15. Getting
around in Chicago
Hail to
the Grid
We—the
boys and I who hung out at the corner store—played a game that elevated our
activities above stupid boy stunts. The game used Chicago’s layout,
a grid.
The game’s rules were simple: Starting from the corner
store, each player had to name as many north‑ and south‑running streets as he
could and name them in the proper order. When each player had
finished with the north‑south streets, we applied the same rules to the east‑west
streets. The winner was the boy who named the most streets in the
right order. It was a game without prizes, the only reward being the
chance to do what boys do well—show off, in this case knowledge.
The grid is a planning tool, a means of organizing urban
growth. It is also a map, a systematic ordering of streets and addresses
that help a person get around in Chicago.
The explanation given here is one I took from the Chicago Studies project at
the University of Chicago:
Chicago streets run either N-S or
E-W. Exception: there are a few diagonals.
Every street has a PREFIX—N-S or E-W—to tell you
how it's oriented.
The street grid has a CENTER at State and
Madison, downtown, in the Loop
Street numbers go up as you move AWAY from the
center.
Address numbers increase by 100 per BLOCK.
Eight Chicago long blocks equal one mile. A short block is one-half the length of a
long block.
EVEN numbers are on the North/West side of the
street.
Chicago's street SIGNS reference the grid, with
the name of a street and its prefix
MAJOR streets mark each mile away from the
center.
About diagonals: Diagonal streets--there are few of
them--follow trails of indigenous people. Other diagonals are not
streets but interruptions and barriers—embankments of railroad tracks and
expressways.
Streetcars, and More
Streetcars,
buses, subways, and els (elevated trains) took me from my home to anywhere else
in the city.
When I
was growing up, Chicago had an excellent public transportation
system. I’ve read that it still does, and Bill Vandervoort, on
his Chicago Transit and Railfan Website, makes a point that is just
as true today as it was decades ago: “Chicago is an area where public
transportation is extensively used, even by those who can afford automobiles.”
Our family did not have a
car, and among neighbors who did own a car, it was a thing left parked during
the workweek, in a garage, or sitting by the curb, stationary, like a chrome
and steel altar, worshipped from across the front lawn until it could be fired
up for a weekend drive to the country or used just to go for a spin.
So we walked, from our
house to the streetcar line on Irving Park Road two-and-a-half blocks south, or
one-and-one-half blocks north to the bus stop on Montrose
Avenue. These were north-south blocks, each one an eighth of a mile
long. An east-west block was half that distance.
The Irving Park Road
streetcar line was a major thoroughfare with grocery stores, clothing and
department stores, restaurants, and bars. The Montrose Avenue bus
was good for trips to the beach or a fishing pier at Lake
Michigan. Both routes offered frequent service and connected to
other routes and types of public transit.
We lived seven miles
northwest of downtown—the Loop—but you couldn’t get there from
here. A transfer was necessary, to the el from a streetcar or bus
line. Some el trains dove underground and became subway
cars. The subway went under the Chicago River, and puddles of water
were visible from subway car windows, allowing a rider to wonder if the tunnel
was leaking, and, if so, would the whole thing collapse?
The trip to downtown from
our front door took forty minutes to an hour via the city’s system of public
transit. An alternative was a Chicago and Northwestern Railroad
commuter train, from a depot in our neighborhood to its terminal just outside
the Loop. The train was faster, more expensive, and didn’t run as
often.
A streetcar was driven up
front by a motorman—that was his job title, although it sounds like the name of
a cartoon character. The conductor stood on the back platform and
collected fares and handed out transfers. The conductor also had the
task of hooking up the trolley pole at the back of the car if it became
disengaged from the overhead wire, which sometimes happened, especially when
making turns. Electrical power of 600 volts DC was supplied via the
trolley pole from an overhead wire.
When I was a kid I paid
seven cents to get on board a streetcar and obtain a transfer. The
transfer was a coupon that allowed its holder to do an unlimited amount of
riding and transferring in the system. Prices have gone up since then,
and I read today that the fare system is a complexity of zones, turnstiles,
transit cards, and separate fees for fares and transfers.
When I was young, I got a
kick out of a streetcar ride. As an adult I have ridden public
transportation in Chicago, other U.S. cities, and England, and it's easy to
find fault with it, but there is always one aspect of it that I truly like
today—I can leave the driving to someone else.
At some time during my
years at Belding, I developed a serious case of wanderlust: I simply
had to see what was beyond this place called Irving Park, so I
traveled. I walked a lot at first, then used public transit as my
excursions grew longer. To return home, I usually did the simplest
thing—retraced my path. No map, no great navigational skill needed.
My parents gave me an
inordinate amount of freedom. They never questioned where I’d been,
what I’d been doing.
Only once did they lay out
any kind of rules for me: “Don’t go to the South Side.”
That was, and still is,
fairly common advice about Chicago, and it’s advice that needs to contemplated
before blindly following it. It’s advice meant to keep a person
alive and safe, for bad things did happen to people on the South
Side. And, rightly or wrongly, the bad things seemed to be
associated with the South Side’s racially segregated neighborhoods.
But the South Side is the
largest chunk of the city, and it’s virtually impossible to live in the city or
to be a tourist visiting it without going to the South Side. In the
South Side are major universities, teaching hospitals, beautiful parks, great
museums, a major league ballpark, and the longest stretch of Lake Michigan
beach in the city. The South Side also has enclaves of the wealthy,
neighborhoods of ethnic and cultural diversity—and pockets of poverty, despair,
and crime.
As a child, I obeyed my
parents’ rule and did not go to the South Side—except one time when, as a joke
for my own amusement, I stepped across the Madison Street dividing line for a
few seconds, just to say to myself that I’d been to the South
Side. I also went with school-led field trips to sites on the South
Side. And as an adult I drove my family into the South Side so that
we could go to the Museum of Science and Industry, one of the best educational
bangs-for-the-buck anywhere.
But as Little Billy Paxson,
I did what my mother and father told me to do.
16. Our Sunday
Morning Ritual
We had a
Sunday morning ritual that began with church. My mother was the
major domo of everything in our family, including religion. From
religion, we went directly to the Harz Mountain Canaries. Sounds
like quite a jump; no problem.
Onward
Christian Scientists
My mother
opted for Christian Science. Or the little storefront church on
Central Avenue. Or the church on West Cullom that performed
immersion baptisms. Depart she did, but she always came back to
Christian Science.
Christian
Science was the creation of Mary Baker Eddy (1821‑1910). Eddy
injured herself by slipping and falling on ice in February 1866. To
heal from the fall, she recuperated by resting in bed and reading the
Bible.
As a
result of that experience, Eddy claimed that her religious beliefs and not
medical intervention cured the injuries that she had
sustained. Thereafter, she devoted herself to teaching the healing
aspects of Christianity. To name her version of Christian healing,
Eddy coined the term Christian Science. To have a
pulpit, she founded the Church of Christ, Scientist. To spread the
word, she wrote Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875).
Rooted in
the Bible, Eddy's beliefs derive from Christianity. But how does the
word “Science” fit in? Or the job title “Christ, Scientist”?
It's hard
to imagine the world's best‑known hippie leaning over a beaker or timing rats
in a maze. Of course, that's a perspective taken well after
Eddy. Still, it's even harder to flash back to Eddy's time and lump
Christ in with scientists whom she should have known of—Darwin, Pasteur,
Mendel.
Eddy
wrote in Science and Health that “The term Science properly
understood”—meaning the way Eddy understood it— “refers only to the laws of God
and to His government of the universe, inclusive of man.”
Well, of
course. Nothing says that you can't define terms any which way you
want to. Here Eddy had the support of the authoritative Humpty
Dumpty, in Through the Looking Glass: “When I use
a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, “it means what I choose it to mean—neither more
nor less.”
Science
and Health omits any reference to laboratory science or the systematic
pursuit of knowledge via the scientific method. That kind of stuff
is for the literal, logical mind, not the mind of the true
believer. Or maybe I missed a key definition, which would be easy to
do, considering that Science and Health is cursed hard
reading, thick with page after page of assertions, non sequiturs, and abstract
ideas.
Science
and Health anticipates the skeptic: “Because the Science of Mind,”
another of Eddy's terms for the healing power of her faith, “seems to bring
into dishonor the ordinary scientific schools, which wrestle with material
observations alone, this Science has met with opposition; but if any system
honors God, it ought to receive aid, not opposition, from all thinking
persons.” The back of her hand to the nonbeliever. If you
don't believe in Christian Science, if you don't see the light as lit by Mary
Baker Eddy, you are not a thinking person.
Christian
Science especially appeals to people who do not like the idea that an all‑powerful
God allows sickness and death. According to Christian Science, God
is wholly good and is a God of love; that is the only
reality. Sickness and death are not real. Therefore,
faith in God will help a person rise above the seemingly real
aspects of sin, sickness, suffering, and death.
Christian
Scientists who carry their faith to extremes are the ones who refuse medical
attention when deathly ill. Those are the Christian Scientists who
make headlines. Other Christian Scientists go to doctors, the use of
which is not forbidden by church doctrine.
Christian
Scientists develop and strengthen their faith by prayer and
reading. A daily lesson is important to Christian Scientists; the
lesson consists of passages read from two works—the Bible and Mary Baker
Eddy’s Science and Health.
The
church operates reading rooms that provide access to Christian Science
publications. Church services are largely devoid of ritual and are
conducted by members elected to serve as readers. The church has no
clergy, but it does have a cadre of practitioners who devote full time to
healing via prayer and counseling.
My mother
the skeptic bought into Mary Baker Eddy's creed. But my mother had
another approach, besides the healing aspects, to Christian Science: “There are
so many well‑to‑do people who are Christian Scientists,” she liked to
say. Maybe she was hoping for some of that wealth to rub off on
us. She simplified Christian Science beliefs into the catchphrase
“mind over matter.” To the Christian Scientist, mind and God are the
same. To be more precise, there are, or could be, two minds—the
human or Mortal Mind, and the real or divine Mind. Noting the
capitalization is important for anyone who wants to follow Eddy's references to
Mortal Mind and Mind.
The
Mortal Mind doesn't count, according to Eddy, for it is “Nothing claiming to be
something. . . the opposite of God, or good.”
However,
Mind, the divine Mind, is “the only I, or Us, the only spirit, Soul, divine
Principle, substance, Life, Truth, Love; the one God; not that which is in man,
but the divine Principle, or God, of whom man is the full and perfect
expression; Deity, which outlines but is not outlined.”
Now that
explains everything. And makes me wonder, in my crabbiest moments,
whether Mary Baker Eddy hit her head when she fell on the ice.
If I
stubbed my toe, my mother would say to me, “Just tell yourself it doesn't
hurt. It's all mind over matter, Billy. The toe doesn't
really hurt. You're just letting yourself believe that it hurts.”
Cursing
and grunting “Ouch!” were frowned upon; neither provided the true cure, and
cursing, of course, was vulgar.
By my
mother's expedient credo of mind over matter it was not necessary to pray over
the sore toe or read something written by Mary Baker Eddy; all I had to do was
stop wincing and tell myself to believe that “It doesn't hurt.” Go
through this often enough, and you build up a pretty good tolerance for pain.
Despite
my mother's good health, she complained of always being tired. “I'm
so tired,” she'd say, and in a few days she'd be off to see a doctor or buy a
new and different medicine.
She was
picky about doctors. A doctor had to find something wrong with her
and prescribe a suitable medicine. Most doctors understood the
unspoken rules and complied. Otherwise, those who told her that
nothing was the matter with her, would be abruptly dumped. Away from
the doctor's ears my mother would deliver her valedictory: “The old
fool. What does he know?”
And
despite her belief in “mind over matter,” her dresser top was a clutter of
vials and bottles of nostrums and potions. Some of the stuff was
prescribed, some she'd read about or saw advertised, and some she'd heard about
from a fellow sufferer.
From time
to time, my mother went shopping for religions. We were
Presbyterians for a while, and occasional attendees at a storefront church
where the pews were folding chairs and where the music and services were very
energetic, to say the least. But no matter where she strayed, she
always came back to Christian Science, bringing along my father and me, who
followed meekly in the footsteps of our shepherd.
Now,
About Those Canaries
In the grand scheme of
life-and-stuff it is truly propitious that we were Christian Scientists while
we lived on north Tripp. Timing was everything. When
services ended at church, we hurried home rather than miss a minute of a radio
program that starred . . . canaries.
Canaries singing on the
radio were popular from the 1930s into the 1950s. The most popular
singing canaries were a breed called Roller. A little of their story
is told in this excerpt from the website Old Time Radio Catalog.
“Coal miners probably brought
the birds into the mines so their song could help brighten their dark environs,
but they soon discovered that the tiny birds were especially susceptible to the
poison gasses which collected in some mines. As long as the canary kept singing
the miners were safe, but if the bird expired it was time to get out. Miners in
Germany's Harz Mountains were able to breed a canary [the Harz roller] whose song
was so melodious that the birds became too valuable for use in the mines.
“Germany was still reeling from the economic ravages of the First
World War in 1926 when ambitious Max Stern realized that German thrift and
industry would serve him well in America. He set about collecting on old debts
to finance his trip to the New World when one friend, a pet shop owner, said
that he could only repay with 5,000 Harz roller canaries. Stern accepted the
birds and negotiated free passage to New York aboard the Hamburg-American
Steamship Line. Although he arrived in New York not understanding a word of
English, he managed to sell his singing birds at the Astor Place John
Wannamaker Department Store.
“After opening an office at 36 Cooper Square, Stern returned to
his native Germany several times, returning each time with more and more of the
colorful, melodious birds which he sold to Sears-Roebuck, Woolworths, R.H.
Macy, and other retailers. By 1932, Stern was the largest livestock importer in
the United States and began supplying feed with the Hartz Mountain line of pet
products [with a t added to the name].
“A small craze graced the radio waves in the form of Singing
Canary programs. One of the earliest examples was the Mutual Network
offering, American Radio Warblers on Sunday afternoons from
1937 to 1952. The program was sponsored by American Bird Products, a birdseed
supplier, and featured organist Preston Sellers with canaries in cages near the
organ. The Hartz Mountain Master Canaries began broadcasting
from WGN Chicago. Since the Hartz Mountain line had expanded beyond birdseed,
the program featured sketches of other pets pitching products like dog chews
and cat toys.”
So our Sunday ritual ended to the tune of the chirping and singing
of canaries, accompanied by an orchestra or organ playing well-known
classics. It was a cheerful ending to a solemn morning.
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