Vic Socotra

27 July 2008

Windy City

Ugh. New week dawning and I am not quite back in the ballgame, so to speak. Baseball overdose, possibly. It was fun, though. Wrigley Field is the last of a whole generation of ballparks, a stadium that is not a gigantic concrete island surrounded by acres of black asphalt parking lots at a junction in the interstate system. It really is a carnival on Game Day, approachable on foot. In fact, this is the corner one block away from my son's place.

Should have stayed over to this morning and would not have wasted the day drilling holes in the clouds over Ohio and diverting to Pittsburgh and for the storms to pass over Reagan.

Awoke at three something this morning. Don't know why- thinking about having to go find a message at DIA before showing up at the office, then realizing I have to do to the office before going to DIA and sighing. Finally dropped off again and punched the alarm off when it chimed and rang.

Now it is hard to believe that it happened. Interesting living with a young man, in a young man's house. Great Television, clean bathroom, that is important to him, but the rest sort of20gritty. Made me think what I could do to the place in a couple months and with a little strategic investment. We spent a few minutes getting the back door open- fire safety for one reason, and the builders had painted over the door so it was stuck tight as a drum.

When we got it open, this is the vista from the back porch:

It was once just a fire escape, but a violation of deck codes lead to a tragedy a couple years ago, and the Code has been significantly upgraded after a party crowd collapsed one of=2 0the old structures. I liked his place just fine, except that the air conditioning was pretty much limited to the area around the window unit in the front room near the big-screen television. We had a sort of rotational bed. I would retire to my son's room when it was time for me to hit the sack, and they would go out. In the morning, when I rose to make coffee and look out over the back side of the building, he would leave the couch and re-occupy his bed for another couple hours. It was OK with me; after all, there were alternatives.

Glad I am not living here, for example, though Eric said he could hook me up if I wanted.

Interesting thing about the Trolley tour of Chicago they took on Friday night when I went to bed. I thought it would be a bus that took the young people around town to a few selected bars. Turned out it was not the case. It was all self-contained, with a bar on the bus, like one of those Old Town Trolleys here, open-sided. The kids were not wearing seat belts and "free to move about the country," like Southwest Airlines. It was my opinion that would be a killer for the ladies, since bathroom management would keep things from getting out of control. My experience was based on Moscow, where the restrooms were so bad that the gals would not drink coffee or liquids all day to avoid using them. It was no picnic for the guys, either, but of course we could just not breath while at the20urinal and we have that unfair advantage.

It was not the case. The bus circled the downtown in an endless sort of loop, pausing at selected parking lots where everyone debarked to pee, men and women alike, finding spots behind likely parked cars. New world, I thought, as we drank coffee and tried to figure out the plan for Saturday.

My older son wanted to see the Bob Newhart statue at Navy Pier, so we wandered over there after a trip in to the sky a t the Hancock Building. The Cokes and iced tea cost $20, but the view was p[retty remarkable, and they say you can see Iowa from up there. Looked like a blue haze and the edge of the world, if so.

It is funny about the claustrophobia in small places high in the air. I recall going up the Empire State Building with them years ago and not feeling that way. I guess something profound has come to pass, but we knew that. The elevator was pretty amazing, if you thought about what was happening to the fifteen of us packed in the car and hurtling up the tower like a piston.

Wandering the downtown was fun, and we found the statue my son was looking for.

The Boys commented on the fact that there is a movement afoot to drain the Lake via the course of the Chicago River. It had flowed into Lake Michigan since the glaciers left the area, but in 1900 the industrious Windy City Residents had ditched the canal20and made it flow south. The thought was that the City could collect the clear fresh water and pipe it off to the arid southwest. It is impossibly blue, like the vast inland sea that it once fed, and now has the potential to drain. I'm sure it would be possible to tap the thing and let all the fresh water run out.

Such a project has the potential to s create a new state of dry lake-bottom. I don't know what they would call it. New Michigan? Something with an Indian name?

I don't know. The Russians succeeded in making the Aral Sea a dust-bowl so quickly that big ships were left stranded in the emerging desert. Maybe that is why people are a little apprehensive about the big schemes.

We wandered up the river to the true heart of the downtown, which grew up around the area where once the stockade of Fort Dearborn once stood. The buildings are quite remarkable, the old classics of the "Chicago Style" now forming the context for the new towers.

It would have been fun to drive around, carefree, but it is hard to find a place to park. I understand why my younger son got rid of his truck now; only special vehicles can be left at the curb near the stadium on game days. You have to have the right color scheme:

Great trip. I have no interest whatsoever in going to the office.

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