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Yours Truly in a Swamp July, 1999 From Chicago to The Swamp for Bastille Day
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Standing on the observation deck atop
Chicago's Sears Tower, the world's tallest building. Inscribed on the window's ledge are
the letters "W-E-S-T." West! Outside, a gasoline red sunset. Sunset? West? Not in New Orleans, Cher. Maybe in Chicago. In New Orleans, setting-suns squat smudged over the East Bank, gasping their way through the fumes, falling - plop - into Lake Pontchartrain. (And, if anything, The Lake is North of Faubourg Marigny!) More twirls the traveler's mind than the tallest building in the world. In New Orleans, sun rises over the West Bank and sets over the East Bank. "Watch they know in Chicago, anyway?" Chicago, great "City of Big Shoulders," on the other end of the Amtrak line. Chicago, where jazz greats took their sound aboard the trains of the old Illinois Central Railroad. Chicago, where art and architecture married, then danced up and down Lake Michigan. Where standing atop the Sears Tower at sunset reminds you of when you didn't care where the sun set -- or when. Looking out over this beautiful city searching for the Amtrak Station with two Wisconsin college boys, in town for a 100,000-strong food processor's convention. I tell them abut New Orleans, and wonder how much our, "City Care Forgot," would forget to host such a mega-convention. We all came in on the train. Today, the only train between NOLA and Chicago is The City of New Orleans. I slept the night before in one of its Pullman Sleepers, aboard my "…father's magic carpet made of steel." We stopped in Jackson, Mississippi, where jazz never got off; and Memphis, where it did. We crossed the Ohio River (not the Mississippi) at Cairo, Illinois, where the two rivers meet; and we parted company there with Old Man River, till tomorrow night's return. On the return we stopped in Carbondale, home of Southern Illinois University, where I spent eight years, during the fabled Sixties; and where this night not one familiar face passes. At Fanner Hall, the University Museum is displaying a collection of 1960s political buttons that I donated. Great buttons, with funny slogans like "Draft Beer / Not Students," "Sterilize LBJ / No More Ugly Children," "LSD / Better Living Through Chemistry," and "I Got It at The Mole Hole." The Mole Hole had been a hole-in-the-wall button shop in Chicago's Old Town, just down the street from Second City. Also, in the collection, two china hash pipes, from the Peoples Republic, made in the visage of Richard M. Nixon and Spiro Agnew. I recognize those two faces, and the Museum Director's. ************* Back home, in the great swamp city of New Orleans, no taxis are waiting at Union Station. A smiling Traveler's Aid lady phones for some. Inside a United Cab, the driver and I talk food. Good on the Train down. "Your chef was Charles Sims," says the cabby, "He and Donna own Donna's Bar and Grill, the jazz joint, on Rampart Street." The cab rattles past City skeletons in Congo Square, where slaves gathered; and the closed gambling casino, where no one gathered. Across the street was the one-time famous Restaurant Jonathan's, where Lillian Hellman hung out in her final days, long after Dashell Hammitt was gone. "Long after everybody was gone," I once heard her say. Jonathan's is now the Funky Butt Jazz Club, a name that goes back to the first days of jazz. Next we pass the closed Marty's, where Tennessee Williams used to hang out. At Donna's, a sign hangs on the door saying, "Kurmit Ruffins, Tonight." A synergy street, Rampart. Part old Basin, "…where the good friends meet." Part new Bourbon, where you never know anybody. Rampart enters Faubourg Marigny where the four-lane traffic heads off down Saint Claud Avenue. We stay on now two-lane, now crowded Rampart and pass back of Schwegmann's lost glory, and the Charles J. Colton Middle School. We turn toward The River, onto Saint Rock Street, and roll up to Schiro's for a beer and a newspaper. Then home, where they have to let us in. ************* July 14th is Bastille Day. A bakery in my neighborhood gives free bread if you wear red, white, and blue colors. The City used to put on a street party in nearby faraway French Quarter, before the American Republicans made everything better. Now, we only eat free bread. Happy Bastille Day, Cher!
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