Big Mike: A Song For Daddy-o

Every time Benny Jay writes a post about his Old Man it gets me to thinking, and that can be a dangerous thing. I’d have loved it if someone like Old Man Jay were my father — he’s a Russian scholar and he can sing an operatic solo at the drop of a hat.

I had a dicey relationship with my father. He was one of those Great Depression/World War II kids whose emotions were so fouled up by the events spinning around them that it’s a wonder any of them kept their sanity.

Daddy-o dropped out of high school after only a couple of weeks. Fourteen-year-old Polish boys from the Belmont-Cragin neighborhood on the Northwest Side weren’t expected to grow up to become scholars. They were, in fact, considered already grown up.

So Daddy-o’s parents in the early fall of 1932 told him to go out, get a job and start paying for his own freight. Daddy-o asked his brother in law, my Uncle Louie, for a job at his small cartage outfit. He started out riding on the back of the truck, tossing boxes of produce and dry goods to grocers along the route. A few months later, he told Uncle Louie that he’d love to drive the truck. Uncle Louie asked him how old he was — even though he knew — and Daddy-o lied, saying he was 18. Fine, Louie said, starting tomorrow you drive.

Daddy-o grinded gears for a few weeks before he got the hang of it, then spent the next few years wheeling around the city. One night, according to family lore,  Aunt Vera busted Uncle Louie mercilessly for eating the last pear before they went to bed. Aunt Vera was a tough Polish chick. “You son of a bitch,” she snarled at my Sicilian uncle. “I’d piss on your grave if I had half the chance!” Sometime in the middle of the night, Aunt Vera woke up with a start, alarmed by what she wasn’t hearing. Uncle Louie had stopped breathing and was already cold. She wore black for the rest of her life.

Daddy-o had to take a job as a driver with Old Man Maxwell who manufactured boxes on the South Side. That’s what Daddy-o always called his boss — Old Man Maxwell. Sometimes I thought Daddy-o wished Old Man Maxwell had actually been his old man.

Daddy-o’s father, whom we called Dziadzia (Polish for gramps), was a real work of art. He spent his days fixing streetcars and his nights chasing neighborhood women while his wife (we called her Busia — grandma) stayed home and ground horseradish. One late afternoon, Daddy-o sneaked into the garage while his pop was working and took the car for a spin. Unfortunately, Dziadzia came home early and discovered his car missing. He promptly dashed over to the hardware store, bought a new lock and installed it in the garage door. When Daddy-o came back from his adventure, he couldn’t fit his key into the the lock. Starting to sweat, he glanced over toward the gangway entrance where Dziadzia stood, leaning against the wall, arms folded, a smirk on his face. “What’s wrong, Jozef? You no got key?”

One Saturday afternoon when he was 17, Daddy-o walked over to Hansen Park and watched a softball game between two girls’ teams. He spied a 14-year-old Sicilian girl with frizzy hair playing short center field. She caught popups in her belly, kicking her right leg up like a Rockette to help nestle the ball. Everybody laughed when she made a catch that way. Daddy-o thought to himself, “I’m gonna marry that little gal one day.”

Two years later, Daddy-o and my future mother eloped in Indiana.

By the time I came around, Daddy-o was fairly fed up with life. He’d never made much money — in fact, when he retired in 1980, his final year’s salary was $18,000. Ma had to work at a series of jobs to help pay the mortgage, first on an electric parts assembly line, then in a sandpaper factory, later for a dimestore and finally for Sears. Neither my mother’s sister nor her sisters-in-law had to work. Daddy-o was embarrassed by that.

He’d also had a scrape with the law when he was about 30. I may or may not write about it one day; I won’t today because it’s too embarrassing. My mother’s brothers had to bail him out and then pay off the judge to keep him out of state prison. The incident revealed to them something about him that no one would ever want anyone know.

Oddly, Daddy-o subsequently found it impossible to forgive others for transgressions, real or imagined. For instance, when my sister Frannie took up with a black man in 1970, Daddy-o almost cracked up. He called her every name on the book. They fought viciously for the next quarter of a century. Once, he even implied that she was street hooker. He and I nearly came to blows over that one.

Daddy-o spent the last 25 years of his life certain all the forces on the world were aligned against him. He couldn’t stand politicians, actors, singers, priests, car salesmen, college professors, newspaper reporters, rich people, poor people, anyone, in fact, who wasn’t part of his family. Not that we held an exalted place in his estimation.

One day he demanded we all convene at his house. He had an announcement to make. We gathered around the kitchen table. He sat down and began: “I have something to say.” He paused for effect, looking around the table. “The Glabs,” he continued, “are shit!”

By the 90s, Daddy-o had become homebound. His physical health had deteriorated in concert with his outlook, sort of a variation the Dorian Gray story. When he died in March, 1995, I cried deeply but I was also relieved. Not so much for myself but for him.

To this day I wish that just once Daddy-o’s heart had been light enough so he could sing, like Benny Jay’s Old Man. It wouldn’t have had to be an operatic solo. Maybe just an old ditty.

Benny Jay: My Old Man

I go to lunch with my old man.

He takes me to The Berghoff, the old German restaurant at 17 W. Adams Street in the Loop.

It’s always been one of his favorite places to eat. He used to take the train downtown all the time. Shop in the little stores under the el on Wabash. Buy himself some socks. Eat at The Berghoff. Check out the Art Institute. Buy a bunch of post cards in the gift shop. Take the train home in the late afternoon. A great way to spend a day….

But it’s harder for him to come downtown. The long walk up and down the subway stairs is tough on the knees. We’re all getting older — he’s not alone.

He orders his favorite sandwich: Corned beef on rye. Keeps telling the waitress he shouldn’t. Too salty. Got to watch that salt. Don’t tell me my wife….

That’s a good one. Makes me laugh. First of all, the waitress is a stranger – she doesn’t know his wife. Second of all, if you know my mother, you’ll know her first question when he gets home will be the same question she asks after any meal: What did you eat?

He only eats half the sandwich. Gives the other half to me. Bring it home, he says. Give it to your daughters. I know how much they love corned beef.

Afterward we have a cup coffee and split some chocolate mousse. Man, it’s good — too rich to be true.  We only eat half of it. He tells me to take that home as well.

We started talking about this and that and wind up talking about an heart-valve operation someone very close to us will be having. He tells me all about the heart and how it works. Never knew he knew so much about the heart. But that’s my old man — the stuff he knows will amaze you. The key, I learned long ago, is retention. Tell him something once and he knows it for life.  I’ve never been so good at retention. But that’s okay, cause I’m good at other things….

We sit and talk for a couple of hours. The waitress fills our coffee cups two or three times.  Other diners leave — we’re just about the only ones left.

Next thing you know it’s after three. Better get going. If we don’t leave now, we’ll get caught in rush-hour traffic and we won’t get a seat on the train.

We bundle up in our coats and say good bye at the front door.  Gotta do this more often. Never did it enough. Let’s hope we get the chance to do it again….

He heads east and I head west.

At some point I look back and I see him walking away. He’s moving slow. Not like he used to.  He used to walk a lot faster back in the day.

If you saw him walking east on Adams, you’d think it’s just some old guy walking with a cane.

You wouldn’t know that it’s my old man….

Two Headed Boy: I Officially Have 12 Fingers

Two of my fingers are split down the middle, leaving gaping gouges that simulate the appearance of two digits in one.

I wish I could say my strange wounds came from a knife fight or something with a slight whiff of bad ass. Instead, I’m the victim of Merino-wool sweaters, brightly colored Cardigans and jackets relentlessly tattooed with sequins.

This is the life of a retail rookie in the winter.

I used to be a college student, and then I graduated last May. I used to play bass in a rock band, and then our drummer took off to Prague – the bastard.

So now I work in a clothing store in a mall somewhere west of Chicago. I’m the guy who takes the unwanted clothes from doomed fitting room sessions back to their rightful homes on racks and shelves.

In order to protect my anonymity – and not offend my boss — the clothing store will remain nameless. Better yet, I’ll call it The Clothing Store. Well, it worked for The Container Store.

The name doesn’t really matter – we could be talking about any store, Anywhere, USA. Okay, not anywhere. Somewhere cold. I mean, really cold, so the store is skin-cracking dry and no matter how much moisturizer I apply to my hands – handling garments is agony.

If palm readers were to look at my hands, they would tell me I perished from dysentery in 1855.

The good news is that the holidays have finally ended and with it went the store’s seasonal soundtrack. I can deal with your typical faceless, mid-90s, pseudo-club-funk-disco-elevator music perpetually playing in the background. But I can’t take the toothless R&B or rap – with holiday-themed lyrics slathered on top – playing over and over again.

I hate to blame Run-D.M.C, but their certifiably awesome 1987 track, Christmas in Hollis, started the snowball rolling. For two months, I heard it every day.

This song survives because they turned the holiday cliches upside down. Santa comes to Queens to deliver fat gold chains and new Adidas, while mom’s in the kitchen cooking chicken and collard greens.

Other tracks aren’t as creative. The songs piping into the fitting room are too predictable – it’s pain/paint by numbers, folks.

“Me” rhymes with “tree” – just so easily. I’ve heard that rhyme in at least three different songs.

Destiny Child’s 8 Days of Christmas was playing at least once every half hour on the store’s perpetual loop. Whenever I heard Beyonce mention that CD she got for Christmas, I feel like testing the Frisbee capabilities of the CD in the store stereo.

At least we’re done with all that. We’re back to the standard issue, disco-funk shipped straight out of the C&C Music Factory.

Music can keep you sane and drive you insane at the same time. Sometimes during  slow times at work I picture Joe Strummer fighting Kenny G inside my head for my immortal soul — sparks emanating every time the Telecaster and Soprano Sax strike each other.

Jimi Hendrix once said:  “That’s what it’s all about – filling up the chest cavities and empty kneecaps and elbows.” Good music can be the salve for the soul, but awful music isn’t always its poison.

I’ll be touching on it all here at The Third City — the anomalies and cacophonies, low lights and highlights, that are swimming in the bizarre pool of music — past and present.

If you need me, I’ll be in the fitting room.

by Two-Headed Boy

Randolph Street: Steam Roads

These were taken last July at the Train Festival 2009 in Owosso, Michigan.  They had eight working steam engines.  Most of these are from a day trip behind the Nickle Plate 765 up to Alma and back.  More steam than you could shake a stick at…

All photos © Jon Randolph 2009

These were taken last summer at

Big Mike: God’s Work Pays Handsomely

There’s a little space on Facebook that lets you show the world what your political affiliation is. Most people who actually take the trouble to fill it in put Independent. It’s a catch-all term meaning, Politics is way too complicated. I’d have to take the time to figure everything out but I won’t because I really just wanna watch Dancing with the Stars.

On my Facebook page, I’ve written the following: Overthrow Goldman Sachs.

That’s my political philosophy right now. You might think it’s glib or a throw-away line. It isn’t. Substitute another gargantuan, evil, bloated, greed-driven plutocracy from any other era and the philosophy still holds. President Eisenhower, for instance, named the boss of General Motors, the nation’s largest corporation at the time, to be his Secretary of Defense in 1953. In his confirmation hearings good old Charlie Wilson told senators who’d wondered if he might favor GM when looking to grant military contracts that he’d always believed “… what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa.”

Had there been a Facebook in 1953 (and had I been alive) I would have written Overthrow GM.

Another example. Thomas Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park and the sainted figure from elementary school history class, actually ran a business empire out of his lab. He drove his paid army of inventors mercilessly, refusing to share profits and glory with those who developed machines for which he still enjoys the credit. He cheated Nikola Tesla out of a huge payout for improving Edison’s electricity generation plants. He OK’d the fatal electrocution of animals and even, in one case, a man to demonstrate the supposed superiority of his DC transmission system over AC. The author Gus Russo suggests that Edison’s employment of goons and arsonists to intimidate motion picture competitors in the East led to the migration of studio heads to California where they set up shops around Hollywood.

Had there been a Facebook in 1920 (and had I been alive) I’d have written Overthrow Edison.

I’d have written the same for JP Morgan, John D. Rockefeller and a host of other uber-wealthy thieves and bullies. I’m not anti-success. I want businesses to succeed. I’m all for people (especially me) making money. But, honestly, how much money do any of us need? Once you get past your first billion dollars, any more is just and annoyance and extra work for your accountants.

If I suddenly found myself hired for a job that paid a million dollars a year, I’d work for six months and then quit. I could do very well on a half million-dollar nest egg. Of course, that’s never going to happen. The people who make that kind of dough are made of different DNA than I am. I may be genetically related to the chimpanzee; they’re closer to the hyena.

Anyway, our friends at Goldman Sachs just released their most recent quarterly report. The company made $5 billion in the last quarter of 2009, the best showing in its history. This is the gang, by the way, that you and I bailed out with our tax dollars because its employees have been pissing investment money around on snake oil schemes since the dawn of the Age of Reagan. Perhaps as much as any other entity in this holy land, Goldman Sachs was responsible for the economic meltdown. Rather than throw its executives in jail, Presidents Bush and Obama chose to toss a few billion dollars its way to get it through its woes. I’ve yet to receive a personal word of thanks from chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

This is the guy, by the way, who last year said he was doing “god’s work.” Not even Charlie Wilson or JP Morgan was craven enough to say that.

Benny Jay: Thunder Thighs

In my unrelenting ambition to become the world’s richest man by writing a blog – that’s the plan, anyway — I join Facebook.

My good friend, Monroe, who knows everything about blogging, made me do it. He gave me this whole lecture about the new media train leaving the station. He said unless I want to spend the rest of my life on the sidelines watching it go by I had to jump aboard right now. And even then I’d only be on the caboose….

My older daughter helps me set up the account. We stay up late on the night before she goes back to college. Hooks me up with friends – mostly people I never even heard of – and gets  me to list my favorite music, books and movies.

Then she says I have to put up some pictures.

“You’re kidding,” I say.

“No….”

“Why?”

“Cause, dad, people need to see your face. That’s why they call it Facebook….”

So we post some photos of a recent family vacation.

“Oh, you gotta pick this one,” says my daughter.

It shows my wife and me standing on a lovely beach in northern Michigan. It’s got the tawny-colored sand, gorgeous blue sky, grassy-green dunes and sparkling sun-drenched waves of the lake.

“It just makes you want to be there,” she says.

“Yeah — mom’s gonna love it….”

Fast-forward eight hours. My daughter and her friends have taken off for college and I’m at the computer fiddling around with – what else – Facebook.

“You gotta see my Facebook thing,” I tell my wife.

“Does it have pictures?” she asks.

“Hell, yeah it has pictures,” I say, happy that I finally found someone who knows less about Facebook than I do. “You have to have pictures. Hence the name, Facebook – duh.”

I show her my pictures: The kids on the porch, the dog under the bed, me running through the woods, the two of us, arm in arm, on the beach….

“Ahhh!” she shrieks.

“What?”

“What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything – and I won’t do it again….”

“Take it down…

“Take what down?”

“The picture….”

“What picture?”

“What do you mean, `what picture?’ That picture!”

I look at the picture. I see the sun, the sky, the sand, the dunes, the water. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m wearing a bathing suit.”

“Well, yeah — you’re on a beach….”

“My thighs are showing,” she says.

I look again. I don’t know what to say.

“You’re not flashing my thighs to millions of people on the Internet….”

“Millions of people? I only got like ten Facebook friends….”

“Take down that picture of my thighs….”

“Okay — your thighs are just a very small part of the total picture….”

“They’re thunder thighs….”

“Thunder thighs – what the fu?”

“Take them down now!”

“Okay, okay.” I’m starting to panic cause — I don’t know how to take a picture down.

“They’re still up,” she says.

“Hold on – I’m not sure how to do it….”

“Oh, you don’t know how to take it down, but you know how to put it up….”

“Hannah did that….”

“Call Hannah….”

“I tried — she’s not picking up….”

“Call Monroe!”

“I can’t call Monroe — it’s Sunday morning….”

“Hurry up!”

She’s hovering over my head, her breath on my neck. I scan the screen looking for options. Miraculously, I see a delete-picture prompt.

“There – all gone,” I say. “Happy?”

“I can’t believe you put that up there….”

“How `bout a little credit for figuring out how to take it down….”

“Obviously, you know nothing about women….”

Well, isn’t that the understatement of the century?

“For the record,” I say. “I like that picture….”

“Yeah, well, don’t put up any more pictures until you run them by me….”

Can you believe the stuff I have to put up with?  I used to feel sorry for those Goggle guys who have to deal with China’s Internet censors. But compared to my wife, the censors in China are a piece of cake….

Big Mike: Bloomington’s Been A Gas So Far

The furnace went kaput at The Book Case the other day. I work three days a week at the place, peddling Penguin Classics and McSweeney’s volumes. About three weeks ago, I’d noticed the odor of gas in the back room and mentioned it to my co-workers who blithely dismissed my concern. “Ah, it’s nothin’,” said Tanya, the roller derby queen. “Toughen up, will ya?” Rachel, the trained librarian, added, “It always smells like that back there. It’s an old furnace. They all smell like that.” Then she pulled a tome off the shelf and showed me pictures of historic Indiana potbelly stoves.

Meanwhile, I couldn’t get a full night’s sleep for the bone-crushing headaches I started experiencing. I became lethargic and began to feel nauseated much of the time, especially after my shifts at the store. Then one day Tom, the author and songwriter who rents studio space upstairs, came down and complained that he smelled gas and it was making him sick.

“Aha!” I nearly shouted. “I knew it!” I turned to Constance, the owner of the shop, and said, “Just call the gas company. They’ll come out immediately and check it.”

Constance: “Aw, I don’t know. I don’t smell anything.”

Me: “They come out for free.”

Constance: “Oh, okay.”

With that, she picked up the phone and called the gas company. The service guy arrived about an hour later, his electronic sensor blaring an alarm before he even opened the front door. He went down to the furnace room and ran back up, panting. “Everybody out!” he said. “Throw the doors and windows open. Out, out out!”

It turned out the place had a carbon monoxide level ten times higher than that at which a building has to be evacuated. He called the fire department to bring gas ejectors and industrial fans. Within minutes, half the fire trucks and ambulances in Bloomington screamed up in front of the store. They got the building ventilated and the gas guy shut off the line into the place.

I eavesdropped on their conversation after order was restored.

The Gas Guy: “The minute I walked in, my tongue went numb and I started feeling a tingling in my fingertips.”

A Firefighter: “Yeah, when we got downstairs there was a plume of flames about six feet in diameter around the furnace.”

I interrupted. “So you mean we’re pretty much lucky to be alive?”

The ambulance guy nodded and pulled out an incident report. “Do you have any symptoms?” he asked. “Any headaches? Nausea? Lethargy? ‘Cause if you do, we have to bring you to the emergency room.”

I glanced at Constance who had a pleading look on her face, then at Tanya, who narrowed her eyes at me. “Naw,” I lied, “I’m fine.” Constance exhaled and Tanya winked at me in approval.

The whole incident reminds me of the first few days The Loved One and I spent in our new Bloomington home. On the day of our closing, we did our final walk-through on a sunny Thursday. We were seeing the place empty for the first time. Our real estate agent was gabbing on his cell phone (real estate people never seem to be present with you in the moment — they’re always living in some future tense, setting up another appointment, trying to lasso another client.) I opened the garage door and, whoom, it hit me. Gas.

No, not the kind for which I’m justifiably famous. I mean the kind that heats the house.

The home’s furnace is located in the garage and the odor seemed to emanate precisely from the aging heating plant. The Loved One and I both grabbed the real estate man’s left arm and, placing our four feet firmly against his ample tummy for leverage, successfully pried his cell phone away from his ear.

The Loved One: “Tell us if you smell anything odd.”

The Real Estate Man: “Oh hi, I didn’t know anyone was here. My name’s Artie. Would you like to buy a house?”

Me: “Artie, snap out of it. It’s us, Mr. and Mrs. Big. Remember?”

The Real Estate Man: “Oh, right. Sorry. You know how it is in this business.”

Me: “Yeah, yeah. Look, Artie, go out in the garage and tell us if you smell anything.”

The Real Estate Man went out to the garage and started sniffing around like a stray dog outside a Burger King. He burst back in the house huffing angrily. Suddenly, the man who seconds before had to be reminded we were in the room with him now was prepared to go to war for us.

The Real Estate Man: “There’s a gas leak! This is unacceptable! I can’t believe this can be happening! I’m gonna do something about this right now!”

Naturally, he pressed his cell phone to his ear and, upon reaching the real estate person for our sellers, began to holler for justice. After a good couple of minutes of expressing his righteous indignation, The Real Estate Man listened and then said goodbye. He flipped his cell closed and told us we would be able to straighten everything out with the sellers at the closing.

The Loved One, who’s the real hardball negotiator of this partnership, shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe we shouldn’t even go through with it. Why don’t we just have the seller fix the problem first and then we’ll close?”

Good old Artie clutched at his chest with his right hand and extended his left arm like Fred Sanford suffering the terminal Big One. He clearly was imagining his percentage check fluttering away. He quickly regained his composure.

“Now, now,” Artie said, talking fast. “Let’s be calm.  There’s no need to do anything rash. Their agent says everything can be worked out.”

The Loved One, still skeptical, agreed to go through with the closing. Upon our arrival at the real estate office, we informed the sellers — let’s call them Mr. and Mrs. Slip — of the gas odor.

Mr. Slip: “Gas odor? Honey, did you ever smell any gas in the house?”

Mrs. Slip: “Gas? What gas.”

The couple looked as aghast as if I’d suggested we’d found crystal meth-making apparatus in the attic.

Their real estate agent shook her head. “I never smelled any gas when I was in the house. This is the first I hear of it.”

Me: “Wait a minute! I thought Artie just called you about it!”

We both turned to Artie who, of course, held his hand up, signalling us to hold on as he whispered into his cell phone. The Loved One’s brow furrowed. “Well, that’s fine with me. We can do this whole thing another day,” she said to Mr. and Mrs. Slip. “You let us know if and when you want to fix this.” She began gathering her belongings together as if to leave.

I’ve never seen three middle-aged people leap into action so quickly. Mr. and Mrs Slip and their real agent agent nearly pushed The Loved One back into her chair. They hovered around her like ICU nurses. “Can I get you a cup of tea?” the real estate agent asked. Artie even flipped his cell phone closed.

We eventually got the Slips to sign a document that they’d pay for any furnace repairs. Satisfied, The Loved One nodded to me and we proceeded with the closing.

I drove The Loved One back to work and then called the gas company. The service guy arrived an hour later, his electronic sensor blaring an alarm as soon as he walked in the door. He shut the gas line off and informed us we’d have to get our furnace fixed or replaced before it could be turned back on. Bloomington, at the time, was experienced unseasonably cool weather. Temps at night dipped into the lower 40s. It took a good six days for us to get the heating plant back in service. We slept under a lot of blankets (as well as in our socks) in the meantime.

I hardly know where to begin to describe the response Mr. Slip sent us after we’d forwarded him the repair bill. He wrote of the anguished nights he’d spent contemplating fairness and responsibility and the spirit as well as the letter of the law. He said he’d barely gotten a moment’s sleep. I started feeling sorry for him. That is, until his check covering only the original service call fell out of the envelope. After all his mulling and meditation, he’d concluded that he wasn’t on the hook for such luxuries as parts and labor, which amounted to hundreds of dollars more.

The Loved One was cranky about the whole deal for the next couple of months.

How I live and learn. I never knew furnaces could cause so much trouble.