The Rest of Chicago

There was more to Chicago than the Alumni awards last weekend. How could there not be? Chicago is the city of my youth and it has never left my heart.

I first set foot in Chicago in September, 1974, as a freshman at the University. It is my singular good luck that I first saw the University of Chicago, in all its Gothic splendor, and met Katrina on the same day. They are forever melded in my mind. Even though she and I have traveled far from Hyde Park (the University's neighborhood) and the gauche eighteen year olds we were, I never see the campus without thinking of Katrina.

Which is why it was perfect that Katrina was in Hyde Park herself last weekend. As a member of the Alumni Board of Governors, she chaired the awards committee. (Truth be told, I knew months ago that Muriel was receiving the award.) Katrina had duties and obligations on Saturday, and Warren and I had a meeting with Muriel, but Katrina and I nonetheless found time for a meeting, a hug, and a walk across campus talking furiously the whole time.

The campus was beautiful and all three of us commented on that beauty as we walked. It holds memories―memories of Katrina and me dancing and singing our way across the quad ("The minute you walked in the room, I could tell you were a man of distinction, a real big spender. Hey, big spender, spend a little time with me..."), memories of exiting Cobb Hall after a movie into a misty spring night and being overwhelmed by thoughts of Warren (he will know why when he reads this post), memories of walking across the Midway on a silent, cold winter night and seeing the full moon rise up, terrible and large, and hang over the IC tracks at the far end of the Plaisance.

We met up with Katrina's husband, Ed, near Harper Tower, and Warren and I gave Ed and Katrina a ride to their downtown hotel. The talk never ended. It was too fast, I wanted more, and I was thrilled to see Katrina at all. There were more hugs on Michigan Avenue as they got out of the car; Warren, watching the traffic in the rearview mirror, said tersely, "get back in the car now!"

Warren and I spent the night in Oak Park, where a century plus ago a young architect by the name of Frank Lloyd Wright began to turn architecture upside down. As a freshman, I had lived across the street from the Robie House, one of Wright's masterpieces. The predecessor (and to me the handsomer house) is in Oak Park:

So is what is undoubtedly my favorite structure in all of Chicago, if not the world:

It is a ticket booth—an original!—from the 1892 Columbian Exposition. I find it simply incredible that someone has an original ticket booth in their side yard.

Sunday morning before leaving for Ohio we drove back into the city, to meet another friend for breakfast. John is the same age as my son Ben, and is one of "my kids" from when I used to coach Destination Imagination. He now lives and teaches in Chicago and we were meeting at Ann Sather's.

Well, that was the plan. And a good plan it was, too, except for the fact that John got assaulted after parking his car and before entering the restaurant and it was some 30 or 40 minutes before he could rush into the restaurant, disheveled and wild-eyed, announce he had been assaulted and was filing a police report, and run back out.

I was so distraught that I had to order a second serving of what are surely the most amazing cinnamon rolls in the world:

From the blog Lucky Taste Buds! 

We never met up with John. We had to head home long before he completed the reports, so we left him our good wishes and a gift certificate for the breakfast he never got. There will be other trips to Chicago and other times to sit with John and enjoy breakfast.

The drive from here to Chicago or Chicago to here is a bit under six hours. We took a little longer coming home on Sunday. We meandered deliberately to a small cemetery in a small Indiana town which my great-great-great grandfather helped settle in the 1830s. Henry is buried there and we found his grave fairly quickly.

And we meandered again to drive a portion of the Lincoln Highway, the original US 30.

In recent years, most of US 30 in Ohio has been "improved" into a four-lane freeway and routed around the small towns and cities it once fed. I understand the reasoning behind that: the "new" US 30 is able to carry far more traffic, especially semis, swiftly and more directly than the original roadway. The small towns are no longer congested with diesel fumes and rumbling trucks.

But, oh, what we gave up when that improvement occurred.

We drove the portion of the Lincoln Highway that went into Van Wert, on the western side of Ohio. We came into town through an old residential section, slowing our pace down to match the narrow street. We rolled through a portion of the downtown, much of it shuttered, we drove past the courthouse.

We were driving on what William Least Heat Moon called (and immortalized in a book by the same name) "blue highways." On a blue highway, you will find the local doughnut shop. On a blue highway, you will find the hand lettered sign, "Fresh Eggs," at the edge of a farmhouse. On a blue highway, you will see the small stores and not just the strip malls.

On a blue highway, you will find a piece of this country's, and perhaps your own, past.

My life is threaded with blue highways and they are my preferred routes for travel. Back in my student days, I would sometimes take the Greyhound bus from Chicago to Delaware and back again. The bus in those days only traveled the blue highways. I knew the look and feel of downtown Fort Wayne, of Van Wert, of Delphos and Lima and Kenton.

Driving on the Lincoln Highway decades later, after a weekend in Chicago in my old haunts, I felt the faint touch of the past, light as moth wings, whisper against my face. I raised my hand as if to brush the memories away, drove on through town, and onto US 30.

Thankful

Last night I was feeling poor. Dirt poor. Meanly poor. But not because of anything so mundane as money. While rarely flush with funds, I usually have money pay the bills and keep the wolf from the door, and that is enough for me.

No, I was feeling poor because of time. Or, to be more precise, the lack of time.

I recently realized that I feel poorest when my schedule gets blocked up and the demands on my time rise to threatening levels. I can be so broke that I am shaving slivers off of pennies, but still feel wealthy beyond all measure because there is food on the table, a roof overhead, a cadre of wonderful friends, and a warm and loving marriage to sustain me. But squeeze my time - layer too many demands on top of my too few hours - and I am suddenly keeping company with Ma Joad.

Sarah Crewe at her lowest point in the attic garret has nothing on me.

Last night was one of those nights. The holidays are upon us and there are rooms to clean, food to prep. There are plates to wash. There was a press release to write. I'd spent most of my day at the courthouse, each meeting taking far longer than I had budgeted in my head, resulting in my arriving home after 5:00 instead of after 3:00. No one had planned supper. We had to run to the store for fresh vinegar to finish the coleslaw as the old bottle had gone flat.

After the vinegar expedition, I announced loudly (to no one in particular as Warren was upstairs) that I was not washing the plates, and then slammed a package extra hard on the kitchen counter for added emphasis.

It was a perfectly childish gesture that felt wickedly good.

I quickly wrote the press release. Then, in an absolute fit of self-indulgence, I watched "Frontline" on PBS, thus causing my annual rate of television consumption to shoot through the roof for 2010.

I am writing this on Wednesday evening. Today dawned bright and clear in my heart, if not outside the window. Patricia and I went walking; Judy and I had coffee. Then I came home and turned my hand to the household and to Thanksgiving preparations. I have baked pumpkin and apple pies today. The plates, some of which will appear on tomorrow's table, got washed throughout the afternoon as I tended to the pies. Loaves of bread are rising as I finish this post.

There is no less work to do today than there was last night, but today I have set my pace and I have spent my hours as I saw fit.

And for that I am truly thankful.

"And We Came Away Happy..."

Saturday night we went out to Margo and Gerald's house for a late night supper and then dessert sitting around the fire ring in their yard.

The four of us are good friends of some years now. Margo and Gerald were the first couple we socialized with as a couple. Back when we were not "out" yet publicly, Margo had invited me to come to supper on Thanksgiving. I asked if I could bring a friend. Sure. I could not interpret the look on Margo's face or her sudden laughter when Warren came to the door with me that long ago evening. Several months later, over coffee, Margo confessed she had speculated to Gerald that the "friend" I was bringing was a puppy (Margo and Gerald are dog people) and she was so convinced it was a puppy that she was momentarily stunned when Warren emerged from my car.

To this day, I never drive up their long driveway without thinking "I'm not bringing a puppy this time either."

We were a little late getting there; dinner was delayed a little longer while the brats and the cut vegetables - peppers, yellow squash, leeks - roasted. Margo had also made baked beans. We had brought homemade coleslaw (the cabbage coming from Mrs. Hough's garden) and roasted potato salad made with our entire crop of potatoes. We also carried in a homemade apple pie still warm from the oven.

[A word about the entire crop of potatoes going into the potato salad: that morning we had dug the potatoes that I had never planned on growing in the first place. They were from seed potatoes that my friend Scott brought over because someone gave them to him and while he couldn't grow them in his yard, he hated to throw them away. So did I. So I planted them in the sod garden and trusted Nature to know what to do with them. Per Pa Ingalls, you "can't get much from a first year on sod ground." We had just enough to make the salad - about three pounds - and not a potato more.]

While we ate supper, we kept exclaiming over the variety of flavors and textures and tastes of the meal spread before us. The food was good. And as we ate, we talked of many things as we always do.

One of the topics was food nostalgia: what tastes do you remember from your childhood that you sometimes yearn for (or even seek out) just because it reminds you so much of home?

For me, it was the coleslaw we brought. My grandmother Skatzes, who always had Thanksgiving at her house when I was little, made a vinegar dressing coleslaw that I loved so much that I was in my twenties before I learned to tolerate more conventional (i.e., creamy) coleslaws. When Grandma died, that recipe died with her for thirty years until I discovered that Barberton chicken is always served with a side of almost identical slaw. It is once again the only type of slaw I make.

My story led Warren to compare my slaw dressing to one his father made for thinly sliced cucumbers and onions. That sparked a memory in Gerald of a similar dish, causing him to comment that he didn't even like the dish that much, but sometimes wanted just a taste of it because of the memories it brought back. That led to a story about switching the mashed turnips for the mashed potatoes on his Thanksgiving table.

Chinese author Lin Yutang wrote, "What is patriotism but the love of the good things we ate in our childhood?" If that quote had been put to the test Saturday night, it would have been immediately proven true.

After our meal, we cut thick slices of the pie and took them outside to the fire ring. Gerald and Warren spent several minutes rekindling and then building the blaze, then we all pulled our chairs up close and ate pie and talked. Our talk ranged widely from the Symphony to United Way to which snakes give birth live (rattlers, among others) to the fact that a log in the fire ring looked like a large frog squatting in the flames. When the fire was particularly hot, we would scoot our chairs away; we'd pull back closer when the flames cooled and the cooler night air wove its way back in among us.

Margo and Gerald live just far enough out of town that you forget Delaware is right over there. Their house and yard are surrounded by fields farmed by the Skinners; this year the Skinners planted soybeans. Sitting out in the yard around the fire ring, listening to the late summer katydids and crickets, looking up at the stars, talking and sharing among us, is one of my favorite things to do.

It was almost one a.m. when we all finally realized we were tired and it was time to head to our respective beds. (Margo and I had been quietly testing out that notion on our own at ringside.) We stumbled into the kitchen, its cheery red and white floor all the brighter for the early hour, exclaimed as we always do over the lateness of the time, and said our goodnights. It never fails to amaze us that we are so compatible and talk so much that it is usually the next day before we end our evening.

Kentucky author Jesse Stuart wrote, "We went to our supper table hungry, and we came away happy, full of food and great dreams." I thought of that quote as we drove home. We too all came to the table hungry: hungry for the good food, hungry for the good talk, hungry for the good friends. And like Jesse, we all came away happy, full of good food and great friendship.