Last night I was taken to what may now be recognized as the best watering hole I’ve ever encountered.  It is in fact the last remaining American Legion post in the city of Chicago. On Friday nights, non-veterans are permitted to drink in its basement bar, a palace of low ceilings and low lighting and patchy acoustic ceiling tiles.  The bathroom is behind what was referred to as a “curtain” but is clearly a very old bedsheet.  Beers are two bucks, mixed drinks three, all served up by a jovial middle aged Vietnam vet (in leather vest, no less) named Hot Rod.  The music is the local classic rock radio station, which in my humble opinion is the best classic rock radio station in the nation.  Technically one must pay a yearly $10 subscription fee to become a member of this exclusive club.  I have yet to do this, but the folks who invited me out were all members.  I think on my next visit, I will go ahead and take the plunge.

The ceiling is so low that two members of my party stood with about half an inch of clearance between the tops of their heads and the acoustic tiles.  These two fellows also happened to be the most argumentative of the bunch, starting a long and loud discourse regarding the patented form of midwestern gregariousness that is as ubiquitous here as the glowing Old Style sign.  Don, an angry Philadelphian, felt that the friendly polite manner of the flatlander is disingenuous and conciliatory.  No one else happened to agree, which stood to reason as the rest of us all hail from the region.

Don compared the midwestern style to that of the southerners, which we of course dismissed out of hand. Southerners are patronizing, we countered, whereas we Illini are simply kind hearted and polite.  Alas, upon ruminating further, I think Don might have been onto something.  While I still don’t think I necessarily need strangers to treat me as if I am a total asshole and sometimes even vocalize it, at the same time maybe there is something slightly false about blanketed kindnesses.  Still, I’d rather have my niceties, contrived or otherwise, delivered in the cadence of long vowels than the slow drawl that will always come off to me as utterly condescending.

This morning I went to a pretty decent thrift store and found a radio in the style I’ve been seeking for awhile now.  The further exploration of this radio was thwarted by a very bad smelling old Polish man, however.

When a website I frequent alters its format, I really have a hard time adjusting.  I like to think that I am a fairly adaptable person.  After all, I’ve moved like forty times in my life. I’ve acclimated myself to new jobs and new friends and new states and new towns and new shoes.  So many new shoes.  If the weather suddenly changes while I’m down at the office, no sweat!  I might have an umbrella with me, or hey maybe I’ll shed a jacket or two. No biggie.

Alas, Gmail really fucked with my shit last week when it rolled out this new “theme” nonsense.  What’s the new theme, Gmail, not being able to read anything in my inbox for lightness of text?  Awesome, sign me up.  I was pretty relieved to find out that Billy HC was on my side (but then when is he not?) and was going to go ahead and retain the classic Gmail format.  I was with him in this classicism.  Then, at the last minute, I tested out all the new themes and found that the one called planets is actually rather fetching.  The background is black, which is kind of invitingly sinister.  Since most emails I send are pretty derogatory, it only seems fitting.  And a new planet every day is somewhat exciting. Or at least it will be for like, two more days, when I’ve cycled through them all.

Last week in the New York Times there was an article entitled “A New Wind Is Blowing In Chicago.”  In retrospect the piece was probably more condescending than laudatory, trumpeting the city as arising from its perpetual second class status with the success of our own brown boy.  Alas, there was a quote which I found quite apt.

“There is a really strong sense of self in Chicago: People aren’t defined by wealth or by work or accomplishments, but rather who they are,” said Alex Kotlowitz, an author who makes his home in Chicago because he believes it is a place to peer into America’s heart. “Obama seems so comfortable in his skin and with who he is. That’s so Chicago.”

Living on the left and right coasts, one is constantly bombarded with the questions “where are you from?” and “what do you do?”  Ask someone either of those questions in Chicago and you are met with a perplexed look that says, ”What do you mean where am I from?  I am from HERE (or at least the suburban facsimile of here).  And what do you mean what do I do?  I get off work at 4 p.m. and commence drinking the excellent beers which are so readily available in this land.”

There is indeed something incredibly refreshing about not having to be defined by these limiting, and in my case, transient personal attributes.  There is something freeing about entering into a social situation without the anticipation of being peppered with questions and having to recite the same old resume and having to gloss over the unimpressive parts of which there are often so many.  This is me in my grey slacks and my North Face fleece. Hello.

The last couple of days have produced snow flurries of varying moistness.  While nothing has stuck yet, I eagerly await the glittering of Christmas lights on a powdery sidewalk and the squeaky sounds my boots are going to make as I tread lightly or maybe not so lightly upon my frozen homeland.

Recently I have gotten the idea in my mind that all my food ought to be cooked in this one cast iron skillet that my mother gave me.  I remember quite well when this cast iron skillet was purchased.  It was the early 1990’s and my dad bought it in addition to a larger model at the Kane County Flea Market.  For some years these skillets were the main producers of fried chicken in the Harvey household.  My mother passed on this vessel to me a year or so ago and offered up the bigger one as well, but cooking for one rarely requires a pan of such massive proportion.

I have been pretty committed of late to using the skillet for most of my food needs.  It obviously doesn’t work for things like cooking rice, but otherwise it has been a faithful companion.  The only downside is that it gets really hot and I am an idiot who constantly grabs the handle, so my fingers are covered in dozens of burns of varying severity.  I never minded having wounds, though.  I come from the school of thought that we humans are pretty much a product of all our accidents and failures.  The fiery feeling on my digits mirrors the burning pain I often feel more inwardly with regard to the man who brought these skillets into my life in the first place.

Today I awoke from a nap to a light snow falling.  As suspected, the abandoned hospital across the street from my apartment looks quite fetching with the snow swirling around in front of its vacant staring windows.  Ever since I moved my bed to allow for gazing at the hospital while laying down, I have become quite familiar with the different types of curtains collecting dust in its disused rooms.  I like to speculate what the rooms were used for based upon the style of window dressing.  Puffy balloon valances?  Maternity.  Vertical blinds?  Intensive care.

Not having lived here for very long, I have no idea when the hospital was closed down.  My main affiliation besides my morbid fascination with it is that its parking lot houses the fuel efficient cars that belong to my car share.  It’s interesting to think that a parking lot where nervous fathers to be and soon to be widowed wives and fretting parents left their sensible American cars is now the place where yuppies go pick up the Prius to ferry themselves to the grocery store.  Time is funny like that.  Sometimes I feel like so much has changed in a year or ten years, and it has.  But so much changes every five minutes.

When I was first learning how to swim at the indoor pool in the tranquil suburban outpost which spawned me, the skill of treading water seemed at once exciting and useful.  Look at me, moving moving yet staying still. Head above water. I could have done it forever!  And sometimes it feels like I am.  Moving moving yet going nowhere.  Head above water (barely). Forever.

The other day a man called my place of employment to order some crackers.  He was calling from Iowa and he sounded absolutely ancient.  Petrified, as in fossilized not terrified.  

“Is this Obama’s country?” he asked me.

“Sir,” I said. “The whole country is Obama’s country now, and thank god for that.”

I suppose we can’t expect things to happen all at once, can we?  But I don’t think it’s asking too much to expect little things to happen a little bit at a time.

I guess I really ought not do too much bellyaching about the forlorn state of my social life.  I am still killing down at the Salvation Army thrift store.  I was there on Saturday and a toothless man followed me around the store repeatedly asking me if I work out.

“Yes, I do.” I said.  ”Thanks for noticing.”

He introduced himself to me as Jerome and asked me for my phone number.  I declined. When it came time to pay for my items, I found myself in line behind Jerome.  It was then that I noticed that the words “Pam + Jerome” were written in large, magic marker letters on the back of Jerome’s sweatshirt jacket.

“Who’s Pam?” I asked Jerome.

He was quick to assure me that Pam is old news.  Out of the picture entirely.  Upon going outside, I almost ran Jerome over with my bike as he picked up his suitcase from the crosswalk.

It’s pretty annoying when neighbors whip their unwanted catalogs all over the floor of the lobby of the apartment building, isn’t it?

My friends, I am pretty embarrassed by how much Phil Collins era Genesis I listen to these days.  And also, how deeply affected I am by it.  Emotionally.

Four years ago, I went to go see the late, great Discord Records band, Q And Not U, play at the Troubadour in Los Angeles.  On the eve of an election there was really no better band to see than one plucked from the breast of Ian McKaye.   Four years was an eternity ago, a night filled with a lot of hope.  There was an intense feeling in that insular left coast world, that humming undercurrent, that general concensus that we the people couldn’t possibly be so dumb as to be making the same mistake twice.  And yet, we did!

Two weeks ago I ventured to the main branch of the Chicago Public Library to see the inimitable Sarah Vowell regale the flatlanders with a few lines from her brilliant new book The Wordy Shipmates.  The world could use a couple more Sarah Vowells, more Ian McKayes, more Q’s not U’s.  The dubious patriots, the samurais in sneakers.  The doers, the sayers.

In this new book, Sarah quotes from John Winthrop, who was a Puritan founder of the Massachusetts colony. A few words from his sermon of 1630, A Model of Christian Charity:

We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community of members in the same body.

I must agree with Ms. Vowell that these words, these American words, are perhaps the most powerful ever uttered.  Incidentally the same words were utilized by Sandra Day O’Connor as we all watched that colossal piece of shit, Ronald Reagan, be lowered into the ground and hopefully the hell back in 2004.  

And so I hope, and so my fingers are crossed, let’s put 2004 behind us and remember 1630.  Let’s do this people.  Let’s make my union supporting, thunderstorm watching in the garage, faithful American parents seem honest.  Let’s make me believe that while America might not be the best country right now, it was, and it can be again.  Tomorrow!

So now it’s November 2nd, and I’m thinking it’s as good a time as it ever will be to put pesky October behind me.  October sucked!  People were mean to me and I was stressed and drinking too much and not being as productive as I would have liked.  And needed to be.

Alas, it is done done done.  Onwards and upwards I have to be, and shall be.  This morning I woke up at five and hopped on my bike to purchase a loaf of limpa, which is a sinfully delicious type of Swedish rye bread, for those of you unlucky enough to have never sampled it.  Unfortunately the Swedish bakery was closed and so instead I went to crappy old Jewel and got fixings for making pancakes.  I also bought some jam, because no longer am I going to be the type of person who is stopped in my tracks by a closed down Swedish bakery. If you have the jam, the limpa will come to you.  Sooner or later.

Then hopefully sometime a toaster will also come.