Nov. 4, 2008

     Friday's column ends with a quick gloss on a scene at Grant Park, 15 years ago tonight. A number of readers mentioned it, and I thought I'd share the full passage, from my memoir, "You Were Never in Chicago," published by the University of Chicago Press in 2012:

    The mass of people at Grant Park the night Obama was elected — I almost didn't go downtown to be part of that. My tendency is to shy away from crowds and, besides, the paper had it covered. There was also a concern — what would happen if he lost? It might get ugly.

     But Ross wanted to be there on the historic election night, and I understand that impulse. A kid doesn't want to miss anything. So we drove downtown, left the car by the Sun-Times Building and walked over to Grant Park. A calm, pleasant night in early November. I've never seen the park so crowded. Big searchlights threw shafts of white light into the night sky. We had passes to a crowded press area. Barack Obama was across the park, on a distant stage — most people were watching him on giant TVs, but I figured we were here, we should see him, not just on a screen, but directly, at least once, with our own eyes, his image reflected against our retinas.  
     All the vantage points were taken, so I went up to a group crowding around a gap in the fencing, pushed Ross ahead, and said, to no one in particular, "Could this boy take a look, just for a moment?" A large black woman turned, regarded him, and then commanded those in front of her, "Let the baby through!" and they parted, affording Ross and me a momentary glimpse of the future president, a tiny figure, far away. I thought of that famous photo of Lincoln delivering the Gettysburg Address, a distant, barely recognizable speck in a multitude.
     But that wasn't the moment that lodged in my heart. That came afterward, when a quarter of a million people flowed from the park to Michigan Avenue, buoyant with victory, intoxicated with promise and possibility and hope, filling the street from curb to curb, from Roosevelt Road to the Wrigley Building. They were in their new Obama t-shirts and in church clothes, whole families, including wide-eyed toddlers, some cheering, some walking in quiet, careful formality.
    It seemed so strange, so fantastical — this famous street, empty of cars but crowded with Chicagoans, waving flags in the brightly lit midnight.
     "Take a good look around," I said to Ross, then thirteen, as we walked up the middle of Michigan Avenue. "Because you are never going to see this again." People whooped and hugged, beat cowbells, and chanted.
    We were walking north, toward the brightly lit Wrigley Building in the distance. We passed in front of the Hilton and I stopped, actually bending down to pat my hand against the asphalt. "This was the Conrad Hilton," I told my boy, in my pedantic dad fashion, choking up a little. "This was the spot where the protesters sat down and were beaten by the cops in 1968. It was right here."
     The contrast was stunning, between the long-ago violent night, so seared in public memory for so many years, and now this harmonious scene, not to replace it but to soothe it, finally, another cool layer of dirt spread atop the burning memory, adding to the 1996 Democratic Convention another strata of forgetfulness, the police this time watching from the medians, some steely-eyed, some scowling, some beamng, some bemused. Maybe it was finally time to put the 1960s away. Maybe the party was happening right now and we were in the middle of it.
    I usually never smoke a cigar in front of the boys — I have an example to set —but this was a special night, and I pulled out a celebratory stogie, brushed off Ross's protests, and fired it up as we walked, taking in the commotion around us.

    Did they dance in the street? Yes, they danced in the street. Were people really singing? Yes, I can report on good authority, that at least one prematurely cynical teenage boy, a born skeptic, by genetics and by upbringing, who earlier that evening compared Chicago to a wormy apple, "addled with corruption," spontaneously broke into song as he walked up Michigan Avenue at midnight.
    "O beautiful, for spacious skies..." he began.
    "For amber waves of grain," his father, no small cynic himself, joined in.
    "For purple mountains majesty ..." the continued together, loudly and off-key, really murdering the high notes, linked arm in arm. "Above the fruited plain. America, America, God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good, with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!"

Barack and me

Barack Obama at the Sun-Times in 2008. Note the tray of cookies to the left.

     You could always tell when somebody important was visiting the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board because they’d set out a tray of cookies and little bottles of spring water. These were visible to the newsroom through the boardroom’s glass wall. Hardened political journalist that I am, one day in 2008 I saw the tray and thought, “Ooh, cookies.”
     The VIP wouldn’t miss a cookie or two. I slid in and was just loading a couple into a napkin when there was a commotion in the hall. I tried to flee but was blocked by Barack Obama and his entourage coming in.
     What to do? I took a seat at the table, so I was there as Obama explained away a deal he had done with fixer Tony Rezko, one of the countless hurdles he had to clear to get from where he was to where he was going.
     When I heard that 2,500 members of what has been dubbed “Obamaworld” are meeting in Chicago this weekend to celebrate this past moment of triumph — election night in Grant Park — I didn’t pout, wondering where my invite was. Like my presence at that meeting, the media just happened to be there, already, when he showed up, although we certainly played a key role in Obama’s success.
     Somewhere in the boxes of clips and files that have ended up in my basement is a yellow legal pad with “BARACK OBAMA” scrawled across the top. I still remember waiting in that boardroom — I was on the Editorial Board when he ran for U.S. Senate in 2004 — wondering what kind of person that name might belong to.
     I’d be more ashamed to admit who I imagined — some lefty professor in a big Afro and a dashiki, tossing a Black power salute and lecturing us on American imperialism — if it didn’t so perfectly encapsulate the entrenched prejudices Obama had to overcome on his journey to the White House.
     What was he like then? I felt sorry for him: a husband who really wanted a cigarette but was forbidden to smoke by his wife.

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Flashback 2000: Joseph Colucci, 93, owned Division St. Russian Baths

     Wednesday I went to Wicker Park to take the heat at the Chicago Bath House on Division Street  — the former Division Street Russian Baths. I might write something about that next week. While I was schvitzing, a man sat nearby, running a razor over his bald head, telling a third patron how some kid had tried to upbraid him for shaving in the sauna.
     "So I ask him, how long have you been coming here?" he said. "And the kid says, 'This is my second time.' And I say, 'I've been coming here 33 years...;"
     "Thirty-three years!" I interject. "I've also been coming here for 33 years." Since I checked the bath out to see if it was the sort of place I could take my buddies to after my bachelor party. "You must remember Joe Colucci."
     At which point we fell to telling Joe Colucci stories, his lines delivered in his trademark gravely bark. This guy said that Colucci, as a young man, had been one of Al Capone's drivers. Which I'd never heard before, but could be possible. I realized I never shared his obituary. Now seems a good time.

Joe Colucci

     Joseph Colucci came into the world in 1906, the same year as the Division Street Russian Baths, and he devoted the last 25 years of his colorful life to preserving the venerable institution, an anachronism in a modern age, the last old-world steam bath in Chicago and the only one between the coasts.
     Mr. Colucci, 93, died Sunday at his home in River Forest.
     He was born on the West Side, the son of Anthony and Rachel Colucci, Italian immigrants from the town of Potenza. His parents ran a grocery store.
     An only child, Mr. Colucci helped out early, preparing newspapers for delivery at Madison and Paulina when he was just 6 years old.
    By his teens, Mr. Colucci was driving newspaper delivery wagons, which then were still pulled by horses. He ended up working for the Herald-Examiner, rising through the ranks of the circulation department.
     Newspaper delivery was a brutal business at the time, and delivery trucks were famous for not stopping if pedestrians were in the way. Mr. Colucci met his future wife of 63 years, Mabel Robertson, when the truck he was driving nearly ran her down.
     In 1940, Mr. Colucci became a car dealer, with a Kaiser-Frazier dealership at California and Madison. He ran Parkside Motors, 2810 W. Madison until 1968. He moved his dealership to 1301 W. Washington, where he sold Studebakers, then Jeeps.
     He was always proud of his roots as a newsboy and liked to reward industrious Herald-Examiner newsboys by giving them bicycles.   
     Mr. Colucci was widely known as a bookie. While Mr. Colucci always denied any underworld connection, in 1963 the commander of the Chicago police intelligence unit testified before a Senate subcommittee that Mr. Colucci was one of the top organized crime racketeers in Chicago.
     Whether mob-related or not, Mr. Colucci certainly was a power in the 27th Ward. He caused controversy in 1950 when he erected a "gaudy and illegal" neon sign boosting a sheriff's candidate atop a building he owned. The city, which also backed the candidate, ordered the sign removed — after the election.
     Despite Mr. Colucci's efforts to clear his name — which included suing the Chicago Crime Commission for $1 million in 1970 — Mr. Colucci's reputation was such that in 1974 a top Chicago police official was demoted after being seen playing cards with Mr. Colucci.
     The same year, Mr. Colucci began a new career, as owner of the Russian Baths, 1916 W. Division, where he went every day to enjoy the heat. They were badly run down, and Mr. Colucci was proud of the many improvements and renovations he made to the structure.
     Survivors include his wife Mabel and sons Jimmy and Joe Jr.
     Visitation will be from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. today at Salerno-Galewood Funeral Home, 1857 N. Harlem.
     The funeral mass will be at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at St. Vincent Ferrer Church, in River Forest. Burial follows in the family crypt at Queen of Heaven Mausoleum, Hillside.
                —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Jan 25, 2000

"From the river to the sea..."

Cain murdering Abel (Met)

    I try to write an honest, thoughtful column, one that considers issues fairly and in a logical way. Of course not everyone agrees. And some issues defy abstract reason — the gut-wrenching horror in Gaza, for instance. Not a situation, perhaps, where deliberation is much use. It's like trying to measure a scream with a ruler.

    I'm tempted to just declare the war unspeakable and address other things — but that strikes me as cowardice, a failure of my duty to myself, to the paper, and its readers. The Israel-Hamas war is a huge story. People are scared and in pain. I know I am. Perspective is needed.

     Maybe not my perspective though. The column below isn't running in the Sun-Times today — nobody explained to me why. I thought it made an obvious, undebatable point — the Jews are there to stay; this from-the-river-to-the-sea business is counterproductive. Maybe it was the way I said it.  Or maybe its acceptance of Israel as a country that exists isn't fit to print.

      Anyway, my apologies to co-workers who were upset — that's the last thing I want. These are heartbreaking times aplenty without my adding to anybody's suffering. I mean that. You can't imagine how profoundly I hate what's going or how sincerely I wish it would go away. Maybe covering your eyes is the next best thing. I'm a humorist at heart; that's what I set out to be. Maybe I can find my way back to that enviable, oblivious state. I'm going to do my best to focus on lighter matters. Readers need that too. I sure do.

     “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is often heard at rallies supposedly supporting the Palestinian people. While the media sometimes points out that it’s a code for genocide — they’re basically saying, “Let’s kill the Jews and take over Israel” — I include the word “supposedly” because someone should consider its effect on Palestinians.
     Belief that they are entitled to all of Israel is what kept them, tragically, from accepting past peace deals that fell short of the Israelis handing over the keys to the country and then magically vanishing.
     It’s what inspires the charmed notion that Israel, one of the most advanced militaries in the world, will be defeated through a series of terror attacks, even one as severe as Oct. 7.
     It’s a mindset that discourages Palestinians from creating a nation where they are — why live jammed in the West Bank and Gaza when the wide sweep of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is theirs for the taking? Though if we look at history — a handy guide — for the first 20 years of Israel’s existence, it didn’t possess sections its people highly desired, such as Jerusalem, but the Israelis built their country anyway.
     Because of that attitude, for all the heartbreaking death and suffering being inflicted by Israel on Gaza, appeals for a ceasefire are directed at Israel and not at Hamas. Surrender is not an option.
     That’s a shame. Surrender is underrated. Look at Germany. Kaiser Wilhelm II got World War I going by sending his troops into Belgium on their way to France, which the Germans always fancied they deserved (“From the Atlantic to the Rhine, France shall be mine ...” — not quite as catchy). The four-year bloodletting cost 20 million lives.
     Germany gave up in 1918 but didn’t really surrender — the position the Palestinians keep finding themselves in. The Germans decided they didn’t lose because of all those American doughboys. No, they had been betrayed, stabbed in the back — by the Jews, natch.
     In that frame of mind, after 20 years spent siring a new generation of cannon fodder and rebuilding its military, Germany tried again.
     World War II cost over 50 million lives — 15 million military deaths and at least 38 million civilians, because civilians always take the brunt of war. It didn’t start in Gaza. After World War II ended with their complete defeat, again, the Germans looked over the ruin of their once prosperous nation and did something surprising: They learned. They decided to surrender sincerely this time. They gave up their dream of possessing the Sudetenland. They stopped fighting, and endured seven whole years of Allied occupation.

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Flashback 2007: "The hook man got him"

 

      Happy Halloween! Though honestly, I'm not feeling the "happy" part, what with the relentlessly grim news. Nor the "Halloween" ... all those grinning skeletons and cartoon ghouls, cardboard memento mori at a time when actual death is already all too present. You want to snarl "Read the room!" and send them packing, scrambling back to the red hell from whence they came. 
    So what then? I glanced into the vault and found this, with manages to combine both concern for Israel and the demons of the seasons, but in a more light-hearted fashion. It was from when the column filled a page, and I left in the original subheads.

OPENING SHOT . . .

     Israel has a problem with Palestinians blowing themselves up in public places.
     So it built a fence, to keep bombers from infiltrating Israel. And it started pulling down the houses of the families of suicide bombers, since it's hard to punish somebody who has blown himself up.
     Not the most extreme governmental action in this woeful world, yet one that sends certain idealistic Americans into a frenzy, such as the protesters who broke up the Caterpillar annual stockholder meeting in St. Charles this week. They don't want the company to sell Israel bulldozers.
     Why stop at bulldozers? I bet Israeli soldiers eat corn flakes. Shouldn't they also picket Kellogg's? And the Jews who support Israel drive Fords. Better demonstrate against Ford, too.
     And the sun — it shines upon the Israelis, warming them, doesn't it? Maybe it can be boycotted, the way British academics are shunning Israeli universities.
     It's silly. One can criticize Israel. It makes mistakes, like any other nation. I don't equate condemning Israel with anti-Semitism, though both can sure smell similar. To be an American, to survey this world of bloodshed and repression — the charnel house of Africa, the slave camp of China, the rigid theocracies of the oil states — and to decide to shout down companies doing business with spunky democratic Israel is out-of-balance, almost perverse. I'd be indignant, but these people are mere stooges, more to be pitied.

BEWARE THE MAN WITH THE HOOK

     An article — a fake article, running down the right side of this column, headlined:

                              "TOP COP SLAMS HOOK MAN FEAR"

     As I put together the tent poles, I merrily composed the article in my mind:
     "Northbrook Chief of Police Buck Jackman assured parents there is no reason to be concerned about the 50th anniversary of the escape of the deranged killer known only as 'The Hook Man.'
     "'All usual summertime activities, including sleepovers, should proceed as normal,' said Chief Jackman. "'The myth of his return on the anniversary to kill again is only that, a myth.' 

       "It was June 13, 1957 — exactly 50 years ago Wednesday when a serial killer whose right hand was replaced with a razor-sharp hook escaped from the Northwest Suburban Facility for the Criminally Insane. The same night, four boys camping in Harms Woods were found brutally slaughtered . . ."
     I would fold the paper over, hiding the part that explained the joke to readers, and pass it across the kitchen table to the birthday boy.
     "Look at that," I'd say, idly. "We'd better not tell your friends. Wouldn't want them to be frightened . . ."
     But I had already turned in Wednesday's column. I briefly considered phoning the paper and having them tear up the page. But the copy desk might look askance at that . . .
     So I let it go. The party proceeded as planned. Bocce ball and dinner at Pinstripes. Home for a ballgame, the pinata, gifts.
     Darkness fell. The boys were settled in the tent to play poker, and I was getting ready to go to sleep when my younger son appeared. His older brother was teasing his friends.
     I went into the yard, found Son No. 1 raking his fingers across the outside of the tent and crooning about a Hook Man — it must be in the genes. I sent him to his room, established that the five boys within were calm, and hit the hay.
     At 3:45 a.m. one of the boys appeared in our room — feeling ill, he said, no doubt a combination of massive sugar infusion, late hours and excitement. His folks were called and they returned him to the comfort of his own room.
     "The boys are going to wonder where he went when they wake up," my wife mused, in the 4 a.m. darkness. Then she smiled — I could hear it. "It must be you guys rubbing off on me, but I'm tempted to tell them that the Hook Man got him."
         — Originally published in the Sun-Times, June 15, 2007

Zombie babies nibble at Texas freedom

     My sister got married and moved to Texas. Almost 40 years ago. Don’t ask why; it’s complicated. The family would occasionally haul down to Texas to visit.
     I can’t honestly say I relished those trips. Yes, it was educational to visit Dealey Plaza, where John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Seeing how compact the layout is, you go from “How could Oswald hit him twice?” to “How could he miss?”
     But Texas is so .... my sister lives outside Dallas, which is not a proper city, like Chicago. The skyline, with its neon trimmed buildings, seems an inflatable backdrop, something the Army Corps of Engineers would set up overnight to create the decoy of a city.
     Though one early visit stands out. We rented a Lincoln Continental — when in Rome — which I dubbed “The Fat Man’s Car,” thinking of that TV detective Cannon. He drove a Lincoln.
     Back then, in the mid-1980s, Texans could drink and drive — they had drive-through liquor stores. At one point, my brother and I slipped away, picked up a 6-pack of Lone Star beer and tooled around, enjoying the full Texas cultural experience.
     Steering with one hand and nursing a beer with the other was perfectly legal. Why? Because freedom. They would be gosh-darned if they were going to let some gubment bureaucrat tell them how to live. They not only drank and drove but celebrated the practice.
     “Texans love to drive and drink,” Jan Reid wrote in Texas Monthly in 1983. “I’ve done it many times ... gained new vigor for the upcoming stretch of road from the rousing feel of a cold one wedged between your thighs ... the freedom to imbibe behind the wheel represents a level of personal liberty that is denied residents of more thoroughly urbanized parts of the country. We tenaciously defend our right to drink and drive.”
     Tenacity slips, and personal liberty is on hard times in Texas. Not because they passed an open container law in 1987 (for drivers; passengers could imbibe until 1993). Having seen the ravages of alcohol up close, I applaud common sense so clear it even sank into rock hard heads of Texans, eventually.

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Haarlem Nights

 

      Why buy postcards when you can just snap a photo? Such as the one above, taken last month, of the De Adriaan, a rustic windmill in Haarlem, Netherlands. 
      The windmill isn't original — built in 1779, it burned down in 1932 — but a lovingly-crafted reproduction on the precise spot, opened in 2002. Edie and I took the tour, and learned a lot — particularly about the connection between the windmills and Amsterdam's meteoric commercial rise. We think of them as charming anachronisms, now, but they were cutting edge technology 300 years ago.
     I can't share the photo without giving a shoutout to Karen Turner and her Wanderlustingk blog. She is the reason we were in Haarlem in the first place. My wife and I decided to go to Amsterdam at the last moment — just a couple weeks ahead of time — and after we bought our plane tickets, I was surprised to have difficulty finding a room at an affordable hotel, meaning under $300 a night. Even the $400 and $500 hotel rooms were nothing to get excited about. Basic rooms, quite small, most lacking a queen sized bed.
     With what-have-we-done panic setting in, I fled to the internet for guidance, and immediately found Turner's 25 ESSENTIAL TRAVEL TIPS FOR AMSTERDAM FROM AN AMSTERDAM RESIDENT. The first few — don't stand in the bike lane, wear comfortable shoes, carry ID at all times — while no doubt useful, did not address our particular problem. But No. 5 was: "BOOK YOUR HOTEL OR HOSTEL EARLY, ESPECIALLY FOR PEAK SEASON (SPRING/SUMMER)" and for those for whom this was impossible, included this key piece of advice:

     Some people choose to stay outside of Amsterdam to save up to 40% (like my dad did), however you’ll need to factor in the cost of traveling to/from Amsterdam daily per person. Haarlem is a lovely city about 20 minutes from Amsterdam.

     That sounded like a plan. I went online and found a number of suitable hotel rooms for about $200 a night, and booked a stay at the Lion D'Or, right at the train station in Haarlem. The view out our window looked like this:    

    We really liked Haarlem — not only was there a charming windmill, but a perfect little restaurant, Jacobu Pieck, at 18 Warmoesstraat. We ate there three times. We also visited the Franz Hals museum, and took in an organ concert at the Grote Kerk, the town's main church, which has been at that location since 1307. The organ was finished in 1738, and played by Mendelssohn, Handel and a 10-year-old Mozart. We saw Rob Nederlof play, and he was excellent. Tickets were four Euros.

     I liked Amsterdam, particularly the Van Gogh Museum, a must-see lifetime experience, and the Rijksmuseum, which isn't the Prado or the Art Institute for that matter, though still worth a look-see. But we loved Haarlem.