'Willie the Wimp and his Cadillac Coffin'

Illustration by Lauren Nassef

     Spencer Leak Jr. passed away at the young age of 56. In their obituary of the scion of the famous South Side funeral home family, my colleagues Violet Miller and Mariah Rush include a few of the high profile funerals A.R. Leak Funeral Home have held, such as for singer Sam Cooke, Rev. Jesse Jackson and drug kingpin William Morris "Flukey" Stokes.

     I had to wonder how many readers, 42 years after the fact, knew just what a wild display of the funerary arts that last send-off truly was. I plunge into it in my 2022 book, "Every Goddamn Day." Honestly, I was reluctant to do so. The man was a drug dealer, his funeral a garish display of the values that killed him. Told haphazardly, I could see it coming back to bite me.

     But it happened on a Feb. 28, and that date needed a story. Context was everything, and I tried to gingerly tell the tale with sympathy and understanding.

Feb. 28, 1984

     “Willie the wimp was buried today,” the song begins. “They laid him to rest in a special way.” 

     Yes, yes they did. 

     White organized crime is celebrated. The Godfather. The Sopranos. Black gangsters, not so much. The glorification of rap, true. But those are Black artists singing about a life they know, in theory. “Willie the Wimp” will be written by a Texan, Bill Carter, who saw the news story and was fascinated. It’ll become a minor hit for blues rocker Stevie Ray Vaughan. 

     “Southside Chicago will think of him often / Talking about Willie the Wimp and his Cadillac coffin.” 

      Maybe the street-level carnage, the tragic effect on ordinary Black lives, is just too great to pretty up. Italian American kids are not being cut down every day in every city by the mafia. Drug dealers like Willie do too much damage, take too many lives. He’s easily, gratefully forgotten. And yet, what a sight he was. 

     “With hundred dollar bills in his fingers tight / He had flowers for wheels and flashing headlights.”           

     The funeral happens today, just as the song says. Willie “the Wimp” Stokes Jr., the 28-year-old son of drug kingpin Flukey Stokes. At the South Side’s A. R. Leak Funeral Home. In a pink suit, propped up behind the wheel of a coffin made to resemble a Cadillac Seville, down to its wire-spoke wheels, and authentic grill, put on at a body shop. The headlights and taillights work. Enormous wide-brimmed gray hat on his head. To some, the effect may be more of a toddler’s play car than anything that would seem elegant to anyone who isn’t high on the drugs he sold. 

     To others, however, there is a pride in the ostentation, a definite respect. Jet magazine gives the funeral three pages and is not critical. It ends pointing out that his mother finds comfort in the send-off. “I think he would have really liked it because that’s the way he was,” she says. “He was flashy and he believed in style.” And this is definitely style, of a certain sort. 

     "He been wishing for wings, no way he was walking / Talking about Willie the Wimp and his Cadillac coffin.”

'So wholesome and so Chicago' — Lakeview couple comes to aid of porchless neighbor

 

Laurel Parks, left, and Stephanie Vasconcellos

     In an ideal world, homeowners with odd-numbered addresses would buy a lawnmower, while those with even numbers would buy a snowblower. They’d pair off and share, halving the cost. In an ideal world, kids from down the block would play in your yard, uninvited. You’d look out your window, see them, and smile.
     Alas, we do not live that world, but this one, with our dibs, our fences, our jealously-guarded possessions and valorized selfishness.
     But occasionally, a glimpse of that ideal world appears. Such as the story of how Laurel Parks ended up sitting on the front porch of Stephanie and Matt Vasconcellos.
     “I’ve honestly been thinking about it for a couple of years,” said Parks. “My plan last year was to put hand-written notes in the mailboxes of people whose porches I like. In West Lakeview there are a lot of nice porches.”
     But not on the “great apartment” where she has lived for 13 years.
     “I love it,” said Parks. “But there is no outdoor space. Just this window. I get home from work, and I’m not ready to cook dinner. I want to be outside, but don’t want to walk. I want to be able to sit comfortably and peruse the internet, maybe drink a beer.”
     Park, 39, an office manager at an investment firm and executive assistant, who moved to Chicago from California in 2009, decided to try something novel.
     “Dear porch-possessing neighbors:" Parks posted April 12 on the “What’s Happening in Lakeview” Facebook page. “May I occasionally borrow your porch? As the weather finally starts to turn, I am once again confronted with the harsh reality that I am porchless. I am humbly requesting the occasional use of a porch, somewhere in West Lakeview, for low stakes activities such as: • Reading fairy smut • Staring at my phone • People watching...”

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And by "meow," I mean, "You're handsome and a good owner..."

     Our dog Kitty can talk. Well, after a fashion. She certainly communicates with me, from morning — about 5:15 a.m., when she appears at my bedside and makes a plaintive growl, which means, unequivocally, "Get the fuck up and take me outside" — to midday, when she fixes me with a probing glare which means, "Where is my goddamn mid-day snack?" To evening, when she assumes what I consider a "significant look," meaning it's time to go outside, again. With various remarks in between. For instance, during a thunderstorm, she hurries to wherever I am, even in the bathroom, and stands very close, which I know means, "I blame you for this: Protect me!"

     At least I've decided it means those things. I would be reluctant to say so with 100 percent certainty. It's not as if I've done a study. And I can't ask her, yet.
     Though people do believe their pets can communicate with them in a variety of unexpected ways. As I learned over Memorial Day weekend, visiting the Naperville home of some longtime friends. In their kitchen, my attention was snagged by four brightly colored hexagons arranged on the floor by the refrigerator, each containing six buttons that, when pressed, utter a recorded phrase in the owner's voice, like "Play!" and "Cat box — stinky" and "Oops, I puked."   

    I demanded: Does your cat really communicate with you through these buttons? They assured me the cat did. Nor are they alone in this belief.

     "Social media is filled with videos showing dogs, cats and parrots learning the meaning of dozens of buttons and pressing them to 'talk' with their people," Robyn Schelenz writes in "Can our pets really say ‘I love you’? Science is finding out" on the University of California web page. "And a few of these chatty animals have become minor celebrities as they seemingly converse, not just about food and walks, but about more complex concepts like love, strangers and time, opening a window, potentially, into what our pets are thinking." 

     Schelenz turns out to be, not a researcher, but with the school's marketing department. Ah.

     Her story does bring up Clever Hans, the famous performing horse that was supposedly communicating, doing math problems and such by clomping its hoof, when it was really being subtly directed by its owner. The possibility exists that owners eager to be in  closer communication with their beloved pets are misinterpreting random presses. Cat boxes are generally stinky. 

     Schelenz cites a study being done by the Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of California's Animal Communication Project.

     "The use of soundboards has the potential to be a powerful tool through which dogs, cats, and other domestic animals might be able to communicate their needs, wants, and internal states to their owners," the project explains, in a post looking for volunteers for a broad national study. "The potential welfare impacts of this technology are powerful: if pets can tell their owners when they feel ill, for example, they might be taken to the vet sooner and treated before their condition becomes severe."

     So the jury is out, as far as I'm concerned. I'm sure it's been brought up before. But do we really want to know what our pets are thinking? Most cats seem to be trying to tell their owners — and generally succeeding, if demeanor is any indication — "Hey, you suck!" 

     Maybe when Kitty delivers her morning whine, what she means to say is, "There is no God!" but I, misreading her intent, take her outside and, being there, she does her business.

Letter from Paris

 

     The summer of 1977 I turned 17 and spent a month in Geneva, Switzerland. A long time ago. But I remember the one movie playing at the one local theater that showed English films: "Car Wash." Not my favorite. And I remember the movie that was "COMING NEXT" — Led Zeppelin's concert film, "The Song Remains the Same." And recall, sharply, the growing disappointment, as the month ticked by, realizing that "Car Wash" was never going to close, at least not while I was there.

     Quite the different situation in Paris, as regular contributor Jack Clark tells us. You remember Jack. Former Chicago cabbie, current fiction and memoir writer.

     If you ask me, it's time to promote Jack Clark from regular contributor to EGD Paris bureau chief. Though that raises the risk I'll start giving him assignments — for instance, as diverting as these lists of movies are, I'd be more interested in seeing lists of French pastries, perhaps illustrated with a photo of a cup of a coffee and a representative example on a small round table on a street in Paris. Not an assignment, of course. A suggestion, from a faithful reader.

     "What do you do in Paris if you don’t go to museums?" someone asked me recently. Well, it’s a big city, but still a great walking town. You can walk from one side to the other in two hours or so. It would take you decades to visit every bakery. And many of them are truly great, so you don’t want to limit yourself to just one. You never know what specialty you might find inside. When you see a bakery along the way, go in and take a look. I don’t speak the language but I can say pain au chocolat and croissant and a few other standards, and I’ve gotten very good at pointing. If you don’t find something that looks enticing, no one will care if you turn and walk out. But be polite and say, Merci, au revoir and walk down the block or around the corner and try the next one.
     A French friend living in New York told me there were several good French bakeries in town. “Here’s the difference,” he said. “In New York everyone knows the good bakeries. In Paris everyone knows the bad ones.”
     Cafes and restaurants are great too. They really do know how to do food here. And if you stay away from the tourist traps and the ritzy places it’s generally much cheaper than in Chicago. If it’s not lunch or dinner time, you can order a single cup of coffee and sit for hours. It’s a great town for people watching.
     We like to go to a neighborhood market on Sunday morning. You can buy produce, prepared food, and other items. But the best part for me is after the shopping is done, when we’re sitting at the café in the middle of the market, drinking coffee and eating pastries from the bakery across the street, (this is not always permitted, but if they know you, they might let you get away with it) while watching the parade of people pass.

     And I’m working, of course. I’m about a third of the way through a novel tentatively titled, "Long-Lost Friends," and just released another book: "Eddie Miles Drives Again & Other Stories." It’s ten short stories, all set in Chicago. You can find it here and there online and also at www. jackclarkbooks.com.
     One of my favorite pastimes is to go to a movie. There are sixty-some movie theaters in town with 400 screening rooms. On the average day there are about 500 movies playing, which makes my hometown Chicago look like a movie desert, which vast stretches of the city truly are.
     On Wednesdays we usually pick up L’officiel des spectacles, which translates as "The official entertainment guide." This is a small magazine about the dimension of the Reader’s Digest, which lists live theater, comedy, music, art exhibits, and the movies playing in Paris for the week.
     In the current issue, the brief movie descriptions take up 27 small-print pages. This is followed by 22 pages of showtimes at the various theaters. The first two pages of descriptions list movies from France, Tunisia, USA, Slovakia, Jordan, Germany, Italy, Mexico, U.K., Senegal, Morocco, and Canada. If you’re like me and don’t understand French, most of those movies are off limits. French movies are shown in French, of course, most of the rest are shown in the original version with French subtitles. But this means you can go to just about every movie from the US, Canada (as long as it’s not from Quebec), or the UK. If there is a “(vo)” at the end of the listing that means it’s the original version. Here are your choices for the week of Wednesday, May 13th to Tuesday, May 19th, as listed in the magazine.

New releases:
Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition, USA & UK 2026
Obsession, USA 2025
Reeditions: (rereleases, I guess)
Dune, USA & Mexico 1984
Top Gun, USA 1986
Films en exclusivite, which translates to Exclusive Films. I’m not sure what they mean by this but here’s the list:
An Evening Song for Three Voice, USA 2023
Dead Man’s Wire, USA 2025
The Criminals (Fuze), UK 2026
The Devil Wears Prada 2, USA 2026
Die My Love, Canada 2025
The Drama, USA 2026
Drunken Noodles, USA & Argentina, 2025
The Royal Opera, UK 2026
Hamnet, USA 2025
Marty Supreme, USA 2025
Michael, USA 2026
Mortal Kombat 2, USA 2026
The New West (East of Wall), USA 2025
I Swear, UK 2025
Project Hail Mary, USA 2026
Super Mario Galaxy, USA 2026
My Father’s Shadow, UK 2025

The next secrion list Autres films or Other Films.

Eyes Wide Shut, USA 1999
Rear Window, USA 1954
Seven Chances, USA 1925
Fight Club, USA 1999
The Rain People, USA 1969
Inland Empire, USA 2006
Lee, UK 2023
Lost Highway, USA 1997
Lost in Translation, USA 2003
Magnolia, USA 1999
Marie-Antoinette, USA 2005
Mission Impossible, USA 2000
Moonlight, USA 2016
Mulholland Drive, USA 2001
Space Cadet, Canada 2025
The Birds, USA 1963
Pride & Prejudice, UK 2004
Orwell: 2+2=5, USA 2025
The Godfather, USA 1972
Phantom Thread, USA 2017
Pillion, UK 2025
War for the Planet Apes, USA 2017
Psycho, USA 1960
The Metropolitan Opera: I Puritani, USA 2025
Ready Player One, USA 2016
Requiem for a Dream, USA 2000
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, USA 1975
Wild at Heart, USA 1989
Shaun of the Dead, UK 2004
Sherlock Junior, USA 1924
Stop Making Sense, USA 1984
Vertigo, USA 1958
Sweet Thing, USA 2020
Witness For the Prosecution, USA 1957
Thelma and Louise, USA 1991
The Mastermind, USA 2025
Top Gun: Maverick, USA 2022
The Ladykillers, UK 1955
Twin Peaks (Fire Walk with Me), USA 1992
The Virgin Suicides, USA 1999
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, USA 1975
Face/Off, USA 1997
The World is Full of Secrets, USA 2018

     If that’s not enough, check out what the magazine calls Festivals et cycles. There’s a Harold Lloyd retrospective at the Champo theater in the 5th arrondissement. It’s showing four of Lloyd’s silent movies made between 1923 and 1928.
      Then there is: Cycle Le Printemps Du Film Noir. It’s a thick block of type with at least 20 films, with directors and the year of the film listed. All are showing at the Filmotheque — also in the 5th. If the movie was released with a French title that’s the only one they show. But without bothering to translate those, I find plenty of English language movies including, A Most Violent Year, Bad Lieutenant, Body Double, Cutter’s Way, a Don Siegel movie, another by Brian DePalma, and one by Scorsese, all listed with French titles only, The King of New York, Miller’s Crossing, No Country for Old Men, another Don Siegel and one by Jonathan Demme, listed with the French title, and also A Simple Plan. They are all marked vo.
     The Ecoles Cinema Club in the 5th and the Christine Cinema Club in the 6th are putting on something called Spring Break. They are showing Blade Runner, Into the Wild, M.A.S.H., a Clint Eastwood movie, one by Fritz Lang from 1953, Blood Simple, Bonnie and Clyde, Citizen Kane. . . Well, there’s more but my eyes have started to give out.
     When I turn the page I find Cycle Bon Voyage at the Ecoles Cinema Club in the 6th, where you can catch, Fargo, Manchester by the Sea, My Own Private Idaho, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Casablanca. The last is showing at Christine Cinema Club in the 6th.
     That’s somewhere around 80 movies. I was surprised to not find a single Western showing in Paris. Usually there are several and also maybe a John Wayne, John Ford, or Sam Peckinpah festival or retrospective going on. This might be the wrong time in history for watching Americans with big guns eliminating the bad guys. Many of the French have a somewhat curious viewpoint on America today.
     The magazine costs 2.40 euros. The issue I cited here is number 4071. At one issue a week, that adds up to more than 78 years, pretty much the entire postwar era.
     It’s Wednesday again so we picked up the latest issue, once again without a single Western listed. John Wayne is probably trying to shoot his way out of his grave to catch the next flight to Paris.
     I thought that was a pretty good final line. As far as I was concerned, the story was done. I was chuckling to myself over my John Wayne joke when my wife, the lovely Hélène, looked up. “You forgot the Cinematheque,” she said.
     “I couldn’t find it,” I said. “Maybe they’re taking the week off.”
     She grabbed the magazine, quickly paged past the Paris and suburban movie theater listings, past the listing for children’s films, and pointed at the Cinematheque heading.
     “Why did they put it way back there?” I said. She tossed the magazine my way and left the room.
     According to Google the Cinematheque Française is a French film organization that holds one of the largest archives of film documents and film-related objects in the world. Based in Paris, (12th arrondissement) the archive offers daily screenings of worldwide films. All are shown in their original version.
     Among the English language highlights: A Marilyn Monroe retrospective from April 8 to July 12, 23 films.
     A Greta Garbo retrospective from May 6 to 24, 21 films.
     25 Essential Serial Killer Movies, May 7 to 25. I didn’t look but most of them have to be American, right?
     A Robert Altman retrospective from April 22 to May 24, 37 films. This includes what the French insist on calling John McCabe. It’s one of my favorite movies and also one of Julie Christie’s sexiest roles. In the U.S. we gave Christie equal billing with Warren Beatty and called it McCabe and Mrs. Miller. It played in Paris on May 15th, so I missed my chance this time around. It’s also a Western so John Wayne can relax and put his gun away for now.

 

 

Puzzles are the anti-TikTok, the antidote to mind-numbing social media

     If you asked me to list the three greatest cartoonists from a century ago, the first two would be easy: No. 1, George Herriman, whose “Krazy Kat” created a surreal world around the love triangle of the titular, gender-fluid feline, her — or, sometimes, his — unrequited love for the brick-throwing Ignatz Mouse, both kept in line by Krazy’s secret admirer, Offissa Pupp, all capering across a stark Arizona scrubland conjured up by Herriman’s madly creative pen.
     Then Windsor McKay, whose “Little Nemo in Slumberland” plunged readers into Art Nouveau dreamscape where a little boy peers over pillows while his bed, its legs impossible long, strides down Fifth Avenue.
     As for the third, I’d be hard-pressed. But Rube Goldberg would certainly qualify. His wildly complicated machines entered the vocabulary, a “Rube Goldberg device” being any overly-engineered contraption which, though perhaps not involving a goat gnawing through a rope releasing a boot to kick a ball through a hoop, uses more steps than necessary.
     That said, I would not have noticed, never mind purchased, “The Rube Goldberg Puzzle Book,” if it weren’t created by my former NU classmate — and ace New Yorker cartoonist — Robert Leighton. Friends buy friends’ books — the sales pitch getting harder and harder, year by year. Everyone is so busy.
     Yeah, busy flipping through Instagram.
     Which I do too, for 30 minutes at a throw, watching snippets of “Peaky Blinders” and “The West Wing” and whatever other mind-decaying fluff some string of code decides is going to mesmerize me today.
     But having purchased a puzzle book ($16, not bad for a hardback) there was a complication I hadn’t foreseen. I then had to do puzzles, based on Goldberg’s drawings. Initially, they were quite simple — a four-panel comic strip is scrambled. “Can you figure out the proper order to tell each story?” Robert asks. Well, you can, but you have to read the panels first, then find the fractured narrative by thinking. And thinking is the one thing you don’t do flipping through TikTok.
     But I felt compelled to push on. Not only was the book written by a pal, but the introduction is by Jennifer George, Rube Goldberg’s granddaughter and chief creative officer of the Rube Goldberg Institute, “a not-for-profit organization that uses my grandfather’s work to inspire joy, curiosity, and creativity through inefficient machines.” That also scratched my particular itch — I’ve been gazing into my newly arrived second grandchild’s face a lot lately, musing on two things: first, what could his world possibly be like, say, in 2076? And second, what passing thought, if any, might he someday have for a certain old guy who huzzahed him into the world?

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Thank you for not mentioning my betrayal of America today...

     My Wednesday column, an obituary of CSO violinist Samuel Magad, was written because a relative of his, a friend and former colleague, asked me to do so. 
     It drew this note. I receive nearly identical versions of this email every single time I write about a subject other than Donald Trump. I thought I'd share this one, representing 100 others:

     You wrote a great column today. You are a very talented writer, don’t waste your talent writing about Trump. There are plenty of other writers bashing Trump, we need you writing pieces like today’s column.  Thanks Mike R.

     My response:

     It's funny how relieved dupes are when I write about anything other than the fraud they blindly follow. I always wonder why. What should cross your mind — but won't — is that a guy who's a talented writer, in your view, on every other subject except your crazy obsession is also a talented writer when explaining how you betray every American value you pretend to hold. Thanks for writing.  NS

Samuel Magad, an 'impeccable' violinist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for 48 years, dies

 

     When Samuel Magad auditioned for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a 26-year-old vet fresh from the U.S. Army Orchestra, he of course was accepted — the violinist had already debuted with the CSO as an 11-year-old prodigy during World War II.
     But there was one issue.
     "You're a good player, but could you get a better violin?" asked music director Fritz Reiner, who studied under Bartok.
     No, that wasn't possible, in the short term.
     "I had a junk violin, but I was broke," Magad recalled. "I had a wife, two babies and not a penny. He said, 'I'll take you anyway.'"
     In the long term, however, a better violin would come. By the time Magad's nearly half-century with the CSO ended, he was playing the 1710 Stradivari "Vieuxtemps Hauser."
     After a lifetime of playing music at the highest levels, including as the backbone of the CSO for 48 years, Magad died in Buffalo Grove on May 25 at age 94.
     "It’s mind-boggling to think of the changes Sam navigated during his years under four very different Chicago Symphony music directors," said Wynne Delacoma, the former longtime classical music critic at the Sun-Times. "He arrived in 1958 during the reign of the legendarily precise Fritz Reiner and rose to assistant concertmaster in 1966 during Jean Martinon’s relatively short tenure. Georg Solti named him concertmaster in 1972, and Sam held that front-row seat for two decades as the high-octane CSO-Solti chemistry turned the orchestra into an international powerhouse. He was a steady presence during the next 15 years when Daniel Barenboim’s approach to a piece of music could change from one performance to the next. Sam’s impeccable technical skills and open mindset were invaluable assets to whomever was on the podium."
     The concertmaster is the unsung backstop who not only cues the A note — usually played by the oboist — which the orchestra tunes their instruments to at the start of each piece, but he sees that the conductor's wishes are obeyed and facilitates logistics. If a star violin soloist breaks a string mid-performance, the concertmaster will swap instruments.
     Some concertmasters are mere mouthpieces of the conductor; not Magad.
     "Magad saw himself as a colleague of the orchestra's players, walking the players' side of the divide with management," Anne Mischakoff Heiles writes in "America's Concertmasters." "Giving voice to their concerns, he endeavored to use his voice to promote the welfare of his colleagues."

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