Friendly if you belonged

     Jackie Schaller died last Saturday at 90. The owner of Schaller's Pump, the legendary Bridgeport tavern, was given the proper affectionate send-off by our inimitable Maureen O'Donnell in the Sun-Times. But these old South Side guys, they weren't Teddy bears. They had a toughness that lingered right into old age, as I found out, a little, when the great Ed McElroy took me to Schaller's in 2009, leading to Jackie Schaller's memorable cameo in my 2012 memoir, You Were Never in Chicago:

    For lunch today, Ed takes me to Schaller's Pump. From the outside, the place seems unremarkable—a modest two-story brick building, a large welcome to White Sox fans painted across the wall. In the gravel parking lot, I mention that I was last here with Mary Mitchell, a black Sun-Times columnist who was hesitant to walk into Schaller's because of its reputation, unsure of how she would be received, though the regulars warmly welcomed her once she did muster the courage to go in. 
     "The only black you'll see here is the cook," says Ed.

Jackie Schaller

     On the inside, Schaller's Pump is also unremarkable — your standard small, dim neighborhood tavern, with an elbow-worn wooden bar and a dozen tables. Patrons are older, all white, and Ed knows most of them. We sit down and are joined by Jackie Schaller, a tiny man in a blue cardigan, not two years older than Ed but looking far more elderly, shrunken, pale — his face seems like soft stone worn away by a river. His grandfather started the bar in 1881, and it has operated continuously since then — all through Prohibition, which merely required installation of the peephole that's still in the side door. Schaller calls Ed "Eddie" and they reminisce. 
     "Who took you to your first World Series?" Ed says, and they both laugh. To St. Louis in 1946 to see the Cardinals beat the Red Sox. "I drove down in my car," says Ed. "The Chase Hotel. A guy I knew took care of us."
     Schaller is cooler toward me. Though in Ed's company, I'm still a stranger and a newspaperman at that.
     Did Schaller know his grandfather, I ask. Did he know the man who started the tavern?
     "Yes," Schaller replies.
     Silence.
     What was he like?
     A pause. "Five foot one," Schaller says, without a trace of warmth. Nothing more.
     An older black couple arrives and is shown to a table nearby, where they quietly eat. Times have changed, in some ways, and not in others. I ask Schaller how old he is.
     "My birthday is Jan. 15," says Schaller. "Do you know what day that is?"
    I shrug—nothing comes to mind.
    "Martin Luther King Day," Schaller says, with a quick flick of the thumb toward the black couple. There doesn't seem to be malice in the gesture—those days are gone—but maybe the memory of malice....
     Ed orders a hamburger and a glass of milk. I order a steak sandwich and a cup of coffee, with only the briefest glance of instinctive longing at the men having Budweisers at the bar. Jackie moves off, to see after a big group of tourists arriving at the back room. Ed tells me a little about him. "World War II guy. I think he got hit," Ed says, describing how Schaller went from an eighteen-year-old playing on the St. Leo Light Basketball Squad and mouthing off to the priests to a soldier fighting in the jungles of the Pacific. A common path for the boys of Ed's generation. They played ball, they went overseas, they fought, they got hit, they came home.
    "All those guys. Overseas. Bronze stars. You couldn't get a better bunch of people," says Ed. "All out of Visitation Parish. In Chicago, you know, we go by parish. Especially South Side. Visitation—it's like the pope lived there." Ed holds up his hands in amazement. "Unbelievable, Visitation. So many priests came out of there. So many policeman. Commanders. Firemen. It was so friendly."
    Friendly, of course, if you belonged.

     
     

     

The miracle of evolution

     I've been staying with my parents in Boulder for the past few days. And one of the joys of such visits is rambling through the library of my father, a retired NASA scientist. For some reason I pulled down Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology, by P.B. Medawar and J.S. Medawar (Harvard: 1983) and have been browsing happily.
     The entry on barnacles includes the fact that "Aristotle understood the special reproductive problems of creatures which do not move." The essay for "Man's Place in Nature" touches upon humanity's gradual realization that the Lords of the Earth are actually animals ourselves, a cousin to the gorilla with delusions of grandeur.
    Leading us to the entry under "creationism," which contains an idea that, for all the debate over the subject, I had never heard expressed before, and it's potent enough that I thought it merits sharing:

     We are surprised at the obstinacy with which creationists cleave to literal creationism. So doing, they fail to realize that the evolutionary concept is a much grander and more awe-inspiring conception—in keeping with what C.S. Lewis referred to as rational piety, and for many people conducive to reverence.

     Of course. Not only is the "And then God made everything, end of story" of the Bible wrong, but like so many untruths, it's a gross impoverishment of the reality that it supposedly describes. The religious fairy tale pales in the sense of awe and wonder that one would expect the actual creation of everything that exists in the universe would evoke, and does, when you grasp the actuality of it. Any deity worthy of the name would prefer credit for the vast, interconnected, incremental clockwork progress of evolution, its patience, subtlety and beauty playing out over billions of years, to the tossed-off because-I-say-so of the Bible. Comparing Darwinian and Biblical notions of the origins of life is like comparing our DNA blueprint to a crayon stick figure.
    But no need for much elaboration. I'd rather you re-read the quote by the Medewars (a British couple; Peter, a biologist, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1960; Jean approached him over the meaning of "heuristic" and love ensued) than listen to me extemporize upon it. Just as faith so often serves up hatred when it's supposed to encourage love, so its view of creation as a dusty desert whim of theological fascism viewed through a keyhole crumbles next to the magnificent real miracle of evolution.

The beauty of bicycles

     Who doesn't love old bicycles? The people who built the Schwinn above, who designed the frame behind the handlebars to flare out, resembling ... what? The thorax of some emerald insect? The wing of a bird? What were they thinking? Doesn't matter. The end result is wonderful.
     The other day I wandering into University Bicycles, the sprawling cycle shop just off the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, and was first amazed by the jammed mass of bikes of all colors, sizes and descriptions. The vast repair department, the arrays of helmets, gloves and bicycling jerseys.
    I just had to explore. Even though I'm not in the market for a new bike—my black Schwinn Cruiser with its fat whitewall tires does just fine—and as much as I admired their custom "University Cycle" Italian-style racing shirts, I'd look like a fool in one. You need to earn clothing like that.
     My attention shifted to University Bicycles museum's worth of antique bicycles hanging from the ceiling.  Most were Schwinns, the dominant American bike company for most of the 20th century (and a company, I should point out, founded in Chicago in 1895). There were lesser brands as well, such as a 1888 Hickory with wooden spokes and rims.
    I'm sharing the pictures just to say, "Hey, look at this." But they do raise a question: why was design so important on these bikes? Nowadays bikes are all about performance, about simplicity, the lightness of the alloys, their toughness and ruggedness and speed. The streamlined chain guards and fenders are all a thing of the past. Why don't we value them anymore? My guess: because we live in a world where we jettison the superfluous, to save money. We can't afford style.
    Maybe because bicycles were newer, and companies felt they had to sell the product. If you don't know it, the bicycle was one of those technological innovations that changed society, like computers, television and the automobile. There was a Bicycle Craze in the 1890s. Women started shedding those layers of skirts because they were riding bicycles, which not incidentally put them beyond the reach of family and chaperones. Editorial writers wrung their hands, as editorial writers do, and Wondered What It All Meant.
     If you want to see more, there's a rambling video on YouTube that gives a jumpy tour of many more of the older bikes in the store. Or, better, stop by University Bicycles next time you are in Boulder. I asked if they minded if I photographed their bikes, and they said go right ahead. Nice people. I bet they're even nicer if you buy something.

Memorial Day, 2016

      We do lots of activities over Memorial Day weekend—picnics and barbecues, tent sales and, not to forget the big event itself, the Indianapolis 500.
     Don't blame the shrug of modern life. When Memorial Day began, right after the Civil War, as Decoration Day, it was a time for families to visit the graves of their knighted Union dead, outings immediately re-purposed by amorous young folk.
     "Decoration Day was also a day of courtship for the young people," notes holiday scholar Jack Santino, pointing out how 19th century couples would wander off to the more remote spots of woodsy cemeteries.
      Given these practical uses of the holiday, we can't be blamed for wondering, as we dip our heads and reflect on the sacrifice of soldiers who gave their lives for the country, for whose benefit do we do this?
      The noble dead? To please those gazing down at us from heaven?
     Pretty to think so. I would suggest, however, that we remember those who yielded their lives, not as a favor to them, but for ourselves. Dignity demands it. Our nation did not form spontaneously, like a mountain range, but was wrested by intention and force from Mother Britain. Nor did it survive for 240 years without the exercise of military power--often in folly, for certain but sometimes crucially, to make sure the Wehrmacht didn't come rolling down Michigan Avenue.... 

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Boulder, SUVs and goats

      I've spent a lot of time in Colorado: a full year, in bits and pieces, since I was a teenager. I don't love it the way many do. I mean, it's nice. Mountains. Forests. More mountains. Fine if you like that kind of thing.  I'm there now, visiting my parents. So I thought I'd share an observation from a dozen years ago, when SUVs were newer and more something to be remarked upon, as opposed to something accepted with a shrug.

     BOULDER, Colo.--There are fewer sport-utility vehicles on the roads here than in Chicago. That was a surprise. I assumed, with all the mountains, it would be the other way around, and worried I was somehow misperceiving things, perhaps due to the less congested traffic zipping along new, clean highways, plus the wide open spaces. But I quizzed my wife, cleverly not tipping my hand, and she viewed it the same. And we definitely did not spot a single Hummer in a week of driving the kids hither and yon, through the Rockies and back and forth across town.
     I have a theory as to why this is: People in Chicago drive all those Behemoths and Whales and Mountainsides--complete with headlight grills to brush away nonexistent branches and fog lights to cut through the mist of fjords 5,000 miles away--as part of some elaborate interior fantasy, a parody of the life they'd lead if only they weren't working like dray horses in windowless brokerage houses on LaSalle Street.
    But in Colorado, where people actually routinely shun their work and responsibilities and race off to the mountains and climb them, sometimes with their bare hands, they don't need to fantasize. They're busy hiking, riding, paddling, skydiving. They don't need a 3-ton, 11 mpg, $60,000 hunk of junk to prop up their outdoor delusions. They've got the real thing. We pulled over to the side of the road in Rocky Mountain National Park and watched a herd of elk basking in the sun, if not eyeball to eyeball, then as close to a group of elk as I want to be without bars between us.
     And I was driving a sedan.
     Not that Boulderites are without their own fantasies. Living next to smoggy Denver, which is a kind of Cleveland with mountains, and with every acre of farmland rapidly turning into tracts of pre-fab homes, there is a certain frenzy to environmentalism here.
     For instance. We were zipping along Foothills Parkway when we passed a couple hundred goats at the side of the road. We were in residential Boulder, and a glance beyond the goats confirmed that this wasn't some sliver of farm. There were houses around the goats. My wife was puzzled, but my long acquaintance with the People's Republic of Boulder--I've been coming here since the mid-1970s--gave me a hunch what was happening. The goats were mowing the grass, a diligent step on the road to ecological Nirvana. I had to know more.


     Recession, not eco-friendliness       
      "I came up with the idea," said Patrick Tarver, median maintenance flood supervisor for the City of Boulder. "We've only had it going about three weeks; it started out as a pilot program."
     To my disappointment, the goat mowers were not inspired directly by some chai-swigging, patchouli-scented macro-organic aversion to internal combustion engine lawn mowing, but because of lawn care services folding in the recession.
     "We couldn't get a mowing contractor," Tarver said. "The budget hit them really hard. They had let people go, sold equipment, and couldn't handle the job."
     Enter the goats.
     "We had a noxious weed problem, and used the goats in the past, and it just kind of came to me to try goats out," he said. "We have real steep berms, and it would take a lot of time to weed wack the whole area."
     A company in a nearby town, "Nip It in the Bud," provides hungry goats at $1 a day each--there are 232 in Boulder's herd, and Tarver said the goats' work compares favorably to human mowers at $10 to $15 an hour. Temporary fencing keeps the goats from wandering away.
     Tarver said that while the primary motive was "an economic thing," there is no question that goat mowing scratches a particular Boulder eco-green itch.
     "It is a Boulder mentality item as well," he said. "We're always looking for alternatives, and the goats don't put out ozone, don't put out noise pollution, don't use any fossil fuels."
     One man's ceiling is another man's floor, however. While I was appreciating Boulder for its wide-open spaces, grass-gobbling goats and zoning that doesn't permit any building that doesn't look like it was made out of mud by Pueblos, I ran into a resident who was thinking of packing it up.

     A few people can be too many
     "I've lived here since 1966," said a deeply-tanned, squinty kind of guy I met on the trail, while his dog and my boys played in what I hoped was a creek but could have also been an open sewer. He didn't have to finish the thought.
     "I suppose it's gotten pretty built up for you," I said.
     "It has," he agreed.
    "There's always North Dakota," I said, nodding sagely and forcing down a smile.
     We flew back into Midway, and saw our first Hummer of the week on the treacherous terrain of Cicero Avenue. I was calm though. I'm trying to get beyond the fist-shaking scorn for SUVs that I've felt over the past five years. I'm trying to replace it with more of a bland, avuncular tolerance just shy of contempt. If kids can play cowboys and Indians (well, just cowboys nowadays) then why shouldn't adults buy big rolling playpens and pretend they're being chased by rhinos in the veldt?
     I just wish they wouldn't feel the need to drive while doing it.

                             —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Aug. 8, 2003

"Not in jest, but in earnest"

      There is a quote from antiquity that explains half the suffering in the world. It's one of my favorites, all the better because odds are you've never heard it before.
     Ready? 
     Here goes.
     "Little boys throw stones at frogs in jest," the poet Bion wrote in 100 BC, "though the frogs die, not in jest, but in earnest."
     In other words, the powerful do things lightly that have heavy consequences. 
     Great, huh? 
     So why is this quote illustrated by a grainy photo of a mother duck and her seven ducklings in my backyard?
     Our backyard is so wet it attracted ducks. I thought I would get their photo, and since I don't have a camera with a long lens—I don't have a camera at all—I stealthily crept out the back door to get a closer shot with my iPhone. I didn't want to scare the ducks by slamming the door, so I left it open.
     What I forgot, padding across the wooden deck on tiptoe, was the dog, who saw the ducks, and bolted out the open kitchen door, shot across the deck and after the ducks, scattering them in a quacking cloud of confusion and duckling and feathers.
    "Kitty!" I shouted giving pursuit.
     I don't think she hurt any of the ducklings —I once saw her trying to get the better of an overturned cicada and, well, let's put it this way: the cicada won.
      The inter-species scrum disappeared into the pine trees. I eventually tracked the dog down. The momma duck quacked mightily and assembled her charges, and stalked off, highly offended, to find a more hospitable yard. I felt very bad about driving them away. It wasn't my intent. But that's how it goes.
      Little boys throw stones at frogs in jest, though the frogs die, not in jest, but in earnest.  It also works for ducks, and lots of other things too. 

Police plant seeds of trust

 

   
     A piece of turf in Englewood. Young black men and women hanging out. And cops with dirty hands, planting something, then covering it up.
     Familiar words. You think you know where this story is going. But you don't.
     "My name is Officer Davis. I work at the 7th District police station," says David Davis, standing beside his partner, Ja'Lance Hunt. "Our mission is to protect and preserve life. We would be glad to answer any questions you have. We're here today to help you plant, to put the flowers in the garden today. We go to all the schools in Englewood and we plant flowers, but we also act as the police too. OK? So who's going to show me how to plant?"
     It was a sunny morning in West Englewood last week at the Southside Occupational Academy High School, 7342 S. Hoyne, a school for students with disabilities. Southside Occupational is a rare Chicago public high school that has its own dog, Louie, a mini-Goldendoodle.   
    "Everybody knows Louie," says Joshua Long, the principal.
     It was the school's Earth Day celebration, with outside activities: food grills, art projects and planting their school garden. Officers Hunt and Davis greeted one group after another with enthusiasm, placing tiny seeds into their hands, helping plant them into the rich earth and cover them up with dirt.
    “You ready to do some gardening?” enthuses Davis.

     God knows the Chicago Police Department would never invite press to such an event. It was The Kitchen Community, the foundation that runs 115 of these “learning gardens” at schools in Chicago. I might have declined the opportunity to drive to Englewood to watch kids plant chicory. But when Kitchen Community regional director Tovah McCord mentioned that police officers would be there helping, I decided to slide by. Though I confidently assured McCord that the police would never talk to me because, well, not talking to the press is what cops do. That’s what makes the whole “Code of Silence” flap so laughable. It isn’t just that police don’t talk about wrongdoing. They don’t talk about anything. It’s safer that way.
     But Davis and Hunt didn’t seem to get the memo. They not chat easily with the students, laughing and hugging, but they even talk with me.
     “It’s about building relationships,” says Hunt. “At the end of the day, it allows us to interact. For the kids, learning about growing healthy foods and the police coming out supporting that. It gives us an opportunity to plant, be interactive and do some positive things with the kids. It’s a win-win. It allows them to see us in a different light.”
     Hunt and Davis are Army veterans and have been partners for 11 years. They worked with ATF, the FBI, and with gang crimes. Now they’re with CAPS.
     “We did all the secret squirrel stuff,” says Hunt. “But nothing, nothing beats working with kids.” They also take students on college trips and visit schools to mediate tense situations before they become violent.
     I tell Hunt I’m surprised to find officers who talk to the press.
     “When you’re trying to do positive things . . .,” he says. “It’s bigger than us. These are future leaders.”
     As a gardener myself, I know that not everything planted bears fruit. The trick is to keep trying.
     “How do you effect change?” says Hunt. “You can complain. But what are you doing about it? You do it by your interaction. It starts with what we’re doing now: talking. It starts with your interaction with me. Now I don’t know what your past experience has been with the police. If nothing else, this is something different. Unfortunately, everything has always been negative. So it’s almost like there’s no good things happening, no good kids. You’ve got a lot of kids doing the right things as well as officers.
     “We’ve been able to change opinions. How do we build relationships? What’s the best place to start? Schools. You get that many young ladies and young men in one place, it gives them the opportunity — their first time to ask questions and to understand the other side of it. We’re honest with them. We encourage questions. We go to the grammar schools, the little kids will ask, ‘Why you all shoot people?’ They have no filters. We always address the elephant in the room. You have to address it but not let it be the focus of what we’re talking about. It allows them to expand their minds.”