Cool tools #3: Wilton Tradesman Bench Vise.

 
     The vise is the heart of any workshop. A vise holds what's being cut, steady and unwavering. You'll notice I've added an extra layer of support before bolting the Wilton—which has four bolts instead of the standard three—to my work table, to encourage it not to pull through the particleboard.
     The really extraordinary thing about this Wilton Tradesman Bench Vise is not that it weighs 70 pounds or its sleek green finish or that it rotates 360 degrees: it's where the glorious object is made: not China, not Mexico, but Carpentersville, Illinois. The company began in Chicago in 1941 by Czech immigrant Hugh W. Vogl, and while some production has moved down to the union-unfriendly state of Tennessee, these "bullet vises"—so-called because the screw is encased by a rounded casing that keeps out grit—are still made locally.
     Don't overlook the little square anvil area. Very useful.
   The obvious question is what connection does "vise," the badass tool, have with "vice," the bad personal habit? The romantic in me would conjure up a t00-easy answer: some medieval moralist opining how we are squeezed by the shame of our moral failings.
     The actual, the world-sucks-but-we-have-to-live-in-it answer is "there's no connection." In fact, "vice" is used for both the tool and the sin in most of the English speaking world, the depravity-related meaning being older, and tracing to the Latin "vitium," meaning, simply enough, "fault, or defect." The thing with jaws pressing together is from "vitis," or vine, which grow in corkscrews ("Vite" is screw in Italian). Without the casing that Wilton so handily features, the large screw mechanism was most distinctive. 
     In his great 1755 dictionary, Samuel Johnson defines vice as "1. The course of action opposite to virtue; depravity of manners, inordinate life" then "2. A fault; an offence." The third definition is, obscurely, "The fool, or punchinello of old shows," citing Shakespeare, and only in his fourth definition gets to "A kind of small iron press with screws, used by workmen" citing a Dutch word, "vijs," which must, like all of Johnson's etymologies, be taken with a big blue Morton canister of salt. 
     Only in the United States is the "vise" spelling generally used, trying to get a little distance I suppose between our tools and the urgings of Satan.
     It was this column, almost a decade ago, that first put the Wilton company on my radar. And in my basement.

     "This isn't Chinese. I can tell from the box, they're American," says Gordon Stade, holding a microphone and sitting high in a booth mounted on the back of a red Ford F-250 pickup truck parked in the middle of the Northbrook Garage. "What are they, Jerry? They're tire wrenches, boys."
     The "boys" are 50 or 60 men, substantial, hardworking men, many in baseball caps, some in bib overalls or leather jackets atop plaid shirts atop hooded sweat shirts. Others wear sleeveless T-shirts, one showing off a red-white-and-blue Chevy logo tattoo. They crowd in a circle around the truck, fully bearded or scraggly faced, pony-tailed or balding, rail thin or hauling around cantilevered beer keg guts. They are truckers and towers and garage mechanics, the kind of guys who would show up early Saturday morning to bid on one and a half centuries of clutter from what, until last weekend, was one of the oldest businesses in the United States, the Lorenz auto garage on Shermer Road, which began as a horse carriage repair shop in the 1840s.
     Think of how cluttered your garage is—now imagine that on an immense scale after five generations. Hydraulic jacks and chain hoists, tow cables and breaker bars and tires stacked chest-high. Huge hooks attached to pulleys the size of dinner plates. Shocks and wrenches and little boxes of little bulbs.
     And air hoses—red air hoses.
     "I'm going to sell 'em to you, you can send air all over the farm," says Stade, a livestock auctioneer, himself in business 55 years out of Huntley. "Fifty? Who'll give me 10? Now 20. Now 30."
     Not being in the market for a 25-ton press or an acetylene outfit or the hood from a Firebird, I didn't plan on attending the auction. But the warm weather drew me outside, and I wandered over—the brick garage, built in the early 1920s, looks like something out of a train diorama and is only two blocks from my house.
     I take my place among the men gathered around Stade's pickup truck, which moves along the center of the garage, selling first one pile of stuff, then another. A pair of axes goes cheap —I could use a good axe—so I think to register at the trailer in the back, resolving not to buy anything I don't actually need.
     So no 5-Speed Heavy Duty Drill Press produced by Central Machinery of Hollywood, Calif. No hubcaps from a Nash Rambler. No "Your LaSalle—An Owner's Manual" from 1938.
     "We're selling the trailer, boys," says Stade, who wears a cowboy hat and speaks in an easy, burbling patter. If the family farm has to go, this is the guy you want selling it.
     "He's really good at what he does; he'll get more per item than anybody," observes a big bearded man standing next to me, Chris Horcher of Horcher's Towing of Wheeling. Horcher is here for trucks and chains—"I would have bought more, but he was getting more than the chains cost new."
     I don't want to fall into that trap. But when the longest industrial extension cord I have even seen in my life is held up for sale, I remember scrambling to piece together every cord I own. One hundred feet of heavy-duty orange extension cord goes to bidder No. 106—me—for $6, and lugging the coil makes me feel like less of a well-scrubbed scribbling toff amongst men who actually work for a living.
     I pause to admire a vise—two feet long, made by the Wilton Tool Corp. of Schiller Park. Dappled with 50 years of hammer blows and saw nicks, worn, with a dust brown patina, it looks more like a natural formation, something carved by the wind perhaps, than an object manufactured by human hands.
     "You need a vise?" asks a guy, who sees me examining it. "These are not made in China, you know."
     "Every man needs a vice," I answer. "And frankly, I've been lacking in the vice department lately."
     But this is not the crowd for wordplay. I hang around for more than an hour, hoping to snag the vise, or at least one of the tire irons—those big metal X's, not the little jack sticks that comes with cars nowadays. Lunchtime approaches, however, and I decide to leave the tools to those who really need them. I am also afraid that I'll shrug and make the easy observation: that, as if our big car companies failing were not bad enough, now even the corner car repair shop is going down, breaking apart and spilling its contents to the winds.
     Despite the fever dreams of the village fathers, I can't imagine a hip restaurant opening in this yawning cavern. I can't see the high-ceiling space, with its skylights and metal struts, becoming a mall—a candle shop and an olive oil boutique and a stand selling artisanal cheeses—not one that ever progresses beyond an artist's drawing published in the Northbrook Star. My bet: It'll sit empty for the next five years.
      That goes without saying. More worthwhile noting is that my wistfulness for the Wilton vise was misplaced—Wilton, now of Elgin, made its first vise in 1941 and is still going strong. The Wilton Web site touts 132 vises—though whether they are made in China or here, I could not immediately determine. Either way, I might have to pick one up because sometimes a man needs a vise.
    —Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 9, 2009



   
   

And then there's all that trouble ordering the cake...

     Adolf Hitler's birthday is Friday, and here I am without a present.
     Or a person to give it to—well, there's Arthur J. Jones, the sorta-Nazi running for Congress on the Republican ticket. We'll get to him later.
     April 20. Hope it passes peacefully. Ever since April 20, 1999, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 fellow students and a teacher at Columbine High School, kicking off the current era of mass school shootings, there's been a certain clenched expectation to the date, even though the pair actually planned their attack for the 19th, but delayed a day to collect more ammunition.
     The media unhelpfully increases the dread by lumping in April 19—it's so close!—with Timothy McVeigh's 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people. But McVeigh was thinking, not of a pre-birthday blow-out for Hitler, but to avenge the deathes of 80 Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, on April 19, 1993.
     Which is why it's good to pay attention to anniversaries. Terrorists sure do.
     The bright spin: at least they're remembering history. A poll released last week shows that 41 percent of Americans, and 66 percent of Millennials, can't identify what Auschwitz was (oh, sorry kids: concentration camp—1.3 million people killed there. Notorious in its day. Now, obviously, not so much).

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Cool Tools #2: Eggbeater hand crank drill

     And sometimes all a tool has to do is hang there, looking beautiful. 
      Like this eggbeater drill.
      I wish I could tell you more about it. It looks very much like a Miller Falls hand drill, of the sort manufactured by the well-known Massachusetts company during the first few decades of the 20th century. 
      But I spent more time than I should have Wednesday looking through on-line sources about hand drills—I am not alone in my appreciation—and going over this drill with a magnifying glass. 
     Nothing.
     Drills from Miller Falls and other noteworthy manufacturers all seem to have identifying hallmarks on them. This piece has nothing, which makes me think it is a lesser knock-off. 
     Though a well-made knock-off. Turn the crank and it purrs with a light zipping sound, the well-tools gears meshing perfectly after what has to be the better part of a century's use.
    Not so much use in recent decades, I imagine, as cordless electric drills have mooted this kind of thing, though I still use it occasionally for delicate tasks—countersinking a screw, for instance, where you want to make the smallest indentation and no more. Guides I've consulted recommend the drills for teaching young children carpentry, as they require two hands to operate, and a reckless child would really have to show determination to contrive to injury himself with it.
     Whatever the provenance, the drill  looks very much like the drawing that Herbert D. Lanfair submitted with his patent application On Aug. 13, 1895 he was granted Patent No. 544,411. This was an improvement over the C-shaped crank brace drill, that had been patented 40 years earlier.     If you notice in the first drawing, bits are held in the handle, and until I began my research, I didn't realize that the handle of my drill was hollow. Unscrewing it, I found eight blue steel bits, not spirally, like drill bits today, but simply cutting tips, like the ones shown here. 
     A reminder of how ancient drilling is, back some 10,000 years, when prehistoric man drilled holes by rubbing a stick with an obsidian point between his palms. 
       The bow drill was an improvement on that—the same dowel, with an iron bit instead of stone, twirled by a stringed bow, with the string looped around the stick so that it turned when the bow was drawn back and forth. 
       A variant of this was to wrap leather straps around the drill bit, which one man would hold upright in place, while another man pulled the thong, a process that I just read described in Emily Wilson's fine translation of "The Odyssey," where a sharpened, red hot olive spear is rammed into the eye of the sleeping Cyclops:

                                       ...I leaned on top
and twisted it, as when a man drills wood
for shipbuilding. Below, the workers spin
the drill with straps, stretched out from either end.
So round and round it goes, and whirled
the fire-sharp weapon in his eye.

     At which point we've probably said enough. Old tools are beautiful, not just for their aesthetic form—this this case the red wheel with its gently arching spokes—but because they remind us we are the latest stage of a very old tradition, that use of tools is truly what sets humanity apart from the animal kingdom.
     Yes, a few animals use rudimentary tools—digging for ants with sticks and such. But they do not recraft their world, for good and ill, the way we do. We've earned our nickname homo faber, "man the (tool) maker," 
    The phrase was first used by Roman politican Appius Claudius Caecus. He gave his name to a road, the Appian Way, and wrote in his book of proverbs, Homo faber suae quisque fortunae—"Every man is the maker of his own destiny." Which is largely true, again for good and ill. 

         

How popular is 'The Big Bang Theory'? Even I watch it.

     Shame is funny.
     "Funny" as in odd.
     I have no trouble writing about personal stuff. My kids, my life. I once wrote a column about getting naked for a dominatrix. I've written about being an agnostic, about going to rehab, all the time my large head— which I've also written about — held high.
     But a certain subject has been straining forward in its seat, going "oh oh, pick me!" For months and, coward that I am, I've been ignoring it.
     Because ... I'm ... well ... embarrassed.
     Okay, here goes.
     The Big Bang Theory.
     When I say to my wife after dinner, "Let's watch TV," what I mean is, "Let's watch 'The Big Bang Theory.'" The only show on television, now in its 11th season Thursday nights on CBS. Plus shown continually in syndication. Some nights TBS runs it seven times in a row, from 6 p.m. to 9:30. Reading the newspaper listings is like giving a hammer to a toddler: "BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG." 

    And there, on the couch, night after night, is Mister I-Don't-Watch-TV, aka me.
     At least I'm not alone. "The Big Bang Theory" is the top rated show on television. The most popular show in syndication for the past ... 338 consecutive weeks.
So what is the allure? 
     The premise — for the handful not familiar — would not seem something guaranteed to captivate a nation where half the citizens cower in self-constructed hallucinatory states. Viewers are invited into the lives of a pair of Caltech physicists, Dr. Sheldon Cooper and Dr. Leonard Hofstadter. We meet their colleagues: engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicst Rajesh Koothrappali. Plus their loves —" Big Bang Theory" is probably the most risqué double-entendre title of a hit TV show) — Amy, Penny, Bernadette, and whomever Rajesh is seeing at the moment.

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Cool tools #1: DeWalt Log-Splitting Axe

     Spring just won't arrive. Oh, it's here, technically, according to the calendar, though that usually trustworthy grid has taken on a slightly disreputable air, more akin to a mimeographed sheet of lucky policy wheel numbers than a reliable guide to what part of the year we find ourselves in.
     Though the weather did cooperate enough last week for me to try out my latest tool, and since we need something positive to remind us that the season of building and repairing and doing outside is nearly upon us, I thought, until the temperatures get back into the 60s, I would inaugurate a new occasional series I am dubbing "Cool Tools."      

      For a half dozen years now, I've had the good fortune to spend a weekend every autumn in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, at my buddy Rick's sprawling compound—a big main house, barn, sauna, and cabins—seven hours due north in Ontonagon.
     The place is on the sandy shore of Lake Superior, but woodsy in the extreme. Once I've gotten settled in my cabin—"Squirrel,” meticulously crafted by the inimitable Moonshine Mike Guzek—and admired the views, and chatted with the other guys, I'll slip on a pair of J. Edwards elk skin linesman's gloves and go split wood.

It doesn't split itself

     Why? Why go to the effort? Why not just sit on the porch and admire the thin blue of the lake and wait for dinner?
     That's complicated. A variety of reasons, I suppose. It's good exercise, yes, and Rick has a lot of logs that need splitting—split wood dries better and burns better, for you city folk. 
      But that isn't quite why I do it. It isn't as if Rick is expecting me to put in sweat equity, though I like doing that. 
    There is something manly and Reaganesque about splitting wood, and immensely satisfying. You take a section of log, about two foot long, set it on a solid base—a tree stump is perfect. Then line up your axe, holding it with both hands, draw it way back behind you, then bring it down fast and hard, as hard as you can, on the circular top of the log. If all goes well, the log explodes into two halves. If it doesn't, the axe impacts into the wood and you need to lift the entire heavy conjoined thing, the log with the axe embedded, and bring it down until it splits. Graceless.
     Split a dozen logs with an axe and you feel like you've accomplished something.
     "Axe" isn't exactly the proper term. I'd never use my Gransfors Bruks Scandinavian Forest Axe for splitting wood—too light and delicate; that would be like using a surgeon's scalpel to cut a hole in a galvanized steel tub. Rather I use one of Rick's mauls—he has a few. 
    If you don't have an mental image of what a "maul" is, don't feel bad.  Most people are familiar with "maul" as a verb, as what bears and pit bulls do to you, if you're not lucky, or what various sports teams do to each other, metaphorically. 
     But the verb "maul" is several hundred years newer than the noun, which were used to describe various big hammers, and now are used primarily for a tool that is like the love child of an axe and a sledgehammer—the blade to split the wood, and the heft to push it apart.
     I'd always had what I thought of as "maul envy." But I couldn't bring myself to go out and buy one. Yes, I chop trees on my property, but logs will burn with the bark on them, particularly if you use enough gasoline, and I try not to get more tools than what I absolutely need. The time never came when I headed to Home Depot thinking, "Better pick up that maul."
     Then the good people at DeWalt sent an email. If I read every bit of corporate puffery to land in my in box that's all I'd ever do. But I have Big Love for DeWalt, as the proud owner of one of their compound mitre saws, though I think of it, incorrectly, as a "chop saw," perhaps the most useful power tool I own other than a cordless drill. I used it to build a cedar play fort for the boys, and a magnificent piece of equipment it is, having stood up to 15 years of hard use.
     So my interest was perked when the DeWalt people sent an email, almost like a birth announcement, ballyhooing the arrival of a new addition to the family:

     DEWALT® ExoCore™ Axes are available in 20 oz. with a 12” handle and 3.5 single bit and 4.5-pound log splitter with a 32” handle. All DEWALT® ExoCore™ Axes feature a scalloped cutting edge, which ensure a deep cut and improved release from material, and carbon fiber composite handles for overstrike protection. The durable rubber over-mold on the grip provides comfort.
     Available now where DEWALT products are sold, the ExoCore™ Sledge Hammers and Axes will come with a limited lifetime warranty for $29.99-$54.97 MSRP.

    I don't think they actually expect journalists to reply to these emails—they're probably designed for jaded professionals in the hardware industry media, God help them. But I was overcome with enthusiasm, and wrote back the following slightly-embarrassing reply:

 Ooo, I might have to pick up your log splitter. I already have the best light axe made. But I use a maul a lot when I'm up at Lake Superior, and have been in the market for a really good one. 

     That was not disingenuous. I was not trying to lure the DeWalt people into sending me their new log-splitting axe. But send it they did—respect for the media has not died entirely, I'm happy to report. 
     It took a week, maybe 10 days, to arrive. Long enough that I had just about given up hope. Companies say things all the time and never follow through. I've talked to the Pendleton people twice since November, when I foolheartedly ordered a wool blanket and thought that simply because I had selected it and paid for it that meant I could, in reasonable span of months, expect a Pendleton wool blanket to arrive at my home.
     No such luck. I phoned Pendleton in January—it was supposed to be my wife's Hanukkah gift for me—and again in early April. To be honest, I was just curious, as to what the hold-up was. Factory burn down? An invasion of moths? Sudden global run on green heather Yakima camp throws? Just tell me. I spoke to a variety of people there, some charged exclusively with talking to the media, and ended up with nothing but a bad taste in my mouth. They would neither explain what the problem is or acknowledge that they were not explaining it. Maddening. I came close to cancelling the order, but it really was my wife's order, her gift to me, and I didn't want to make her feel bad—the Kindle I bought her is one of her favorite toys—just because the Pendleton Woolen Mills of Portland, Oregon doesn't know how to handle would-be customers whose only crime is trying to purchase one of their products.
   The DeWalt folks are much more on the ball. A big cardboard box arrived. Perhaps I overreacted, but I ripped the box open on the spot, took the axe onto the couch and watched television with the tool, its 4.5 pound head—with, I will point out, a rubber guard protecting its razor-like edge—cradled lovingly against my chest. 
     My wife, who is used to this kind of thing, and in fact finds it an appealing boyish enthusiasm, or so she claims and I choose to believe, suppressed concern. "The Shining" sort of ruined the idea of a husband with an axe.
     On that one single, precious day last week when suddenly the weather became nice, and it seemed like spring was finally here, I ran outside with my new DeWalt to put it through its paces.
     Well, first I put on my pair of Red Wing steel-toed boots—a certain amount of force, quickness and aim is required when splitting wood, and the chance of the maul skittering off the target and ending up planted in your foot needs to be kept in mind at all times.
     The DeWalt log-splitting axe was all it was advertised. Solid hardwood logs fell apart at a stroke. Easy to grip, light to swing yet the 4.5 pound head delivering the force where it's needed. I feel a little sorry they don't call it a "maul"—trying not to confuse the tool-buying public, I suppose. But it's mine now, and I plan to call it a maul, and don't expect anyone to contradict me on the matter.    

     

Nation's librarian wants you to see our country's treasures

      The CVS drug store across the street had been looted. Buildings were burning. Rioters tossed rocks, injuring 15 police officers. The governor imposed a curfew and called out the National Guard. While the University of Maryland closed its downtown campus and the Orioles postponed their home game against the Chicago White Sox at Camden Yards, head librarian Carla Hayden decided to not to close the Pennsylvania Avenue branch of Baltimore's venerable Enoch Pratt Free Library, even though it was at the center of the turmoil surrounding the killing of Freddie Gray.
     Because it was at the center of the turmoil.
     "We had to be open and available for the community in need," said Hayden, now the Librarian of Congress—the 14th, and first African-American to hold the title. "We did it because, in that neighborhood, like in so many others, the library is the opportunity center and there were people who needed it, to have a safe place."
     In addition to its usual functions, the library distributed food and diapers, since stores were closed.
     Hayden will visit Chicago next week to receive the 2018 Newberry Library Award, in recognition of her lifetime of service to libraries.
     Born in Florida, Hayden came to Chicago when she was 10 after her parents divorced, and graduated from South Shore High School and Roosevelt University.
     She got into library work, at the Auburn branch on 79th Street, after a friend told her the library was hiring "anybody with a bachelor's degree." She shifted over to working at the Museum of Science and Industry while earning her her masters and doctorate from the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Library Science.
     Hayden, who spent 23 years in Baltimore, has seen how libraries have been transforming into community centers, even before the Internet.
     "That's a development in the making since the 1960s and 1970s," she said. "Libraries became information centers, and that just expanded over time. Libraries are places where people go for social services, to get flu shots, where AARP is helping with taxes."
     With books so readily available online and electronically, what is known as "The Library of Things" has become a trend, with libraries checking out board games and cake pans, carpentry tools and traffic cones. A library in Winter Park, Florida, lends bicycles.
     "All kinds of things," Hayden said. "Most libraries are expanding beyond books."
     Eighty-percent of librarians are women, but Hayden became the first female Librarian of Congress in September 2016, when she began her 10-year term. She said when she spoke with Barack Obama, whom she had met in Hyde Park in the 1990s, he talked about noteworthy documents he had seen at the Library of Congress, musing that he might have special access as president, and asked her what she could do to ensure more people get to see the treasures of the library.
     "My major focus is accessibility, making sure as many people know about the treasures at the library and how they can use them," she said. "One thing I'm really really passionate about is opening up this treasure chest, the Library of Congress."
     That's good, I said, because when I was doing research at the Library of Congress, I wasn't even able to persuade a guard to let my boys to peer into the elaborate 1890s main reading room.
     "I'm working on a young readers card," she said, after getting a "wonderful letter" from an 8-year-old California boy, Adam Coffey, complaining about the library.
     "I don't like the fact you have to be 16 years or more," he wrote "I'd love to visit your amazing library."
      As the first Librarian of Congress with a Twitter account, she is hoping to use the Internet to draw attention to the library and its holdings.
     "What we're doing now is making sure more people get to see and use the collection," she said. "Technology is a wonderful tool, but the tangible object is unique. You come to Washington, D.C., you can view the contents of the Abraham Lincoln's pockets the day he was assassinated, to the draft of Thomas Jefferson's last version of the Declaration of Independence, to the world's largest collection of comic books. A complete array of the wonderful and unique."

Tax Day, 2010: Poking in the soil Trump sprang from.

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Money Museum

     Today is April 15, traditionally Tax Day, when what is Caesar's due must be rendered up to Caesar (actually, federal taxes are due April 17 this year, due to today being a Sunday and tomorrow being "Emancipation Day" in Washington, D.C., a local holiday marking Lincoln freeing the slaves in our nation's capital in 1862).
     Nosing around for something relevant in the vault, I came across this visit to the Tea Party eight years ago. A reminder that Donald Trump was a product of our brokenness, not its cause. And that we liberals, if not guilty of summoning it up, then certainly misread the warning signs, as my lack of alarm at the end of this column amply illustrates. The original headline was "Tea Party 'revolt' looks like a pity party to me."


     "Chicago Tax Day Tea Party," read the colorful card handed to me as I emerged from Union Station into the soft, summery day Thursday.
     "Liberty" it continued, in spidery, colonial-era script. "Constitutional Principles. Fiscal Responsibility." Then, in bright-red type -- the blood of patriots, no doubt -- "Repeal it! Replace Congress." And finally: "Chicago. Daley Plaza. 12:00 Noon."
     Oh, right, I thought, sadly realizing that, though I'd love to toddle off to Gene & Georgetti as planned, I was duty-bound to cancel lunch -- another sacrifice on the altar of freedom! -- so as not to miss this moment in history. I'm sure guys were sheepishly telling their grandchildren, "No, Johnny, I was not at Lexington & Concord. But I was quite near -- the Spooner Tavern, two miles down the road, sharing a potato pie with Jim Griswald . . . "
     Can't have that.
     I entered Daley Center Plaza. Elvis' "It's Now or Never" burbled muddily from loudspeakers. There seemed about . . . and this is sensitive, so I'll tread carefully . . . 500 protesters, though the Tribune estimated 1,000 and the Sun-Times called it "thousands." So let's say 2,000, but if you want to make that 20,000, be my guest. I sure didn't count them, but took my place in the crowd.
     Radio host Cisco Cotto led singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner." Or tried to. The response was a murmur, and I turned to look around -- most mouths were set in a grim line. One speaker said this was a happy movement, but they sure didn't look happy.
     "Keep it respectful" read a yellow sign a lady carried, and there was obvious effort to rein in the excesses of previous Tea Party rallies across the country, despite the taunts of counter-protesters.
     "Keep the rich rich!" chanted some young men. "Take my freedom!"
     A round man in a straw hat carried a sign: "We Gave Peace a Chance and We Got 9/11" with "Peace" crossed out and replaced with "Hope" and "9/11" replaced by "Ft. Hood."
     "So you don't think the Fort Hood massacre was the isolated act of a lone disturbed individual?" I asked, by way of starting conversation.
     "No, I do not!" he said, fleeing. A common reaction. They want media attention, so long as it is not on themselves personally. I drifted over to a counter-protester, a young man in an aluminum foil hat.
     "I've used tinfoil hats as metaphor," I said. "But I've never seen anyone actually wearing one . . . "
     "Why don't you talk to the actual Tea Party members!" demanded another man, swooping in.
     "OK," I said, trying to disarm him with my boyish smile. "Why don't I talk to you? What would you like to say?"
     He turned and fled, at a trot.
     Onstage, less tax, less tax, less tax. Clear enough. Though sometimes it seemed the partiers hadn't actually thought about what they were saying. Someone began reading an analysis of the Pledge of Allegiance that has circulated on the Internet for years.
     "I," he read. "Me; an individual; a committee of one."
     "Pledge; dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without self-pity . . . "
     I looked around. Nobody here seemed willing to dedicate even some, never mind "all" of their worldly goods, and self-pity was the operative emotion.
     "We want our country back," they said. But who has taken it? There were taxes and debt before. What is different is Barack Obama, and his central difference. . . .
     "I don't give a damn that Obama is black," read a sign held by a man in a Soviet greatcoat. "It scares the hell out of me that he is red."
     What to make of all this? Of the yellow "Don't Tread on Me" flags and tri-cornered hats? I could probably work up indignation at the co-opting of revolutionary icons. Our founding fathers were risking their lives, signing their names boldly across acts of treason, and these guys can't even put their names behind their vague complaints.
     But, to be honest, I found the whole thing harmless. Just because they've adopted the self-inflating rhetoric of revolt that so inflames every Saturday afternoon Young Communist League pep rally doesn't make them a genuine threat to anybody.
     My feeling was, heck, if staging public gripe fests gives these people something to do, then great. It's outside. It involves handicrafts, the making of signs and costumes. It's like Scouting for irked middle-aged white people.
     As to whether this is an actual grass-roots moment, or a sham orchestrated by larger interests, well, after the rally I pulled out that large card I had been handed when I got off the train. Stiff cardboard stock. Four-color. Glossy. Expensive, like something J.B. Pritzker printed up when he was running for Congress. A real grass-roots movement would use colored copier paper from Kinkos.
     Despite all the talk of the American Revolution, the era of history they really evoke, at least to me, is the America First, the isolationist organization started in Chicago in 1940. Like the Tea Party, the America First was also conservative, nativist, at odds with both parties, since Democrats and Republicans wanted to help the English stand up to Mr. Hitler, which America First found a waste of our beloved money. Like the Tea Party, the America First gloried in huge rallies, featuring its own populist star, Charles Lindbergh, and mistook these displays for actual significance. America Firstism vanished on Dec. 7, 1941, and was promptly forgotten.
     And while I would never be so bold as to predict the same fate for the Tea Party, it wouldn't surprise me either.

        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, April 18, 2010