Chicago Auto Show Spectacular: #1. All revved up, nowhere to go

1948 Tucker Torpedo (Smithsonian Museum of American History)

     The Chicago Auto Show opens at McCormick Place today—assuming you are reading this Saturday, Feb. 10.   
      While I make a point of going to the housewares show, the auto show is such a mob scene that I studiously avoid it. Though occasionally the paper dispatches me, and I manfully try to do my best, such as this report—I'm proud for noticing the aspirations to elegance of any car can be gauged by the grandeur its makers lunge for when describing "white."
     But skirting the show doesn't mean I don't get excited about cars. I do, and have fun when the opportunity arises to write about them. The show is open until Feb. 19, and during its run I'm going to share some fun, auto-related columns from years past. 

     Some sort of cosmic malevolence has always kept me from appreciating automobiles.
     I want to. I try. But the effort inevitably falls flat.
     I just came from five hours of wandering around the Chicago Auto Show. There was only one car that I knew ahead of time I rather liked, just for its styling — the new Audi TT Roadster. Sort of like a Volkswagen Beetle for guys. When I realized that you could sit inside the cars, I opened the door of a very promising silver TT and got inside.
     Or tried to.
     The same cut-down roof that gives the car its low-slung line makes the car nearly impossible to get into. I had to fold myself in half and shove my body in, dragging my head against the frame. And I'm not quite 5 feet 9.
     In general, actually seeing the vehicles took the sheen off the idea of owning them. As rugged as the Hummers look, a peek inside shows that the driver and passenger seats are about a yard apart, separated by a chest-high central console. Your passenger might as well be in the next lane.
     As I strolled, I became more interested, not in the vehicles themselves, but in the ballyhoo used to push them. For instance: They seem to be running out of car names. The contender for the "Impact" award for a bad car name goes to the Chevy Avalanche, which denotes not just mountains, but mountains sliding down on top of you.
     The Echo Reverb — an economy model from Toyota—was runner-up, though I also appreciated the name of the sound system in the signature Sony vehicle from Ford: Xplod, pronounced "explode."
     I administered what I called the "white test." You could tell how pretentious a car is by what term the company applies to the color white.
     For instance, while Saturn calls white "white," Ford calls it "Oxford white." Moving up the scale, Cadillac has "white diamond" and Porsche, "Biarritz white." Rolls-Royce can't even utter the prosaic syllable "white." For them, it's simply "Artica." (And yes, it's true, the Silver Seraph does come with one of those little doughnut spare tires, as opposed to a full-sized spare).
     The color of the future seems to be yellow. Most every concept car is that hue. Saturn's concept car is the horrible gold of a 1959 refrigerator. Daewoo's Sporty concept is the same greenish yellow found on the reflective strips on firefighter turnout coats.
     The most arresting color I saw was a Ford Taurus painted "chestnut clearcoat metallic." It looks like radioactive chocolate pudding. Ford also has a jarring "autumn orange" that's hard to describe. Not quite a burnt orange. Maybe a little toasted.
     There is a good deal of inadvertent humor at the show. The centerpiece of Secretary of State Jesse White's display is a sort of shrine to White — his portrait, 2 feet tall, flanked by flags and mounted on a white wooden tableau.
     The highlight, for me, was noticing Trooper C.T. Pfotenhauer at the State Police display pushing sober and safe driving. The booth is located directly across from the 208 mph Lamborghini Diablo VT Coupe at Shell's exotic car display.
     "They do it to us every year," sighed Pfotenhauer, who was nonplussed by the speed of the Lamborghini, particularly compared with the range of a police radio. "The bottom line," she said, "is can they outrun Motorola?"
          —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 15, 2000

"This is life most jolly"

     This storm is nothing. Then again, most winter storms are nothing, as Shakespeare reminds us, at least when compared to the storms of the heart. What wind can freeze you the way other people can? Anyway, I thought of this song of Lord Amiens, and decided to share it.

Blow, blow, thou winter wind.

Thou art not so unkind

As man’s ingratitude.

Thy tooth is not so keen,

Because thou art not seen,

Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly.

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then heigh-ho, the holly.

This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

That dost not bite so nigh

As benefits forgot.

Though thou the waters warp,

Thy sting is not so sharp

As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly.

Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then heigh-ho, the holly.

This life is most jolly.

                                       —William Shakespeare

                                          As You Like It

                                          Act 2, Scene 7

If you can't come to the gas station, the gas station will come to you

Jacob Menard

Miguel Anzo

     Jacob Menard is a lanky 25-year-old who works for his uncle Gerald at Amazing Lock Service. He sports a stainless steel post through his right eyebrow, a number of tattoos, and an understated blue stocking cap advertising Cresco, a Chicago medical marijuana dispensary.
     The young man drives a gray 2013 Volkswagen Passat. On Monday, he contrived to get the car’s gas tank filled without the vehicle ever leaving its parking space behind his uncle’s shop at 3165 N. Halsted Street.
     This feat was achieved through Yoshi Inc., a new automobile fill-up and maintenance service that began operating last year in Atlanta, Austin, Nashville, Los Angeles and San Francisco, expanding into Chicago on Feb. 1.
     They approached me to cover their launch last week. I asked if I could instead see an average customer.
      “You do have customers, right?” I said.
     I expected a corporate lawyer having his Land Rover topped off in a downtown office building parking garage while he racked up the billable hours. 
     I didn’t expect a fresh-faced kid who works as a service technician and sings hip-hop on the side. Why would a guy like that pay $20 a month for a service to deliver gasoline to his car? (the first month is free) charging the average per gallon rate AAA is reporting that day? What’s wrong with gas stations?

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"We are all people"

   





     Chicago has its share of great museums.      
     There is the Art Institute of Chicago, of course, a world class institution, up there with the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre and the British Museum. You can visit it again and again and never get tired of going.
     There is the Field Museum of Natural History, certainly worth regular visits, particularly for the special shows, like the recent Tattoo exhibit, or the one on Haitian voodoo.
     Even the Museum of Science and Industry, though it tends to cater too much to popular tastes only vaguely related to science—relics of the Titanic!—and has a tendency to lean back and let corporations have their way.
     Those three are enough, and both visitors and local residents have a tendency not to stray much beyond them.
     Which is a shame. There is a a galaxy of what I think of as The Lesser Museums that warrant periodic visits. Places like the Museum of Contemporary Art, or the Oriental Institute, or the National Museum of Mexican Art. 
      Not to forget the Chicago History Museum, the former Chicago Historical Society, where I stopped by Monday because I was in the neighborhood, reporting on a story, and had seen an email about the museum's exhibit on race. That's a big target, and I figured, it being Black History Month, and race being a constant source of societal agita, I should swing by and give it a look.
      "Race: Are We So Different?" was designed primarily for school groups. Lots of text. Lots of open space. Short on the artifacts that we older folk like. Some slave manacles. 
     Not a lot of surprise. The emphatic answer —spoiler alert!—to "Race: Are We So Different?" is no, we're not, at least not physically. Socially, yes, economically, big time, and that is certainly a lesson worth conveying. Although my hunch is that the city school groups coming through already have a pretty good idea about how the American deck is stacked against minorities, who are blamed for failing to thrive at a game where the rules are written against them at the start.
    Otherwise, the points the displays were making—race is a social construct, not a biological fact; you can't tell a person's race from his skeleton—were not earth-shattering. Good if you didn't know it; sort of preaching to the choir if you did. At best a worthwhile reminder.
    One aspect of the exhibit did stick out from the homogenized, run-through-the-museum-exhibit-machine texture of "Race: Are We So Different?" Students were asked to fill out blank index cards.
    "What's your story?" the display inquired. "Do you have a story or idea about your varied heritage you'd like to share? Jot it down, drop it in the slot, and we'll add it to the comment book."

      The students shared, not so much stories, as unvarnished expressions of pride and enthusiasm.
      I found myself reading card after card, enjoying the wide range of ethnicities and nationalities mentioned. They were kashmiri and Japanese/Mexican, "Afro-Latina,"  They drew flags, portraits.
      Many expressions of enthusiasm. "I am PROUD to be PINOY!" 
     You could see the way racism—perhaps inspired by our current president—filters down to children, the seismic rumbles it sends.

"I am an 8th Grader who is very ready for high school – a new start. I am a girl, but my best friend used to be a guy. Recently though, he has changed. He is making Hitler jokes, black jokes, and gay jokes of the worst kind. He will not stop, even though I have confronted him about his racism at school."

     Most evocative were these tales of bigotry, brief, almost poetic, heartbreaking narratives: "I was at the beach and somebody whispered, don't go by him because I am black."
     The sort of incident you just know stays with a person for a lifetime.
    "I have been told to 'go back to Tokyo' by a stranger on the train. I’m Vietnamese and French-Canadian."
    "I was called Frijalero" refers to a Spanish word, "frijolero," that literally means "one who prepares beans," or "beaner" something you would fling at at Mexican to suggest they haven't advanced far from whatever village they may have come from.
     But generally they were positive, proud, hopeful. A reminder that just as hatred has to be taught, so does shame. The natural thing is for people to feel good about their heritage, whatever it is. 
    Some were so simple and forceful, it was almost poetry: "Ignoring it won't make it go away." 
    Won't make what go away? Hate? Racism? Difference?
    Racism always feels antique—we ask ourselves, how can this be, in 2017? Just as people marveled at what was happening in 1962 an 1937. 
    Hate is both very old and very current. In November, 2016, those in our country who fear more than love grabbed the wheel. The kids filling out notecards at the Chicago History Museum are a reminder that someday soon those who love more than hate are going to grab the wheel back.
    Or as one visitor wrote:
    "We are all people." 
    That's such a simple lesson. Why do so many have such difficulty understanding it?


 

Republicans deny just about everything EXCEPT the Holocaust. Generally.

      We don’t have accent marks in English. None of those little slashing lines peppering French — the accents aigu and grave. None of those rumbling double-dot umlauts found in German.
     Thus people could almost be forgiven for mispronouncing “Holocaust denial” by stressing the first word: “Holocaust denial.”
     That rolls off Republican tongues. Pronounced that way, the Illinois Republican Party can muster indignation that perennial candidate Arthur Jones is an admitted anti-Semite as revealed in the Sun-Times by my colleagues Lynn Sweet and Frank Main. Jones is a man who denies the Holocaust, and yet is on his way to becoming the Republican nominee for the 3rd Congressional District since he is running unopposed.
     If only refusing to acknowledge unpleasant facts were limited to anti-Semites blind to the historical end product of their hatred. To those who, perhaps through a lingering vestige of humanity, flinch at seeing their philosophy put into practice, squeezing their eyes shut to what is actually the best-documented atrocity in history, thanks to those meticulous Germans.
     But denial is a big tent. Lots of room in there.

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Rules of the Road: Slow down at Yield signs, Nazis

     Kudos to my colleagues Lynn Sweet and Frank Main for tracking down Republican candidate for Congress Arthur Jones, flipping over his rock, and hearing what is on the mind of the Holocaust-denied and Nazi. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art

     Reading their piece, I noticed that Jones protested the opening of the Illinois Holocaust Museum in 2009. Which means he's an unnamed member of the supporting cast that inspired this column, one of my favorites. Yes, I noticed that Bill Clinton's quote describes much of Donald Trump's base. It was at a time when my column ran over an entire page in several parts, with a joke at the end, and I've kept that structure.





OPENING SHOT . . .

     Today is Adolf Hitler's birthday — it does creep up on you, doesn't it? And here I am without a gift or anything.
     He would have been 120, for those keeping count. It's also the 10th anniversary of the massacre at Columbine High School.
     Not a coincidence, of course — the teenage killers planned it that way. Hitler is a magnet for the unstable, the weak-minded, the cruel. It isn't hard to imagine why. Talk about a boost to the old ego -- the biggest loser in the world can suddenly have a historical giant as a personal pal, with an entire cast of suddenly subhuman inferiors to scorn.
     You can just see today's celebrants, gathered in windowless rooms, lighting the candles on their homemade sheet cakes (those swastikas are tough to make in icing!) for a quick round of "Happy Birthday to You!"
     What should we, the non-crazy, do to mark this special day? Well, I would be so bold as to suggest that we, too, consider a bit of celebration. Because Birthday Boy once conquered much of the world, his fascism was triumphant. Then Hitler was crushed, thanks in great part to the good old U.S. of A, and his beliefs were exiled into the realm of mental illness. His followers are scattered, marginalized, and the sort of people who don't realize that getting a tattoo on your neck is a bad career move.
     Every year that's still true is a happy birthday, in my view.

'I HATE ILLINOIS NAZIS'

     Driving requires split-second decisions—who yields to whom when merging onto the highway, whether to speed up through the yellow light, and of course what to do if there are Nazis.
     It has been a while since I've studied my Rules of the Road, but instinctively, you see Nazis, you slow down and try to find a place to park.
     I had just hopped into the car after four hours outside in the penetrating cold at the dedication ceremony for the Illinois Holocaust Museum, and was not keen to return to the cold rain.
     But Nazis! How often do you get to talk to Nazis? Maybe a dozen of them, in jackboots and black cargo pants, waving red and white swastika flags at the corner of Harms and Golf roads Sunday afternoon. I slowed, leaned over, gazing carefully, locking eyes with a round-faced, heavy lad of about 14.
     Just as I was about to ease the car onto the shoulder, a different emotion kicked in — screw 'em. Who cares what they have to say? Why give Nazis the platform they seek, so they can spout their pathological philosophy?
     I kept going, slowed down, thought of doubling back, kept going.
     On the one hand, you can't make up the kind of twisted psycho spew these people serve up—they indict themselves, if you let them.
     On the other, happy is he who didn't have to go to hell to know what the devil looks like. There is something perverse in shucking two hours of earnest, intelligent speechifying by leaders and politicians, only to turn around and collect the thoughts — to strain the term — of a gang of jackbooted yahoos protesting a museum.
     Besides, confronting a gang of Nazis at the side of the road might not be smart, from a practical point of view. "Columnist in bloody brawl with neo-Nazis." Can't have that.
     What kept me driving was remembering something former President Bill Clinton had just told the crowd of 12,000 people. He explained these Nazis more clearly than they could ever explain themselves:
     "The capacity for evil has to be stirred," Clinton said. "Folks who are ripe targets for the stirring are people who are insecure -- insecure psychologically, insecure financially, insecure politically. They are more vulnerable to false claims by power mongers. . . . The neo-Nazi groups in Europe and other hate groups around the world, if you really look at them, they basically were made up of angry, uncertain, insecure people looking for someone else to blame, cultivating, in their own minds, a phony victimhood to justify hurting others."
     The only word of Clinton's I'd quibble with is "were"—the neo-Nazis aren't a "were," alas, but an "are," as was clear Sunday to anyone passing the corner of Harms and Golf roads. They may be a rarity, but they are still with us, and while they are so far from their Nuremberg glory days as to be almost laughable, what they represent—the idea that the life of Person A is diminished by the polluted presence of Person B — is a philosophy by no means limited to those wearing jackboots, brandishing swastikas and eating birthday cake today.

TODAY'S CHUCKLE . . .

     Guy and Gary, cold, soaked to the skin but giddy with excitement, return to their Cicero basement and drape their big Nazi flag over the sofa to dry.
     "Well, I think that went extraordinarily well, wouldn't you say?" says Guy, putting up the tea. "I'm glad those Jewish vermin at least saw that we were out there!"
     "Indeed," replies Gary, who suddenly looks troubled. "Although. . . ."
     "Although what?" Guy asks, laying a concerned hand on Gary's shoulder and squeezing.
     "Wouldn't the presence of Nazis down the street dramatically underscore the need for a museum like this in the first place?"
     The two young men gaze at each other.
     "Oh," Guy says. "Those wily rascals!"
     "They tricked us into showing up, and we didn't even know it!" says Gary.
                  —Originally published in the Sun-Times April 20, 2009

‘Time on Fire’ shares cancer’s lesson: Life is ‘the sweetest candy’

Station Hospital, by Robert Sloan (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

     Distant friends are like distant comets. Gone for long periods. Then suddenly back, lighting the darkness for a time before looping out of sight again.
     Which is why a friend who retired to Florida, but in November was in town and stopped by the newspaper — whoops, multi-format storytelling platform — surprised me by phoning last week. Off-schedule. I was puzzling over this when she texted: Where are you? That got me on the phone, the cold hand of unease squeezing my shoulder.
     Some preliminary chat. Then she let it drop: cancer, one kidney already gone, a pea's worth of Mr. C. discovered in her lungs. Chemo started.
     My turn to say something.
     "That's terrible," I began, then tried to reel it back. "Losing a kidney . . . well, humans are designed for that. That's why we have two. And cancer . . . people shrug off cancer nowadays. It's like having an unpleasant hobby."
     I told her about one of my older son's best friends since kindergarten, now 22. Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in August, back at school, prognosis good, by January.
     "What's your address?" I asked. "I'm sending you a book."
     The book I send to all my friends facing cancer is "Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors," by Evan Handler, a 1996 memoir that begins this way: 

     "I'm afraid it is not good news," is what he said. "It is bad news. It is in the bone marrow. It's an acute myelogenous leukemia."

     And just like that, Handler, then a young Broadway actor, is exiled to the land of sickness.

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