Flashback 2001: Hot dogs with ketchup, mustard and wisdom

     Today is what would have been Harry Heftman's 113th birthday. Longtime readers will remember that he owned a hot dog stand at the corner of Randolph and Franklin that I liked to visit. Eventually, I started to write about the diminutive owner. Harry passed away in 2013, at the age of 103. But I still think about him sometimes, particularly when I walk by the little park where Harry's Hot Dogs used to be. I thought I would share this, at the risk of re-igniting the stupid ketchup controversy. Not that it ever goes away.

     Harry serves me hot dogs but will not let me pay. He stands in front of the condiments, his head just visible above the counter. I hold out several bills, folded in my hand, and shake them vigorously, as if to catch his attention. But he ignores me.
     "Take the money Harry," I plead, then turn, imploringly, to Jeannie at the cash register. I try to give the cash to her; she ignores me too.
     Since 1956, Harry Heftman has run Harry's Hot Dogs, under mustard-yellow awnings in the tiny Showmen's League of America building at the corner of Randolph and Franklin. Harry is, maybe, 5 feet tall. He is, maybe, 90 pounds. Glasses. White hair. He is 92 years old.
     For a wild moment, I consider tossing the bunched up money at Harry, but I end up pocketing it with a sigh, as I always do.
     Harry puts mustard and ketchup on my hot dog--that's how I like it, and unlike many, he puts on no airs about the ketchup. He is a friendly man, and acceptance radiates off him like a glow.
     "That's what life is all about," he says. "Be friendly."
     I take my hot dog, resting on a sheet of waxy paper in its little red plastic basket, and my styrofoam cup of hot black coffee, and go sit in a booth.
     I have never done this before--usually I eat the dog standing up at the counter then rush away. But I want to look around the place, to look at Harry and calm my jangled nerves. The last time I saw him was Sept. 11—I was hurrying to work, he was standing out front. I paused to shake hands—we always shake hands. "Hell of a day," I said somberly and he agreed. I've missed him, missed his friendly pat on the back, and if not for my reluctance to cadge another frank, I'd have been back long ago.
     I dig in. A juicy, hot, Vienna wiener. Soft, steamed bun with poppy seeds. After a minute, Harry slides into the booth across from me. This is pleasant, sitting here, I tell Harry. I should do this more often.
     "A nice opportunity to relax," he says, his voice low and raspy. "Start the day right. It's important to start out with a good breakfast that gives you a lift — a bowl of cereal."
     And not a hot dog? I ask, surprised.
     "A hot dog too," he says. "What's important is to sit and relax."
     He hurries away. Customers. Harry is a man in motion. I can't help but think of all the other people, his age or younger, sitting in the day rooms of nursing homes, griping. Not Harry. He is hustling back and forth with a metal bowl of crisp fresh lettuce in his hands.
     I look around the shop. This is the sort of place that people have in mind when they curse fast food chains. The beauty of the green neon signs, "Drink Coca Cola," in both windows, contrasted with, in orange neon, "HOT CORNED BEEF" facing Randolph Street, and "FOUNTAIN SERVICE" facing Franklin. The faux wood paneling. The plastic flowers. Blue laminate booths, six four-tops and three two-tops. A pair of charming signs encourage culinary daring: "Try our fish sandwich!" suggests one. "Try our shrimp in a basket!" suggests another. Cook Chester Green, 72, in a poufy chef's hat, like a cook in a comic.
     Harry returns, and we continue talking about friendliness. I ask Harry if he ever met anyone he didn't like.
     "No," he says, with a shake of the head. "If I don't like a person, I start talking to him, and he walks out happy, smiling. That's what this business is right here. A lawyer came in the other day, and by the time he walks out, he was my best friend."
     A lot of people walk out of Harry's smiling.
     "He's the type of character that makes the city a wonderful place to be," said Circuit Court Judge James Henry, a regular. "He's priceless."
     Harry leans forward, his voice hushed, about to impart a secret.
     "The economy is not good," he reveals. "I really hope it changes. I'm lucky to have a good location."
     Harry points out the latest decoration—a pair of Boeing posters, one for a 747, one for the F/A 18 E/F Super Hornet.
     "My business is very improving because of airplanes," he says. "Boeing, they all come in here — very nice — gave me beautiful pictures."
     Harry lives in Skokie. He arrives at work five days a week at 6 a.m. He stays until the shop closes at 5 p.m. "My son drives me," he says. "He comes in especially for me."
     Harry tells me about a grandson at Harvard, then asks, "You have a nice family? Wait, I'll show you a picture." He runs to get a photo of himself and his wife of 60 years, Perle. And one of his parents, Rose and Herman. He is proud of his three children and five grandchildren.
     "I wish your children to follow my children. That's a very good wish. A good family gives you energy, to work for," he says, emphasizing his words with a light tap of the fist on the table.
     Then he is off again, hustling about his day, and so am I, refreshed and renewed, not so much by the hot dog — which in truth goes down a little uneasily first thing in the morning — as by the hot dog vendor. Be friendly.

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Oct. 28, 2001

Doing time’s dirty work

     Time will send a henchman to your home someday to tear through your most cherished possessions and scatter them forever, and there was a certain irony that last month time’s designated agent would be me, a nostalgic man inclined to keep everything.
     Time will cure you of that tendency.
     I arrived at my parents’ townhome in Boulder, Colorado, then proceeded to my father’s studio and went to work.
     Pausing, yes, one last time to regard the tableau: delicate paintings, watercolors, on styrene foam core boards, framed on the walls and set out on a pair of handmade wooden easels, built by a neighbor, that reached almost to the ceiling.

     The two big drafting tables, with the Winsor & Newton watercolors — cobalt blue, burnt sienna, alizaran crimson — some still in their beige boxes, the jar jammed with well-worn brushes. I ran my thumb across the bristles of a wide sable brush. It tossed off a puff of dust.
     Time to move my parents to a nursing home — my mother’s term, though I gently correct her, with all the brightness I can muster. “A dynamic senior lifestyle community, Ma!” I say. In Buffalo Grove, 17 minutes from our house.    

     The Scandinavian design hutch that sat in our dining room when I was growing up in Berea, Ohio, and had been, for the past 34 years in a corner of my father’s studio. I started there with the books, kept behind glass doors where the china nobody wants once had been.
     I always thought we’d keep the dessert china: Royal Doulton with delicate flowers. But my wife made a face when I held up a cup to her, inquiringly. We have our own nice china our boys don’t want. No need for another set.
     I began pulling the books out —”Patterns in Nature” by Peter S. Stevens, “Fearful Symmetry” by Stewart and Golunitsky — piling them on the floor. My father had been a nuclear physicist at NASA for 30 years, then retired in 1987 to paint watercolors: ocean waves and canyon walls and that damn vase he loved so much.

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Selfish generosity

The Front Lines: (left to right) Phil Rothman, Kier Strejcek, Kevin Bowie and Steve Jarvis.

     What's a memory worth?
     One single burst of sound and energy and image? Still strong after 40 years?
     But I'm getting ahead of myself.
     The first bassist for an Evanston college band calling itself The Front Lines—they might have still been just "The Lines" at that point, since a group of that same name hadn't yet been encountered, requiring a quick fiddle with the name—was a freshman named John. My memory of him was of a solid, quiet guy who stopped attending classes entirely so he could sit in his second floor dorm room in the Orrington Apartments and laboriously teach himself to play the bass in order to join the band. He didn't last long in college or the group, that my roommate Kier started.
     There might have been more bassists—I'll have to check —but by senior year, or just after, they found a kid named Kevin Bowie, a 17-year-old thumb-slapping bassist, a student at Evanston Township High School. It was an epiphany to watch him play, big thumping notes riffing from his flying fingers. It was thrilling.
     You can hear him at the beginning of their song, "Night Napalm." I can't say for certain whether he was truly good or we just thought he was good. It was not a distinction I could conceive of at the time.
     I must have heard that kind of bass playing before, on various disco hits of the 1970s. But to see it being played, up close. There was a tremendous hopefulness to this development. Those rumbling riffs seemed a promise, a thumping pathway up and out of the college town obscurity we all were mired in. The band had been plugging along for several years, success was slow in coming, as success usually is. But suddenly they had this kid, and oh man, he could play.
     But it didn't work out the way they hoped. Life seldom does.
     Jump ahead 40 years. I saw on Kier's Facebook page that Kevin, now in his late 50s, is battling some terrible medical situation and living in Florida. His wife began a Kickstarter campaign, trying to help the family get by. They haven't raised much. I might still have not pitched in—the memory remains whether I pony up or not. But I happened to be feeling particularly crappy Saturday afternoon, despite the sunshine. The fucking war in Ukraine. A magazine piece due Monday that is sprawling instead of gelling. The general isolation and langor of a pandemic now in its third year. I figured, maybe sending fifty bucks Kevin's way might make me feel a little better. It did. Doing good for others is often doing good for yourself too. I recommend it.

Wilmette Notes: Rusty

Photo by Caren Jeskey

      Today is Saturday, which means it's time for the weekly update by our intrepid Northern Suburban Correspondent, Caren Jeskey, who isn't about to let even the briefest window of pre-spring good weather slip by without seizing the opportunity. Her report:

By Caren Jeskey

     Sunny and 67? Yes! Last Saturday I was overjoyed to have a day of warmth to interrupt the long abyss of winter. I have to hand it to anyone who manages to stay active during a Midwest cold season. I thought I would, but I’ve had more days cozy on the couch than not. To celebrate, I decided to hop on my bike. Poor thing’s not had a turn of the wheel in too many months. It took longer to get out than I’d expected. Finally, tires pumped up, helmet on, bike lights with fresh batteries, backpack with water and snacks, I set off from home for the big city.
     I biked east to Sheridan Road, eager to see the melting mini glaciers on the lake. I pedaled past a kindly looking older man on a brisk walk, his spine curved into a deep C. I wondered how much it bothered him to get such a good look of the ground these days. I rode onto the concrete overlook at Kenilworth Beach and peered over the edge. I felt proud to see a small chunk of ice still clinging to the pier. Well done, you!
     I snapped pictures of the last vestiges of the big freeze and got back on my bike. I had 8 miles or so to go to reach Loyola Beach in Chicago where I was meeting a friend. Spandex clad riders swooshed past me. I admired their sinew, camaraderie and chutzpah. I thought “maybe one day that will be me!” though that's unlikely.
     There was a gale wind advisory which made the trip a little more challenging.
     When I made it to the fieldhouse on Greenleaf I got a text from my friend. “I have to go home and change socks and shoes. A wave totally got me.” This gave me time to silently marvel at the straw colored prairie grasses flapping in the wind, surrounded by rippled sand dunes and the bright blues of the lake just beyond.
     When my friend made it back, we ventured out onto the sand and spread out the tablecloth I’d brought, listened to some music and stared at the waves.
     I noticed a big purple claw in the sand and felt all of the excitement of a childhood treasure hunt. I wondered if someone had eaten a meal in this spot earlier, leaving the dismembered leg behind. Then it sunk in. There are creatures, many creatures, that I know nothing about in this fabulous Great Lake system, right under our noses. There is much to learn. I put the claw in my fanny pack.
     There was a bit of excitement when a man placed his jacket down on the pier, and a strong gale took it right into the lake. He was quite upset, as it was his nice down parka and had a good bit of cash in it. A small crowd gathered and an avid swimmer let us know that there was no way anyone should wade the 50 feet or so into the lake to retrieve it.

     The man who’d lost the jacket did not speak English. Turns out he is one of the recent Afghan refugees who’s moved to our shores, and spoke only Pashto. A nice synchronicity is that I know Pashto speakers, and had one on speaker phone to explain to the young man what was happening. We called 311 and the coast guard actually said that after roll call they’d send a boat out to retrieve the jacket— all the way from 9800 South. Sadly, we were let down when an officer called back to say that due to the wind advisory, it would not be safe for them to send a boat out. He wanted us to know that if it had been a person, of course, they would have already been there.
   All was not lost though, since a group of volunteers (via the phone tree) procured a new parka and a bit of cash for the man who relinquished his coat to the wind.
     When I got home I did a little claw research. Turns out the purple beach find probably belongs to a Rusty Crayfish, which is invasive and dangerous to our waters. It’s such a hardy and strong fish that it was able to “hop a continental divide and invade a new region” according to aquatic scientist Julian Olden of the University of Washington. It seems that there is nothing that can be done to stop them. The cat is out of the bag. Some terrible and tragic things are simply beyond our ability to stop.

‘This is what we do: we build robots’

Jacob Hoyt, left and Aiden Cohen with their team's robot.

     The robots do not fight. Get that straight. No buzzsaws, no sledgehammers, no flame throwers.
     To grasp what these robots actually do, or try to do, you should watch the eight-minute animated video by sponsor Raytheon Technologies. It takes focus just to understand what teams are required to do; now imagine having to conceive and fund and build and program and operate a robot that can perform those tasks in a competitive setting.
     This year’s competition is called “Freight Frenzy.” Having been to an Amazon procurement center, I couldn’t help but feel that, when no humans work at those places in 10 years, these little robots — each must fit within an 18-by-18-inch cube — will be part of the reason.
     Last season, when the FIRST Tech Challenge was virtual due to COVID, the robots fired small rings at a target. This year? Well, let Jacob Hoyt, captain of outreach for Highland Park’s 18529 Rust in Piece team, explain:
     “This year’s objective basically boils down to picking up balls and blocks and ducks.”
     Little rubber ducks, not big live ones. For the first 30 seconds of each match, the robots must work autonomously — that is, without influence from their operators. Then a two-minute guided scramble to grab the aforementioned balls, boxes and ducks, then place them on “hives,” three-tiered towers that tip over if not balanced correctly.
     Meanwhile, three other robots — two operated by opponents, one by an “alliance” team — try to do the same thing on the same field. Your robot can lose points if it gets in their way.
     Rust in Piece is one of 36 teams in FIRST Tech Challenge’s Illinois Championship Tournament at Elgin Community College on Saturday.

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Flashback 2001: Younger Brent keeping dad's bookselling alive

 

    When I first heard that someone had spent $10 million to locate the wreck of the Endurance, Ernest Shackleton's famed ship, on the bottom of the Weddell Sea since 1915, I couldn't understand why someone would go to the trouble. They can't salvage the wreck—by law a historic site—but only take pictures, using submersible drones. And the photos from the Endurance, taken from glass plate negatives, are some of the most haunting and beautiful in the history of exploration. How to improve on that? Then I saw the video. Astounding—you can read the name on the stern, see the wheel, all preserved in the frigid Antarctic waters. It's money well-spent, if you've got it, and reminded me of when I first encountered Alfred Lansing's classic book, back when there were independent bookstores on Michigan Avenue, and in the Loop, and people actually went downtown and visited them.

     The most thrilling book I ever read in my entire life was placed into my hands by Adam Brent. This was years ago, back when he was working at his father's famous bookstore on Michigan Avenue. I had gone in looking for books about Mt. Everest, and this young guy, whom I had never met before, suggested I might enjoy Endurance, by Alfred Lansing, the tale of Shackleton's star-crossed voyage to the South Pole. "Enjoy" was too weak a term--it is the sort of book that you not only read while walking, but walk into walls while reading and don't care.
     What young Brent did is called "hand selling." It is not the sort of thing mega-bookstores do well, but rather the personal alchemy that cleaves a certain group of people to independent booksellers, permitting us to patronize stores even if they don't also sell coffee and stuffed animals, and makes us fret over their futures like a worried mother hen.
     His dad's store, Stuart Brent Books, went out of business in 1996. And while I disapproved of the shriek of moral outrage that Stuart Brent emitted when he went under—a bookstore is still a business, after all, and ya gotta make money, cultural landmark or no—I was sorry to see him go, and rooted for his son, glad that he is trying to keep the Brent name alive in Chicago.
     Adam Brent has two stores, one in the Loop on Washington Street and another newly opened in Highland Park. He tried to make it on Michigan Avenue, in the commercial kill zone south of the river, but was quickly driven out of business there, which made me worry about his Washington store. I quick march by there nearly every day, hurrying to and from the train. When I have a moment I stop in to buy books or shoot the breeze with Brent, 37, who is the antithesis of his father, personality-wise--subdued and pleasant with none of the chest-thumping that, to be frank, did not make his dad universally beloved.     
     "I don't think I'm really as outspoken as my father," said Adam, as we sat on folding chairs in his store. "Give me another 10 years."
     My plan was to bring out the violin and play a sad song of Brent desperately trying to copy his father's success while gazing at an empty store. It always seemed I was the only customer in the place. But the truth turned out to be that 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. are not peak business hours. Despite a downturn in the industry, he says he's doing great.
     "This store gets mobbed," said Brent. "Lots of office workers have been coming for years--it's part of their ritual."
     After Sept. 11, Brent worried that books would be one of the luxuries people crossed off their lists.
     "I thought I was going to be roasted," he said. But it turned out that the opposite occurred--people suddenly craved information, and titles that slumbered for years, becalmed on the backlist, suddenly were in demand--books about Islam, about terrorism, about Afghanistan.
     "One of the most amazing things about the book business is that, in times of crisis, one of the best places you can go is a bookstore," he said. "We are repositories for the knowledge of a civilization."
     I had assumed that Brent Books came out of the demise of his father's store, but actually it is a phoenix risen from the ashes of another grand old Chicago icon, Kroch's & Brentano's.
     "When Kroch's went bankrupt, I saw a vacuum," said Brent, who bought the shelves and fixtures from Kroch's La Salle Street store. "I talked it over with my dad and a potential investor."
     I'm fascinated by men who go into their fathers' professions. My father was a physicist, which killed off any interest I might have in science. As an outside observer, I would have guessed that having Stuart Brent for a dad would inspire a person to become a longshoreman. But Adam Brent says that his own quiet demeanor meshed well with his father's—"My dad and I never clashed," he said--and the passing years have only increased his admiration.
      "I'm in awe of what he was able to build," he said.
     That sounded swell, but I couldn't resist phoning Stuart Brent to get his version. At age 89, he has lost none of his leonine pride or reflexive verbosity. Barely had I introduced myself and my topic, when he said:
     "Considering the tragic consequences of a culture that is in a terrible situation, he's staying alive primarily, I think, because I taught him that if he gives a valentine to everyone who comes in he can make it."
      In a brief talk, Brent managed to call his old shop both "the greatest bookstore in the past 50 years in this country" and "the most precious" cultural landmark on Michigan Avenue, quite a statement considering that the Art Institute and Symphony Center are just down the street.
     But give Stuart Brent credit. When it comes to his son, his legendary self-regard dissolves, replaced by the most admirable paternal pride.
      "I'm very proud of him," said Stuart Brent. "The boy has done a magnificent job. There's absolutely no money in bookselling. It's a disaster—the very last thing a boy would want to spend his life on, selling books. But as a child, he was thrilled with the idea of books. Totally committed. There was a magic in the way he behaved, and I told him that, unfortunately, he was not doomed to be a great stockbroker or a brilliant journalist, but to try to help others get the value and the beauty to be found in the written word. I told him to 'keep that independence of spirit, and that smile, and believe me, Adam, you'll make it.' "

     —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Dec. 21, 2001

‘Why don’t we DO something?’

     “Why don’t we do something?” my relation said, in a tone of anguish over the telephone.
     Ukraine, of course. All news dwindles away in the face of war in Europe: missiles slamming into apartment buildings; desperate refugees picking their way across demolished bridges.
     We wanted to forget COVID; but not like this.
     You know a situation is really getting under people’s skin when your extended family starts calling to talk about it. Reaching out to me, I suppose, the same way you’d call a cousin who’s a plumber when you have a leaky faucet. I’m in the trade, this thinking-about-stuff business; maybe I can share the inside story.
     I tipped back in my chair, put my feet on my desk. This would take a while.
     “Well...” I began.
     It’s human nature to want to insulate yourself from horrors. To exile them safely to the past — hard enough to contemplate cities being bombed in 1944, never mind to think about cities being shelled last Thursday.
     We also like to segregate suffering, not only in time, but geographically, as far from ourselves as possible. The genocide in Myanmar furrowed some brows. But it was in the former Burma. Way off. Not so much video, and what photos was got, to be frank, were not of white folks. That part gets unsaid. But it’s true. Human beings have a proven track record of toughness when it comes to shrugging off the sufferings of anyone unlike themselves. Which is not that easy an option for our kind when forced to see a cute little blonde Ukrainian girl in a bomb shelter singing “Let it Go” from “Frozen” in a small, piping voice.
     “It’s extra upsetting because it’s people like us carrying cell phones,” is what I actually said. My relative agreed: We’re all basically displaced Eastern Europeans. This is too close to home.

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