Chicago: Rambling Thoughts

The City in Pages, originally uploaded by mlchunko.

Top title to bottom, these are great books about a great city. And let me add one, it's a story and remembrance book for kids about Chicago called, "Good Night Chicago." I'll not ruin the narrative for you or your kids or grandkids. The entire tip o' the hat will take you less than five minutes to read. When reading to the little ones, tell them about the buildings. Better yet, take them there, then get the book. It will mean more.

I don't know that anyone captures the essence of the Windy City like Studs Terkel, one of the most iconic of the city's writers. He talks up people on the street, in a neighborhood bar (are there any left?), under an El station, in the hall outside a TV studio, no matter. He lets people speak their minds, their souls, their ambitions, hopes, dreams, good times, bad times, and sundry moments in between. "Chicago" (Pantheon Books, 1986) although now out of print is a warm and engaging essay of people, places, things, times past and present in just enough pages that an ambitious reader can almost savor it in an evening. It's enchanced with black and white images that enable you to see past the high gloss color of post cards from the gift shop in the Sears Tower to the real essence of the city set on a lake - people as they are doing what they do the very best at - being themselves (poet Gwendolyn Brooks, included in the text, comes to mind here).

This blog did not start out as a book review, but since we're a few paragraphs into cyber entry, I'll just continue this affirmative rant. As for the remainder of the titles, I suggest each of them. Cameron and Antonio Attini's photojournals are found in the bargain section of big book shops. And lest I forget another Terkel tome, "Division Street; America," ( the pictured copy is signed) is a forerunner to "Chicago," without the photos. Let your mind do the photos.

So what is it about this city that has kept me enthralled ever since I was a little kid, the kid whose first real image of the skyscrapers along the river was in the late 1950s when I stepped off a train at the Chicago and North Western depot (now Ogilvie Transportation Center), walked through the Daily News Building, exited revolving doors, looked up and saw the Kemper Insurance Building towering far far above me? It has been outdistanced so many times in the intervening years as to make it seem a dwarf by comparison.

There matters stood until Bertrand Goldberg's Marina City began to take shape along the north side of the river in the early 1960s. I first saw the completed circular towers from the Chicago Historical Society in 1965 when our seventh grade class went on a field trip there. I have never tied of seeing it, and a visit to the loop always includes a walk through the lobby. I know some nice folks who live there. One sells real estate in the building and another is a photographer. He's professional with the shutter, I am a non-professional enthusiast which means that I basically point, shoot, edit, and post. But he has given my work some kudos and has told me that some of my images could be sold commercially. He also posted a rather ungratifying photo of me (I was 16 years old at the time) on a Marina City website (I contributed some archival photos) that was part of a roll that came very near toppling from a 57th floor apartment balcony in 1969, back in the day when the roof was an observation deck and the Sears Tower was a gleam in the eyes over at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Architects. The Hancock was a steel skeleton about that time, if memory serves correctly, and the best after dark light show was beamed from the roof of Marina City's west tower via two television antennas that had a lot of fancy gadgetry to make them do everything but drop the balls in Bozo the TV clown's buckets. They were ripped from their moorings in 1978. Oh well, the Hancock Crown of Light that encircles the top of the skyscraper is OK, and they change the light scheme according to the holiday season, but the big drawback is that birds are attacted to the light, crash into the glass at cruising speed, and hurl to the pavement below. Not a pretty sight to go to work on a Monday morning to see the rotting remains of the city's feathered friend population under foot.

The city is the nice guys who live in Marina City that I'm acquainted with as well as the people on the street who are helpful when I need to find the right bus, a store, or who have time to bodinage with me waiting for the light to get green at State and Madison. They're the sales clerks at Macy's (OK, Marshall Field and Co.) who don't mind me taking photos, the guy on the train last summer who has kept in contact after he started grad school at Notre Dame, and even the wait staff comedian at Ed Debevic's that dumped a tray of glasses (I thought they were full) in my lap a couple years ago.

No, I'm not sure what charms this city holds that keep me returning there, loving every minute, and finding adventure at every turn. I've quit trying to figure it out. Sinatra was right: it's my kind of town.