Highway 61: Photographs From Thunder Bay to New Orleans

Randolph Street: Photographs From Thunder Bay To New Orleans

Chicago’s finest photojournalist Jon Randolph takes us through America along US Highway 61. From 1975 through 1985 he captured the lives and the places along the legendary thoroughfare that follows the Mississippi River for much of its length

Porch  Steele, Missouri

Pabst Cap  Auburn, Missouri

 Grocery Boy  Wapello, Iowa

Discount Store  Arkansas

Carnival  Barnum, Minnesota

Doll Heads  Wentzville, Missouri

Join us every Friday for more Randolph Street. We’re here every day with new The Daily Blog posts and more on The Third City.

Letter From Milo: Dead Serbians

I gave my mother a call over the Fourth of July weekend just to see how she was doing. I don’t see her as often as I’d like so I make it a point to call her a couple of times a week. Mom’s in pretty good shape for an 84-year-old lady. She’s in good health, still drives her car and lives independently in a small apartment a few blocks from my sister’s house.

Talking with my Mom is always an adventure. She speaks broken English and sometimes she can be hard to understand. For example, when I ask her about some of her old friends and neighbors, like Mr. Popovich, she’ll say something like this:

“Mr. Popovich is just fine. He’s been retarded for about 20 years.”

“Retarded? What do you mean retarded?”

“You know, he doesn’t work anymore.”

“Oh, you mean he’s retired.”

“That’s what I said.”

“How about Mr. Vukovich? How’s he doing?”"

“Not too good. He’s got the old timer’s disease.”

“Old timer’s disease?”

“”You know, his brain is not too good.”

“Are you talking about Alzheimer’s disease?

“That’s what I said.”

Anyway, when I called Mom on that Fourth of July weekend she told me she was going out to the Serbian Orthodox monastery in Grayslake, on the grounds of which my father, Nikola Samardzija is buried. She was making the trip with several other widows and they would spend the day fussing over their husbands’ graves, the same way they fussed over their husbands when they were still alive. They would bring flowers, light candles, pray for the departeds’ souls and, most importantly, clean up the gravesites.

When Mom told me what she had planned, I felt a pang of guilt. You see, I haven’t been out to visit the Old Man’s grave in a long time. I guess I’m a bad son. I don’t have the same sense of veneration for my ancestors that the Chinese do. My bad.

The last time I visited the cemetery, I also had to spend a few minutes cleaning up the site, clearing away the “gifts” that some of the Old Man’s friends had left behind. Serbians have a tradition of leaving tokens of esteem at the graves of friends and loved ones. A pious person’s grave might be gifted with pictures of the saints or other religious artifacts. A housewife’s grave might be festooned with knitting needles, coffee cups or smidgens of her favorite foods.

In my Old Man’s case, his grave was littered with cigarettes, shot glasses filled with Christian Brothers brandy and decks of playing cards. It sometimes looked like Jim Morrison‘s grave in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, minus the graffiti.

The Old Man, you see, enjoyed the high life. He drank, smoked and gambled – and those were just the things I knew about. He no doubt had other vices but I wasn’t privy to them. I had heard stories over the years of epic drinking binges, substantial amounts of money won and lost in savage all-night card games, and bar room brawls from Gary to Milwaukee. But, as I said, those were just rumors.

I remember the day we buried him in the hallowed grounds, more than 20 years ago. There were about 50 of us in the monastery dining hall, having a post-funeral luncheon. These events always feature plenty to eat and drink, the favored beverage being Slivovitz, a plum brandy of indeterminate proof but undeniable potency. There were still several of the Old Man’s drinking buddies alive then and most of them spoke a few words about him. It was the usual bullshit that is said of dead people – Great father, wonderful husband, a friend to all,  etc.

Finally, one old-timer, Petar Pepich, who was one of the Old Man’s favorite partners in crime, rose unsteadily to his feet, knocked down a shot of whiskey and said, “God damn it, I’ve got three children and they all look like Nikola.”  Even Fr. Jovan, who was sitting at the head of the table, had to laugh at that one.

After the funeral luncheon I spent an hour or so wandering around the cemetery. There must have been more than a thousand graves in sight, all of them filled with dead Serbians. Like any other group of people I’m sure there were good people and bad people buried there, honest men and crooks, loyal husbands and philanderers, successful men and losers, religious men and whoremongers. I wondered where my father fit in that human spectrum. Probably somewhere in the middle, I guessed.

The one thing all these dead Serbians had in common was that they all wanted to be buried in the hallowed ground of the monastery.  Maybe they figured proximity to a holy place might give them an edge in Saint Peter‘s entrance exam. Maybe they figured they’d catch a break on Judgment Day. Or maybe they just wanted to be close to old friends and neighbors. Who the hell knows?

Getting back to the conversation I had with my mother on the July Fourth weekend, I asked her, “What are you going to do after you visit the Old Man’s grave?”

“After we leave the cemetery me and my friends are going to the casino.”

Hmm, first the graveyard, then the casino. My guess is the Old Man would have approved.

Big Mike: The Chrysler Versus the Critters

The Loved One and I are still keeping up our long-distance relationship. She stays in Bloomington, Indiana from Monday through Friday while I remain in Louisville, trying to peddle the house. We’ve had the place up for sale for four months now and haven’t gotten so much as a nibble. The joint’s a showplace. We’ve sunk tons of dough into it and everybody who walks through it tells us it’s fabulous and beautiful. Yet none have reached for their wallet yet. The jerks.

It reminds me of my pal Mikey back in the old Pilsen East artists’ community. He had a crush on a tall and beautiful woman named Delia, who was intelligent, well-spoken and was a filmmaker. Mikey was so smitten that he could hardly speak to her. I urged him to ask her out for months. Finally one day he mustered up the courage.

Mikey: “Say, um, Delia…, I was wondering…, you know, um, maybe…, I don’t know…, why don’t we go out to a movie or something…, y’know, like a date?”

Delia: “Oh, thank you, Mikey. That’s sweet. It really is. And you’re a really great guy. I really enjoy being your friend. But it’s not the right time for me to get involved with somebody right now. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with you! Don’t get me wrong. You’re fantastic. You’d make a great partner for any girl. You’re smart and you’re good looking. You’d be quite a catch!”

Poor Mikey. Never had he been so lavishly praised by a woman. “If I’m so great,” he complained afterward, “why am I not good enough for Delia to go out with?”

I had no answer for him. Just as I have no answer for why nobody wants to buy our fabulous and beautiful pad.

Anyway, The Loved One emails me a picture of herself every day. Yesterday’s shot showed her with puffy eyes and a protruding lower lip. It was accompanied by this explanatory note: “Oh my God! I almost saw a kitten get run over this morning! I stopped to save it. I broke down crying after it ran away to safety.”

Later in the day she filled me in on the details over the phone. She’d been barrelling down the road on her way to work when she saw the kitty up ahead, cowering between lanes, paralyzed with fear. The Loved One, whom I occasionally suspect would rather keep company with cats, horses and woodchucks rather than actual human beings, jammed on the brakes. She leaped out of the car and ran toward the feline. Most of the passing cars had been slowing down and giving the cat a wide berth. But as she neared it, a Jeep roared toward them and came within a whisker of squishing them both. When The Loved One got within a few footsteps, the cat darted away, safely, into the foliage along the side of the road.

Oh, the things The Loved One called that Jeep driver!

I’m proud of her. How many people on this Earth would risk their necks for a scared critter in the road? I know of two.

When we first moved to Louisville, I was driving her to work one morning when we saw a turtle struggling to cross the road. I pulled over after we passed it and put the car into reverse, intending to hustle him off the pavement. Suddenly, I heard an ugly crunching sound. Don’t worry – I hadn’t turned the guy into turtle soup; I’d merely scraped up our fairly new car on a telephone pole.

Every time I see the scratches I put on that fender and bumper, I think of that old turtle, who – I’m happy to report – made it across the road unflattened. The Loved One, who’d normally treat me to a stern lecture if I’d scraped up the car, didn’t give it a second thought as long as we’d saved the turtle.

I suppose that makes us softies. That’s okay by me. It’s better than the alternative. A year ago, we entertained some visitors from Chicago, some relatives of mine. Let’s call them Moe and his sons. The first night we piled into Moe’s shiny new Chrysler, more an aircraft carrier than a sedan, with a Hemi engine that gave it more thrust than the Space Shuttle boosters. Moe couldn’t wait to show me how powerful the engine was.

“Listen to that,” he grinned as we roared down Brownsboro Road. It was almost dark and the road was winding and hilly.

“Y’better watch out,” I warned, ” there’s a lot of critters that dart out at this time of night.”

“Fuck you!” Moe roared over the roar of his Hemi engine. “If you think I’m gonna swerve into a head-on collision just to avoid a fuckin’ squirrel, you’re nuts!”

“Hmm,” I said, “I was thinking there might be a third option, like maybe slowing down.”

Moe was silent for a moment, then he muttered: “Fuckin’ squirrels.”

Me? I whispered to myself: “Fuckin’ cars.”

Benny Jay: Private Eye

It’s Sunday night, and I’m up late, watching a video, when the call comes in from Big Bob, a neighbor down the street.

He’s got a problem with Fatso, his neighbor — a big piece of shit who lives in the two-flat near the corner. Dude’s been keeping everyone on that end of the block up late, setting off firecrackers until the wee hours. Also illegally parks his truck behind the tow-zone sign, openly flaunting the law, like he’s got an in with the Man.

I’m not sure why Big Bob’s calling me for help — a sure sign of desperation — but it’s fortuitous in a way. I’ve been going through a heavy private eye phase — reading detective novels by Raymond Chandler and George Pelecanos. I tell Big Bob: I’ll take the case.

I ring off, sit back and think: What would Marlowe do?

It hits me! I go the computer and run a property-tax search that tells me the house belongs to a lady named Barbara — at least that’s who pays the taxes — and she’s getting the homeowners exemption. I run her name through Google — nothing. Try the Tribune clip file. Nope. One last try with the Sun-Times. Bingo! I read her obit — Barbara died in `95.

Obviously, she doesn’t live there anymore, but her name’s still on the bill. Hmm? At this point — if I was Marlowe — I’d light up a cigarette just to help me think.

I check the recorder of deed’s website — no sign the house was sold. She must have left it to a son or daughter.

I get the leash. “C’mon, Nicky,” I tell the dog, “we got a job to do….”

Outside it’s dark as coal — not a light in the sky. The only sound is the crunching of my feet walking along the sidewalk. I walk to the house and look around. Deadly silent. No firecrackers tonight. I tie the dog to a pole, and walk up the porch. It’s hard to read in the dark, but I make out the letters. Barbara’s name — first or last — is not on the mailbox.

I hear a noise. Footsteps coming from the back. I hop off the porch. Too late. A big man emerges from the side of the building. It’s Fatso. He looks enormous standing in the shadows.

“Excuse me,” I say, thinking fast. “Is Richard here?”

“Richard?” he growls.

“Is this Henderson Street?”

“No — Byron….”

I smack my forehead with my hand. “Oh, brother — wrong block,” I say. “I’m such a dummy….”

I feel him watching me as I get the dog and walk away.

I walk around the block, so he can’t see where I live, and think about what I have learned so far. Fatso is renting the house from a landlord, who’s breaking the law. That is, he, the landlord, is getting a property-tax break that’s only intended for people who live in their homes. I don’t know what good this information will do Big Bob, but I’ll give it to him in the morning.

Of course, if I really was like Marlowe, I’d visit the landlord tonight — just drop in on his house, wherever that is. I’d tell him he’d better crack down on Fatso — no more firecrackers — if he didn’t want me taking what I know to the law.

But, I’m not Marlowe. I’ve done enough for one night.

I light an imaginary cigarette and blow out an imaginary puff of smoke. Just another day in the life of Benny Jay — private eye….

Big Mike: My Daily Constitution

I may have sounded a little harsh in my Fourth of July post. I went on and on about how little the flag means to me and how, when I was cutting my teeth on political thought back in 1968, the United States was about as admirable as a two-bit loan shark and his muscle.

If you caught the idea that I hate this country, then I pitched the wrong idea.

I can’t deny that this great land was – and still is, although to a lesser extent – racist, sexist, violent, xenophobic, homophobic, materialistic, and suspicious of intellectuals. Not exactly my kind of land.

Then again, it is an amalgam of 300 million souls and, according to the laws of probability, there must be a hell of a lot of five-star assholes within that stewpot. Shoot, occasionally we put one in the White House.

Anyway, there are assholes in every nation on the planet. Pick up a newspaper on any day of the week and you’ll want to run out of the room screaming for all the sins committed in the name of god and country from Iran to the United Kingdom to Myanmar. Nations as a whole are neither definitively bad or good (save for a very few like Kim Jong Il‘s little East Asian snake pit.) That’s because people are both bad and good. If there’s any lesson you want to teach your kids or grandkids, it’s just that. People make up nations, religions and economic systems. As such, those gangs can occasionally elevate the species and then, the next day, screw their brothers and sisters without so much as a thank you.

But I believe the United States is a little different. No kidding. The men who created this nation were slave-holders and ruthless businessmen but their thoughts were strongly influenced by the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. They clung to the benighted past by acknowledging the existence of some kind of god but a scant few of them actually belonged to any church. They took great pains to reserve rights and liberties for white male landowners yet they agreed to proclaim All men are created equal.

The truth is, it might have been too much to expect them to embrace women, Africans and sodomists. Take what you can get, and in the late 1700s if you could get a powerful group of moneyed, armed men to propose that none of them was better than another by dint of birth or decree of god, then hell, you were riding the wave of the future.

The history of this country, as Molly Ivins once opined, is really nothing more than the extension of that egalitarianism to everybody else.

That’s why black men and women, who once were bought and sold like Ford Escorts, still are loyal to America. They’ve realized that the Declaration of Indepedence and the Constitution of the United States of America were written for them, even if the writers didn’t know it at the time.

You want to know how much I love the United States? I keep a hardbound book containing the Declaration, the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution in my bathroom. I read from it almost every day. I’m still blown away by the fact that a pre-Industrial Revolution, pre- high tech, pre-global gang of men could have passed into law the First Amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yow! That was enacted in a year, 1791, when Frenchmen by the hundreds were killed by the national guard for demanding an end to the royal succession, when British mobs rioted because some fellow citizens didn’t hew precisely to the dictates of the Church of England, and when the Pope was still the boss of a fairly muscular empire.

I can choose to be pessimistic and say the First Amendment has resulted in the lunacy of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck or I can celebrate the idea that anyone who despises the president can shout it from his or her rooftop. Today, I choose to be an optimist.

So yeah, my neighbors who marched in Murray Hill‘s Independence Day parade love, love, love their country, I guess. But do any of them have a copy of the US Constitution in their bathroom?

Benny Jay: Nothing to Do

It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon — the Fourth of July — and we’ve got nothing to do. We could see a movie, but my wife‘s got a better idea: Let’s torture the dog.

Technically, it’s all about giving her a bath cause she smells bad. But the dog hates soap and water, so it’s more like: This is gonna hurt me a lot more than it hurts you. Heh, heh, heh….

As my wife hauls the dog up the stairs, the dog gives me a look like: You aren’t gonna let her do this to me, are you?

But I’m preoccupied. I’m watching golf on TV. As a I rule, I hate golf — don’t play it, don’t watch it, don’t even read about it. But this is a celebrity tournament and Michael Jordan is playing. So, technically, it’s not really golf — it’s basketball. It’s like I’m watching this tournament and hoping a Bulls game will break out.

“Hey, look everybody,” I yell to my wife and daughters, who are upstairs. “Michael Jordan is smoking a cigar while he plays golf.”

Jordan tees off. I don’t know much about golf, but I can see right away — he sucks at it.

“He’s smoking that cigar to cover up for being a bad golfer,” I yell out. “He doesn’t want us to think he’s really trying.”

My younger daughter walks through the living room. “Why are you watching golf?” she says.

“Look — Michael Jordan,” I say, as she walks out of the room without even looking. “And Justin Timberlake — he’s playing too….”

I was hoping that by mentioning Justin Timberlake, I might lure her back to the set. It’s always fun to watch these things with someone else. But, no luck.

Jordan misses a put. “I’d like to announce,” I yell out, apropos to absolutely nothing, “that I am better at bowling than Michael Jordan is at golf….”

At that moment, the dog, liberated from the bathtub, comes bounding down the stairs at top speed. She races through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen and back to the living room. She completes this circuit three or four times. I’ve never seen her move so fast. Then she takes a leap from the ground floor to the first landing on the stairs — I swear it’s four feet through the air — and gallops to the second floor.

“My God!” I exclaim.

Back comes the dog, charging down the stairs. Through the living room, dining room, kitchen. She dives into the ground and grinds against the rug. Her hair is everywhere. She’s desperately trying to dry herself off.

“Dang, girl,” I say, “take it easy.”

I pick up a book, lay on the couch and within a few minutes, I’m napping….

Fast forward about twelve hours…..

I walk into the bedroom, ready for bed. My wife is reading a magazine. There’s something funky in the air.

“What’s that smell?” I ask.

“Wet dog,” says my wife, her eyes never leaving the magazine. “The whole world smells like wet dog….”

“Where is the dog?”

“She’s hiding — she’s still traumatized from that bath.”

I find her under the bed, her eyes big and round, as if she still wants to know: How could you have let them do that to me?

“You shouldn’t have given her that bath,” I tell my wife.

“I’ll never do it again,” says my wife. “I don’t care how bad she smells….”

“To tell you the truth, I think she smelt better before you gave her the bath….”

Big Mike: Your Flag

I’ve always felt guilty on the Fourth of July. Take today – my next door neighbors, Kevin and Jan, have a row of about a dozen American flags lined up along the edge of the front lawn. In fact, when our town’s little Independence Day parade marched past this morning, Jan had affixed an American flag-decorated Mylar balloon to her Yorkie‘s collar.

My house is flagless.

Every Fourth of July morning, I’m communing with myself over coffee and a crossword when suddenly, at ten sharp, I’m blasted from my reverie by the shriek of a siren from the Louisville Metro police car leading the parade.

It’s a rather modest affair – a bunch of kids pedal their bikes festooned with red, white and blue streamers behind the squad car, a few grown ups march with them, tugging at the leashes of their dogs who are similarly bedecked, a few joggers carrying tiny flags weave in and out of the procession and a couple of hardy oldsters bring up the rear on their own bikes. That’s it.

Rather than puff up my chest with patriotic fervor, I only mutter, Why the hell are these dumb sons-of-bitches making so much racket this early in the morning?

It’s not that I’m a curmudgeon. Oh, alright, I am. But that’s not the reason I’m so annoyed and then guilt-ridden by the day and the parade. It’s just that I’ve never really been a flag guy.

The underpinnings of my political and world views developed in 1968. The year of Tet. The year the South Carolina Highway Patrol busted up a civil rights protest at a segregated bowling alley by killing three college-aged participants.

1968, the year a little man – no doubt financed by some pillars of society who objected to the cut of Martin Luther King‘s suit – pointed his rifle out the window of a Memphis shithouse and whacked the civil rights leader.

1968, the year Mayor Daley demanded that his cops shoot to kill kids carrying Molotov cocktails. You know, the same cops whose perception was keen enough to determine whether the bill folded neatly beneath a drivers license during a routine traffic stop was a ten or a twenty but who were unable to distinguish between little old ladies in tennis shoes protesting the Vietnam War in a church basement and the wild-eyed Mau-Maus who, those crack preservers of the peace were certain, lurked around every corner just waiting to ravish their virginal daughters.

1968, the year Bobby Kennedy, washed clean of his sins by the trauma of his brother’s assassination, trying to redeem himself and the country by reaching out to the poor, the unfortunate, the Blacks and the Latinos, caught a bullett in the skull in a Los Angeles hotel kitchen.

1968, the year Daley’s cops took off their badges and nameplates and pounded on the crania of protestors, news reporters, innocent bystanders – hell, anyone within range of their nightsticks – during the Democratic Convention.

1968, the year a couple of American runners, medal winners at the Mexico City Olympics, raised their black-gloved fists during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” to bring attention to the racism poisoning their country. They were exiled from the Olympic village and received a flood of hate mail and death threats upon their return home.

I watched, read and heard about all this and concluded that Mayor Daley was a dictator, black guys who caused a ruckus got slapped down or worse, the United States was a bully, and there were too many goddamned guns floating around.

Yet guys like Daley loved the American flag. Black guys found themselves less infatuated by it and I understood why. I also noticed that those who backed the Vietnam War waved their flags around like Bonobos displaying their boners. And, of course, guns and the flag go together like straightjackets and the madhouse.

At the age of 12, I vowed never to stand for the anthem or salute the flag. One day, not too much later, I found myself in the Wrigley Field grandstands. The PA announcer asked everyone to stand and remove their hats for the national anthem. An idealistic, cocksure adolescent, I thought I’d be damned if I was going to take my cap off. I refused to stand as well. As the anthem played, I filled out my scorecard. Next to me, a kid my age nudged his father and pointed me out. The old man snorted and snarled, “Why, he’s just an anti-American scum.”

I’ll never forget those words. I’m nowhere near as idealistic or cocksure now. Yet the flag and the anthem still represent nothing more to me than the utter contempt that grown man had for a dopey teenager.

I feel guilty for being such a potential buzz-kill to all the kids with streamers trailing from their handlebars and to my next door nieghbor Jan with all her red, white and blue. So I won’t go out of my way to tell them how I disdain their flag fixation.

I only wish they’d return the favor by not blasting me out of my reverie with a police siren every Fourth of July morning.