Flashback 1996: Sometimes the one you can't trust is yourself

     Trying to keep the house we're confined to orderly, I pulled open a night table drawer and started to unjam. There, an expense check from December 19. $100.43. Quite a lot. The checks says "VOID AFTER 90 DAYS." Ever the optimist, I deposit it anyway, thinking maybe that's more of a suggestion. 
    It's not. The check bounces back, and the bank charges me $12 for my trouble. I appeal to our human resources department, which, used to my bumbling, says they will look into a new check, and delicately suggests I consider direct deposit for my expenses.
     Yes, I say, "that would be smart." I already have direct deposit for my pay, arranged after the episode outlined below. 

     "Bzzzz!" The buzzer. "UPS!" the intercom cries. A glance out the front window confirms the presence in the street of a big, boxy, brown truck. I let the guy into the building.
     That glance is a practiced part of city living. Can't be too careful. This supposed UPS guy could be a maniac, fresh from Stateville, with a double-edged ax under his coat. The truck is a good indication that everything is on the up-and-up.
     In day-to-day living, you have to assume the worst. Scan the bill for ripoffs and bad math. Check for complaints to the state when hiring the new plumber. Nothing dire about this; just being smart.
     Spending my days as I do scanning the horizon for trouble, I was doubly shocked last week not only to lose a big chunk of money, but to do so in a manner so stupid and careless that I never before imagined possible.
     I'm sharing the tale here, despite deep humiliation, for the purpose of perhaps helping one poor hapless individual avoid a similar circumstance.
     Also, my wife insists it is funny. She's been laughing all week. Perhaps you, too, will find it funny. I certainly don't. Maybe in several years. But not now. Not anytime soon. Maybe never.
     Here goes. Every week I take my paycheck and deposit it in the bank, personally. I understand doing this has become an antiquated process, on par with dipping candles or spinning wool. I understand banks discourage their customers from actually showing up and demanding services. A reader complained that his bank charges him 5 percent to run coins through the change machine. Make a deposit at the wrong ATM and you end up owing the bank money.
     What's next? A whack with a big mallet when you open an account? They used to give away toasters. . . .
     The bank wants us to use direct deposit or their ATM machines. But I like going to the bank. Or used to. It was a manageable errand, like dropping off a pair of shoes for repair at the shoemaker. No stress. Something I could do often and do well. The bank tellers are nice young people who respond politely and quickly.
     Returning to the tale: Every week I deposit my check, carefully filling out a bank deposit slip. About a month ago, I noticed the balance on the receipt was huge—many times what it should have been.
     I mentioned this to my wife, who handles the bookkeeping. She didn't blink. "You must be reading the wrong number," she said. "A code or something." The matter dropped.
     The next week it happened again. And the third. I gathered my courage and tried again. "Honey, I really think this is the amount in our checking account. It's got a dollar sign in front of it."
     The dollar sign usually means something.
     She got off the couch, sighed, and took the receipt from me. There was a long silence. I could hear the clock ticking in the next room. Her face went slack, and when she spoke, her voice sounded tinny and far away, as if filtering up through the heating ducts.
     "You've been writing the wrong account number—see, two numbers are switched," she said. "You've been depositing your paycheck into somebody's else's bank account."
     A month earlier, with great effort, I had memorized our account number. I had been so proud.
     In the movie version, the camera, at this moment, would pull back quickly, perhaps spinning, while the soundtrack filled with boisterous cosmic laughter: "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-hah!"
     There's a feeling common in childhood, mine anyway, a kind of sinking in the gut, a horrid, "I'm-in-trouble-now" feeling that doesn't happen much in adulthood, thank God.
     I felt it now, and no matter how much my brain reassured me that of course the bank would rectify the error, my gut tormented me with images of grinning bank clerks shrugging their shoulders. "Tough luck, pal. Be more careful next time and don't let the door hit you in the butt on the way out. . . ."
     My wife added this helpful thought: "Well, maybe the people whose account you put our money into will be honest and agree to give it back." Thanks, dear.
     The most galling thing to me was this: It was a problem I had never imagined possible. I just assumed the tellers checked the number against the name on the slip. I had counted on the kindness of strangers, bilking myself the way so many people get bilked, through trust.
     The next morning I slunk to the bank, hat in hand, and presented my case. I could have taken the offensive and yelled that it was their fault—why have a spot on the bank slip for a customer's name and address if nobody looks at it?
     Instead, I meekly pushed the crumpled deposit slips I had found in coat pockets and atop dressers at the teller and begged for my money back.
The teller was very nice—of course they'd look into it, he said, right away. He would pull the records and set everything right. Very friendly and sympathetic. I'm going to miss those bank people, I thought, as I immediately arranged for direct deposit. Better safe than sorry.
—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 15, 1996

Texas Notes: Trusty Steed

     Austin bureau chief Caren Jeskey takes us for a spin through life today. 

     “Can I put your bike in my car?” 

      My pat answer to the bike question was “no, thank you,” but that usually did not suffice. “You can’t ride home from here! Let me take you,” or “it’s too cold/late/rainy.” The well-meaning friend or family member thought they were doing me a favor by offering to drive me home when, in fact, my body and soul wanted nothing more than to get on my bicycle and ride. A cyclist has a sturdy countenance and a hankering for the wind. We can tell you if it’s blowing at 5 or 10 miles per hour, and at 12 or more we know we might be in for a bit of a challenge. This depends on whether it’s a headwind, coming from one side, or mercifully at our backs. We’ll only concede and remove the front tire to gingerly place our babies into the trunk of a car if we are absolutely beat or— as happened once or twice in my drinking days— a friend absolutely insisted.
     My love of bikes started early. First came the shiny red tricycle with tassels flowing from the grips. Then came the Big Wheel. I remember the day my mom picked me up from school, a giant wheeled tricycle of sorts rolling around in the folded-down back seat of the station wagon It was a few days before my birthday. She said “don’t look in the back!” so of course I did. I was overjoyed to see it there and counted down the hours to my birthday morning. From that day on I’d ride in endless loops around the house. I was lucky that the living and dining rooms were divided from the kitchen and downstairs bathroom by one long partition wall, making a perfect race track for my little legs.

    When I got my first real bike, it had training wheels that my dad had firmly affixed for my safety. One day when in the early 70s when I was 5 or 6, my tough Nana— my grandmother’s sister Kate— had enough. She unceremoniously removed the trainers. I got on the bike, and she pushed me away from her to sail or to crash, a cigarette dangling from her lips. I sailed all the way down the whole block of Birchwood Avenue between Albany and Sacramento.
     The next bike had a big banana seat and could easily fit a friend or two, or even three; one on the seat with me, one standing on the hubs of the back wheel, and one perched on the handlebars. We learned from an early age that it was necessary to have wheels to get to McDonald’s quickly to assuage the craving for a hot apple pie or vanilla milkshake and fries.
     I don’t quite recall what I rode in high school— too distracted by boys, Water Tower Place, and L and subway train excursions.
     When I moved to Santa Monica in my early 20s I bought a Diamond Back mountain bike that became my trusty steed for many years. She carried me along the ocean from Santa Monica to Venice Beach and beyond, day in and day out for the year and a half I lived there. When I’d had enough shots of booze at the 2nd Street Bar & Grill where I worked, and smoked enough Mary Jane to last a while, it was time for me to come back home and finish college.  

     Diamond Back and I moved back and cruised Chicago streets year round; neither snow nor rain nor sleet nor ice could stop us. Her sturdy nubbed wheels kept me safe. Many folks don’t realize how quickly the body warms up when riding. Just keep your face properly covered and wear glasses or goggles, and voila; it’s almost like biking on a 70 degree day. We were living in West Rogers at that time and would cruise down California to Dodge to the Family Focus community center in far North Evanston where I worked at non-profits. At the end of the day we’d bike to various and sundry yoga and meditation schools, or to the green markets full of health food and tinctures that were starting to burgeon in Evanston and the near north side. We might grab a bagel at the shop on Ridge that sold the yummiest “bagel bites” I’d ever had, before they got shut down for selling LSD (or at least that’s what legend holds).
     Poor DB finally got stolen, due to my negligence. I’d been living in Hyde Park and going to graduate school when I had a short stint in a co-op of activists who gave me a room to rent. I left her there and a so-called friend “borrowed” her. Allegedly he had her locked up in front of a Kinko’s on 57th Street where she was stolen. I didn’t quite buy the story—the “friend” was more of an acquaintance with a recent incarceration that involved theft. I have a feeling she was sold for his profit. I tried to get him to at least pay me for her but he ghosted me, never to be seen again.

   Fuji Cross Trek was next. She was lighter and more upright than DB. She could easily sail me from Uptown to the West Loop to Andersonville in a day. She got me to the 6 a.m. yoga classes I was teaching on Clark and Balmoral from where I was living on Racine and Adams in no time. I loved her the way a gearhead loves a hotrod. I peppered her with stickers of local community gardens and my favorite coffee roasteries. She had a bumper sticker that said something about peace. The fix-it crew from our favorite mechanics at Uptown Bikes on Broadway under the Wilson L would let me know that they’d seen her parked downtown or other places around the city. She stood out. I rode her until she fell apart and there was no fixing her.
     I ordered a Felt Verza City 3, a hybrid, from Iron Cycles on Montrose. She was chocolate brown and sleek, with no fenders or rack so I could keep her light. When I got to the store to pick her up, they told me they had accidentally ordered me the fanciest version of this bike— the golden colored City 1 with the burnt caramel leather seat. Since it was their error, they decided to be angels and gave it to me without an upcharge. This baby was the Mercedes of all bikes to me. She gleamed with elegance. I hopped on and was a little scared to have such a fancy object in the city. As I rode through Ravenswood Manor on my way home a man called out “nice bike!” and I turned to wave, proudly. I was somehow not surprised to see the man’s thick head of dark hair as he watered the flowers in front of his classic Chicago blonde brick home. It was Blago. Yes, I had arrived.
     Sometimes I’d return to her after an errand or a movie, surprised to see her $1500 frame still securely locked up and waiting for me. More than once a person or two or three would be ogling her as I walked up. They’d crouch down to get a better look. They’d ask about the disc brakes and internal gear hub, which I didn’t know much about, and I’d collude with their delight because it was fun. They’d walk away plotting their next big purchase. She came out to Texas with me and is currently snugly locked on the porch of the tiny house I rent. She’s looking forward to hitting flat Chicago streets again one day.

Trump ends convention with one truth

     It had to happen.
     Donald Trump said something entirely true.
     Not true in the way he meant it, of course, and nestled in his usual thicket of lies.
     But there it was, in his speech Thursday closing the 2020 Republican National Convention, with the White House gang-pressed into service as a scenic backdrop, in violation of both law and American tradition:
     “This is the most important election in the history of our country,” he said. “At no time before have voters faced a clearer choice between two parties, two visions, two philosophies or two agendas.”
     No kidding. Those two philosophies are the fact-free, law-flouting, malevolent cult of personality that is Trumpism, taking a pickaxe to the foundations of American democracy.
     And the other, offering at least hope of return to an America of decency, intelligence and integrity.
     The choice between ignoring a pandemic and doing everything possible to stop it.
     Trump’s speech capped what has been a four-day master-class in cynicism, beginning to end.

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Black Lives Matter

     The thing about Jews is, we don't like to go to synagogue, or practice the requirements of our faith. We recognize Judaism as the team we were born onto, but find life too short for saying prayers or following kosher or any of that stuff. That said, some of the rituals are cool. We do like challah, though matzo, not so much, unless its rendered into matzo brei—egg matzo—a breakfast dish, which we eat with sugar, never salt. Jews enjoy bacon and pork chops too, though we draw the line at those big pink glutenous canned hams. Yuck. 
    Oh wait, maybe that isn't Jews in general. Maybe that's just me. Yup, definitely me.
    See, I have trouble doing what so many individuals seem to do automatically: presenting themselves as the spokesmen, the embodiment and voice of their entire group. I know why they do it: it adds oomph to what is really their opinion. Me and all my friends, standing notionally behind me, nodding in agreement, in my fantasy world.
     But Jews are not me. Or you. They are this enormous range of people representing a wide spectrum of beliefs, from black-hats ticking off every single commandment, to Stephen Miller, the president's shadowy, serpentine Goebbels. Every group is enormously diverse and complicated. I don't see how anyone can argue that fact, and in reality, they don't. They just ignore it.
     Not only do people making statements pretend to be representative, but so do those who embrace them. Whom you accept as a spokesman for others says more about yourself than about the group you are trying to characterize.
    On social media, the act of sharing the voice of the member of a minority group is often a kind of tacit slur. For instance. Social media throbs with that video of Chicago Black Lives Matter organizer Ariel Atkins explaining why looting is okay.
    “That is reparations,” Atkins told NBC Chicago. “Anything they wanted to take, they can take it because these businesses have insurance.”
    That's dumb, and I imagine that most responsible people of all hues consider it dumb, and unhelpful, in that it allows folks to dismiss the entire movement as a rationale for stealing Gucci purses. 
     Sure, many are going to reject the Black Lives Matter message anyway, and if not over Atkins then they'll find someone else. Remember, many, maybe most people aren't looking to engage in the world in a meaningful way, but to cherry-pick facts that support exactly who they are and intend to always be. 
     But why make is so easy for them to do so?
     While against violence and chaos, I nevertheless support Black Lives Matter because I know both history and current events. I particularly like "Black Lives Matter" as a slogan, a rallying cry, exactly because it is so understated. Compared to "Gay Pride" or "Never again!" or "Black is beautiful," "Black Lives Matter" is so modest, so utterly unobjectionable. "We have significance. Our lives have meaning." Who could argue with that?
     And the answer is, "Lots of people."  Those who hate seeing police held accountable counter with "Blue Lives Matter." White supremacists float "All Lives Matter," as a kind of code that the only lives that matter are their own. 
     "Black Lives Matter" is part of a fine tradition of setting a subtle snare. If you look at the key moments in the Civil Rights struggle, the line is drawn, not at something grand — the protests are never over the right of Black people to sit on the Supreme Court. But over something ordinary: riding on a bus, eating at a lunch counter, attending 2nd grade.
     A simple ask, that nevertheless draws out the haters, forces them to reveal themselves, to battle something prosaic. To oppose basic decency. To make them show up with their dogs and firehoses, then, or their pepper spray and batons now. And in that sense, BLM should do as much as it can to distance itself from the looting and riots that often follow their protests. If after his encounter with Alabama cop, John Lewis had led marchers to burn Selma, he would not have been as revered and effective as he became, nor would that encounter at the Edmund Pettus bridge be remembered the way it is. Not doing so hurts BLM and their cause.
     In my opinion. Of course I'm one guy, and a 60-year-old white guy at that. I am not speaking for all white folks, nor all 60-year-0lds, nor all Jews. Unfortunately.

Would-be friends

"Waiting for the Stage," by Richard Caton Woodville (Smithsonian Museum of American Art)

     Facebook is kinda curdling, along with everything else. Getting weird and unpredictable. It changed its entire look last week, then allowed me to change it back, which I did, hungry for consistency. Then Facebook told me that it would change over again anyway, soon, and then I won't be able to change back.
    What's the point of that? Either change or don't. It's like they're playing with us. I guess given how stuck we are with Facebook, we should consider ourselves lucky Facebook doesn't start doing all sorts of random shit, turning the screen 90 degrees, so we have to sit with our heads angled hard to one side to read.
    Because we'd do it. We're addicts. So I guess we're lucky Facebook doesn't start fucking with us, just because it can.
    I'm not sure what the point of the thing is anymore. Scrolling the news feed, I see how messed up my friends are, what nutbag conspiracy crap they've fallen for, or how they've wandered into some distant pasture of irrelevance. Arguing is pointless.
    Unless of course they say something that reflects exactly how I believe. I'm fine with that.
    Odd stuff keeps happening. Monday I got 15 Facebook friend requests. On an ordinary day I get none. Or one or two, from youths in Ghana, or lonely hearts in the Philippines. 
     Some Q-Anon infiltration squad? Organized Targeted Individuals? I looked at them, and they seemed fairly normal people. Russian bots designed to do damage once admitted? No ... seemed really real. Not the usual fashion shot of some busty young lady with an Urdu man's name. But actually people—all men—with hundreds of friends and posts.
    I sent them all this message:

    "So I got 15 friend requests this morning, which is very unusual, and I'm wondering what is going on. What prompted you to ask to be my friend today?"

One replied:

     You appeared in my friend suggestion, and you are my favourite Chicago columnist.

     Good enough for me! Another:

     You came up in my feed last week though I didn’t see you before. I related to your Drunkard book so long ago and appreciate your writing. I can see why you might be suspicious in this climate so just ignore the request if you’d like. 

     Of course not! Welcome to the party! A radio host wrote:

           Your line of work, my line of work, and our mutual friends!

     Okay then. C'mon in. Everybody who had a halfway sensible answer was friended. The rest, the majority, deleted. Obviously, some microscopic circuit clicked and I was dangled in front of a horde of Facebook users and 15 bit. 

      No, this isn't really going anywhere. I had a column slated for the paper for today, and here, about the Republican National Convention. But it got spiked, which doesn't happen much. Not a quality issue, I am told, but more a space issue, a game of musical chairs that I lost. Or something to that effect. Anyway, I'm not dwelling on it. Things happen. It isn't that my fierce truth was yanked back by the Powers that Be. More likely they opted for real news over the same old Neil Nattering. Some days you get the bear, some days the bear gets you. Some days I have two columns in the paper, so it seems fair play there should be a column day where I have none. As to why I'm not posting the column here anyway, well, call that a judgment call. I might want to cannibalize it later in the week.

   

Three cheers and a tiger

     Strange. I really don't talk much about writing books here. 
     Several reasons, I suppose. I don't want to create the impression that producing a high quality newspaper column doesn't take up  all my time and energy, 24/7. The skilled carpenter doesn't want to be caught on the job, whittling away on his side project.
     Second, I suppose there is a certain magic act quality to books. You undermine the effect if you show the machinery to the audience, the hollow compartment in the top hat, the years of gerbil-on-a-wheel effort required to produce a manuscript. Better to pretend it isn't happening then,  every few years just produce the finished volume—"SHAZAM!!!"—from out your sleeve, along with a few fluttering white doves.
     Those two motivations seem better honored in the breach than in the keeping.
     So I was grinding through the May 2, 1893 Chicago Record on Monday, reading about opening day of the World's Columbian Exposition for my next book. Being reminded, yet again, of the glory of having several news outlets cover a story. Because the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Daily News inflicted the drudgery of the unedited speeches, the opening Columbian ode, in all its stultifying glory, while the Record reporter seemed to be lost somewhere in the crush of the mob, slogging through the "cheerless drizzle" and the yellow mud, while the speeches were an inaudible garble somewhere far away. Women fainted, soldiers held back throngs with fixed bayonets. Everything was late. Not the happy Cracker Jack and Ferris Wheel image of the fair that abbreviated histories tend to present.
    Though eventually the Record catches up with President Grover Cleveland, in town to press the gold-and-ivory key to start opening (is it the key that gets the machinery going, or is it a certain young man conspicuously waving his hat?) 
    The Record followed Cleveland to the train, where this sentence stopped me.
     "As Mr. Cleveland was alighting from his carriage at the station gates three cheers and a tiger were given with a will."
      For a moment, I thought a big cat was presented to the president, as a parting gift. But the proximity of "tiger" to "three cheers" sparked some dusty memory of the after echo of pre-World War I collegiate football, something in an old Mickey Rooney movie perhaps. 
    Into the Oxford English Dictionary. First reference defines "tiger" as "a large carnivorous feline quadruped," a word whose origin is lost in those unknowable countries to the East ("a foreign word, evidently oriental, introduced when the beast became known.")
     "Oriental" is a taboo word now, by the way. In case you didn't know.
     I kept reading.
     Bingo: "8. U.S. slang. A shriek or howl (often the word 'tiger') terminating a prolonged and enthusiastic cheer; a prolongation , finishing touch, final burst. "
    The first usage listed is in 1857, with plenty of mentions online among soldiers on both sides during the American Civil War. "Three cheers and a tiger" is almost a cliche by 1893, not to mention a contemptuous bit of American enthusiasm, as reflected in this remark from the London Daily Telegraph of Oct. 8, 1880, cited in the OED: "'Three cheers' in properly hearty unison, without the hysterical American supplement of 'tigers.'"
      Judging from descriptions elsewhere, the tiger itself is a kind of enthusiastic growl. 
      We are still a passionate people, lost in zeal. The election is proof of that. But somehow, I have a hard time picturing the kind of "hip-hip, hooray!" cheering that our great-grandfathers seem to have done, never mind capped by a yowl of inarticulate, feline joy. 
    How come? Why are verbal tigers following actual ones into oblivion; indeed, racing ahead of them and arriving at extinction first?
    Theories: Maybe it's just a matter of style. Maybe people are too busy taking cell phone pictures to give a few "rah rah rah, sis boom bahs." Maybe we've simply forgotten the practice, or are so atomized that the idea of doing anything in unison is alien to us. That last one sounds right.

    

‘The bad that is bad now’ began a long time ago

     When Dorothy Parker heard that Calvin Coolidge had died, she quipped, “How can they tell?”
     Which about summarizes my reaction to news that Donald Trump is wrecking the U.S. Postal Service.
     Without question, new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has hurt the USPS during his brief tenure, particularly by ending overtime.
     It’s also true that some changes he’s being blamed for, like pulling out high-speed letter sorting machines, were already in the works. 

Mack Julion

  
     “You cannot say horrible service in Chicago started this spring,” said Mack Julion, a Chicago postal worker for 23 years and president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Branch 11. “Bad service in Chicago began at least a year ago and got worse during the pandemic.”
     An institution as enormous as the post office is like an ocean liner. It takes time to turn. DeJoy showed up in June.
     “The directives we hear are coming from his office have yet to hit the workroom floor in Chicago,” Julion said. “The bad that is bad now, that’s basically Chicago management. He can make it worse. You can’t cut overtime in Chicago because we don’t have enough carriers to deliver the mail. Here’s, that’s unthinkable.”
     And unworkable....

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