In the Time Before Air Conditioning

Yep, that's me

Yesterday afternoon I was in my office at home when I heard the crack of thunder. A few minutes later I could smell the rain outside. If it weren't for those two things I wouldn't know what the weather was out there. Summertime is officially here and on Memorial Day I put the air conditioners in the windows. So we are all sealed up inside. Yesterday the temperature was in the high eighties and the heat triggered the thunderstorms to move through. It all made me think about how it was when I was a kid. In the heat of summer, when the temperatures would climb up and up, we had no air conditioning. Dad wouldn't pop for air until the year I turned seventeen. I remember heat waves with the temps in the nineties, nearing one hundred without a wisp of a breeze. In our first house on Ravinia Drive, we kids slept on the second floor, the heat rising up the staircase turning our bedrooms into little ovens. In the only two windows up there, Dad put a couple of fans. Fans that didn't blow cool night air into the rooms, but sucked the hot air out. Actually sucking all the hot air from downstairs, through our rooms. During the daytime hours, on those hottest of days, Mom would close all the windows and pull the shades to trap whatever coolness was in the house. She would then send us down into the basement to play. It was a bit cooler down there, but dank. When we got bored with the basement, we would venture up to the Walgreens at the end of our street. It was two blocks of walking in the sun, on the hot, bubbling macadam, to get a popsicle. I still remember the smell of the ice cream case at the Walgreens. Because by the time we got to the store we would be fried, and I would stick my head all the way into that freezer. It was a nice aroma of chocolate, sweetness, and a milky coolness. In the 1950s nobody had air conditioning except for the stores uptown. On Sunday's we would sit in Saint George Church, roasting while the giant fans near the altar would roar like a DC3 ready to take off. They pretty much only moved hot air around, cooling nobody. My dad would always attend Father O'Connell's mass, because Dad told us that Father O'Connell said Mass faster than any of the other priests. It was still not fast enough.

So now I'm a spoiled adult who cannot live without the air conditioning. Seriously, I can't understand how I ever lived to the ripe old age of seventeen without it.

Northside 777

I'm kind of nerdy. Certain things interest me that make no sense. For one thing, I like maps. I have a lot of old gas station highway maps, and a lot of old atlases going back to the late 1800s. I like comparing the maps of today to the old ones, road for road, street for street. Maybe that's why I never get lost. Mark gets lost, he got lost in every city we have ever visited. As an offshoot of knowing how to read a map, I have always wanted to know where the movie I am watching was filmed. I used to try to drive past the movie locations, here in Chicago and when I lived in other cities. Now I use Google Maps. I take the little yellow man down in the corner and drop him in front of places I think I saw in a movie. Such as this scene in Washington Heights, New York City.

 

1949 ----------------------------------------2019

Last Saturday I was watching a movie called 'Northside 777' on television. I've known that the movie existed for years, but I had never sat down and watched it. It was released in 1948 and it turns out that it was the first feature length movie ever filmed on location in Chicago. Chicago in 1948 looked a lot different than it does today, but there was one scene that caught my eye. Jimmy Stewart is walking down an old Chicago street and behind him is a church. Something about that church looked so familiar, so I Googled Chicago Catholic church photos. Seventeen rows down on that Google page, there it was. Holy Trinity Church. But the thing is, I had never seen that church up close before. What I had seen, what I had recognized, were the two towers. It turns out that I have driven past that church thousands of times on the Kennedy Expressway. Most of the neighborhood that stretched out before the church in that film is now under tons of concrete and dirt, being pounded by semi trucks and cars for the last sixty years. 

Doctor, Doctor

Some months ago (Time is irrelevant these days) I took Mark to his pulmonologist. Mark was not feeling very good and after being escorted into the exam room, he laid down on the examination table while we waited for the doctor. When the doctor walked in he took one look at Mark, then told me to take him to the ER. Which I did. After a couple of hours at the hospital in one of those ER rooms, I told Mark that I was going to go home and take the dogs out, feed them, and then come back. I then drove home and as I walked into the kitchen from the garage, my phone rang. 
"Come back to the hospital. They told me to go home." 
"What? You're feeling better?" 
"No. A doctor came in and looked at me, then told me to go home." 
I asked a few more questions, but nothing Mark told me satisfied why he was being released.

I'm not impressed with the quality of medical care here in Chicago. Thirty two years ago Chicago doctors and nurses saved my life. They cured me of cancer. Something has happened since then. I think it has to do with being older, beyond the age range that doctors think it is worth their while to do anything for you. Mark thinks that he is getting 'Black' care and that I get 'White' care. He may be right, but I also think health care in Chicago is also broken down into 'Young' care and 'Old' care. I fit into that old category. I went to the doctor about my aching back and after x-rays and MRI, was told that I'm old and shit happens. Nothing could be done. I went to a podiatrist for my foot. I had a neuroma that had been operated on about ten years ago, and the damn thing came back. A neuroma is some kind of nerve nodule in your foot that feels like you're always stepping on a stone. Anyway, the doctor didn't do anything for me other than sell me some expensive insoles. When I returned and pleaded with him to do something more than that, he suggested a shot of cortisone in my foot. I took him up on that. It didn't turn out well for either of us. Getting a needle, a long large needle, stuck deep into your foot is very painful. So painful that I had an involuntary, reflex reaction. My leg shot up and I kicked the doctor in the balls. I felt bad for the doctor, but then I changed my mind when that cortisone shot wore off a month later. When I returned to see him, he looked at my foot. Had me walk around for a little bit. Then he sold me more expensive insoles for my shoes. Now I know why people do heroin. Cheaper than a doctor and it probably works.

We Can Do It !!

 (From eleven years ago. Remember how good it felt?)

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

 

Dead Voters and My Breakfast

In November 1960 I was ten years old, and my friend Jimmy and I were asked by a neighbor if we wanted to help campaign for John Kennedy. Of course we did. Kennedy and I were members of the same club, the Catholic Church. So like good little soldiers we went around with red and white flyers under our arms, knocking on doors in our mostly Republican town. We had a few doors slammed in our faces. I remember going home after passing out those flyers, to see my newborn baby sister Lisa. Mom and Dad had just brought her home from the hospital, and I showed up with red ink staining my hands from the flyers. A few months later, for the first time in my life, I watched the inauguration of a president. Hooray, our guy won, albeit with the help of a few dead folks voting from the grave in Chicago.

Mark claims that he wasn't for Barack Obama at first, that he was a John Edwards fan. Right up until yesterday he continued to be a hard ass, constantly pointing out the flaws in Obama. The truth is that the election of Barack Obama has meant a lot to Mark. The reason I know this is because when Mark is happy, he cooks. This morning I heard the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen, and the unmistakable smell of food. Mark never cooks breakfast, but this morning he couldn't contain himself, and as a result I was served one of the best omelet's I have ever eaten.

Up until today, I have never seen an inauguration as anticipated as this one. The only thing I can compare it to was the inauguration of Kennedy, and Kennedy's pales by comparison. I hope Obama does a good job. (From Alan in the year 2020, he did) But I am not holding my breath. I'm not going to wait for Mark to make me breakfast all the time. Not even President Obama can make him that happy.

 

Posted by Alan at 5:59 AM

Virgin Crowning

I was looking out at the lilac bush yesterday and I thought of my mom. It's her favorite flower and I try to bring her a bunch each year. There is only about a two week window when they bloom, and then they're gone. Unfortunately this year it will be impossible. Mom is locked down in her apartment and we aren't allowed to visit. I also noticed that my tulips were starting to droop. They're near the end of their season just as the lilacs come into their own. The drooping tulips reminded me of a particular event in my childhood, the Saint George School and Church May Procession. The year I wasn't kicked out of it. Seriously, in all the years I went to Saint George School, I was only allowed to participate in one of those events. Each year the nuns would organize the annual crowning of the Virgin Mary in our church. This would involve most of the Saint George School children and we would practice for weeks out in the church parking lot. The nuns would draw an outline of the inside of the church on the pavement with chalk, and we'd practice marching in perfect alignment into the church and down the aisle while singing a song in Latin. It was very much like a military parade with seven year olds. I hated it. Don't get me wrong, I loved getting out of class in the morning for a couple of weeks, but I didn't like the regimentation. So I would act up. This would invariably get me kicked out before the big day, but one year I made it all the way to the actual day of the procession. I informed my mom that I would need a fresh flower to hold between my praying hands while I walked in fake piety into the church. So Mom went out to her garden and got me a big old tulip. Apparently tulips are not good as cut flowers. By the time I got to my place in line for the procession, my tulip was wilted and drooping. I was very embarrassed as I marched up into the church with my flaccid tulip. I wouldn't have another failure like that for many years after that evening.

Trouble

Chopped

Anybody who has eaten Mark's cooking can attest that he's a great cook. Up until a couple of years ago Mark did all the cooking at our house. Slowly as his health problems made it more difficult, I have taken over the serving of meals. Anybody who knows me, knows that I hate to cook. But I have to feed Mark and myself, so I've learned a few things. I have learned to make food that isn't too disgusting to Mark. Personally, I will eat most anything put in front of me. The generic frozen pizza from Jewel Food Stores is quite good and the frozen Mandarin chicken from Trader Joe's hits the spot. Toss a piece of meat on a grill and as long as the outer bits are charred, I'll eat it. Not Mark. He is a very picky eater. So picky that I've started calling him 'Lila'. He pretty much takes the food I give him, rearranges it on his plate, and says he's done. Later he'll order up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because he's hungry. So anyway, last night I made chicken thighs in a mushroom sauce for dinner. I did not pull it out of the freezer in a box, I made it all from scratch. Fresh chicken, real mushrooms, and I even peeled and minced some garlic cloves. I was very proud of myself as I placed Mark's dinner in front of him.

"What's this?"

"Chicken thighs in a mushroom sauce."

"You know I don't like chicken thighs."

Mark then proceeded to poke around at the food and check to make sure the chicken wasn't raw. It wasn't. I thought I had made a pretty decent dinner. The chicken tasted delicious to me. I had made one mistake in the preparation, forgetting to add the thyme and oregano. So I threw it in at the last minute and mixed it into the sauce.

"It has a very strong flavor...."

"Really? I like it. Don't you like it?"

Mark moved the food around on his plate a little, put another small bite into his mouth. I felt like I was on one of those stupid cooking contest shows, waiting to be 'Chopped' from the competition.

"You added the thyme and oregano at the wrong time."

Well sonofabitch, how did he know that? Mark was not in the kitchen, not once, while I made dinner. Yet he knew exactly what my mistake was. Yes, I was insulted. Yes, I cursed him and got a bit pissed off. And yes, I learned something. Mark knows his shit.