Some Things Never Change: Ben Hecht and Michigan Avenue

I usually avoid Michigan Avenue at all costs, especially around Christmas, when it is filled with impossibly slow-moving tourists and suburbanites, but today I had to head down there to pick up a Christmas gift.

It was, of course, full of meanderers and sidewalk-standers, stopping to look in the windows, at the cars, or just gape at the rest of the passersby. For some reason, it reminded me of these words from Ben Hecht's 1001 Afternoons in Chicago:

"This street, I begin to understand, is consecrated to the unrealities so precious to us. We come here and for a little while allow our dreams to peer timorously at life. In the streets west of here we are what we are – brow-beaten, weary-eyed, terribly optimistic units of the boobilariat. Our secret characterizations we hide desperately from the frowns of the windows and the squeal of “L” trains. But here in this Circe of streets the sun warms us, the sky and the spaces of shining air lure us and we step furtively out of ourselves. And give us ten minutes. Observe – a street of heroes and heroines. Actors all."

Ben Hecht (1894-1964) is best known for his screenplays, but his collection of essays, 1001 Afternoons in Chicago, is a real gem as well. Hecht was a journalist at a time when Chicago was (in Hecht's own words) "a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos." (That quotation comes from his play "The Last Page," which went on to become the film "His Girl Friday.") Coupling a taste for literary experimentation with a firsthand knowledge of the language of the streets, Hecht and other writers of his time gave Chicago form, personality, and aspirations. In Hecht's collection of columns, he focused on all aspects of Chicago life, alternately telling the stories of a bankrupt Russian immigrant on the verge of suicide, a hardworking single mother who becomes insane, and a "little fop" who spends his days artfully lounging in hotel lobbies.

Hecht's words about Michigan Avenue still seem to ring true to me today. When I look at my Uptown neighborhood and try to imagine what it was like 100 years ago, it can be very difficult. But Michigan Avenue does not seem to have changed at all. If Ben Hecht came back today he might be saddened by the state of journalism in Chicago, horrified by the transformation of his seedy north side neighborhood into the overpriced Gold Coast that it is today, but, at least, comforted to see that Michigan Avenue has, for better or worse, remained the same.

Michigan Avenue, 1929. Source: Chicago Daily News

More on Marshall Field's

The previous post got me feeling nostalgic about Marshall Field's, especially Marshall Field's at Christmastime. When I was a kid, we used to go down every year to see the windows and eat dinner beneath the big tree in the Walnut Room, the fancy dining room in the store. There would always be a long wait for dinner, and we would put our names in and then go out to look at the windows, not just at Marshall Field's, but at Carson Pirie Scott, as well. Usually my mom would have me in a dress and a fancier coat than usual, so I would be very cold. But then, we would come in from the cold and sit beneath the tree, and I would eat a dinner of the most delicious chicken pot pie in the world, so comforting after the cold weather, dark night, and hectic activity of State Street at Christmas.

The pot pie on the menu at the Walnut Room (I believe it is still on the menu even though Marshall Field's is no more) actually has a very nice history to it. When Marshall Field's first opened its doors in the 19th century, no department stores had restaurants or cafes in them. The stores were mostly frequented by women during the day, and at the time it would have been considered unseemly for women to be dining out in public without being accompanied by men. Legend has it that one day there was a woman shopping in Marshall Field's who was very hungry, and so one of the female employees, named Mrs. Hering, invited the hungry shopper to share her lunch. It was a chicken pot pie. Marshall Field supposedly heard about this and got an idea. He opened a tea room, and put Mrs. Hering's chicken pot pie on the menu. This gave women a place to rest, and even a destination. It gave them a place where they could make new friends and share confidences.

Marshall Field was famous for his belief in giving the woman what she wants. In his store, he created a space for women that offered refuge from the busyness of the city streets and the trials of daily life. When women came to Marshall Field's, regardless of their class or appearance, they were treated like they mattered. Marshall Field did not just introduce the tea room. He invented the idea of a bridal registry--a time-honored custom that makes shopping a special experience for a bride. He first introduced personal shoppers, and this service was offered for free to every Marshall Field's customer from the time that the first personal shopper came to his store until the day that the store closed. Any woman in the world could go to Marshall Field's and receive, for free, treatment that usually is only reserved for the wealthy. Women who lived in miserable conditions could walk into the "marble palace" of the State Street store and feel like they belonged and were welcomed there.

My great-grandmother, Evelyn, was a lifelong shopper at Marshall Field's. In family lore, she is known for many things, including her love of beauty and luxury, even when it is wholly impractical. Evelyn grew up in Chicago, and although her childhood was not particularly happy, she was from a wealthy family. Her maiden name was Flood, and she was one of the heirs to the Flood Brothers livery company. (The company actually is still operated by my relatives today, only now it is a waste management company. You can't miss the Irish flag-colored garbage trucks.) We tell a lot of "Grandma Eve" stories in our family. They have almost become like parables. And I have two Grandma Eve stories that concern Marshall Field's.

The first story happened when she was a little girl, crossing State Street with her mother on their way to do some shopping. Today, State Street can seem a little homely, but back then, it was like Michigan Avenue. It was full of stylish people out doing exciting things. Evelyn and her mother were crossing State Street, right by Marshall Field's, when Evelyn felt that her bloomers were slipping down beneath her dress. It was a dilemma--it would not be seemly to reach down beneath her dress to fix them, but then it also would not do to have them fall down, plus she couldn't stop moving since she was in the middle of the road. She alerted her mother to the situation, and her mother told her that she should hold her head high and pretend like nothing was happening. So Evelyn held her head high, kept walking, and stepped right out of her bloomers, leaving them in the middle of State Street. The lesson? A true woman can pull anything off so long as she never lets them see her fear.

Marshall Field's in 1905. These do not look like the kind of women who would have a sense of humor about lost bloomers.

The other story about my great-grandmother Evelyn and Marshall Field's happened much later in her life. Evelyn grew up, got married, and had some children. She had a lot of money to spend, and loved shopping at Marshall Field's. She had an insatiable thirst for new, beautiful things, to the point where she was constantly giving her furniture to friends so that she would have room for something new. Her husband said that he felt at home everywhere they went because he always saw his furniture in other people's houses. But then, things changed. Evelyn lost one of her children very young, and then lost her husband soon after. She did not know how to manage her money. She became depressed, and mentally unstable. She started drinking, and became an alcoholic. Even though she did not have anything to spend, she still loved going to Marshall Field's. In the days when she had been a big spender, Evelyn often got driven home from the store in the Marshall Field's coach or van (I'd imagine that this would have changed from carriage to truck at some point in her life). The driver would park in front of her house, open the door for her, and unload several shopping bags or a new piece of furniture and take them inside for her. One can only imagine how important this must have made her feel. In her later years, even though she often bought nothing at all, the drivers still took her home after every visit to the store. Even though she now had nothing to offer to them, they continued to take care of her. The lesson? True glamour is something that comes from the inside out, and it has nothing to do with money.

And now, to close, a recipe for a little bite of Chicago nostalgia. Follow the example of the original Mrs. Hering and share this with someone who is feeling tired or in need of society during this holiday season. Or, if you are not a cook, just read through the instructions on this recipe. That Mrs. Hering was awfully nice to share the fruits of this amount of labor with a total stranger.

Marshall Field's "Mrs. Hering's Chicken Pot Pie"

Chicken and stock ingredients
1 (3 1/2 pound) frying chicken
1 carrot
1 celery stalk
1 small onion, halved
2 teaspoons salt

Pie crust ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, diced into 1/2-inch cubes (best to chill cubes in the freezer for at least 15 minutes before using)
1/4 cup vegetable shortening, chilled
3 to 4 Tbsp ice water

Filling ingredients
6 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 large onion, diced (about 1 1/4 cups)
3 carrots, thinly sliced on the diagonal
3 celery stalks, thinly sliced on the diagonal
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves
1/4 cup dry sherry
3/4 cup green peas, frozen or fresh
2 Tbsp minced fresh parsley
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Egg wash
1 egg whisked with 1 Tbsp water

Special equipment needed
6 10-ounce ramekins

1 Cook the chicken and make the chicken stock. Combine the chicken, carrot, celery, onion and salt into a large stock pot. Add cold water until just covered and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pot and let cool for 15 minutes. While the chicken is cooling, continue to boil the remaining water and vegetables in the pot. When the chicken has cooled enough to touch, strip away as much of the meat as you can. Place the meat on a dish, set aside. Return the chicken bones to the stockpot and continue to boil, on high heat, until the stock has reduced to a quart or quart and a half. Set aside 2 1/2 cups of the stock for this recipe. The remaining stock you can refrigerate and store for another purpose.

2 Prepare the pie crust dough. Combine the flour and salt in a food processor. Add the chilled butter cubes and pulse 5 times to combine. And the shortening and pulse a few more times, until the dough resembles a coarse cornmeal, with some pea-sized pieces of butter. Slowly stream in ice water, a tablespoon at a time, pulsing after each addition, until the dough sticks together when you press some between your fingers. Empty the food processor, placing the dough on a clean surface. Use your hands to mold into a ball, then flatten the ball into a disk. Sprinkle with a little flour, wrap with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to 2 days, before rolling.

3 Prepare the filling. Preheat oven to 400°F. In a large skillet, melt butter on medium heat. Add the onions, carrots, and celery, and cook until the onions are translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the flour and cook, stirring, one minute more. Whisk in 2 1/2 cups of the chicken stock. Whisk in the milk. Decrease the heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring often. Add the chicken meat, thyme, sherry, peas, parsley, salt and pepper and stir well. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Divide the warm filling among six 10-ounce ramekins.

4 Prepare the crust. Roll out dough on a lightly flour surface to a little less than a quarter-inch thick. Cut into 6 rounds, slightly larger than the circumference of the ramekins. Lay a dough round on each pot pie filling. Fold the excess dough under itself and use the tines of a fork to press the dough against the edge of the ramekins. Cut a 1-inch vent into each individual pie. Use a pastry brush to apply an egg wash to each pie. Line a baking sheet with foil, place the pies on the baking sheet. Bake at 400°F for 25 minutes, or until the pastry is golden and the filling is bubbling. Let cool for at least 5 minutes before serving.
Serves 6.

Marshall Fields, Macy's, and the State Street Christmas Parade

When I was a little kid, watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade always felt a bit like watching something out of another culture. I had never seen a Macy's before, as they had no stores in the Midwest at the time, but I knew that it was in New York City and so I imagined that it must be a thousand times bigger, more fashionable, and more glamorous than the Marshall Field's department store that I would visit with my family over the holidays. I did not watch much television as a kid and my family did not have cable, so the abundance of licensed characters and B-list celebrities intrigued me. I had never been to a parade with giant balloons like the ones in the Macy's parade. I found it fascinating.

I never knew that we had our own similar, albeit much smaller, Thanksgiving parade here in Chicago until I was in college. I was home on break, and my younger sister, who was in an Irish step dancing troop, was scheduled to perform in the parade. So my mom and I went down, despite the freezing temperatures, and watched her march past, wearing my dad's enormous white knit sweater from the Aran islands on top of her green Irish dance dress. There were, I learned, balloons in this parade, too, much like the balloons in the Macy's parade that I had seen on TV. To be honest, I found the parade to be a bit lackluster. State Street looked dingy, and the parade seemed to be struggling to fill the breadth of the road. The crowds gathered along the sidewalk were sparse, and it seemed as if more people were there just trying to get from once place to another than were there to watch the show. The parade was sponsored by Marshall Field's (as evidenced by the Marshall Field's "jingle elves" who were a constant presence), and I surmised that this must have been their response to what Macy's was doing in New York City.

Because nothing says "Christmas is here!" like this.

It turns out that, even if the parades did wind up being relatively similar, they were established for different reasons--the Macy's parade in order to give outlet to the celebratory spirit of Americans who were prospering, and the Marshall Field's parade in order to cheer up Americans who were struggling.

The first Macy's parade took place in 1924, and was mostly staffed by Macy's employees. Many of the people working at Macy's were recent immigrants or first generation Americans, and, excited about their new identity as Americans, wanted to find a way to celebrate the all-American holiday of Thanksgiving with a parade similar to those they had experienced in their native countries. The parade featured floats, costumes, and animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo, and was such a success that the store decided they would do it every year. Animal shaped balloons replaced the live animals in 1927 with the debut of a Felix the Cat balloon made by the Goodyear tire company, and they went on to become a parade feature. Apparently, back in the day, at the end of the parade they would just release the balloons into the sky. The first year they did this, the balloons immediately burst, which I suppose was sort of depressing, so the next year they reengineered them with safety valves so that they would continue to float through the sky for a few days before becoming deflated and falling to the ground. They had address labels on them, and the people who found them would return them to Macy's in exchange for a free gift.

I was thinking that the balloons must have been much smaller in the early days, but apparently they were letting balloons of this size float loose around the city. Madness! (Photo: Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, 1934.)

The parade in Chicago was actually initially intended to celebrate Christmas, not Thanksgiving, and was originally celebrated after Thanksgiving was over, with its first occurrence on December 7, 1934. At this point, the Great Depression had been lagging on for five years. The economy was a mess and people's spirits were low (sound familiar, anyone?). So, they decided to hold a Christmas parade down State Street to get people in the Christmas mood. Santa Claus led the parade with a sleigh full of items from various State Street merchants, and there were floats and people marching. In spite of sub-zero temperatures, the parade was a great success and led to the best season for holiday sales since 1927. In the next year, 1935, the city did not have any money to hold the parade but since it had been such a success in the year before, they found out a way to do it anyhow. They couldn't afford expensive floats, so instead they used the streetcars that still ran down State Street to pull the entertainers. Since then, the parade has gone on in various iterations, moving from State Street to Michigan Avenue for a time, then coming back to State Street again and changing dates to be on Thanksgiving rather than sometime in early December. Although the parade I saw was part of a brief period of Marshall Field's sponsorship, the parade was not always sponsored by Marshall Field's in the same way that the Macy's parade has always been associated with Macy's. It was founded by the State Street association, and has been sponsored at various times by Brachs, McDonalds, and Marshall Fields.

State Street Parade, sometime in the 1960s

Now, of course, Macy's is a familiar entity to Chicagoans, as the company bought Marshall Field's and turned the iconic State Street store from a Marshall Field's to a Macy's in 2006. It was a transition that I certainly found difficult, and I think it was hard on other Chicagoans, as well. In the same way that Macy's and Bloomingdale's had once been these inaccessible East Coast shopping meccas, Marshall Field's was unique to Chicago. Now, though, it's all the same everywhere you go. We've lost some of those differences.

Teddy Kennedy and the 1968 Democratic National Convention

Driving to work this morning, I saw a sort of pitiful crowd of 5 or 6 pro-life protestors gathered in Grant Park. Seeing them there reminded me, for whatever reason, of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which I have heard about many times from my dad, who attended it in the summer when he was 17 years old. My dad is a dyed-in-the-wool hippie, and spent most of his formative years mouthing off to Marist brothers and speaking against the Man and the war. If my memory serves me correctly, at least one of his days in Grant Park during the summer of 1968 landed him in jail. (This would not have been the first or only time my dad spent a night in prison--he has never been one to lie down patiently for authority.) But he wasn't just there for the protesting. He also wound up participating in the political process, when he became part of a group that tried to spontaneously push the nomination of Teddy Kennedy for president.

My great aunt Jerry was Mayor Richard J. Daley's longtime personal secretary (I'm sure there will be many more stories about this later), and she had scored my dad and his friend Larry passes that got them into various restricted areas where they probably did not belong. They were backstage in some part of a hotel being used for Democratic party operations, when they were recruited to be part of a "spontaneous" crowd of close to 100 people that was going to urge the convention to draft Kennedy as a candidate. They were given professionally lettered signs and buttons and were taken outside the meeting room where the Illinois Delegation was in caucus. Every so often, a man standing near the door would open it and another man would start the chant, "We want Kennedy!"

During this whole thing, my dad was standing next to Len O'Connor, a well-known reporter from NBC. Every time the door closed and the chanting stopped, Len O'Connor would start grilling my dad about how he came to be there, this 17 year old hippie in a flannel shirt and long hair, carrying a professionally lettered sign and wearing a button. My dad flippantly replied that he was there because he believed that Kennedy was the best chance to beat Nixon and end the war (his #1 concern in those days). But Len O'Connor would have none of it. He kept asking who had recruited him. Did his parents work for the city? Were they precinct captains? Meanwhile, O'Connor was also a great source of information because he had other reporters inside the room with the delegation who would come out and whisper news to him. It turned out that Mayor Daley was in the room, pushing hard for a Kennedy nomination, but Kennedy did not want to throw his hat into the ring. He kept calling Kennedy on the phone, and when he would dial, he would signal for them to open the door and start the chanting. So the chanting wasn't just to push the delegation to nominate Kennedy, it was actually to push Kennedy to run. Just as Peter denied the Lord three times, Kennedy denied Daley three times.

Teddy Kennedy speaking in Chicago in 1972

 It's one of those great "what if?" moments. If Kennedy had run, he might have beat Nixon. America might have had one less criminal in the White House. The Vietnam War might have ended sooner, saving countless lives. The students who were shot at Kent State might have been able to live out their lives. The divide between those who fought in the Vietnam War and those who protested it (which I would argue still lives out today in the indifferent patriotism of the Republican party and the so-called "anti-American" behavior of the left) might be less. It's hard to imagine, really, how things might have been different.

I'm sure, though, that Teddy Kennedy was imagining a very different "what if." You've got to keep in mind the tenor of the time. It was August of 1968. In April of that year, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed while preparing for a Poor People's March on Washington. The assasination resulted in riots that ended in another 46 deaths nationwide. In the end of April, students protesting at Columbia University took hold of seven university buildings and were violently removed by police. At the beginning of June, Robert F. Kennedy was shot and killed while campaigning for president. One can only imagine how terrifying this was. People were trying to stand up for peace, and their efforts were being met with brutal cruelty and violence. They were killing people for taking this position. Both of Teddy Kennedy's brothers had been murdered for their beliefs. If he felt that his life was in danger so long as he remained in the spotlight, you can imagine why.

We're always warned about history repeating itself, and I think that there's a strong lesson for our modern world in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Again today, we have politicians who are irresponsibly using violent rhetoric without realizing the effect that it has on their supporters. A MoveOn.org worker who attempted to approach Rand Paul was recently thrown to the ground and had her head violently bashed against the pavement by his supporters. California police recently arrested a man who had been inspired by Glenn Beck's television programming to go out and shoot people at a local chapter of the ACLU. Threatening phone calls have been made to local democratic leaders. A democratic representative in Arizona found windows in his campaign center shattered by bullets. Addresses of democratic leaders and their family members have been posted online, resulting in threatening mail. One democratic leader's brother's gas line was cut. Yes, people are angry, on both sides. Yes, there seem to be some irrevocable differences. But 1968 shows us how this ends. It ends with police opening fire on 19-year-old kids and killing them. It ends with a generation so split by the injustices of the past that they seem incapable of working together for the common good. It ends with children starving to death in the richest country in the world while the people who are charged with looking out for them argue about who is more American.

Violence in Grant Park, 1968

I have hope, though. My dad experienced one kind of politics in Grant Park, but in my own life, I have experienced something very different. On election night in 2008, I was watching the returns at my aunt and uncle's house in Lincoln Park, not too far from the hubbub downtown. I was rooting for Barack Obama. I had actually been waiting for this moment for several years. I had met Barack Obama years ago, when he was first campaigning for senator. My younger sister was in high school, and was involved in the Young Democrats club. I was in college, and was working downtown and taking the train to and from the suburbs every day. I came home one evening, totally exhausted, and my sister was all over me, wanting me to take her and the other Young Democrats (we grew up in DuPage County, so there were about five of them) to see some guy with a weird name speak in someone's backyard in Wheaton. I was not into it at all, but she wouldn't let up, so I took her to see him.

I also was in Young Democrats when I was in high school. I was, like my sister, a very involved member. The group was actually started by a friend of mine, sometime during my sophomore or maybe junior year. Before that, I had never felt a united political presence. Growing up in a very conservative town, I was used to being the only one to support the things that I believed in. As I began to apply to colleges and think about my future, I decided that I would like to go into lobbyism, or public interest advocacy. Through Young Democrats, I got involved in the 2004 election. I remember driving around my suburban hometown delivering yard signs to various area democrats. Many people had requested three or four signs because they said that their signs would always get stolen or defaced. I felt so right and so just helping this small minority find their voice and speak out against a candidate who so many people felt was underqualified for his role. When election day came, I did not see that there could be any other outcome than a victory for Al Gore. The alternative was clearly lacking the skills necessary to do a good job. In my mind, no person could look at him and think that things should continue in this way. I watched the election returns on TV with my family, and when Al Gore was announced the winner, I went to bed thinking that all was well in the world. And the next morning I woke up to the realization that values and rightness didn't matter. Winning mattered, and it mattered enough for people to act like total slimeballs. I went on to college still planning on doing some kind major with politics and advocacy. I circled a bunch of policy classes in the coursebook and signed up for a bunch of advocacy groups' listservs. My first day of college was September 11, 2001. After that, I didn't really want to do anything with politics anymore, for whatever reason. I decided to major in English and Russian and never took a single course in the Political Science department.

When I took my sister and her friends to meet Barack Obama in the backyard in Wheaton, I had pretty much checked out of politics altogether, and especially Illinois politics since I was now living in Minnesota for most of the year. I didn't expect anything too thrilling. But I was very impressed by the candor and optimism of this young candidate. I was especially impressed when, after his speech, he came straight up to my sister and her friends, all of whom were clearly way too young to vote. He asked them about themselves and where they were from, and encouraged them to remain engaged in local politics and to be outspoken on behalf of the things that they believed in. The grown-ups were gathering around, waiting for their turn to speak with the candidate, but he didn't rush off. He had asked one of my sister's friends, who was of Indian descent, what part of India his family came from. You got the feeling that he was really listening to the answer.

Several years later, I voted for this man for president and was truly excited when he won. I was watching the election returns at my aunt and uncle's house in Lincoln Park, along with my boyfriend and various members of my extended family. Lots of my friends were in Grant Park all day long for election festivities, but I didn't really want to be there. I had gotten up early to vote (there had been warnings, which turned out to be true, of long lines at polling places), and had worked all day. I went to the gym before going over to my aunt's house. I also felt some need to contain my enthusiasm so as to avoid starting an argument with my boyfriend, who is such a party-line Republican that he actually voted for George W. Bush the second time. He had voted for Rand Paul in the 2008 election.

When Obama won, to my surprise, my boyfriend told me that he wanted to go to Grant Park. So we got into a cab and went. It was unseasonably warm for November, and there was no need for a coat. Once we got downtown, we saw that the streets were full of people. Everybody was in a great mood. Traffic was a disaster down State and Michigan through downtown, but nobody seemed to mind. People were just hanging out of their cars, shouting the good news about Obama. We got to the park just in time for Obama's speech. We were, of course, nowhere near the stage, but we could see and hear what was going on because of the large screens and speakers. Usually, any group event in Grant Park, even something as relatively small as jazz fest, is a recipe for total chaos. People are everywhere, getting in your way. They drop their stuff all over. They get drunk and fall on you. They aggressively try to sell you things. When it's time for the performance, they all talk too loudly and crinkle bags and you can't hear a thing. You spend the whole time jostling and pushing.

I can only imagine that many, many more people gathered in Grant Park to hear Obama than showed up to jazz fest, but somehow, it was totally different. People were polite and respectful. When we came running up toward the side of the crowd just as Obama was about to speak, people made room, and made sure that we could see and hear. Everyone was shouting and cheering when Obama took the stage, but when he began to speak, it was silent. Each of his words rang out clearly over Grant Park as tens of thousands of people stood still and silent, really listening to what he was saying. I was standing next to a black couple with their teenage son. He was openly weeping.

Hope in Grant Park, 2008

I was grateful to be there, but was worried about what would happen when the speech was over. I was concerned that it would be a long, rough trip back to Lakeview where I lived. It was already almost midnight, and I had to work the next day. I envisioned fighting my way through crowds to get to the train station, only to wait in a long, awful line. But when Obama finished speaking and the crowd finished cheering, the most miraculous thing happened. Everybody gathered up their things. Usually Grant Park is totally littered with garbage after any event, but when I looked out at the emptying lawn, there was virtually no sign that anybody had been there. People had picked up after themselves. And, without any trouble or noise, they processed quickly out of Grant Park and toward the red line station, where people behaved efficiently. The first to arrive were the first to get on a train. People made room in the cars, and held the doors for one another. On the train ride home, I heard people talking on their cell phones in at least four different languages, all with one common word: Barack Obama.

We may not be there anymore, but we've been there. I saw it with my own eyes. So that gives me hope.

Elizabeth T. Bentley, the Red Spy Queen

I live next door to a historical landmark. I work within a historical landmark. It should not surprise anyone to find out that I come from a family with a long, colorful history in Chicago. At some point, I'm sure I'll write about my family's history and ties with the Catholic church, common criminals, labor organization, the smallpox epidemic of 1899, Mayor Daley, waste management, and alcohol (we are, clearly, Irish Catholics), but right now, allow me to devote some time to Elizabeth T. Bentley, the Red Spy Queen, who happened to play a role in my family's history.

Just to give some quick background--Elizabeth Bentley was a normal, bright, American girl with a family that dated back to the Mayflower, who wound up joining the communist party when invited by a friend. At first, her devotion was lukewarm, but when she began to work at the Italian Information Library, which turned out to be a front for fascist propaganda, she went to the leader of her cell and offered to act as a spy. Bentley wound up getting fired from her job at the library when they found an anti-fascist paper she had written in college, and started doing low-level espionage work for Jacob Golos, a Russian-born spy. She and Golos fell in love. Bentley took a job as an assistant to an American business leader and passed on information to Golos. She also acted as a courier and entertained men in order to get information from them. Golos's health began to decline, and Bentley took on more of his work. Eventually, she was running two rings of undercover Soviet spies. When Golos died, however, the communist leadership cut Bentley off from the work that she had been doing, and transferred authority elsewhere. Rather than wait for the Soviet organization to kill her or denounce her, she decided to confess to the FBI. She told the FBI everything. They initially planned to use her as a double agent, but she had already been denounced to the KGB. Unable to get employment from the FBI, Elizabeth went to the press with her story, and was dubbed the "Red Spy Queen." She became an anti-communist spokesperson.

Elizabeth Bentley, Red Spy Queen

At this time, Elizabeth also converted to Catholicism, based on her conversations with Bishop Fulton Sheen, a tremendously popular Catholic figure of the time who was popular on TV and the radio (he is now a candidate for sainthood). Still unable to get a job, embroiled in a lawsuit, and sensationalized by the press, she found refuge in her new faith, and was offered a position teaching at Mundelein College, a girl's school in Chicago (it is now part of Loyola University). This is where her story crosses over with mine.

When Elizabeth Bentley was hired, it, understandably, created quite a stir. Really, it's mystifying that they hired her at all. The cynic in me thinks that Bishop Sheen must have thrown his weight around and bullied a few nuns to get it to happen, although my grandfather has a different take, believing that the school stuck its neck out out of "generous motives," and that they thought that Bentley would be good for the girls because she could offer "a view of the real world they might not otherwise encounter." This is not today's Catholic Church, that's all I have to say.

My grandfather was a reporter at the Chicago Daily News, and was sent to cover the Elizabeth Bentley story at Mundelein. When he arrived, he was greeted at the door by a bright young woman with dark curls in a green suit, who had been sent to deal with the press. This was my grandmother, an alumna of Mundelein College. You know you're doing something right when a man remembers meeting you better than he remembers meeting a Red Spy Queen. The next time there was a Mundelein story to cover, my grandfather jumped on it and asked my grandmother out. This was in November of 1949. They got engaged on Valentine's Day of 1950 and were married in the following June. Their wedding brunch, incidentally, was at the Edgewater Beach Hotel which used to be right at Bryn Mawr and the lake--another landmark of Uptown during the Jazz Age. They invited Elizabeth Bentley to their wedding.

The Edgwater Beach Hotel, built in 1919

They went on to have 8 children, and have 12 grandchildren. They both are writers, and have each published a number of books. And more importantly, they are still truly, very deeply, in love. It is an absolute miracle, not just that their relationship has lasted so long or that they have had such a happy life, but that that type of love is possible and attainable between humans on this passing earth. In his toast at their 60th anniversary party, which we celebrated this past summer, my grandfather said, "You wouldn't believe it, but 60 years later we still have so much fun at home." What a blessing!

The Not-So-Jazzy Age: The Union Stockyards

Now that I've devoted some time to delving into my apartment building and some aspects of my neighborhood at home, I think it's high time that I turn to the neighborhood where I work: the Stockyards Industrial Complex, former home of the Union Stockyards. Nowadays, this is just a big office complex, mostly home to heavy industry (and one publishing company, which is where I work). It's a lot of big warehouse-type buildings with truck docks. 100 years ago, though, this was the meat processing capital of the world. Farmers and ranchers from all over the Midwest would drive their cattle to the stockyards to sell them to slaughterhouses, where they would be processed and sent out to consumers. The stockyards were opened during the Civil War and continued to operate until the 1970s.

I've grown up in Chicago, been to all of the museums a billion times, and feel like I've got a pretty good handle on Chicago history, but until I started working in Bridgeport, I was really unaware of Chicago's role in the Civil War. There will be more on this later (I often go to meetings in a building that was part of Camp Douglas--I'll have to learn more about that at some point), but for now, let's focus on how Chicago's economy was actually boosted by the war. Prior to the war, the Missippi River really controlled the north-south trade route. When the river was blockaded during the war, the westward expansion of railroads really took off. Chicago, being in the center of everything, began to grow as the "hog butcher of the world," while cities like St. Louis fell into decline without the economic benefit of their major waterway.

The stockyards are called the "Union stockyards" because they were founded by a union of several railroads. Before the union bought the swampy area that became the stockyards, there were a bunch of different smaller stockyards located randomly along the various train routes. It was better for everyone if things were consolidated, and so they established the Union Stockyards. They were processing 2 million animals a year by 1870, and 8 million by 1890. By the turn of the century, the stockyards provided for nearly 82% of all meat consumption. So long as trains went faster than cars and refridgeration was still a growing technology, available in railroad cars but not in more portable forms, the stockyards were a neccessity. But as interstate trucking became more efficient and refridgeration became available in more forms, nobody needed the middle man anymore. It was cheaper and faster for ranchers and farmers to butcher the animals where they were raised and then sell straight to distributors, without needing the stockyards. And so, in 1971, the stockyards closed.

The influence of the stockyards, of course, extended far beyond meat. Anecdotally, I can tell you that every person over 50 who was raised in Chicago has a vivid memory of coming to see the cattle at the stockyards, because whenever I tell anyone where I work, they get a faraway look in their eyes and tell me a long, drawn-out description of what it was like when the cows were here. And, certainly, it did serve as inspiration, most notably for Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. In it, he wrote, "It was the incarnation of blind and insensate Greed. It was a monster devouring with a thousand mouths, trampling with a thousand hoofs; it was the Great Butcher--it was the spirit of Capitalism made flesh." So there you have it.

Today, the stockyards industrial complex is kind of empty and rundown, but it has a certain mystery about it. Most of the buildings in the area are newer, charmless warehouse type spaces, but every so often, you'll turn a corner and see a stately civic building crumbling to ruin, or an abandoned turn of the century factory yard. You get glimpses of the optimism, idealism, and sheer strength of industry that must have characterized this area 100 years ago.

The Stockyards National Bank, 1924

 "To the west of the yards ran Ashland Avenue, and here was an unbroken line of saloons--"Whiskey Row," they called it; to the north was Forty- seventh Street, where there were half a dozen to the block, and at the angle of the two was "Whiskey Point," a space of fifteen or twenty acres, and containing one glue factory and about two hundred saloons. One might walk among these and take his choice: "Hot pea-soup and boiled cabbage today." "Sauerkraut and hot frankfurters. Walk in." "Bean soup and stewed lamb. Welcome." All of these things were printed in many languages, as were also the names of the resorts, which were infinite in their variety and appeal. There was the "Home Circle" and the "Cosey Corner"; there were "Firesides" and "Hearthstones" and "Pleasure Palaces" and "Wonderlands" and "Dream Castles" and "Love's Delights." Whatever else they were called, they were sure to be called "Union Headquarters," and to hold out a welcome to workingmen; and there was always a warm stove, and a chair near it, and some friends to laugh and talk with. There was only one condition attached,--you must drink." - Sinclar Lewis, The Jungle

Chicago stockyards workers taking a break at "whiskey row."

The American Ever-Ready building on south Ashland, 1916. They manufactured batteries, but their main business was Christmas lights until they were bought by the National Carbon Company.

A Tale of Two Theaters

Thinking about the various theaters of the Jazz Age era in Uptown led me to think about the Music Box Theatre, a movie theater built in 1929 that still shows art films today. I love seeing movies at the Music Box, and have been thinking about it especially often lately because they show a lot of the old Christmas classics around the holidays. There is just nothing like the sheer joy of watching an old black and white holiday movie like "White Christmas" under the starry ceiling of the Music Box. It is 100% pleasure. The only thing that makes me sad when I think about the Music Box is its lesser-known sister theater, the Ramova, around 35th and Halsted in Bridgeport, not far from where I work. Unlike the Music Box, the Ramova is no longer operational. It is just sitting there, falling apart, its fate unknown. So this post is the tale of two sister theaters, one on the north side and one on the south, and their opposite fates.

Both theaters were built in 1929. At a time when theaters were built to seat 3,000 people, both the Music Box and the Ramova were considered very small, seating just 800 and 1,500 people, respectively. At the time, it seems that the Music Box would have been sandwiched somewhere in between two major centers of entertainment--the major Uptown scene around Broadway between Wilson and Lawrence, and the scene around Lincoln and Belmont. The Ramova also would have been on the fringes of the popular neighborhoods, a little ways northwest of "Chicago's Harlem" around 47th and South Shore, and a little ways southwest of Bronzeville. It would, however, have been just outside the gates of the then-Union Stockyards, which were a major center of industry (I actually work in the former stockyard complex, more on this later).

Both theaters were also designed in the "atmospheric style." I think that my apartment building also must be in the "atmospheric style" (see the previous post on the Jazz Age). Basically, this style pulls from the most eye-catching of a whole host of things in order to create something imaginative and evocative, but not necessarily historically or culturally accurate. The walls of both theaters feature pillars, vines, and arches. Scenes of Spain and Italy are painted, and there are fountains in the lobbies. The ceilings are painted deep blue and light up with a thousand little lights, making it seem as if you are watching the movie in an outdoor, European courtyard of some time in the distant past. It's really beautiful.

The lobby of the Music Box.

The biggest of the theaters in the Music Box.

 Although small, these theaters saw their heyday. Probably the most notable thing to happen was the premier of Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator" in 1940, which took place at both theaters (simultaneously?) because the larger theaters wouldn't show it. It was the first film to satirize the Nazis and Hitler, and the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany at the time. So it found a voice at these smaller theaters, somewhat off the radar.

Both theaters fell out of use as first-run theaters in the 1950s and 60s. The Ramova actually initially had a bit more use than the Music Box, as it was used for Spanish-language films to serve the large Hispanic community in the area. Between 1977 and 1983, the Music Box was used for Spanish films, porn films, and Arabic films.

After this, the fates of the two theaters diverged. The Music Box was reopened to show foreign, independent, and cult films, and has grown to be one of Chicago's premiere venues for off the beaten track kinds of films. Many films have had their Chicago premiere at the Music Box. Famously, "The Break Up" starring Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston had its worldwide premiere at the Music Box (it was shot in Chicago, and Vince Vaughn is a Chicago native).

The Music Box exterior.

Meanwhile, the Ramova has fallen into disrepair. It was closed in the mid-1980s and nothing has been done with it since. It looks like there are some community efforts to do something with it, but nothing has happened.

The Ramova's exterior.