1970s Bar Life

Me Bartending at Dandy's

I loved the 1970s. I was in my twenties, I was healthy, strong, and not fat. I loved the gay bars of the 1970s and I loved living in Chicago before it became so pretentious. One of the gay bar owners back then was Rudy Cistaro. I met Rudy in 1975. He kind of bounced from business to business. When I met him he had a nice little restaurant at Clark and Oakdale Streets. Then he sold that and opened another one downtown, across from the leather bar. He named his new restaurant "Poofy's". Rudy said that was British for faggot's. He had bars before the restaurants and when he got tired of Poofy's, he went back into the bar business and opened "Digger's" bar. Kind of a play on words because Rudy's main occupation was as an undertaker. It turned out that the bar business really helped the undertaker business. Anyway, yesterday I went out to the suburbs to visit with Rudy. He's now ninety two years old and still kicking. Seriously, I couldn't keep up with him. Just like the old days. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, I would hang out with Rudy till all hours of the night. He owned another bar besides Diggers. It was called Dandy's, and when Rudy got tired of hanging around his own bars we would all pile into his giant, black undertakers car, and zoom downtown to the gay bars there. (They're all gone now.) We would power drink our way through the bars and then at two in the morning, when most of them closed, we would go back to Diggers, which had a late license. Ah, drinking till five in the morning, watching the drunks pass out, witnessing fist fights and stabbings. Good times back then.

Me, Rudy, and Chuck, out to lunch.

'Tis the Season

I got this email from Home Depot yesterday. Even though I changed my 'store' to the one in Evanston, Illinois, they still think I live in Florida. Just seeing this brought back all the stomach churning apprehension that I felt every summer for twenty seven years. For six months out of the year I had to live with the possibility that a storm could form out in the Atlantic and find its way to Fort Lauderdale. In all those years I had to endure at least five hurricanes and a few tropical storms. The worst being Hurricane Wilma. That storm left us two weeks without electricity or phone service, and five days without water. And of course each time we got hit with a storm, I had to clean up downed trees, mangled fences, and retrieve the neighbor's shed from the bottom of our swimming pool. With Hurricane Wilma I was seriously scared. The wind howled, the rains came down sideways, and I went through three pair of underpants.

Now I live in Chicago. Sure there are tornadoes in the Midwest, but they rarely if ever hit within the city limits. I think the heat from the buildings or the coolness of Lake Michigan break them up. And yes, we have snow and cold. But the snow and cold never make our electric go out, never make the water go away. When it snows I just sit in my big fluffy chair and watch some television, and at some point go out and run the snow blower up and down the sidewalk. Snow cleanup takes ten minutes from start to finish. Seriously, I do not miss Florida at all.

Wax On, Wax Off

This was our Blockbuster at one time.

I see where two of the last three Blockbuster video stores have shut down. I remember when Blockbuster came to town and put all the little mom and pop video stores out of business. I was saddened by that. Mom and pop had all the movies I wanted to see, and they had a very nice porn selection in the back room. Mom and pop knew their porn. Once a week I would take home a major release Hollywood movie, and a porn selection. Then I would set aside a couple of hours to watch the movie, and later, five minutes for the porn. Sometimes I'd have four minutes left over.

Now I have Netflix. Once a week Netflix sends us a Blu-Ray disc in the mail. Never do they send porn and rarely do they send the movie that we actually want. We also have the streaming version of Netflix, but I have a few problems with that. First of all, I can never find the movie I want on the streaming version. I'm sure there is a search area for finding them, but I cannot find it. When I sign on to Netflix I am immediately presented with a bunch of things they think I would want to watch. They are wrong, I do not want to watch what they want me to watch. So I start going down the list. Comedies, dramas, something called 'Watch it Again', but never what I am looking for. I usually keep scanning down and clicking on this and that to see if I'll like it, and before I know it a half an hour has passed. Even if I find something I like, it takes five or more minutes to load. I hate watching that little spinning circle with the number counting up in the middle of it.

I kind of miss Blockbuster. Strolling through the store and picking up the VHS boxes, looking for one that still has an available video behind it. All that is gone now and seems that the only option we have is Netflix or the Middle Eastern video store on Peterson that rents out "Romance" movies. I've never gone in there, but I like to think that romance movies are Middle Eastern porn. It's good just to know that it is there if I need it.

The Babysitter

Scanning photos from my parent's albums has triggered a number of memories. Most recently I saw a photo of myself and some of my sisters and their friends, and I was reminded of my babysitting career. Yes, at one time people trusted me to take care of their children while they went out to have a good time. These were the years between when I was fourteen and sixteen years old. I charged one dollar per hour to sit at your house and make sure the kids went to bed and stayed there. It often worked out that way. Here are few of the families I worked for.

Family A was Irish Catholic so they had a bunch of kids including a pair of twin boys around seven years old. I only babysat there once. The parents left for their night out with only a few simple requests. One, that I order the children a pizza for dinner. Two, that I make sure they go to bed at nine. They did not go to bed at nine. They continued to run around like crazed monkeys and refused to go to bed. As for the pizza, I ordered it with the money that had been left along with a note. I didn't read the note. It said to order a cheese pizza, but I ordered what I wanted. Sausage pizza. When the pizza came and the children realized there was sausage on the pizza, a riot broke out. As I was trying to pick the sausage off to make it a cheese pizza, one of the twin boys punched me in the balls.

Family B. This family lived in a nice split level house on the other side of town. I was pleasantly surprised to find that when I arrived, the children had already been put to bed, where they stayed. So I had the whole evening to 'investigate' the place. Yes, I used to get up in the people's business when I babysat. At this house I found the dad's porn collection. Problem was, it was straight porn and I had very little interest. However, he had a lot of Playboy magazines and I loved the articles. Especially the Playboy Forum, letters from readers about their sex problems.

Family C. Lived right across the street from us. Here the kids listened to me because they knew me, and went to bed. What I loved about this place were their Redd Foxx records. They had at least five of them, and they were filled with filthy jokes and stories. Quite an education for a young boy.

Family D. They lived next door. They had plenty of liquor in the house, and they stayed out until the bars closed at five in the morning. Enough said? All that and a dollar per hour.

Mark and the Dog Tomato War

Scout eyes the tomatoes

"Arg! GET OUT OF THERE...  Damn dogs, quit eating my tomatoes!" Mark Squealed.

Another summer in Chicago and another garden. Seriously, if I had it my way there would be only one tomato plant in the garden and it would be for the dogs. They love tomatoes. Besides, after adding up the cost of the plants, the water, and the fertilizer, I'm not saving any money. Anyway, Chandler has taught young Scout the deliciousness of tomatoes right off the vine. He goes right up to the plant and sniffs out the ripest, most succulent little tomato and plucks it off. He then takes it to the middle of the grass and munches down on it. Scout saw that last year and copied Chandler's behavior. Now both of the dogs have become connoisseurs of the pomodoro.

"Mark, he can have that tomato. That is the dog's tomato plant. That one and the one by the back fence were planted just for them."

"No, they're mine. Who the hell ever heard of dogs eating tomatoes?"
"Sorry, I planted those for the dogs, not you."

So there is now a battle in the backyard between Mark and the dogs. What Mark doesn't know is that when he isn't out there, I let the dogs pretty much do what they want. They eat the tomatoes, they pee on the raspberry bush, they root around behind the dahlias looking for rats, and poop where ever they want to poop. It's a doggy wonderland.