Morning after: Democratic edition

     Remember when you were a kid, and you'd get a present you didn't really like—the wrong toy—but you knew you had to accept it with as much grace and gratitude as you could muster? That's Hillary Clinton, for me. I looked at her face Saturday night, before she had spoken a word, on stage in New Hampshire for the third Democratic presidential debate, and sighed. I'm not sure what I wanted, but this wasn't it. 
     I could see why people are excited about Bernie Sanders. He's like the best college professor you ever had, flailing his arms and sputtering about how skewed the whole economic system is. I admired the speed with which he apologized to Clinton for his staffer looking over her campaign's data: a message most politicians, heck, most people, never get. Admit the wrong, move on.
    But after watching the parade of right wing fear mongering on Tuesday, I couldn't get behind Sanders, because he'll lose to whatever nutjob the GOP offers up. The time might be right for a septuagenarian socialist president, in Norway, but not in the United States, where a single shooting can cause a third of the country to want to use the Bill of Rights as kindling for their security bonfires.  Sanders is like a computer salesman going from hut to hut in Borneo. His customers just aren't ready for that. Maybe they never will be.
     And Martin O'Malley. Governor of Maryland.  He would have been my ideal candidate.  He came down hard on anti-Muslim hate, condemning "the fascist pleas of billionaires with big mouths." When it comes to guns, he said, "What we need is not more polls, but more principles." Leading a conversation on a topic that the Republicans couldn't even touch. A guy born in Chicago murders 14 people, with his wife, in San Bernardino, and their solution is to bar Muslims from the country. As if they murdered them with their bare hands.
     And O'Malley is young and handsome. Never underestimate the importance of optics in politics. Though he got booed when he brought the age of his opponents up. People are petty; I sure am. Every time the camera zoomed in from the back, I thought: Do I have to look at Hillary Clinton's ass for the next four years?
     That said, O'Malley is like a person who steps out of a crowd, grabs your elbow and starts talking to you. Whatever sense he says is lost compared to the reaction of, "Who is this guy. I never saw him before in my life." And I watched earlier debates. It's just that O'Malley ha a way of not sticking in mind. He's the Democratic Lindsay Graham. 
    And Sanders, while right in a general way about the economy being skewed for the 1 percent, offered up a range of pie-in-the-sky pipe dreams, from free college tuition for all (failing to mention, for some reason, the ponies for the children while he was at it) and the wish that Saudi Arabia and Qatar will take over battling ISIS for us.  He was good at framing the problem—"police officers should not be shooting unarmed people"—without saying what to do about it, which is the crux of the matter here.
     Clinton was on the usual eight second delay. When the ABC moderators, who had a tough time keeping the three from talking over each other in a senseless babble, pointed out that Americans are rushing to buy guns to protect themselves from Muslims (not pointing out that the people most endangered when you buy a gun are yourself and your family) and challenged Clinton to react, she at first digressed, and for a moment my stomach sank, and I thought she was going to dodge. "Clinton boots gun control answer," I tweeted. 
    Then she nailed it. 
     "Guns in and of themselves in my opinion will not make Americans safer," she said. "We lose 33,000 people already to gun violence. Arming more people ... is not the appropriate response to terrorism." And I exhaled. 
     She was good at explaining why Republican scapegoating Muslims, at home and abroad, is not only morally wrong, but bad strategy. "We need to work with them, not demonize them," she said, calling Trump "ISIS' best recruiter."
    And of course she ended the debate with, "May the force be with you," which made me smile, and think, "Okay, maybe that line was written by a $20,000 a month consultant. But she still said it." 
    What's that Rolling Stones lyric? "You can't always get what you want," Mick Jagger sang, "but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need." I can't say I'm excited about the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency. There is something, if not quite dead, then lifeless in her eyes. She's the Generic Stuffed Bear when I had my heart set on a Winnie-the-Pooh Bear. So Hillary Clinton is not what we want. But she sure is what we have. And she beats the alternatives, big time, which makes her what we need. So she will have to do. 

"I'll take some calico, clove gum and..."

  

  

     My first thought, when I went to usher Lillian Vernon into the great beyond yesterday, was that I had written something about her catalogue. But I hadn't. What I had written about was the Vermont Country Store, a similar vendor of bric-a-brac, defunct brands, and, to my vast surprise, a certain type of feminine device one would not expect to find sold along with Stove-top coffee percolators, Ralston and toe covers. This seems perfect for the Sunday before Christmas, and I had to share it.

     This story begins with a hairbrush and ends with a, umm, very different kind of personal care device.
     My wife's hairbrush had seen better days. Years of passing through her curly strawberry blond pre-Raphaelite tresses had worn down its bundles of boar bristles to a nubbin.
     Time to replace it. But alas, she pouted, showing the worn-out brush to me one day, such brushes aren't available anymore.
     Recognizing a challenge when I saw one, I secretly plunged into the Internet and found not just a brush like it, but the exact brush - half-round, boar bristle, from the same Fuller Brush Company.  Sold by the VermontCountry Store.  Swallowing hard at the $40 price tag, I ordered the thing as a gift.
     Only her lack of surprise after I gave it to her made me suspect I had been slyly led.
     Once I ordered something, of course, the Vermont Country Store had me in its sights and the catalogs began coming.
     The first, Spring 2011, sports a painting of the rustic red Vermont store on its cover, complete with rain barrel and American flag. It surprised me to see offered for sale new items that, when I notice older ladies wearing them, I always assumed had been purchased at a Woolworth's in 1965: muumuus (up to size 3X) and caftans, plastic rain bonnets and floral Latex swim caps. It was a revelation.
     And candy—caramel bull's-eyes and Starlight Mints, Herbal Horehound Drops and Black Jack Gum. Plus Whoopie Pies, Bread-in-a-Can, foodstuffs I hadn't thought about in 20 years: Lobster Newburg. Date Nut Bread.
     Maybe it's the cynic in me, but I made a connection between all that comfort food and those 3X muumuus — maybe if women skipped the former, they wouldn't have to buy the latter out of a special catalog.
     The rest of the merchandise was a hodgepodge designed to satisfy the desires of 80-year-olds trying to re-create the past. Like the "Easy-to-Use Cassette Recorder" (only $59.95). Or those aluminum ice cube trays with a handle to crack the ice. A steam iron that "has the familiar weight and heft that's missing from today's lightweight models."
     There were garments the existence of which I had not imagined — "toe covers," which are abbreviated socks designed for open back shoes. Bra extenders, for after you wolf back the canned bacon and Cinnamon Brioche with Praline Sauce and Cream Cheese Icing on page 27 and want to avoid buying new undergarments in a larger size.
    Perfumes like Evening in Paris, Coty, Wind Song. Shampoos like Lemon Up. Alberto VO5 conditioner. I felt like I was looking at my mother's dresser. Many of these companies don't exist anymore - the Vermont Country Store,  amazingly, re-creates the lost products.
     But that isn't why I'm writing this.
      No, the Summer catalog arrived a few days ago, touting new wonders: floral swim caps that were out of fashion in 1975. Stove-top coffee percolators. Ralston. Wooden Q-Tips. Sleeve garters. Buster Brown socks.
     To be honest, I almost missed the Really Amazing Part, right there in the lower corner of page 66: "Intimate Massagers: Quiet, Lightweight, and Discreet." My wife pointed it out.
      The Vermont Country Store sells vibrators and dildos, though never using those words. The catalog offers three models: the Dual Pleasure, the Pinpoint Accuracy and a Dr. Laura Berman signature device — she endorses them, the way Yogi Berra plugged catcher's mitts. Online, there are many more.
     In the catalog, they begin, directly, "Hormonal changes can affect a woman's responsiveness, and many couples find that intimacy benefits from a little help." But online, you can almost feel the awkwardness, as merchants used to hawking licorice whips pause, cringe, then present their new line of sex toys.
     "As we get older, we don't have to become less able," writes Lyman Orton, whose parents, Vrest and Mildred Orton, founded the store in 1946. "Here at Vermont Country Store,  we take a practical, no-nonsense approach to keeping you healthy, physically, emotionally, and . . . well . . . sexually, too!"
     Don't you love that little elliptic blush of modesty? I'm certain it eases the way for grandma to pony up $80 for a Dr. Berman-recommended, rechargeable "Aphrodite."
      I'm definitely not making fun of this — life's a long time, and you do what you have to.
      There's something charming, almost sweet, about a catalog that touts Bonomo Turkish Taffy on the front cover, fade-resistant American flags on the back and has an array of sex toys, including those hawked by the redoubtable Dr. Berman, tucked away inside.
              —Originally published in the Chicago Sun-Times, June 22, 2011

Some thoughts regarding Lillian Vernon Schoolhouse Frames

    It's been a long time since we've veered into the truly trivial, and this seems a good moment.
    Because really, you can only hammer so long on the inadequacy of the Republican presidential candidates, the angry aggrievement of the cops, the country's thickening miasma of fear, the wrecked circus train of various national woes, before it all gets too frustrating and repetitive. 
    Besides, what can be done? Not much.
    Today's topic, I guarantee, will lead some to bold definitive, decisive action, at least for a certain kind of reader.
    Lillian Vernon died last Monday. and if that name rings a bell, it is for what the New York Times called her "sprawling catalog business that specialized in personalized gifts and ingenious gadgets" in its fond send-off.
    Lillian Vernon, the company, sold Christmas stockings and customized doormats, lawn furniture covers and throw pillows, wicker baskets and yard signs.
     Not the sort of stuff I'd run to purchase, though, like everybody else, I flipped through the catalogues when they arrived. It was like sneaking through the window of a those small box homes  you drive past and wonder about. This is where they get their stuff, their personalized place mats, their beach tote bags.
     If that sounds elitist, I've said it wrong. All of our lives are small and human and poignant and proud in equal measure, whether you get your cluttered crap from Neiman Marcus or Lillian Vernon or Goodwill.
     Besides, the Steinberg household proudly displays one item from the Lillian Vernon catalogue. Something we saw on display at the home of our friends in Naperville, and immediately purchased for ourselves, not once, but twice.
     Which is the purpose of my post today. Not to make a political point, or to share an obscure bit of history. But to alert you to a product that you might want, if you are a  new parent or know one. It makes a great gift—surprise, surprise.
     Every year, every school in America takes pictures of its students. Parents don't demand the photos; they don't have to. They just occur. It's always been done, and nobody complains, beyond a wince at the price of things. Someone is getting rich off school photography. Still, it's a service. Time passes so quickly, why not force the tykes to comb their hair and look presentable once a year?
    But what to do with that baker's dozen of wallet-sized formal portraits, from kindergarten to senior year in high school? They go into billfolds and purses, then drawers, then are lost, flotsam in the sea of time. 
    Unless.
    Enter the Lillian Vernon Schoolhouse Frame. It is not cheap, at $29.95, but it does the job of displaying the history in portrait form of your child's transit through public education. And considering the 13 photos they hold probably cost several hundred dollars, I suppose the additional cost isn't much more to guard and display your investment through the years. Ours have been sitting on our buffet for a decade and I'll imagine they'll be there for the rest of our lives. Then one boy, or another, or both, will hold it at arm's length, draw a sigh, and toss it into a box. Anyway, now you know about them. Please don't be one of those readers who complains if you have to read something that isn't gnawing on the Issue of the Day. Even noble Homer dozed.

Breaking the code of silence

"Conflict management" by Jerry Truong

     "Chicago is the capital of the code of silence," says Craig B. Futterman, law professor at the University of Chicago and national expert on police ethics. "If you break with that code, you get crushed."
     This is not news in Chicago, though Rahm Emanuel seems to have only recently discovered it.
     "It's always been this way," says Futterman. "You don't rat out your fellow officer or else you're going to be hazed from within and, just as importantly, it's enforced from above. It's the culture, the practice of the department. Under Rahm it's been no better. And now he says, 'Yup, we have a problem' and admits it."
     Well, hallelujah.
     Futterman has been at the center of the Laquan McDonald case for a year, since his legal clinic received a tip about a dashcam video of Officer Jason Van Dyke pumping 16 bullets into McDonald. With the city in turmoil and the mayor hounded by protesters everywhere he goes, Futterman believes this moment might lead to real reform.
     "I'm hopeful because the vast majority of officers aren't benefiting from this," he says. "It's hurting them. ... This moment may give them an opportunity to not just do the right thing, but what's in their own best interest." 

Craig Futterman

     
     How so?
     "If you look at the data," he says, "the good news is the vast majority of Chicago Police officers on the force are not out there busting heads; 80 percent of officers have less than four complaints [of misconduct] in their career. Most have none. A small percentage are responsible for the lion's share of complaints, and that small percentage are allowed to run roughshod."
     Why?
     "Loyalty to fellow officers is something highly valued and taught, and it's a good thing," says Futterman. "They've got to rely on one another in some pretty hairy situations. [The trouble is] when loyalty to one another trumps loyalty to the truth, to their fundamental job."
     When that happens, there is no option besides silence.
     "You know who the bad officers are, but you can't say," says Futterman. "Many would love nothing more than to get rid of that few percent, because they make their jobs a living hell. [Bad cops] wear the same badge, but they dishonor them. [Good cops are] working rough neighborhoods, trying to solve crime, but everybody hates them and distrusts them because of some jerk harassing people. Lack of trust means they can't do their jobs well."
     So they don't.
   "In Chicago, per officer, there are a lot more complaints on average, particularly those of brutality," says Futterman. "We also shoot more folks than virtually every other department in the country. We stand out as among the worst when it comes to identifying, rooting out and disciplining officers who have abused their powers."
     Another reason cops don't talk: because nothing is done. The department has a stake in that. You pull a thread, the whole fabric could unravel.
     "You expose four bad guys, they made a couple hundred arrests," says Futterman. "Some arrests are good, some are bad, it undermines all of them. These guys who had been corrupt, they didn't start doing this yesterday. Who was minding the store? There are some pretty big political costs for whoever's in charge."
     Costs the mayor is tallying right now. Costs that add to our city's hemorrhaging bottom line. A staggering $521 million since 2004, to hush up these cases.
     "A code of silence about the code of silence," says Futterman.
     My guess? Outrage fades, but habit endures. Smoke will be blown, maybe more heads roll, but nothing substantive. Futterman is more optimistic.
     "I think we're at a moment where change is actually possible," says Futterman, "For the first time, a public official has been forced to even acknowledge the systemic nature of the problem. Now we'll see if he makes that more than words. Everyone has the right to be skeptical of his actions up to this point."
     So what has to happen?
     "When I go around the country, I get stories from officers all the time of someone from the inside who made the department better and got rid of bad cops," says Futterman. "I always ask, 'Can anybody share a happy ending for the whistleblower?' No one ever does. That's gotta change. That's where leadership matters. There is an opportunity now to not just do obvious things — you fail to report, you lie, you're fired — but also to protect and honor the folks who come forward, to treat them like the heroes they are."

Pearl Harbor and Donald Trump

     I finished my morning work a little early Thursday, and thought I would spend the 15 minutes before lunch curled up with A Colorful History of Popular Delusions, by Robert E. Bartholomew and Peter Hassall. Prometheus Books published it in October and a Canadian friend was kind enough to send to me, thinking I would like it, which I do. 
    I had barely begun reading when I came upon this paragraph, in a section about rumor. The authors are discussing assimilation,  which they define as "the tendency for people to shape the emerging rumor in such a way that it is sharpened as a reflection of social and cultural stereotypes." 
     The paragraph is a bit long, but bear with me, because I want to see if it sparks in your mind the same thought it sparked in mine:        

     A classic example of assimilation took place in the hours and days following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, as rumors questioning the loyalty of Japanese-Americans spread quickly across the Hawaiian Islands. Such fears, while unfounded, had long been the subject of concern on the Islands, as 160,000 Hawaiians had Japanese ancestry. [Sociologist Tamotsu] Shibuttani recounts some of the rumors, which included claims that a ring from a local high school (McKinley High) "was found on the body of a Japanese flier shot down over Honolulu; the water supply had been poisoned by the local Japanese; Japanese plantation workers had cut arrows pointing to Pearl Harbor in the cane field of Oahu; the local Japanese had been notified of the attack by an advertisement in a Honolulu newspaper on December 6; ... automobiles driven by local Japanese blocked the roads from Honolulu to Pearl Harbor; Japanese residents waved their kimonos at the pilots and signaled to them [and[ some local men were dressed in Japanese Army uniforms during the attack." Despite failing to be verified, these stories continued to persist long after the attack, especially in the mainland press. When a rumor persisted that the Pacific fleet had been destroyed in the attack, and continued to circulate across the US mainland for several months, President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt the need to give a national radio address to dispel the claims and restore public confidence. 

     Did you read that and think: "Donald Trump"? I sure did. 
     Propagating the rumor that Muslims in Garden City, New Jersey, celebrated the Sept. 11 attacks, breathing new life into the calumny, sticking to the ugly lie even after it was shown there is no hint of evidence behind it. 
    FDR took pains to correct the false story about the Pacific fleet, knowing that such rumors stoke fears and undercut morale. Trump does the opposite, because his presidential run is a candidacy based on fear. It doesn't matter to him that alienating American Muslims is exactly what ISIS wants, that it hurts our security rather than helps it.  Trump perpetrates the falsehood because he needs such stories to justify his plan to bar Muslims and harass mosques, to justify his entire candidacy. Only terrified supporters could have brought him this far. Fear is the fuel Trump runs on.
     Of all the wild and damaging statements Trump has made, I think disseminating the fabrication about Garden State Muslims is the most obscene, anti-American and immoral, not just because it is a patently-false racist slur, one he clings to even after its falsity is established. But also because it undercuts our political environment's already tenuous grasp on fact. Trump establishes himself as as man who does not care what the reality is, and his success inspires imitation and warps democracy. His strategy is the bedrock of fascism. Forget facts. You are what we say you are. 
    The Pearl Harbor rumor is important to remember because it shows the perverse genius of hatred, its creativity in manufacturing libels to pin on victims and justify their oppression. It's so varied: the class ring. The kimonos. The arrows cut in sugar cane fields. We've seen similar wild imaginings repeated a dozen different ways around Sept. 11. 
     I've been called upon, from time to time, to justify my support of Muslims, and I have a solid response: This is America. In America, we don't judge people by their religions, nor condemn them for the real acts—never mind the imagined ones—of their co-religionists. Period.
     There's one more rationale. Occasionally someone will point out that Muslims in other countries and even in the United States, often have dim views on Israel, or Jews, and I don't deny that. I reply that I am not treating them according to their standards of morality, but according to mine. Pointing out what they do or think in Saudi Arabia has no bearing on what we think or do. Of course descending to the level of others is always tempting. Their behavior is seen as a kind of permission. This is nothing new. There have always been a species of false patriots, like Donald Trump, ready to try to protect America's greatness by abandoning the practices that make us great.  Not realizing that it is in the face of danger that we must cling even tighter to the things in which we believe.  I would be more concerned if I weren't also convinced, in my heart, that Trump will fail, eventually. He has to. His kind always does. If they didn't fail, we'd have never made it to this day. 

The morning after

 
      So now I've watched all five Republican presidential debates.
     Ten hours—more or less—staring into the cesspool of the GOP psyche. The fear. The bluster. The Donald.
      The press leaps to critique their performance, citing various lines, moments, gaffes.
      And my impulse is to say ... nothing. Because it really twists the gut to imagine that one of these guys—or, gasp, Carly Fiorina—could end up president of the United States. A big country with big problems.  They could be the ones to apply their intelligence and world view to our running our nation for the next four or eight years.
     The impulse is to fall silent, stare at a spot on the floor. But you sort of have to try, to say something sensible, if only to wave the flag for sense.
     Lest it fall from favor entirely.
     So what's the takeaway?
     First:
     Man, they hate Obama. You'd think the country was a smoldering ruin the way they talk about the past seven years, that other landmarks had been desolated in more 9/11-like assaults. You'd think 10 million people didn't get health insurance or the banks saved and the economy righted. You'd think Osama bin Laden hadn't been killed, and unwise wars wound down. None of it matters of course. To them, he's the Worst. President. Ever. I wonder why they feel that way? I'd say racism, but then, they really, really hated Bill Clinton too. Partisan blindness perhaps. I could scrape together the good things George W. Bush did. No one is completely bad. But not a syllable in support of anything Obama ever did cross the lips of any of these debaters. Not once. Evidence of the vast areas of life they just can't see. That Marco Rubio can say he'll roll back gay marriage ... why? Because of all the damage it causes to straight marriage?
    Second. They are willing to surrender our freedom for the illusion of security. I'm being influenced by the last night's debate more than the others, but if these debates are a testament to anything, they are proof of the fact that a mouse right now dwarfs an elephant last week. You'd think that the San Bernardino massacre occurs every day.
     Actually it does—general gun violence. Many times over. But they never talk about that either. Another region their eyes just can't focus on. Listening to their view of the country was really a case of the Blind Men and the Elephant.
     And Carly Fiorina. Has ever a dud career of failure ever been spun so vigorously? And regarding foreign relations. You'd think she had been Secretary General of the United Nations, to hear her talk. I guess Hewlett-Packard once pressed a button in response to a national security request. Or maybe she went on a Carnival Cruise once. Hard to say.
     Third. The whole thing is so sad, so painfully sad, for patriotic Americans who love the country and want it run well. Donald Trump, pressed to the wall, invokes the best and the brightest, the great minds who'll come in a fix things in some as-yet-to-be-seen fashion. Hasn't he read a history book? Sometimes the smartest people make the biggest blunders. Ted Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard, not that he'd ever mention that—too smart, given the people he's trying to fool. For all the good it did him.
     Okay, enough. Too damn depressing. I had only one central thought, after each debate, after them all. Not a happy thought, but a grim, determined thought: Hillary Clinton better fuckin' win. Not the perfect candidate either. But a clear-thinker living in the fact-based world. Better do all the basic, meat-and-potatoes campaign work necessary: register the voters, kiss the babies, collect the money, produce the TV commercials. Because our nation depends on it. When somebody asks me why I don't wave palm fronds at Bernie Sanders, I reply: because he won't win. This national moment is too fraught for naivete. I won't say that a Donald Trump or a Ted Cruz would destroy the United States—a great nation, it survived eight years of George W. Bush, it can survive anything.
     But they'd sure give it their best shot.

Jeff Magill: " A profound part of that order"

Jeff Magill

     Early this year, Tom Chiarella wrote a fantastic profile of Jeff Magill for Chicago magazine. So when a boss suggested that I was the person to serenade Magill into retirement, I almost blurted out: "It's already been done!" But that sounded kind of lame, and Jeff's a complex enough guy that a little room could exist for my own take on the man.  Though I deliberately left myself out of the equation—didn't want to get between him and the reader.

     Jeff Magill stands behind the bar at the Billy Goat Tavern and hooks his right arm around a Schlitz beer tap as he speaks, a gesture of utter confidence and familiarity, as if he's part of the bar itself, which of course he is.
     He has been tending bar at the subterranean landmark at the corner of Lower Michigan and Hubbard for nearly 35 years. His 35th anniversary would be March 4, if he stayed that long.
     But he won't; Magill is retiring when his shift ends at 7 p.m. Christmas Eve. 

     "It's one of the happiest days of the year," says Magill, in a soft, pleasant voice you lean forward and strain to hear above the bar clatter. "Especially with this place. It starts out, very frenetic in the morning. People are tying up loose ends, with shopping. Almost a crescendo down here. Early afternoon, people peter out. For the most part, quiet. When I walk out the door it's very quiet. So there's a wonderful contrast, the activity of the morning and the quiet of the evening. I love that. I always have. For whatever it's worth, I found a little bit of a symbolic parallel there, trying to figure out the right day to retire on."
     If his language—"frenetic," "crescendo" "symbolic" "—does not sound like the typical "Whaddaya have, pal?" bartender snarl, well, that's Jeff.
     "Jeff has a background in psychology," says long-time patron Michael Gillespie, 72. "Very apropos to this job. He's probably the most eclectic bartender I've ever met, and I used to be in the business."
     And yet there is nothing pretentious about him. He wears his erudition lightly.

   "He's an old-time bartender," says Gillespie. "Today, you know, they're mixologists. In the old days, this place used to be a shot and a beer place."
     Magill once offered a shot and a beer to Hillary Clinton as she was visiting the bar—equal part sincere hospitality and sly taunt, also characteristic. He was there when Julia Child got behind the grill to flip burgers and when George H.W. Bush stopped by for lunch, none of which be brings up. Nor does he mention Mike Royko, the great columnist. But I do.
     "He kind of tested me," remembers Jeff, recalling a moment about six months after he started."Some guy at the bar was talking, and he said, 'Mike, you live in the suburbs.'  
     Jeff drops his voice to a growl to imitate Royko:  "'I don't live in the suburbs! I hate the fuckin' suburbs! When I go out to the suburbs I throw up on the steering wheel.'" Jeff jerks his thumb.
     "He looked at me and said, 'He lives in the suburbs!"
     "I said, 'Mike, as a matter of fact, I don't. Live at Diversey and Ashland. But you live in Edgebrook. Literally just a couple of blocks from the suburbs, a neighborhood indiscernible from the suburbs.' He hesitated for a minute and said, 'I pay my taxes in the city.' And that was it. And I never had any kind of negative thing with Mike from the on. We got along from then on. We played golf a handful of times together."
     Hours can pass like this, but time is short. What has Jeff learned from his 35 years behind the bar?
     'Certainly a lot is revealed in a tavern," he replies. "We know that. We know that sometimes, for good or for bad, alcohol can be a kind of truth serum. For a lot of people, it can reduce inhibitions, in a good sense. I see good fellowship. I'm amazed at how people of disparate backgrounds, income, social status, can get along famously and develop real intimacy. That's the great joy of this business. To see that. All of those friendships, truly devoted to each other. It sounds grandiose, But to preside over that, there's really an honor in that. I don't want to be corny about it, but it really is."
     So what will he do when he retires?
     "No plans," he says. "I've never been good at compartmentalizing my life. I admire people who can. I think they're the most successful among us. But I won't know until I enter that space. That's my intention. Get there first and decide what to do next. Doing repairs around the house that are long overdue."
     Patrons drift in. A couple of pilots, so conversation floats to Meigs Field and, of course, wings back to Jeff.
      "Jeff symbolizes, to me, the era when a local bar was part of Chicago's personality," says Tim Coverick, a retired pilot. "He was able to perpetuate the true essence of a local bar, a classy bar, to downtown and it will never be the same."
     Bars aren't supposed to change.  The Goat has stayed the same for half a century, the same yellowed clippings, the same black and white photos for forgotten politicians and beauty queens.
     But the people inside change.
     "I've seen people's lives evolve over 35 years," Magill says. "I've had the good fortune to have enough regulars. A lot of lives develop and change. the irony is what people look for coming here down in a tavern is a constant, something you shouldn't change. Perhaps that's the function of me being here all those years. Leaving, and some recognition of my leaving, confirms that. I'm finding that this meant more to me probably than I thought it did. There's an ordering of our lives, conscious or unconscious, and you find you're a profound part of that order for a significant number of people..."
     Something catches his eye and he breaks off and hurries down the bar.
     "What will you have?" he says.