems. I'm fairly certain that's been the case since at least Nixon.
DeleteIt's been made abundantly clear since at least the Bush II regime, that republican's only care about power and money, and they legislate (cheat, lie, and steal) to get that.
Additionally, the media and republican's double standard on this drives me insane. I call it Cartering; demanding (and succeeding in having) Jimmy Carter sell his peanut farm due to the potential for foreign and financial unjust influence but not a damn peep regarding, Chaney, Romney, Bush, Trump, and literally 90% of all republicans who are or have been in office since Bush II.
This country doesn't get better because Republican's are actively waging war against her and her people.