Terkel - Studs Terkels Chicago

Studs Terkels
Chicago

OTHER BOOKS BY STUDS TERKEL

American Dreams
Lost and Found

And They All Sang
Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey

Coming of Age
Growing Up in the Twentieth Century

Division Street
America

Giants of Jazz

The Good War
An Oral History of World War II

Hard Times
An Oral History of the Great Depression

Hope Dies Last
Keeping the Faith in Troubled Times

P.S.
Further Thoughts from a Lifetime of Listening

Race
How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession

The Spectator
Talk About Movies and Plays with the People Who Make Them

Studs Terkel Interviews
Film and Theater

The Studs Terkel Reader
My American Century

Talking to Myself
A Memoir of My Times

Touch and Go
A Memoir

Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith

Working
People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

Studs Terkels
Chicago

Studs Terkel

1985, 1986 by Studs Terkel
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form,
without written permission from the publisher.

Requests for permission to reproduce selections from this book should be mailed to:
Permissions Department, The New Press, 38 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013.

First published in the United States by Pantheon Books, New York, 1985
This edition published in the United States by The New Press, New York, 2012
Distributed by Perseus Distribution

CIP data is available
ISBN 978-1-59558-718-3 (hc)

The New Press was established in 1990 as a not-for-profit alternative to the large, commercial publishing houses currently dominating the book publishing industry. The New Press operates in the public interest rather than for private gain, and is committed to publishing, in innovative ways, works of educational, cultural, and community value that are often deemed insufficiently profitable.

www.thenewpress.com

Composition by dix!
This book was set in Centaur MT

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

For Ray Nostrand and Norm Pellegrini
and everything they stand for

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

To Don Gold,
who persuaded me
to write this

Studs Terkels
Chicago

Table of Contents

Away up in the northward,
Right on the borderline,
A great commercial city,
Chicago, you will find.
Her men are all like Abelard,
Her women like Hloise (as in noise)
All honest, virtuous people,
For they live in Elanoy.

So move your family westward,
Bring all your girls and boys,
And rise to wealth and honor
In the state of Elanoy.

A nineteenth-century folk song

WHEN ABE LINCOLN came out of the wilderness and loped off with the Republican nomination on that memorable May day, 1860, the Wigwam had been resonant with whispers. Behind cupped hands, lips imperceptibly moved: We just give Si Cameron Treasury, they give us Pennsylvania, Abes got it wrapped up. OK witchu? A wink. A nod. Done. It was a classic deal, Chicago style.

As ten thousand spectators roared on cue, Seward didnt know what hit him. His delegates had badges but no seats. Who you? Dis seats mine. Possessions nine-tents a da law, aint it?

Proud Seward, the overwhelming favorite, was a New Yorker who had assumed that civilization ended west of the Hudson. He knew nothing of the young citys spirit of I Will.

When, in 1920, Warren Gamaliel Harding was similarly touched by Destiny, there had been no such whisperings in the Coliseum. Just desultory summer mumblings (it was an unseasonably hot June: 100 degrees outside, 110 inside; bamboo fans of little use): Lowden, Wood, Johnson. Wood, Johnson, Lowden. Johnson, Lowden, Wood. Three front-runners and not a one catching fire. How long can this go on? Four ballots are enough. Cmon, its too hot for a deadlock. Shall we pick straws?

But this wasnt just any convention city. This was Chicago. Never mind the oratory. Yeah, yeah, we know about the Coliseum where, in 1896, the cry was Bryan, Bryan, Bryan as the Boy Orator thundered eloquently of crowns of thorns and crosses of gold. Nah, nah, lets settle this Chicago style.

A hotel room not far away.

The Blackstone, so often graced by Caruso and Galli-Curci during our citys lush opera season, was on this occasion beyond grace. Nah, nah, its too hot. Maybe the Ohio Gang ran things that day, but with H. Upmanns blowing curlicues heavenward in the smokefilled room, the dealHarding, OK?was strictly My Kind of Town, Chicago Is.

Yet, along came Jane Addams. Was it in 1889 that she founded Hull-House? The lady was out of her depth, they said. Imagine. Trying to change a neighborhood of immigrants, scared and lost, where every other joint was a saloon and every street a cesspool. And there was John Powers, alderman of the Nineteenth Ward, running the turf in the fashion of his First Ward colleagues, Bathhouse John and Hinky Dink. Johnny Da Pow, the Italian immigrants called him. He was the Pooh-Bah, the high monkey-monk, the ultimate clout. Everything had to be cleared through Da Pow. Still, this lady with the curved spine, but a spine nonetheless, stuck it out. And something happened.

She told young Jessie Binford: Everything grows from the bottom up. This place belongs to everybody, not just Johnny Da Pow. And downtown. No, she told Jessie, I have no blueprint. We learn life from life itself.

So many years later, years of small triumphs and large losses, Jessie Binford, ninety, is seated in a small Blackstone Hotel room. The Blackstone again, for Gods sake? It isnt a smoke-filled room this time. My cigar, still wrapped in cellophane, is deep in my pocket. Its an H. Upmannwould you believe it? The old woman, looking not unlike Whistlers Mother, is weary and in despair. The wrecking ball had just yesterday done away with Hull-House and most of the neighborhood, as well as the beloved elm beneath her window.

The boys downtown tried to buy off Jessie Binford. You can live at the Blackstone as our guest for the rest of your life, they told her. Anything to keep her quiet. She and a young neighborhood housewife, Florence Scala, were making a big deal out of this. Sshhh. But they wouldnt shush, these two.

These two.

Florence Scala, first-generation Italian-American. Her father, a tailor, was a romantic from Tuscany. He was a lover of opera, of course, especially Caruso records, even the scratchy ones. He had astronomy fever, too, though his longing to visit the Grand Canyon transcended his yen to visit the moon. He was to make neither voyage. The neighborhood was his world and that was enough.