April 6th, 2018 § permalink
If you’re reading the title to this little schmear of words, mentally stress the word “that.”
It’s not that question, it’s that question. The one we all know. The one we’ve asked and been asked and we winced with discomfort both times.
This that question came from behind me as the train trundled me north from work.
“Can we still be friends?” a woman said into her phone. » Read the rest of this entry «
April 4th, 2018 § permalink
Shortly before 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 5, down a thin flight of stairs lit by a security bulb, you’re going to knock on a door.
A hatch on the door will slide open. A pair of eyes will glare through.
“Password,” the eyes will say, or maybe they’ll just keep glaring, waiting for you to say what’s next.
You’ll say it. If you get it right, the door will open. Then the history begins. » Read the rest of this entry «
April 2nd, 2018 § permalink
The sunlit morning invited. It was cool and sharp, crisp and wonderful. It asked the city to dance. So we did.
A springtime dance with a city isn’t your normal nightclub shimmy. It’s a complex, choreographed number set to the tune of car horns, train rattles and the few chirping birds giving this whole “spring” thing a tentative go.
We dance among each other, bowing and curtsying out of the way. We stand and sit to give others seats on trains. We hustle up the tempo to sashay just a touch faster past the ones whose role in the dance is to beg for change. We stop and pirouette when encountering an old friend on the sidewalk, a momentary pas de deux before rejoining the grand ballet.
And we dance among ghosts, if we know enough. » Read the rest of this entry «
March 30th, 2018 § permalink
“Sal’s late,” the fry cook said.
“He was late yesterday too,” the man on the end of the linoleum counter said as the waitress topped off his coffee.
“It’s always quiet ‘til Sal gets here,” the waitress said, rushing back to refill the pot. » Read the rest of this entry «
March 28th, 2018 § permalink
It was an overload of children on the bottom two floors. Whining, wailing, amusing, amazing children, just too damn many of them. Free day at the museum will get you that. » Read the rest of this entry «
March 26th, 2018 § permalink
The soundtrack was a mixture of cars traveling down Narragansett and Fullerton, the few birds who decided to make the cold day spring in more than name and a Spanish-language sermon hollered into and and echoing from a loudspeaker through the park from a congregation that decided to celebrate Palm Sunday al fresco. » Read the rest of this entry «
March 23rd, 2018 § permalink
“That TV news truck still outside?” Gene asked, looking up from his computer.
“Yeah,” I said, tossing my coat on the chair next to my desk. “Do you know what that’s about?”
“Guy got stabbed in the neck. I think it happened by Mother Hubbard’s because I was walking in and that’s the only part of the sidewalk that got washed.”
I hot-watered my instant coffee in the breakroom, then walked back to Gene’s desk and told him The Story. » Read the rest of this entry «
March 21st, 2018 § permalink
Picture two man-sized boxes on a darkened corner.
One box is almost a shed, light-toned and covered in siding, like a home in one of the suburbs just a few blocks to the north. There’s a plaque on one side honoring a familial doyenne and a banner on the streetside paying tribute to a long-gone anniversary.
The other box was propped half open, like a grade-school diorama. A chest-high stack of newspapers on a stool fronts a spread of magazines ranging from local dining to muscle car to naked lady.
Approaching the second box brought a visitor from the first. A man sauntered out of the shed with an old Chicago Tribune newsboy apron cinched around his waist.
“This the place that’s been here like a hundred years?” I asked. » Read the rest of this entry «
March 19th, 2018 § permalink
Below a museum of genocide where paintings, photographs and relics pay tribute to the 2 million lives lost to the Khmer Rouge, in a basement with rigged-up curtains cordoning off the paperwork, canned goods and other materials for Cambodian families needing services to set up life in Chicago, a woman opened her soul. » Read the rest of this entry «
March 16th, 2018 § permalink
In the grand tradition of newsman-as-kingmaker and the arrogant assumption typing up public meetings and getting lied at by politicians more directly than the average citizen makes the journalist a grander herald of democracy, 1,001 Chicago Afternoons announces its endorsements for the March 20 primary election.
1,001 Chicago Afternoons endorses voting. Because you’re a goddamn grownup. » Read the rest of this entry «
