Mom's City Singing

All across Alaska bubbles are being filled, scratch paper scratched, and heads scratched too... it is state testing week and the pressure is on.

Meanwhile, the teacher has time to read. I forgot the book I am in the middle of at home so I am reading Never a City So Real
A Walk in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz. It is from the Crown Journeys series that I got interested in after reading Lost in My Own Backyard last month. They are not travel books, but snapshots of thoughts on home by authors from many different places. This one is about Chicago, my mom's hometown.

Jack's character gets the book moving along. He is the author's father-in-law and someone you would be proud to be related to. He is a bit of a salesman, stands up for what he believes in and defied the social norms of his day standing up for equal rights. The author goes on to describe Chicago as a "tribal" about their neighborhood identity and says there are more than 200 neighborhoods in Chicago.

When I think of the Chicago I saw when I was little, it was small. In fact it was so small it fit in my grandparent's backyard. They lived in Palatine (a suburb) and when we visited our days were filled with playing in the backyard beneath the branches of a giant weeping willow tree and in the company of cousins, hippity-hops, Cher with-the-amazing-growing-hair dolls, and breaks indoors with Romper Room and Bozo the Clown (which I don't think I ever saw in Montana). Grandpa and Grandma always had a very tidy house and though I don't recall ever meeting their friends they had a social life that involved playing bridge for grandma and poker for grandpa. More importantly they were active in church. I thought Chicago was small because we just stayed at my grandparents. I was wrong.

Kotlowitz contends that Chicagoans "look at their city from the vantage point of outsiders." How odd. The people that live there still feel like they are from somewhere else? Maybe he means they don't have any romantic preconceived idea about what a Chicagoan is. I guess most of the places I have lived I have felt some disconnect. In Yellowstone it is nature's home... we are all intruding in some way, in Montana we were town kids when the ranch kids seemed to have the roots deep into the place, and in Billings we lived in suburbs. It felt illsuited to the deer hunting in the breaks just a few miles from town and designed to drive through... not walk. I guess we all feel that way sometimes.

Back to Chicago. Of course there are stories about unions and industry, greasy diners, murals, mobsters and of course the blues.

There is an interesting look at how the projects and poverty affect the crime rate. The defendants arrive for their trials and court hearings dressed casually... "They're making a statement:'I don't respect this setting enough to pull out my best outfit.'" But it is understood that the circumstances that can place someone in trouble are very close. "The line is thin, and anyone can cross it. Anyone. I used to think, 'I'm a nice loving person. There's no way I could ever commit a violent act.' But you do this long enough, you know anyone can kill. Anyone. Under the right circumstances. If you understand that, then maybe you have a little more appreciation for the freedoms you have here. It isn't someone else's problem."97 So I will enjoy my circumstances, and hope that they will improve for others. A good read if you are interested in Chicago, America's "Second City."