PRACTICE
Write about Chicago.
Write for fifteen minutes. When you're finished, post your practice in the comments section.
And if you post, make sure to give some other Practitioners some feedback.
Photo by Kevin Dooley.
This prompt is somewhat selfish, since I'm actually going to Chicago tomorrow, along with a few other Write Practice readers, for the AWP Conference. If you're going to be there, let me know. I'd love to meet you in person.
Anyway, here's my practice:
Tomorrow, I will fly to Chicago. I will get off the plane and get on to a subway train and clack clackle into the city—all things go—listening to Sufjan Stevens—all things know.
But just now, the birds cackle out my window sounding like a dozen angry infants, and I wonder if it would not be just as good to stay, to listen to birds all day, and forgo travels and tribulations. Cackle cackle.
Several months ago, I rode a racing bike through the streets of Chicago. The redbrick buildings flew past and a thousand pizza joints and lager bars flashed their neon signs in welcome. I breathed in the crisp city air so deep I think it stuck there, in my lungs, and am only today breathing it out again. Yes, there goes that Chicago breath gone. And now my lungs pang empty, wanting for it again. I guess I'll go.
My thought is this. I'll take the high streets. You take the low. We'll canvas the neighborhoods and business districts with flyers proclaiming ourselves, and wait for the parade to start at four o'clock, when all of Chicago will burst out of their homes and crowd around us and lift us onto their shoulders as the princes, if only for a day, of the city that sleeps only when the wind ceases to blow. Yes, for a day, we will have the city for ourselves.
And then home, to soft beds, with Chicago still lodged in our lungs.
We were meant to stay. You picked me up in a San Diego August, flashing a promise ring and apologies, and set me in that car flush with Panasonic and tumbling clothes. That white car, full of Chicago-bound hopefulness and maybe it will be better now.
Somewhere in Las Vegas, when we pulled beaten and resigned into a near abandoned gas station, save for that grizzle in overalls, it became clear we’d not make it past Wyoming, and so we didn’t. He fixed the car, but we were broken.
I stood in line at the McDonald’s alone, and slid into the car afterwards, tears and 4 Non-Blondes radio-ready. Long roads later, fields, and passes, I pulled into the driveway of the house you rented near Oak Park. Cornices, lead glass, dark floors, a single bed. Or so I imagined. I left you there.
You called in December. I lived with college friends in a brick flat with caller ID on the kitchen counter. I took the bus to work on Michigan Avenue most days. Sometimes I walked past the lake with a yellow Sony walkman stamped to my waist, and pulled my heels from a black knapsack in the ad agency bathroom. Transformed.
I gave the flowers you sent to someone else. I spent mornings in Lincoln Park cafes and happy hours in the pubs on every corner. I met the man who was the next. I left him there.
Two years later I returned to Southern California.
Transformed.
This is gorgeous. It’s like a prose poem. The imagery especially “cornice, lead glass, dark floor, a single bed” and “that car flush with Panasonic and tumbling clothes.” I wish I could see it in a different format.
“Long roads later, fields, and passes” – simply sublime.
At university a commitment to finally study a foreign language resulted in a French class taught by an instructor who hardly spoke English. Interesting. “M’usBHAN whas staSHON en l’Air Fauz en Franz befoe we move to SHEkagoo.” She met her husband while he was stationed in France in the Air Force before they moved to “SHEkagoo.” My kind of town.
The junkie years—post Vietnam—New York City arrangements for a California/Asia smuggling operation, 42nd Street winter winds cut through leather coat, sweaters (2) shirt and undershirt to whistle between ribs. Smack runs out and urgent return to California despite blizzard conditions. The plane makes it to O’Hare—frozen in its tracks. Two nights and one day, the same hard seats and Jonesing body. O’Hare: one of the busiest airports in the universe—all but empty—nobody came.
The largest ballroom in one of the city’s grand old hotels: the truck driver/production manager has laid out a million dollars worth of oriental carpets for the delectation of the natives; both his Iranian masters are there. The ballroom’s all but empty. We face a window; the wind blows in that “makes-you-think-of-Manhattan-as-warm” way I’d watched from O’Hare. The younger brother says, “Customers will come…they live here, they must be used to it.” I shake my head, “No one will come; they know you can die from weather like this. SHEkagoo!”
For some reason, radio signals were stronger at night, so although during the daytime it seemed I had gone to the other side of the globe, at night I could tune my transistor radio and pick up the faint strands of WLS – the Chicago AM station I used to listen to just last summer, when we lived in Illinois.
Top-40 radio played the same songs the Cincinnati stations played, but it seemed different somehow. When I listened, I could hear it as if it were played through the big horn speakers at the Quarry Park pool – we’d lie on our towels on the pea-graveled beach in the hot August sun and bake while the Supremes and Marvin Gaye washed over us. The scent of Coppertone and chlorine wafted over us. Mary and I had been best friends in seventh grade, but at the end of the summer, my family had sold the house and moved.
My new school was okay, but I felt lonely and out of place. People spoke differently in Ohio, and there were different names for things – like “soda” instead of “pop.” Although it even annoyed me when I did it, I couldn’t help saying “When we lived in Chicago, we…” more than I should have. I wrote letters to Mary in colored ink on lined notebook paper, big looping letters and cartoons in the margin, and waited for the mail to come.
Lying there in my bed at night, hearing the tinny music through the earplug, I felt an intense longing, as even the ads evoked Chicago places and names. “The Windy City.” “The Loop.” The lake, Marshall Fields, the Dan Ryan Expressway. I read Carl Sandburg’s poems and though I’d never seen a slaughterhouse, and had no idea what painted women beneath gas lamps lured farm boys with, my soul felt connected to the idea of the husky brawling laughing young colossus of Sandburg’s time. It was an odd, manufactured nostalgia, though – we’d lived in the suburbs and at age twelve, I knew very little of the city proper.
Longing is an essential human emotion. Sometimes we fixate on what we’ve left behind, even if we don’t even really know what it is. I would not visit Chicago until a decade or more later, in my twenties, only to find it a strange city nothing like my fantasies.
– thanks for the opportunity. I came here from San Diego Momma’s blog.
http://doves2day.blogspot.com
“Sometimes we fixate on what we’ve left behind, even if we don’t’ really know what it is”. That line really hit me. I wonder if we, or some of us anyway, write to find out what it is that we long for, to make it real, and I wonder if it’s possible. I love your description of the beach. It sounds very much like “my beach” from the same time period but I was on hot soft sand instead gavel and we were on the bay or the ocean instead of a lake. I enjoyed reading this both because of the images and because it gives me something to think about. Thank you.
I once knew why the radio signals were stronger at night… something about the way they bounce without interferrence. I live on the East Coast and can sometimes get Chicago and New York channels at night.
This piece is so nostalgic. I like it!
Katie
Two and a half hours out of Michigan, I was feeling a little sane again. I don’t know why I came, I just had to get the fuck out. Out of the state, out of my hometown, out of my mind. I knew I was in Chicagoland when traffic started to slow, and the city proper sort of crept up on me. I parked in a lot that seemed well lit, and well traveled, and locked the car. I stepped out into the weather and looked around. I left in the early afternoon hoping to get to Chicago in time for a sunset, but it was hidden behind a slate of clouds, the flat no-color gray of radio static. The wind buffeted me like an errant passerby and I smiled. In my mind, this is how I always pictured Chicago, cold and stark and just a little bit dangerous. Geographically, it was the closest of the Great Old Cities, a moniker I used in my head for New York, Boston, San Francisco, and Seattle. I guess Detroit is old as well, and Grand Rapids is prettier, but there was something not quite the same about those. Sinatra said it best, “Chicago is my kind of razzmatazz and it has all that jazz.”
I’d been working for six years straight, coming out of college, and I had an apartment and a mountain of debt to show for it. Dammit, I deserved some razzmatazz, some magic. I hadn’t planned a trip, really. It was Saturday, I was going to have my late breakfast, read my e-mail and go to the gym. I was reading an e-mail from my direct supervisor, telling me in no uncertain terms that my work was unsatisfactory, my job resting on how I handled our newest client, and I felt a twinge of pain low in my abdomen. I wasn’t good at my job, and they should have fired me a while ago. But they knew as well as I how badly I needed the money. So I suffered without complaint and they suffered me.
I shut my laptop and grabbed my keys. Left my phone on the table, left my breakfast on my plate. I got into the car I’d owned outright since high school and made south, then east. A voice that sounded unlike mine, yet still intimate, still familiar, was urgently whispering that Chicago would be something, and anything at all was better than reading the rest of my e-mail then going to work out with people I didn’t particularly care for.
Now, I was walking in the city, and I felt better. There was no one here that new me, no one here that considered me a poster child for bland, desperate mediocrity. Chicago is one of those cities that really is a melting pot, every human desire and regret and triumph and failure blending and fading into each other in ways that were somehow alchemical, and the result was a whole entirely different than the sum of its parts. I walked in silent rapture, savoring my anonymity and the feeling of surrender. Somehow in this, I was more alive than ever before. I think it might have been me; it wasn’t anything special about Chicago, it was a joy to just be anywhere different. The stone gray sidewalks and black/brown-gray buildings under that cold, steel gray sky were more real than the plastic technicolor I’d left behind.
I walked to the cheapest motel I could, asking directions from other nameless, faceless people, as interchangeable as I was. I payed with a credit card and used the room’s phone to call up a buddy. He had a truck. I told him to go to my apartment, and pack up everything, I’d pay him five hundred dollars plus gas to bring out here. I had enough saved to live for a while, but I made a note to see about some jobs in the city after renting some storage space in the morning.
I lay in a bed and listened to a couple a room down having loud sex, and sirens out in the distance, and a train rumbling terrifyingly close by, and I finally could put a finger on what I was feeling. I was embryonic, I was life full of potential. I was about to be reborn.
“I was embryonic, I was life full of potential. I was about to be reborn.”
That’s exactly how I felt the first time I traveled to the city from Michigan when I was 15. Brilliant. 😉
I spend my days in the suburbs, but once a week or two I make my way towards its sweeping skyline. It always reminds me of a hug, it’s ripple of architecture wrapping around the skyway toward me in a welcome that takes my breath away.
Chicago : it’s where I belong.
It’s where I found my heart, my mind, after living in a sleepy farm town for seventeen years.
The fixtures of the city anchor me like the bronzed lions that stand sentry outside the Art Institute, like its winding Wacker Drive and jutting towers and the sea of young sailors jaunting down sidewalks from Navy Pier.
The city is expensive and loud and wintry for far too much of the year, but I’ve fallen so deeply in love with the city in the summer that I could never leave it behind. In the summer my friends and I make our way toward the Pritzker Pavilion for Music Mondays, where we lay on blankets and sip Goose Island and listen to the melodies of our favorite musicians while the sunset casts pink and gold rays down long city streets. On hot July nights we wander around Wrigleyville, stopping into one of a dozen Irish Pubs or into our favorite cafe, The Pickmeup, where I fell in love with the boy that would be my husband. The city in the summer makes it so easy to have a good time, to savor food and art and sport and friendship, to feel young and alive.
I can think of a million cities in the world that I could live – Paris, Amsterdam, Salzburg, Prague, Florence, Dublin – all places I’ve visited that stole pieces of my heart, but Chicago? Chicago has the whole of it. Its sweeping skyline spreads its arms wide to welcome me, and I drive straight into the heart of it. It feels good to be home.
That sounds so lovely. I like the description “sunset casts pink and gold rays down long city streets.”
Girl, you make me want to go there!
The speed limit sign says 55. I glance down at my speedometer: 77. I unconsciously tap my brakes and instantly regret it. Cars continue to whiz past me at 85mph. I’m not sure my little car can go that fast. I’m not sure my little brain can keep up. I struggle knowing I’m going to be rear-ended, cut off, and flipped off if I falter.
“Eleven minutes to Loop.”
I don’t even know what that means. Note to self: google “Loop” next time I’m not doing 85 in a 55 down down a named interstate.
My iPass ricochets across my dashboard. The cars whiz by me. Even the radio announcer speaks with an unusual speed in his voice.
Life is fast in Chicago. It’s all about getting from one place to another as fast as you can. I silently wish I could have taken the Metro/a or the Amtrack. Even the El would have been better than driving, especially at $4.50 a gallon for gas. No, you couldn’t pay me enough to call Midway my home airport. Even O’Hare is out of my comfort zone.
“Eight minutes to Loop.”
My knuckles have gone white. I don’t care how long it’ll take to get to the Loop. It’s not where I’m going, especially since I don’t know what it is. Loop. Dan Ryan. Edens Parkway. Downtown. Express Lane. Toledo. Wisconsin. Indiana. Iowa. Detroit. St. Louis. You can go anywhere from here. I just want to be home and make it there in one piece.
I feel I need a Visa to pass through. And I don’t just mean to pay for gas.
“Six minuts to Loop.”
Even with my windows down the smog invades my little car. I can see it suffocating the city. I’m too far away to smell the crisp, fresh air of the Lake. All I see are powerlines and smokestacks. They remind me of my friends’ photos of Russia and the soot that covered everything upon their return. I’m in the safety of my car, though not protected from the city stench.
Beer and Panera. Soot and gasoline. Cigarettes and burning.
“Four minutes to Loop.”
In the middle of the brouhaha, the interstate, the hussle bussle of city life, the poverty is an Oasis that boasts Starbucks, McDonalds, and free wifi. How on earth could one get any work done in this crazy mess? It would not be an Oasis for me, no matter how enticing the palm tree looks. It would be a panic attack in the making.
“Two minutes to Loop.”
That is the best thing that I’ve read by you, and you do a good job always. I love the way you set it up. I particularly like the two sections after eight minutes to the loop and six minutes to the loop. I think because there are more sensory images in them they are just incredibly intense. Wow, it’s funny how segments of time as short as two minutes can encase so much memory. That is just amazingly real to me. It sounds worse than the DC – Baltimore loops. I’m glad you made it.
Thanks, Marianne!
What the heck is the “Loop” … oh well, it’s probably better I don’t know. Reading that was fun and kept my interest.
I like this a lot, especially the note to self, the mental reminder to Google something is what I do a lot, even in moments when I really shouldn’t be and can’t justify doing it!
Nice take on the subject Katie. The ipass richocheting across the dashboard is a great image, I can see it clearly in my mind’s eye.
I’ve only been to Chicago twice in my life, but loved it both times I went. The first time I was just 19 and went to the big city with my then 29 year-old fiance. We went to the museum with the famous Seurat painting and plenty of other impressionist artists. I loved wandering through the rooms filled with paintings of the great masters. Later we sat beside the lakefront and a gentle breeze blew in the 70 degree weather.
The next time was the summer after I graduated college and two other fellow Deadheads and a girlfriend ventured to Chicago and the World Theater to catch an outdoor Dead show after seeing a previous show in Cincinati. It was one of Brent Mydland’s last shows before he succombed to a drug overdose-the third keyboardist that had played with the Dead. The show itself was beyond awesome and I’m lucky enough to have a bootletg tape of the show. The four of us had traveled there in the middle of July in a small Honda CRV with no air conditioning. We also got lost coming back to Texas( the boys didn’t need a map, ha!) But it was a helluva of an adventure in 1990.
You have two very disparate but very well know things you are remembering there. It sounds like you had fun both times.
There was only one way to get to Chicago. I had to drive. But, I wasn’t really going to Chicago, I had to say something she could understand, she surely didn’t know where Sandwich was, it would just confuse her.
“Why do you have to go?”
“I told you a thousand times mother, I can’t find work here. Please you’re not making this any easier.”
“But Chicago, it’s horrible there — the wind blows all the time, the winters are freezing, the summers are unbearable; oh, and don’t forget the gangs … don’t go out at night or you’ll be killed; then we’ll never know what’s happend to you. I’m sure you won’t write.”
Mother was being nice, the dementia had no hold on her that day. It was crazy how it drifted in and out of her mind like a switch. Some days I just loved her company, she was like someone else, someone you would like to know. Not like her actual self at all. The other side of her, where the dementia took over was more like her … she said what came to mind, her words were sharp and cut to the heart.
“C’mon Mom, I’ll write, you’ll see.”
For once I was happy to see my sister, but not really. As I left down the sidewalk I could see the tears didn’t flow equally and I was fine with it. My sister and I hadn’t spoken since Dad died. Sister and Dad were estranged at the time and nothing I said could change her mind. Dad died the lonliest and most broken man that ever lived.
I reaehed the car and the thought to make a friendly wave occured to me. But the thought froze in my mind when I turned and saw that my sister’s countenance was taking effect on my mother.
The long drive was a welcome lover …
This is very emotional. Parents with dementia must be horrible, and I like that you describe a “good day” rather than a bad one.
HAVING parents with dementia is horrible. the parents themselves? well I suppose they remain what they always were.
As a therapist who works with them, I can say that their confusion CAN be separated from their essence. Like rmullns said, the dementia drifts in and out. it’s like an overlay that hazes the view that once was crystal clear. their core soul is still strong. it just takes an open heart to see it. that, and not being family.
It is how I imagine it would have been if my mother had gone through that — she was feisty in her own way.
Ouch! Exquisitely done rmullins. Being the daughter of a mother in this condition you really nailed it with the finality of someone who obviously has had to deal with it. I too have used aspects of my mother’s dementia in my characters and it is a veritable mine of emotions for me. A goldmine. You really got me with the dementia aspect being ‘more like her’ because my case is very similar. My mother has truthfully been a spoilt brat her whole life and when she’s having a bad day she is like that bad self to the thousandth power….
You’ve got a deft touch.
I am so sorry to her that dementia has touched your life .
This peice is complete fiction. I dunno how it happened I just like to write this way … I appreciate your comments.
Holy cow, you’re good!!
Sad. The memory of Chicago sounds like it could have been either a blessing or a curse in your life, or perhaps both.
I’ve never been to Chicago … complete fiction – every word.
I love the stereotypical Chicago in your fourth paragraph.
I hadn’t expected “She” to be the sister either.
Katie
That was very real, I have two (living) relatives with dementia and I relate.
Chicago. The sound of billie holiday blues and crown victoria police cars. The smell of sweet ribs and golden falling leaves. It’s the city of wind, the city of winter, the city of waiting and watching for the sun to peek out. It’s a city that gave me life and educated my parents. It’s the place I escaped when I turned eighteen, laughing all the way to California but I won’t deny that I still reminisce over the perfect moments it afforded me. Frigid Halloweens where we wore ski suits just to fend off the cold, and every house on the block emptied their candy baskets into our trash bags, happy to have any trick or treaters that year. There was the miraculous snowstorm that shoveled itself onto our roof, one year at the tail end of winter break. It closed school, providing us with the perfect alibi for an extra 48 hours with my international cousins. We kept cozy under comforters by firesides made noisy by the crick and crackle of dying wood so that embers could live and warm our hands.
I could never forget the first day when summer comes to call, it stops by just to survey the area, and making sure everyone is ready for it, and we are, after months spent cursing the seasons and their lack of motivation, their unwillingness to change. But in drifts summer, it starts in the nose, subtly humid and grassy, with a hint of lilies, a scent lighter than bubbles hovering just beyond a fingertip’s reach. It reminds you that the days will be long, the nights warm and fireflies will return to paint the sky in glimmering stars, floating just underneath the trees.
Chicago is hot dogs but I was a hamburger girl. It never bothered the Vienna beef people, the tiny little restaurant built into a porch, jutting out from a house the inside of which no one ever got to see. How I cried when they closed, after I had already moved my roots. You see, when you leave a place, all that remains of the past is the memories you can still relive. Those delicious tiny burgers blanketed in onions and pickles, catsup and mustard, accompanied by the most decadent heaping of fries, glistening in fat, they were special to me. It was the kind of food that kept one foot in the door of childhood, just when you thought it was shut forever. When they left, it was though I could feel myself getting older, and further from home.
The city lights at night always made me feel grown up, as though I had snuck into a peep show and Chicago was flashing a little leg at me, winking while the boss turned the other way. When you’re a kid you have no sense of how far or how close. How far is adulthood? How close is the supermarket? If you bike to the forest preserve you can make it home by dusk, if you don’t stop to track deer. If you walk to the movies it will take seven hours if you stick to the abandoned railroad. If you ask your parents to drive you to six flags it’ll take them one week to say yes and then another 2 hours to get there. We always stopped for hotcakes on the way and maybe some hash browns. I was afraid I wouldn’t be tall enough, but my parents kept me company, reminded me that growing up was one more thing to look forward to- and then they bought me funnel cake.
They’re going to sell the house and then there won’t be a way for me to return. We’ll have reached the center of the maze and it’ll be time to turn the page. New puzzles for a new me and a new family, and a new life. I won’t see rainbow leaves splattered on the sidewalk. I won’t hear church bells ringing on the way to the park. I won’t drive past the frame store where we bought the colorful prints that reminded me of the Caribbean, like the one with all the tropical fish swimming wearing serious expressions, and the title: “Honey, have you seen my sunglasses?” They were at the bottom. I’ll look at the tree stump that once held the makeshift stairway I used to sneak out at night and think I don’t have to ask for permission anymore but now I do. I’ll creep behind the pool and remember all my goldfish, Maya was my favorite, she lived for five years. And of course, I’ll drive to the beach, out past the light house, where the shore withdraws and then spits back out balancing the city skyline on its hip. I’ll remember the fireworks from the lake, and the buildings appearing out of smoke and I’ll love the city I never called home. I’ll miss the city I never felt a part of and I’ll long for the moments that made it my past, the ones that smelled like rain, tasted like cherries and sounded like jazz. Sweet, but not my home, Chicago.
This is wonderful.
Vicki, keep writing. You’ve got a gift.
I rememer that snowstorm. 1968. One of my classmates was driving drunk and killed a guy walking home on the street because no one could find the sidewalks. Strange year.
The vienna beef people may be gone but you can still write about them. That’s part of the fun of writing giving something you remember new life. You have a good many details here and that makes this easy to visualize.
I loved this Vicki!! As a Chicago native who now lives in California and whose parents no longer live there either, your post reminded me of so many things from my childhood! Thanks! Great memories. Your images are fantastic!
In 1968 the Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago.
“Go with me,” said Bobby. I remember how he smelled, like oranges. I remember how his eyes laughed at irreverent humor.
“I can’t. I don’t want to,” I said.
“It’s going to be a party. Jerry Rubin’s going” he said.
I did want to go, but I was scared. Protests were getting too rough.
I watched it on TV in my parents living room in front of the big mahogany cabinet TV with the tiny black and white screen.
I looked for Bobby in his fringed leather jacket and Levis. I didn’t see him, but I saw Dan Rather get pushed by the police, and heard him saying “Take your hands off of me”, although I didn’t know who Dan Rather was at the time. He was just a young journalist engulfed in a shoving, pushing mass of security people.
I’m not sure if it was because Bobby was there and I was afraid for him, or if I felt disloyal or what, but I started to cry and I couldn’t stop. To help me sleep, my mother gave me some sherry in a little stemmed glass.
I waited for Bobby to come back for more than a week. No long distance calls. We couldn’t afford them. When he finally came home, I had lost enough weight to get into my lavender cut offs. I wore them when he came over.
He looked tired but was laughing about how great “the party” was, and about how bad the stock yards smelled.
That’s as close as I ever got to Chicago.
Evocative piece Marianne. You painted a real picture there of another time and place, with the fringed jacket, and lavender cut-offs. And I loved the way Bobby smelled of oranges!
Thanks Yvette Carol
My parents were in that mob. They were just walking to their parked car when the crowd ran by, and they had to run with them to avoid grtting clubbed by a policeman. You were probably smart to stay home.
Wow! That’s awful. Yes, I’m glad I missed that.
Marianne … this is so visual.
“When he finally came home, I had lost enough weight to get into my lavender cut offs. I wore them when he came over.”
I love it and it says so much about the girl!
Beautifully written.
Thanks!
I like your final line. Well, I like the whole thing but that one really hits it home for me because it’s the only bit of regret I could find in the piece.
Katie
Thanks Katie
I’m pleased with the orange smell, I know people like that.
Thanks.
I think I just about died. CHICAGO is my favorite place in the whole wide world. I could be there tomorrow. Or tonight. Or any day [I live really close].
The White Sox, Bulls, Bears, + Blackhawks.
The pizza.
The Thai food.
Navy Pier.
Sear’s Tower [yes, it has another name. yes, I will forever call it Sears].
Lake Michigan.
The United Center.
Ferris Bueller.
Home Alone.
The Metra.
The Blue Line.
Northside.
Southside.
O’Hare.
Midway.
The Art Institute.
The Field Museum.
The Museum of Science + Industry [my FAV!].
Shedd Aquarium.
The Planetarium.
Hipsters.
Wicker Park.
Macy’s.
Randolph Street.
Millennium Park.
The BEAN!
Michigan Ave.
Seriously. My favorite place on earth. I could spend all my life there + never tire. I went on the world race, lived in cities all over the world, and my heart was still singing “C’mon. Baby don’t you wanna go? Back to that same old place, Sweet Home Chicago.”
Sounds absolutely cackulous Joe! You have a way with words dear fearless leader.
Being a New Zealander and never having stepped out of Godzone I think I will forego this particular exercise. I could look at photos of Chicago and try and go from there, but my excuse still stands. I’ve finally finished all my other distracting jobs on the to-do list and can get back to working on my book today. So I go!
Have an awesome time in Chicago 🙂
It would be really fun to hear/read an outsider’s perspective on Chicago based on the stereotypes and photos she can find online. Be creative; we don’t judge. 😉
Katie
Ha ha thanks for the encouragement Katie. I think I am in love with this community. This is my fave of all the blogs I follow!
When travelers go to Chicago, they set a goal to eat a deep-dish Chicago-style pizza. What is wrong with you people? First of all deep dish is not Chicago-style (it’s thin crust, very thin) and second of all pizza is not Chicago’s specialty. It’s Italian beef.
Nowhere in the world can you get an Italian beef sandwich like they make in Chicago. I grew up on them and have never tasted anything so good since I left home in the seventies. Oh, you can find recipes online, but there’s always something missing. You know how cooks are. I’m told the secret is to simmer the meat overnight, but today on Man vs. Food they said it is the jardenière sauce added at the last second. Al, the restaurant owner interviewed today, said the secret is the sweet peppers because they crunch. (I sense he was withholding information.) See what I mean. No one will give you the straight scoop.
The only way to taste the unforgettable savory flavor of perfect Italian beef is to eat it in Chicago. And the only question is: how long did you simmer the meat? If it was less than overnight, go to another stand.
How bout the hoagies and dogs with kraut? I was born in Chicago and was moved out before I turned 10, but have gone back to visit family over the years.
Hoagies, really? Maybe that’s a Southside thing I don’t know about. All of my eating was done north and west. Lately, I’ve had good burrittos from Cicero, but I haven’t heard about hoagies. Hmmm. I’ll check it out next visit..
This post made me hungry! (apparently it doesn’t take much these days).
Katie
Sounds good!
I guess I’m a bit stuck here, I’m too far from Chicago to sample and desperately lacking in Italien beef 🙁
Some of my earliest childhood memories are woven around the fabric of Chicago, or Shy Town, as my dad used to call it. I was born there. It was my world until I was half-way through my ninth year. Here are a few of the first images that came to mind as soon as I saw the prompt to write about Chicago.
I remember strolling down Diversy Street, my little hand in Grandma’s as we made our way to the bus stop. I don’t ever remember my Grandma driving anything, but I’ll never forget those rides with her on the city bus or on The El.
Finding a place to play was way too easy in Chicago. A basement apartment’s stairwell served as a foxhole, while the gangways were secret passages to yet undiscovered lands. And there isn’t a water park in America that can hold a candle to the amount of fun an open hydrant affords on a blistering summer day when the local fire department would open them up for us kids!
I was the strongest, bravest, most daring, adventurous seven-year-old, wild game hunter in all of Chicago when my mother took me to the Brookfield Zoo for the very first time. And I was a brilliant scientist on expedition as we visited the Museum of Science and Industry.
Allen was my best friend when I was nine years old. He had a bike. I didn’t. But the banana seat was plenty big for a couple of nine-year-old boys to double up on as explored the rail yard behind the Aldins’ department store. I still shake my head in disbelief that we weren’t killed or at least seriously injured as we hopped trains at that tender age.
I’m guessing it was the call of home from Tennessee as well as the deep freeze and numbing cold of Chicago that called my Dad to move us from Chicago when I was nearly ten years old. But even now, nearly forty years later, I can still hear that Puerto Rican vendor shouting all the way down the street in the old neighborhood as he pushed his cart along, “Tamales! Get your hot Tamales!”
That nicely made of little short vignettes. I like the part about playing in the stairwells. Stairwells are such interesting places, good to hide, but kind of scary, that they could be a topic in themselves. I also like your memory of riding the bus with your grandmother. This is good positive writing.
Scariest stairwell I’ve every experienced was in a tenament block in Edinburgh. I never experienced wild game there but I can imagine it.
I was born in Chicago Samantha and my childhood heroes were Bobby Orr and Tony Espizito (sp?).
Chicago:
I called it home once.
The Metra would, without my parents’ knowledge, whisk me away from stark suburbia to The City where magical adventures awaited.
With my friends, I’d skate on State or press my face against the ornate Marshall Fields Christmas window displays, wondering to my teeange self if they might hold the key to happiness.
Often, I would find my way to Oak Street Beach after lingering at the Hancock’s 95th floor to sneak a peak at life above the Lake Effect.
Through Navy Pier I once walked with white platform sandals on Prom night to the Odyssey, the boat where my high school boyfriend naively promised me forever with a $95 purple amethyst from JC Penny.
The lions guarding the Art Institute would welcome me with their protective scowls to discover George Seurat’s version of Sunday in a Parisian park or “American Gothic” and I’d gaze into a window of Edward Hopper’s soul otherwise known as “Nighthawks.”
Chicago means Buckingham Fountain during a summer sunset right before I had to sprint to the 5PM train to make it back in time for dinner without my mother knowing. It is fireworks at the Taste of Chicago and sweaty humid afternoons spent wandering.
It’s me as a production assistant for a commercial at Charlie Trotter’s posh restaurant where I first learned what was really in fois gras.
It is Shakespeare and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, cultural experiences I discovered for the first time on awkward middle school field trips that left an indelible imprint in my memory.
Chicago was my cousin’s church cathedral wedding at the same venue where Cameron Diaz married Dermot Mulrooney in “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”
It is Giordano’s pizza and Chicago Pizza and Ovengrinder where I discovered heaven as a food.
It is ornate bridges and a green river on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s shopping on Michigan Avenue and driving down Lakeshore Drive by myself the first day I got my driver’s license.
It is smokestacks and breath that freezes in your lungs before you can catch it. Buildings so tall I lay down on the pavement just to see them scrape the sky.
It’s the El train and shiny lights at night. Taxis everywhere. Buses rumored to be homes for rats. The financial district deserted by dusk.
Admittedly I have never been an adult while living in Chicago. I’ve become a California girl and replaced a lake with an ocean, bitter bleak winters that build character and frostbite tolerance with February short sleeved mornings with windows down and sunscreen streaks across my arms.
Yet Chicago whispers to me. When I let myself think of it, it beckons. And slowly I let myself remember driving down 290 under the Post Office building into a real City where people work and bustle and toil and become. And in that moment, I go home.
I can’t believe I forgot to mention Phantom of the Opera, the first Broadway play I ever saw in downtown Chicago! Or the Museum of Science and Industry where I saw baby chicks hatch from eggs and walked through a model of a human heart. Or Lincoln Park Zoo, Shedd Aquarium where I first saw Beluga whales, or that time I stood in Grant Park for 6 hours in the rain after the Bulls won their final championship just to see Scottie Pippen’s head. Barely. Or my first Cubs game at Wrigley! Wow, forgot a lot! But this is a great exercise! I’m remembering so much!
You took me there with you darling! Nicely done. A nice truism too about the way home ‘whispers to you’, doesn’t it just?
Your post makes me want to go to Chicago. The closest I’ve come is a fly-through O’Hare. Sounds like it’s all there, waiting for the rest of us to come and taste, feel, smell, and enjoy.
Thanks for a great travelogue.
Funny you should task this, just last week I went to Chicago by mistake. One minute I’m messing with my phone, killing the time, preparing for my Grandmother’s tirades and dreading defeat at Scrabble, and the next minute I wake up in Chicago, avoiding both but dreadfully embarrassed. I went to withdraw cash for a taxi, then found I’d left my wallet on the bus.
Not a big deal, I pawned my watch, picked up a harmonica on the cheap, grabbed a quarter-pounder and sat outside playing some eerie blues. Grandma doesn’t have a phone, all this modern technology and all that, but she’s always appreciated the pentatonic.
Several hours later I’m back on the bus, scouring the tourist guide for useful words, she may be losing her mind but she is still the queen of the language, a master of the dictionary and deliciously ruthless.
As luck would have it I won with Chicago, a freak triple-word score and a startling coincidence. Grandma disowned me. It was pretty much the worst day of my life.
(San Diego Momma sent me here, where am I?)
Oh Mo. I’ve missed your prosing.
“Grandma doesn’t have a phone, all this modern technology and all that, but she’s always appreciated the pentatonic.”
Stuff like that especially.
I’ve missed you too SDM, thanks for sending me this way!
Stick around Mad dog, you got some chops on you there boy! Love your style, it’s like a breath of fresh air. And ‘dreading defeat at scrabble’ with your grandmother made me laugh 🙂 Brilliant.
Thanks Yvette, I ‘ll try come back for some more fun. Feel free to stop by my place 🙂
Would love to. Your place is where?
Ha! it’s like word jazz. I hope we see you again. Thanks
Word jazz? I’m not familiar with the term but thanks 🙂
I made it up because this reminds me of jazz with words, a lot of very rhythmic phrases that hang together in a cool way, particularly if read aloud. I like the story itself too with winning scrabble with Chicago (i thought we weren’t allowed to use proper names in scrabble but then my family seems to have made up its own set or arcane scrabble rules).
I love writing to music 🙂 Oh yeah, I forgot about the proper name rule, dang 15 minute time limit…
Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. Where the cars go. Where the people go. Where I will probably not get to go. A fool I tell you, a fool. For how can I go if I know not where it lies, if I know not who it rests between, and if I admit my geographic naivity to those that would take me to the employing embrace of Chicago, Chicago, Chicago.
What’s the deal with vacuums? When they suck they’re good and when they’re good, they suck. Dyson sucks and they are proud of that achievement. I would have been proud too, to work for a company that sucks relentlessly like Dyson. But my inability to remember the states locations is likely to thwart my unification with a sucking business.
Are you willing to come to Chicago they asked. Will you guys help me out with that I ask in turn. Of course they reply. Of course then I reply. I have never been to the East coast I say like the moronic troglodyte that I am. And after fumbling around, they see my ignorance to my surroundings. They see me as a buffoon who has been living in a balloon. But I want to pop this adolescent balloon and learn how to suck like you! My mind howls. It is too late. They see me for who I am.
Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. Now I know your location. Not the East coast. Not the West coast. You are in the middle, lost in the soirée of blasé square shaped states. Now I know you are the third most populous entity in the U.S. But how could I have known? How could I have remembered? You have not come up to my vision, my mind, my speech since the fifth grade. No one has cared about you since then. You were behind the blinders as I was being ridden to and through “higher education”.
Higher education. HAH! The only thing high about it is the professors. They neglect to remind me of the location of the measly Chicago! They say they are preparing me for the real world. Well I have breached the real world and they scoffed and my stupidity, my idiocy, and my blind trotting through life. A simple horse is what I have been reduced to. I will not be the master farmer, providing food and sustenance to his peers. No. I am a work horse and will forever be so. Chicago, Chicago, Chicago.
Moronic troglodytes and buffoons in balloons, I can learn from that, brilliant.
Great post, I enjoyed ready reading it, Keep posting good stuff like this.