Don't leave home without them

 

The New Yorker's Patricia Marx, and alpaca, at the drugstore.

     I subscribe to just three magazines: Consumer Reports, The Economist, and The New Yorker. 
     Consumer Reports, not as a practical tool—it isn't as if I need them to help me choose a blender—as for the magazine's skeptical tone. So much in the media is blathering, mendacious corporate hype, it's refreshing to see scientific sorts asking: is this any good? Does it work? Should you buy it? I enjoy reading the smartly-written publication, but I also want to give Consumer's Union the money, to support what they do.
   Reading The Economist is, as I've said before, like having an extra brain. Not only do they bring news of corners of the world that we'd never seem to hear from, hear cries that otherwise would be smothered by our big comfy American blanket, but the magazine applies a keen outsider's eye to this country as well. Even their coverage of Chicago is fresh and interesting. 
    And The New Yorker. Nothing needs be said. Either you get it or you don't. I've subscribed to the magazine for 30 years, and my father has subscribed to for 60 (and my son Ross, insisted on getting both it and The Economist at college. That's my boy!)
     Last week's issue, dated Oct. 20, sat on my nightstand for a few days—I've finally got around to reading Keith Richards' Life and find it hard to put down (like Consumer Reports, it's a question of tone. It isn't what Richards reveals so much as how he reveals it, his voice. I find him as interesting writing about the Boy Scouts as he is writing about the Rolling Stones, maybe more). But I cracked  The New Yorker Saturday morning, and was rewarded with Patricia Marx's delightfully-conceived and bravely-executed takedown of emotional assistance animals. 
     Basically, the American with Disabilities act allows for service animals—seeing eye dogs, monkeys that can do tasks for paralyzed people, that kind of thing. And glomming onto this are self-indulgent pet owners who want to bring their animals places, and pretend they have emotional issues, and get ersatz credentials and animal vests from for-profit groups. Thousands and thousands of people do this, and people let them, because we're trained to defer to anybody claiming any kind of disability whatsoever, however marginal or illegitimate it might be.  
     Marx skewers this woeful situation by getting a variety of rebarbative animals certified then traipsing around Manhattan with them: a 30-inch long snake, a four and a half foot tall Alpaca, a turkey. She flies with a 26-pound pig, Daphne, to Boston, and takes her to tea at the Four Seasons. 
     The responses of the flustered clerks, maitre d's and flight attendants are priceless. The story is like Borat, the intersection of generally-polite, generally-accommodating America  with Dadaesque insanity. One clerk at Chanel flees the snake but another suggests what snakeskin handbag would best match it, and for only $9,000. 
     While I have never spotlighted someone else's story on my blog before, I'm spotlighting this one, because it does so many neat things, stomping on a social wrong most people would be too timid to tread gingerly upon (I thought of Patricia Marx as more of a member of the supporting cast at the New Yorker, the woman who did those delightfully droll shopping reports. Obviously I underestimated her; this article, in my mind, boosts her to star status).
     Given the way victimhood and disability have seized the whip hand in American culture, I sincerely think Marx's piece represents an important shift in tone: the cresting of a wave, the reassertion of a modicum of balance and common sense, where your needs to bring a service hippo into the china shop are now balanced by the needs of the people in the shop not to share it with your pachyderm. 
     I'm sure she is hearing howls from those who have had their asses kissed for so long they consider it a birthright, people who feel they are adults in every sense but the chance that their actions might bear scrutiny.  So I felt, besides the inherent good of sharing her story, I would add my applause, for what it's worth. It took courage, as good things often do.
     Don't take my word. Read her story, "Pets Allowed," by clicking here. It enhances the effect if you share it with someone. I must have read a quarter of the piece out loud to my wife, laughing hard, tears in my eyes. Bravo.

Saturday fun activity: Where IS this?

     I was reflecting gloomily on this contest yesterday, thinking, "I've never stumped them. Never! Why?" Maybe I'm too soft-hearted; I just can't pull the trigger on something truly obscure. It seems unfair to you. But when I do—that stone surrounded by velvet ropes. Who was going to place that tucked into a corner of the B'hai Temple? I guess you guys were. In fact, the more obscure I think a place is, like this Pegasus wind vane, the quicker people seem to peg it. Though this really should stump you. You can't see it from the street, you have to go there, and it really isn't a public spot, though the public can, under certain circumstances, visit. I stayed there a while, and have gone back to see friends, from time to time. And there we'll draw the veil. Where is this place? The winner gets ... oh heck, let's get rid of the last of the posters, to make way for the new poster, its design, as we speak, winging its way down to Nashville to be set in type by the good folk at Hatch Show Print. Please be sure to post your guesses below. 

Ebola is here and we're gonna die! (eventually, that is, and not from Ebola)

     Is it too early for the Ebola post-mortem?
     I don’t think so.
     While there are still a few weeks of frenzy left in the mania, you gathered here in this quiet corner of the media have my permission to exhale a collective sigh of relief and move directly to the soul-searching segment of the show, reflection that comes when we all grasp that the nation has been in a quiver over what is, in essence, nothing.
    Well, okay, not nothing, but close enough to nothing on the crowded sliding scale of Bad Stuff We Need to Be Concerned About.
     So let’s jump the gun together and pretend it’s already, oh, mid-November, when the media will shift into the holiday season, the War Against Christmas and such, and shake off Ebola like a dog shaking off water after a bath. Let’s look at what lessons we’re learned from all this. (And no, “people are morons” doesn’t count; that’s a one-size-fits-all truism applicable in every circumstance).
     Lesson #1: Sex sells.
     Media attention is not doled out due to relative importance on some objective index. It is not fair. I hear continually from readers wondering why some bit of nonsense gets huge play. A few Americans dying of Ebola (Africa, as always, barely registers) shouldn’t outweigh the millions dying of heart disease. But Ebola does, because it’s weird and graphically arresting. Wondering why Ebola gets so much press and diabetes doesn’t is like wondering why all those photographers trail Miley Cyrus and not your cousin Maude, given that Maude does such good work with the church choir. 
     Like Miley, Ebola is sexy. Not the black vomit- and diarrhea-inducing viral infection itself, of course, but as a subject. How many movies feature those oooh-scary biohazard suits and graphics of the outbreak rapidly spreading red across computer maps of the United States before the alarmed eyes of the young and attractive epidemiologists who have only 48 hours to find a cure, build a breeder reactor out of junk lying around the office and, of course, jump into the sack?
     Let me boil the above into a simple code you can refer to later: "They never did find that missing Malaysian airliner, did they?"

     Lesson 2: It's your fault.
     When CNN shifted to wall-to-wall breathless speculation and endless plumping of some nondevelopment perhaps related to the missing Malaysian flight, what happened? Did a disgusted public turn away from such craven manipulation? No, it was cravenly manipulated. CNN's numbers spiked, no matter what dim bulb non-news they ladled out. So blame the public, aka you. You didn't say, "This is idiocy" and turn to another channel. You lapped it up, bought the false sense of urgency and tuned in. "Please sir," you said, extending your empty bowl toward the bubbling pot of idiocy porridge, "we''d like some more." Ebola is the same. Works every time.
     In CNN's defense: The job of the media — those of us who still have jobs in the media — is to display the bright, shiny thing the public wants to see. Period. I wrote a scare-mongering Ebola column, too, last week, because it seemed the thing to do, though I also emphasized that, horrible as it is, you're not going to get Ebola, so sit back and enjoy the show. It isn't my fault nobody listened.

     Lesson 3: Better safe than sorry.
     Neither authorities nor media want to be the dopes who miss the next disaster's warning signs. In our post-Benghazi world (Congress is already holding Ebola hearings) there is a huge cost for failing to act, but little for overreacting. Thus, doctors order rounds of expensive, unnecessary tests; travel has become a crazy security Kabuki; and everybody treats Ebola like it's the next Black Death because the editors of The New York Times are terrified they'll someday be able to say, "If only we ran another 50 Ebola stories, we might have saved the world."

     Lesson 4: We're all cowards.
     People really, really care about their own precious selves, so much that actual threats — heart disease, fatal car accidents, cancer, suicide, taking your last breath in a grim, ammonia-reeking nursing home — are just too real and scary to actually think about.
     So we take all that anxious energy that should be spent whittling down the enormous cantilevered bellies hanging over our belts that really will kill us someday, and instead obsess over notional risks like Ebola.
     It's a perfect pre-election distraction. A new scandal for jackal-pack Republicans — Phyllis Schlafly already said that Obama intentionally let the outbreak occur so we'd be more like Africa. For Dems, a chance to focus on our broken health care system and the biblical woes of Africa, which Americans otherwise blithely ignore. And for everybody, a real-life thriller we can keep tabs on as a distraction from our plodding, pedestrian lives. We'll miss it when it's gone.

Rahm kicks the can down the road

Rahm

     While not one of the deep pocketed fat cats who seem to be Rahm Emanuel's primary constituency, I found myself defending him over the past few months, as his popularity slumped over, toppled off its park bench, rolled to the ground and then slid into a culvert. Nobody else seemed to have a good word for him, so sticking up for him pleased my contrarian nature, and seemed the fair thing to do.
     Until Wednesday.
     Up to now, his central sin seemed to be closing 50 schools without the requisite hand-holding and

Nipper

gripe enduring, the sitting next to a pitcher of water through endless raucous hearings, tilting his head like Nipper the RCA dog, feigning interest, while a long line of honked off community residents crowded around a microphone for the chance to poke their fingers at the air and scream at him for closing their schools.
     That's tradition, but Rahm is not exactly a traditional guy. 
     The bedrock fact is, schools needed to be closed. Chicago's population has dropped 10 percent in recent years. If you paid close attention to CNN's "Chicagoland" series, the halls of Fenger High School, the backdrop where principal Liz Dozier was always wobbling through, shouting, were often deserted. Four hundred kids in a school built for 1600. She had to send her teachers out into the street to round up students so they didn't lose federal funding. How many empty shells is the Chicago Public Schools supposed to keep open?
     The bottom line is, we're broke. I found myself explaining, it's not the Rahm doesn't like mental health clinics. The city has no money. Like most broke people, Chicagoans have a hard time accepting that. Easier to whip out the Mastercard and sleepwalk through one more day of plenty.
     And while I sympathize with the cops and firefighters castigating the mayor for aiming his razor at their pensions—I lost mine; it bites. Now I'll never get that fishing boat—the truth is his predecessor gave away the ranch, and the money is not there. Is it fair? No. But then neither was Hurricane Katrina, and the mess had to be cleaned up anyway. Bad stuff tends not to be fair, that's what makes it bad stuff and not a delightful bit of irony. "Oh look, Donald Trump, killed by a block of malachite that tumbled off his latest tower..."
      Rahm Emanuel is so unpopular, I told myself, because he's making the hard choices, trying to knit together some kind of workable parachute as the city hurtles toward the canyon floor of complete fiscal insolvency. He's leading, or trying to, and maybe people, instead of bitching and scanning the skies for some new savior who'll tell them what they want to hear, wistful though it may be (we'll tax the commodities exchange!) should bite the bullet and get behind him. 
      Then Wednesday came. And Rahm Emanuel stood in front of the City Council and kicked the same by now dented and battered can down the road that Rich Daley kicked for years. 
    Glance at my colleague Fran Spielman's lucid story on Rahm's speech outlining the 2015 budget. 
     In case you are reluctant to veer away from my golden prose, I'll give you the key point, in paragraph three: 

He talked about “continuing to confront the challenges facing our city,” but failed to even mention the biggest one: police and fire pensions with assets to cover just 30 percent and 24 percent of their respective liabilities.

     That will be remedied, no thanks to Rahm, but as demanded by state law, with a $550 million mandatory payment by the city to the pension funds next year that will either further gut city services, or demand income tax increases, two subjects our mayor danced over in his 40 minute talk. 
     I guess his sudden unpopularity unnerved him. The speech was no doubt written before Karen Lewis's brain cancer was revealed (I'm probably going to hell for saying this, but my first, unfiltered thought when I heard the bad news about Lewis, Rahm's only potential challenger of any merit, was, "Wow, how did Rahm manage that?")
     So count me in the camp of — well, I don't hate the guy. I pity him too much for that. He's a politician. He's one of those guys who thinks if he wins enough he won't ever die.  And I also have to deal with him occasionally, so I like to squint my eyes and see him in the best possible light. Though now that I think of it, it's the end of October, and I haven't spoken to the man since ... last December, so I guess I don't really need to deal with him all that much. Maybe none of us do. Rahm Emanuel is the master of the possible, and perhaps he looked at the polls, the print-outs, and the entrails of ducks, and saw that the time isn't right to save the city from utter financial ruin. He'll wait until he safely trounces Bob Fioretti and THEN pull the rip-cord, five seconds before impact. Let's hope the chute opens in time. I do try to give him slack. Remember who taught him how to charm voters: Richard M. Daley.

Congratulations Gale! Now make dessert for 200 to honor yourself

Gale Gand, judging an apple baking competition, Northbrook, September, 2013

    This story changed a lot as I worked on it. Originally, it was much more personal, telling of the time, for instance, of the first time I invited Gale and her family over my house, and my poor wife had to figure out what to make for the James Beard Award-winning chef and celebrity baker. But as Tuesday progressed, and I talked to more people, I decided to squeeze out my own impressions of Gale, such as sharing a bottle of champagne at the Ritz bar that, to our vast surprise, cost over $500, and not the more modestly-priced bottle we thought we had ordered. That was merely a droll tale, if not  braggery, and what her colleagues had to say about her was, I decided, far more interesting. I think this version is better; though I wish I could have saved the image of a fruit tart she once served at her house: the beautiful, perfect, glistening colorful fruit on top, the rich yellow custard within, and that crust. It's burned into memory.

     Gale Gand is sweet.

     Which is fitting, as she is a pastry chef. Though she is also a food star, not only now — Oct. 15 is officially Chef Gale Gand Day in Chicago — but for the past 20 years, ever since she and then-husband Rick Tramonto opened Trio in Evanston in 1993. Brasserie T in Northfield followed in 1995, then she really made her mark in 1999 when the pair opened Tru. “Ultra-hip, ultra-haute, ultra-pricey” is how one Sun-Times columnist (OK, me) described the place in 2000.

     Since then she has starred in her own Food Network show, written eight books, opened another hip restaurant (Spritz Burger) and created her brand of root beer.

     Lest there be confusion, I can’t pretend that I’m impartial, that I’m Mike Wallace holding Gand between my pincers and examining her under a sodium vapor light. I’m her friend; I’ve been shoveling her chow into my maw for a decade and a half, pausing between bites to chat about the challenges of being a celebrity chef (hard and fun), a parent (fun and hard) and always coming away impressed, informed and well-fed.

     Don’t take my word for it. The mark of great chefs is what young chefs who have spent time in their kitchens say about them. 
     "Gale has been incredibly wonderful to me," said Leigh Omilinsky, who started at Tru and is executive pastry chef at the Sofitel Chicago Water Tower. "She likes to see her kids do well; she's like a proud mama."
     Omilinsky said she tries to pattern her own kitchen demeanor after Gand's.
     "Just her overall patience," she said. "She wants to put her people in a position where they'll succeed, and she'll do anything to help them. She encouraged people to really learn. There's no doubt she's the boss lady, but she's very approachable. She didn't want her people to call her 'chef' and I don't want my people to call me 'chef' because it creates a barrier."
     "She hired me right out of pastry school," said Meg Galus, executive pastry chef at the Park Hyatt and NoMi. Gand taught her a chef can embrace newcomers. "Bringing up the next generation is huge," Galus said. "I always want to make sure my team is learning and growing so they can take over someday. I credit a lot of that to her."
     Where did Gand learn the importance of that? Her last boss was Charlie Trotter, and while she would never put it this way, I will: She watched how Trotter treated his staff and then treated hers the opposite.
     "I learned how it feels to work for someone else and how I'd want it to be for someone else who worked for me," Gand said.
     This week's honor is part of a quartet of days for chefs being inducted into the Chicago Culinary Museum & Chefs Hall of Fame. And if you're asking yourself where the Chicago Culinary Museum is and why haven't you visited it, the answer is that the place is still notional, existing in the imagination of backers. Some in the Chicago culinary community support the museum; others snort in derision at mention of it.
     With honors, mitigation often follows. If I get an award, it's promptly given to someone I disdain. For Gand, being named to the Hall of Fame came with a surprising duty.
     "When they first asked me, I thought I was being honored," Gand said. "I didn't realize I had to cook. They want me to show up with 200 portions of dessert. But that's the life of a chef. For one second I slipped into the idea that I got to go to the party. I accept the lot in life. My dad is a musician. We're never the guests at the party. We're always the entertainment. I'm not sure what I would do with myself at a party if I didn't have work to do. It's what I do."
     Gand, by the way, is whipping up 200 of her trademark banana cream pie spoonfuls. "A great dish," she said. "Vanilla custard, whipped cream, banana and pie crust."
     How does it feel to be in the hall of fame?
     "It's nice to have some impact on people's lives, especially when just doing what you do," she said. "This is nice for my dad (Bob Gand, of Village Music). I was going to be the one they had to support. They thought I would be the loser who always needed help, and this coming from a family of musicians. So it's nice I'm not a burden to the family."
     What's her secret for culinary success?
     "If you can help people do the things they want to do outside of work, they're happier at work," she said. "I'm probably the only chef in the world who thinks that. Part of it is, I'm a pleaser. That's why I'm a chef and why I'm a pastry chef. I like to help you celebrate and mark your important day and make you an impressive dessert to propose marriage over. I want everybody to be comfortable and happy."

Odd Wisconsin: Rocks for Fun Cafe Pastie Shop

   The northern Midwest is beautiful and strange. 
   Monday started beautiful, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, heading home from our weekend on Lake Superior. Just as we left, a bald eagle—the largest I've ever seen—appeared silently overhead, seeming to guide our way as we drove through the yellow-leaf splendor.
    For several hours, all was fallow corn fields, scenic barns, and stunning woods.
    Then we entered Wisconsin. 
    Wisconsin is beautiful, too, but also kinda strange. The miles clicked by.
    "If you see a place that looks like it makes a good burger, you can just go ahead and stop," I said, riding shotgun.
    It was shortly after 12 noon, and we were hurtling down Route 45 with only a donut, the UP version of a scone and a cup of coffee to hold us since morning. 
    Just south of the Menomonee Indian Reservation, near the banks of the Embarrass River, my pal, Rory, who was driving, noticed this stone building that looked promising -- basically anything that is not a chain restaurant looks promising-- and pulled into it before we even registered the "GREAT PASTIES" in the window.
     "A pasty is beef in a pastry," I explained, as we got out to of the car. "I had some in London. Street food. We should try one." 

     I did glancingly notice the painted Packer-themed rocks out front— foreshadowing if this were a horror story, which it is, a little— but shrugged them off, and never even read the enigmatic sign: "THE ROCKS FOR FUN CAFE." People are like that. I was happy to stand up straight after three hours in the car, and occupied thinking about a cheeseburger. The sign could have said, "ENTER AND WE'LL KILL YOU" and I probably wouldn't have noticed.
    A very busy interior to the place. Lots of stuff on the walls. But then, backwoods eateries and taverns tend to decorate with agglomerations of junk.
 

     "Can we eat at the bar?" I asked the waitress Linda -- at the bar it seemed like we'd have a better chance to study our surroundings.
    "If you're nice to me," she replied.
     I paused, looked for a fingerhold on this remark, and finally promised to be as nice as I could, then asked for coffee. politely.
      She left, and before we could look at the menu a white haired man came over and offered us the chance to select our very own "Lucky Rock", a small googly-eyed pebble attached to a business card. We had a dozen to choose from; I picked this fellow. The card bore the title, "Rock Creator: Don McClellan" and I almost said, "So you're Don?" but really, it was obvious. Who else would he be? This was not a job that gets delegated.
    "Would you like to see a rock off the moon?" Don began, and we admitted that we would. Don began a spiel that quickly turned into a pun, of sorts, or a kind of play on words.
    "The reason I know they're off the moon is because they're not on the moon," he explained. "All my rocks are off the moon."
     There was more of that sort of thing. And there were a lot of anthropomorphized rocks, arranged into humorous tableaux, and they came fast and furious. Don challenged Rory to tap a rock and say his name. He did.

     "Would you believe that your complete name is now etched in the center of that rock?" he said. "Not only that, would you believe your phone number is on a piece of scrap paper at the center of that rock"
    And so it was. The words, "Your Complete Name," etched in the center of the rock, as if by magic, and "Your Phone Number" jotted on a piece of paper, just as he predicted. 
     Lest I be left out of the fun, I was handed a "Speckled Python Rock" that weighed three pounds, felt it heft, then told the next one weighed eight pounds, and did flinch when it was projected at me—foam and nowhere near eight pounds, though looked identical. I slid off my stool and retrieved the Speckled Python Rock, which had bounced off my chest and onto the floor.
      More rock creations, more jokes, or puns, based on the 346 rock constructions Don has installed on every wall and flat surface of the restaurant, plus more hanging from the ceiling. Jailhouse Rock. Rolling Stone. (You can see dozens of the pebbly figures on their website). There was a rock that squirted water at Rory and a rock that, when I shifted over to the proper stool, wet me in a place I would not want to be thought of as wet. There was the rock he had spent five years teaching to walk, whose skill he display, scampering across his hands, then instantly explained (a hidden thread, clipped to his apron). Some of them took an impressive amount of ingenuity, technical skill and pure unabashed corniness.
      "Have you had a chance to order yet?" Don asked, eventually, as an afterthought, and we admitted that no, we had not, but we would like to. Don explained that he opened the restaurant eight years ago, then three years ago went all pasties. I've always flinched at the word "pasties"—it always seems, at first glance, a typo of the word "pastries" then, at second, a reference to what strippers wear in dismal 1950s bump-and-grind joints. But I did eat them in London—they're originally from Cornwall. "Pasty" (or "Pastie," Rocks for Fun spells it both ways) is a creole of "Cornish Pastry.") More rocks, more jokes. Eventually we looked at the menu—no curry chicken, alas. Linda returned, and as nicely as I could I asked for the Bar BQ Baby Back Pork Ribs ("Our second most popular pasty" Don said) and Rory went for the Cheesy Philly Beef.

      After we placed our order, I stepped into the main restaurant to examine the rest of the displays, with Don hot on my heels, pointing out various highlights and masterpieces. I later found that Oddball Wisconsin: A Guide to 400 Really Strange Places, calls him "the guru of geological guffaws," and like many gurus, he tends toward the hard sell. He pointed out a Marriage on the Rocks display, commemorating his 50th anniversary, and noted that today, Oct. 13, was the actual day of his anniversary. I didn't know whether to say, "Happy anniversary" or "Is your marriage really on the rocks?" so I went with the former. Safer. Don pointed out the 50 dollar coins, given as an anniversary gift, incorporated into the display.
     A large sign declared how many pasties have been sold since the restaurant began serving them three years ago: 89,404. "Do you change it every day?" I asked. 
     "Several times a day" he said—the restaurant is opened seven days a week, from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m.

     About three minutes after we ordered, our meals arrived. A rather plain looking well-browned crescent pastry on a styrofoam plate, with three slices of their "famous Idiot Pickles" and a small cup of applesauce. $7.50. I tried to cut the pasty crust with my butter knife and was thwarted. It was tough.
     Biting into it was challenging too, because it was chewy outside and blisteringly hot within—three minutes nuked in the microwave, rendered the dough like rubber and the filling like lava. 
     By dunking it in the apple sauce and vigorous blowing, I managed to eat the thing with only a little blistering. I resisted the suggestion that we buy more to take home. "Some people buy 30 at a time," Don said hopefully. "They come frozen."

     I liked Don, and appreciate the rock pun world he has created around himself. Quizzing him about his background, he said he was a tile salesman, and the vibe of the place had a definite salesman schtick quality, like a jokey bar napkin come to life.  I am loath to bring big city Chicago judgment to bear on the star of his own ongoing show in Tigerton, population 724 according to a nearby sign. To question such a quaint and idiosyncratic piece of Wisconsin's culinary and artistic heritage. (One website called the pasty the "state meal"). Rory and I marveled at the time he must have spent to craft the 346 rock dioramas, plus the 180 more that Don said he has designed but yet to execute. I realized that I'm probably thinking too much about something that isn't supposed to be thought about at all.
     Still, we both wondered, driving away, if perhaps Don might be well served if he devoted less time to creating new rock scenarios—as it is we could only have a dozen, or two dozen, or three, of the hundreds there, presented to us before we paid our bill and fled—and devote a bit of that ingenuity to making the pasties more fit to eat. His customers certainly would be better served. I am not a gourmand or restaurant professional, but perhaps some pasties could be kept from the freezer for a day or two and popped into a conventional oven to warm after being ordered: that might take 13 minutes instead of three, but that would leave more time for jokes, and the improvement in palatability could be considerable.  I would definitely go back—the coffee was fine—and soak the whole place in again, and spend more time with Don, who is certainly an American marvel. I'm just not sure I could make another go at a pasty. The thing tasted, I realized after I got home, like nothing so much as a rock. A Scalding Tough Pasty Rock. Suddenly the name "Rocks for Fun Cafe" took on an ominous double meaning. Perhaps that is part of the joke.
   
   

Gruene Coal Company

   

     A friend was sick, and I offered to bring her some cookies from D'Amato's. She wasn't familiar, and I said, "Last coal-fired bakery oven in Chicago" and sent her this column. Re-reading it, after five years, I thought, "That's a nice column," and decided to lay it out here, as a reserve, in case I ever found myself at midnight with another day looming and nothing to share, or, if you're reading this on Oct. 13, in the Upper Peninsula where I can't access the Internet to write a blog post. That day must have come last night, because here this is, for your reading pleasure. And if your reaction is, "I read that in 2009!" well, I enjoyed reading it a second time, and I wrote the thing. 

     If you've never seen four tons of coal dumped in an alley — and my guess is you haven't — it's a surprisingly complex process.

     As the bed of Paul Schoening's blue dump truck tilts slowly upward, a lone preliminary lump of Harlan County, Ky., coal tumbles to the ground, as if reconnoitering.

     Then, the whole mass shifts, slightly, almost expectantly, while remaining on the truck bed.

     Then, a scattering of pieces, ranging in size from eggs to loaves of bread, clatters to the asphalt.

     Then, all at once, the coal crashes down in a roaring cascade, five long seconds of dry, percussive sound, like 10 bowling balls scattering a hundred bowling pins. The 8,000-pound pile is a yard high, 10 feet across and 6 feet wide.

     Five men, employees and owners of the Coalfire Pizza Company, 1321 W. Grand, set upon the coal with shovels. Using two green wheelbarrows, it takes half an hour and 40 trips to move the coal into the restaurant's coal bin.

     DOWN TO 2 CUSTOMERS

      Coalfire is one of two remaining customers of the Gruene Coal Company, the last coal hauler in Chicago.

      Once, the combustible black rock — the carbonized remains of plant life that dinosaurs failed to munch — heated most buildings in Chicago

     "Calumet High School, it was unbelievable," recalls Schoening, who in his first and best year — 1968 — sold 10,000 tons of coal.

     Now, he sells 100 tons a year. A dozen tons to Coalfire, the rest to D'Amato's Bakery two blocks east, at 1124 W. Grand (the one owned by Victor D'Amato, not to be confused with the D'Amato's Bakery at 1332 W. Grand, owned by his brother, Matteo).

     The proximity of Gruene's last two customers can't be coincidence, and isn't. Coalfire was started three years ago and intentionally opened near D'Amato's.

     "One of the reasons we chose this location was D'Amato's was right down the road, using the coal bakery oven," says owner Bill Carroll. "We figured, if someone objects to our using it, it's [already being used] right down the road."

     Why a coal-fired pizza oven?

     "Mostly, it's to get a high temperature," says Carroll. "You can achieve a similar high temperature with wood, but the coal fire burns a little more evenly. You don't have to stoke it as much, and it's a little cheaper."

     Co-owner James Spillane suggests a more nostalgic reason — both men are from Massachusetts, home of coal-fired pizza.

     "I wanted to burn coal," he says. "I really couldn't tell you the difference between wood-fired pizza and coal-fired pizza. But coal — coal fuels cities; coal was the fuel of the Eastern cities."

     Midwestern cities, too. Chicago was once defined — and blighted — by coal. "Chicago seemed an unreal city whose mythical houses were built of slabs of black coal, wreathed in palls of gray smoke," wrote Richard Wright, of his first visit here in 1927.

     IN 1913: 800 COAL DEALERS

     Gruene Coal, founded in 1883, was among 800 coal dealers listed in the city's 1913 directory. It has been Chicago's only coal company for decades. Schoening, a weathered but jovial mustachioed man in a watch cap, is its owner and only full-time employee.           

     Most of his income is from selling fuel oil — he considers coal "a hobby" and a tribute to his dad, who owned the Old King Coal Company on the Near South Side.

     The next day — and this was coincidence — Schoening made one of his monthly deliveries to D'Amato's. This was a much easier process, since D'Amato's oven uses crushed coal — stoker coal — which a rusty hopper shoots into the oven.

     The bituminous coal — softer, smokier coal than the harder, better-burning anthracite — is like coffee, in that it costs the same ground or whole: about $1,350 for 4 tons, delivered. Here it doesn't get dumped in the street, but is poured, through a hatch in the back gate of the truck, onto a black rubber conveyor belt that hurries the coal through a little metal door in the May Street side of D'Amato's and into the coal bin in the basement.

     Above, workers place loaves of dough on wooden pallets attached to long poles and thrust them into the oven to bake, a job unchanged for 5,000 years.

     Across the street, Vic D'Amato, sitting in his small office at the wholesale branch of the bakery begun by his father, brothers and himself, considers the question — why keep the last coal-fired bakery oven in Chicago? — with a patient grimace, as if a child had asked something naive.

     The building, he explains, was constructed right after the Chicago Fire. It was built around the coal oven — the oven is part of the building itself and hence part of D'Amato's Bakery. It's still there — he doesn't actually say this, but I sense it — because anything else would be wrong.

     When she heard that I was visiting D'Amato's, my wife had instructed, "Bring home bread." So I dutifully secured a loaf.

     That evening, I brought home the loaf of D'Amato's bread that had been baked that morning on a large wooden pallet shoved into the century-old coal-burning oven.

     "This is very good bread," my wife said, more than once, adding further instructions: I was to return frequently to get more of this very good bread.

     I cut myself a thick slice, buttered it and took a bite. Delicious. Yet. Perhaps it was me. I'm sure it was me — but I somehow thought I detected a trace of coaliness; not a flavor, but a hint, a suggestion. A second bite. It must be psychological. But, yes, a whisper of coal.