Flashback 2003: Ground down? In a rut? Just go fly a kite

The original 1903 Wright Brothers Flyer (Smithsonian Air & Space Museum)

     Not only do I write for the Sun-Times, but I read it, and can tell you, one of the central joys of being a subscriber is watching Lee Bey hit it out of the park on a regular basis — bam bam bam bam. Monday was his front page story on how the Museum of Science and Industry ... oh, all right, the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry — is further defacing itself, not just in name, but in physical reality, by adding a nearly 30-foot-tall, 458-foot-wide "Welcome Hall." The thing is, well, let Lee describe it:

     The Welcome Hall is too tall and much too wide. It promises to sit there like a carbuncle in the park. And its arched grass roof makes the structure resemble a displaced section of Teletubbyland.

     It also eradicates the north lawn of the museum, which not only is visually important, but serves an important civic function as well, such as the kite festival this 2003 column relates, eventually. I apologize for the unashamed bitching of the first 2/3 of the column; I must have thought it was funny, at the time, or at least honest, and was trying to build up to the glorious end, not realizing that half the readers would probably never get there. Plus I didn't mention the facts of the story — Glen Ellyn airplane enthusiasts had spent four years hand-constructing an exact copy of the Wright flyer, and 2,000 people — including my family — gathered on the MSI lawn to watch them try, and fail, three times to get the thing airborne, in honor of the centennial of the first manned, powered flight at Kitty Hawk. The type of event which can't be held should the Griffin Carbuncle be built.
     Anyway, I offer up this 23-year-old chestnut as back up to Lee's scoop. 

     On my way to and from work I often cut through City Hall and the County Building. They're two halves of the same massive, square, block-filling structure, as you probably know if you work downtown. The nearly century-old corridors bustle with genuine Chicago types--loitering knots of cops, engineers clutching hard hats and pastel logs of rolled up blueprints, bright young good government sorts surging out of brass-faced elevators, while the older, shady, yellow-plaid-jacket crowd they inevitably become lope in to replace them.
     Then there's the architecture: marble, curving mosaics on the ceilings, brass frou-frou fixtures that would spark three scandals if the government paid for them now but which at the time seemed simply giving civic life its proper due.
     I cut through the building because it's cheering and, frankly, on some days I need cheering. Nobody who isn't in a refugee camp or a burn ward has the right to complain, of course, but I'm sorry; the routine gets oppressive. Like most people — perhaps like you — life gets dull. After three years in the suburbs and eight years with the children and 13 years being married and 17 years at the newspaper, well, I'll tell you, buddy, on some days the sparkling sense of newness and wonder just ain't there. The last time I walked through City Hall, I barely broke stride, even when a big poster caught my eye — "Mayor Daley's Kids & Kites Festival" it read.
     "Right," I said to myself, eyes forward, hurrying on, squelching the urge to stop and see where the festival was, thinking, "No way I'm dragging the crew to one of Hizzoner's bread-and-circuses."
     I'd rather have jumped on the L and gone out to O'Hare and charged a plane ticket to Fiji, where I'd end up standing at a grass shack bar like a character out of Conrad, gazing for hours at the flat blue horizon, silently nursing my wounds and my dark rum, the focus of glances and whispers. "The Mystery Man."
     Only I wouldn't. The Fijian authorities would track me down after three weeks and ship me home and I'd be right back where I am right now, another gray-faced workadaddy grinding back and forth in his rut between job and family, bouncing like a rubber ball from home hassles to work woes and back again, stumbling each morning from the company of my inert, mutely waving neighbors in the bland, soul-sucking suburbs through the grimy indifferent city, to the stasis of my office and my shrugging, impassive co-workers, then back to the changeless shoebox diorama of Northbrook, now bathed in twilight, to mark time until it begins anew next morning.
     Only, after Fiji, I'd have another $10,000 in credit card debt.
     Fortunately, I have a rule that I would like to pass along, just in case it might prove helpful to you. And that rule, which kicks in like a computer logic loop at these bleak moments — okay, bleak minutes and hours and whole days -- of vinegary unhappiness and boredom, is this: life is not dull or unpleasant, not generally, and certainly not in a great city such as Chicago, and thus anybody finding it dull or unpleasant needs to kick himself in his ample backside. The world does not fade to black merely because you happen to close your eyes.
     That is why I did not stay home and work as I should have Saturday morning, particularly with the book due April 1, a date whose ironic, mocking aspects only strike me now that I set them down.
     I wanted to. But despite the looming due date and the whole house liable to collapse in a puff of asbestos dust, I blew off my responsibilities and took the family downtown to see the Wright Flyer fly. It didn't, merely putted along a track on the windless front lawn of the Museum of Science and Industry, as earthbound as a root.
     But somehow that was all right. After an hour, we went inside the museum, and it was great. Normally, I occupy myself searching for signs of corporate spin in the displays, all of which seem to have been paid for by oil companies.
     But this time I just enjoyed the exhibits, particularly the new ToyMaker 3000. They've set up a faux toy company, and we learned about design and marketing and then were set before an automated production line where, for three bucks apiece, my kids watched their own cool gyroscopish Gravi-tron toys assembled and customized before their popping eyes.
     But that wasn't the best part. The best part came about 3 p.m. We had been in the museum for four hours, which is a lot, even with lunch. The boys were melting down. It was time to go home. Normally, just going outside after four hours in a museum is a diver-breaking-the-surface delight, a return to sunlight and air.
     But Saturday we went out the museum's front doors, and there was the kite festival. I had ignored it, but it had found me. Surprise intensified the wonder of an expanse of blue sky filled with multicolored kites of all shapes and sizes. A brass band played jazz. People of all races and ages enjoyed themselves, flying kites, strolling, picnicking. I can't begin to express the joy of the thing. It was like God reaching down and ruffling my hair and smiling. I stood on the steps for a long time, trying to burn the image in memory, and then hurried after the boys, eager to join the excitement.

               — Originally published in the Sun-Times, Sept. 26, 2003