Touch and Go (8 page)

But New York was not Chicago. I had become spoiled living in the archetypal American city. My father, medical advice or not, had to leave that bedside. He was in the men's hotel with Ben, awaiting the kid. Annie, of course, was welcome, but he'd run the hotel, not she.

How will this one work out? I sure liked that name: The Wells-Grand. It was, to me, a melding of two cultures. I remember the Wells-Fargo from all the movie references. And of course that posh pre-Hitler Berlin hotel, the Grand.

I
haven't mentioned my four remarkable old teachers at the McKinley High School in Chicago. Some had begun teaching in the nineteenth century, during the Gilded Age. All four were Edwardian in style and demeanor. George W. Powles Jr., teacher since 1800-and-something. Pince-nez balanced delicately on nose, white mustache overflowing; his daily mantra: a cigarette was “a light at one end, a fool at the other.” He very much enjoyed my precise reading of Charles and Mary Lamb's
Children's Shakespeare.
“Oh, young sir, you could handle that Lady Macbeth all right. One day, I'll boast that I taught Shakespeare to a young Sir Henry Irving.” I had no idea who Sir Henry was but obviously professor Powles put me in fast company.

Some of my fellow students were impish in nature—a few, members of the '42s, who were to the Mob what the Junior Chamber of Commerce members were to their elders. The '42s liked me because I always shoved my finished papers to my left while a certain'42 member-in-good-standing was seated behind me. He moved his chair to the left. His vision was apparently 20–20 because he'd always wind up with an A, much to his parents' surprise. There was in our class an ROTC chieftain, with medals brightening the sunshine where he was. He finked numerous times on his classmates. One, Louis Fratto, who won the Catholic Youth Organization
(CYO) featherweight title, beat the bejeepers out of the medal-lioned one. He asked me if he had gone too far. I kissed both his cheeks as General Foch did those of American soldiers in World War I.

As a parting gift, Mr. Powles offered me two books. I say “offered” because it was more than giving. Two books:
Roget's Thesaurus
and Olive Schreiner's novel
The Story of an African Farm.
The latter was written under the name of Ralph Iron, much as George Eliot found a name of her own. What astonished me so many years later, during a visit to South Africa, was that Nadine Gordimer told me that was one of the books she had read as a young woman in her family store near Johannesburg.

Now, the wondrous question: How did George W. Powles, an Edwardian schoolteacher, come across this book? Of course, after the two precious books had been many years in my possession, I lost both. (If there were time, I could heartbreakingly explain how I misplaced and never recovered a letter from Charles Chaplin in Vevey, Switzerland, and an astonishing note from Douglas Fairbanks Jr. on the horrors of ageism. Young Fairbanks was a grandfather at the time and I was his co-speaker. It was an assemblage of old guys and dolls, who gave him a standing ovation. I also lost a Western Union telegram from Sterling Hayden, its language so foul that the operator refused to repeat it other than to another woman. It was a lovingly hilarious note of congratulations on my having won the Debs Award.

The second of my McKinley mentors, Robert Potter, was rugged of face with a scraggly mustache. Though he and Powles were venerable contemporaries, their temperaments were somewhat at odds. Andrew Potter taught algebra. He was aware of my woeful weakness in anything involving numbers. Nonetheless, he maintained an air of patience. I found his kindness to me inexplicable, though as a quiet, shy boy, I was very well behaved. When he spoke of certain kinds of people, his speech was less than tender. I assumed he meant “Mediterraneans.” It was the time of Italian and
Portuguese workingwomen first writing and then loudly singing “Bread and Roses.” No, Mr. Potter had discovered a people to be disliked even more than Mediterraneans: the Jews. As an offering of farewell, he gave me, all wrapped in thick rubber bands, the Dearborn
Independent
. It was Henry Ford's beauty; he was publisher. (There was much talk among affluent Jewish groups seeking to put forth a car to rival the Model T. It was called the Star. To say that it flopped is to say that Jack Dempsey defeated Billy Miske. The fight lasted one round.) Not a bet was missed; the paper covered everything from the Protocols of Zion to the killing of Christ.

Perhaps Mr. Potter thought I was a Mel Gibson born a generation too soon.

I started reading them and they caught my attention and held it fast. They contained the most virulent anti-Semitic speeches I had ever encountered. It was so shameless; it approached an eloquence I had never explored. Meyer told me to throw them into the stove, but I hesitated, for I had seen nothing as sensational since Peaches exposed everything about Daddy Browning.
¹¹
I regret that I was never able to express my gratitude for Mr. Potter's largesse . . .

Our gym teacher was no Jack La Lanne, nor a Jane Fonda. He was in his seventies, with the traditional mustachio, pocket watch in jacket, suit, white shirt and tie—formal attire, except for well-worn white sneakers. “George Commons, sir, is my name.” They all had a common attribute, ingenuity. Mr. Commons always wore heavy sweaters because it was forever cold. The elves came through, the'42s. They'd run by tossing hot pennies at him. Drawing himself up to his full height, he'd threaten to take on “a dozen of you Mediterraneans.”

My favorite of all was the gentle Miss Olive Leekley, who was not merely our Latin teacher (she insisted it be pronounced softly Lat-hin, which came easily because she was so thoughtful of every-one's
feelings. She even passed the young oaf who suggested that Nero was a southpaw with the Boston Red Sox.).

Most important, she was our debating coach. Each school had an affirmative side and a negative. At McKinley, I had suddenly developed a case of logorrhea, and I was on both sides. The favorite topic was, of course: Resolved, the Death Penalty Shall Be Abolished. There was no honor. The students did the choosing and the '42s saw to it that I did well. They attended all the debates in which I appeared. I think of what I might have been, had I gone along with the law and maintained my friendship with the '42s. I might have been Sidney Korshak—Mr. Clout. When Senator Estes Kefauver, a genuine public servant, headed a committee investigating the Mob, Korshak saw to it that he stepped out. Korshak had everything on everyone. Oh, when I was on the negative, I was a small boy
Torquemada
. I'm not sure I came out for quartering or the rack, yet some of these buggers had to be punished. I do remember saying as a grotesque small-boy epilogue: “Of course, I didn't mean it.” “Oh yeah?” said one my '42s classmates. “Why not?”

O
n the southeast corner of Wells Street and Grand Avenue is an imposing three-story building of condominiums: nine spacious, elegantly appointed apartments that frequently make the style sections of our daily newspaper. The occupants, a couple of indeterminate age, seated, oh, so casually, smile in the manner prescribed by a celebrated local photographer. (Once upon a time, I had run into the camera master and asked him if Cartier-Bresson had any influence on his work. “No,” he replied. “Annie Liebowitz.”)

Below is a four star Moroccan restaurant, whose fare is North African-cum-French—or it's changed hands and serves Italian-cum-Californian, but the prices are always high. Each time I passed this corner, I paused, trying to recall what this place once was, and kicked at the wall of the rather opulent entrance. The doorman always appeared discombobulated, as a seventy-five-year-old (the occurrences were twenty or so years before this writing) and obviously decrepit old bum limped away.

I was, at three score and fifteen, only performing what was the usual ritual. For me, what was once a native habitat had become alien turf. The transformation that had been happening gradually, SUVesque, seemed so sudden.

Yes, the Wells-Grand area had once been a near-north neighborhood of sorts. Italian was the predominant ethic, though it was ecumenical
in the sharing of hard times. Yes, two blocks east was Clark. It was the strip that could reasonably be described as Skid Row East.

I stepped inside about thirty years ago, ages after we had sold the hotel, the lease; the building itself had been owned by H.L. Flentye, a rigid ultraconservative but an honest, decent landlord. The hotel had become SRO (single-room occupancy). I, for sentimental reasons, had visited from time to time and been quite satisfied. In the still quite neat lobby, I heard an elderly guest querulously wonder where “the jokes” were. The jokes. He didn't ask for “the funnies” or “the comics.” I felt the place was in good hands. I was made aware of the SRO veterans being given three months' notice before being booted out. Where will they go? I had the temerity to ask this of one of the developers with whom I had become acquainted. “Out there.” He pointed west, vaguely. It was more of a genial wave.

What, you may ask, made me, some twenty years ago, at seventy-five, sprain my foot against the brick of the wall? I realize the kicks made no sense; yet they brought back a memory. That obdurate wall had once upon a time been the glass-door entrance to the Wells-Grand Hotel. For years, after we had left, that entrance was unchanged. Gilt-edged letters across the glass proclaimed the name. On the fabled (for me) corner hung the neon sign bearing those sweet words—Wells-Grand.

During my last kick-time, I ran into a construction worker, the only one left, who was putting some last-minute touches to the masterwork. I said to him, with the prudishness of an old puritanical schoolteacher: “These were once fifty rooms. Do you know who lived there? Working people like you.”

He simply looked at me for a good while. At last he replied, “Of course I know that. It's my job.”

“Did you ever wonder about the people you kicked out—how many years ago? Did you ever wonder where they went?”

“One day,” he casually responded, “these new people will be kicked out, too. This might become a great big office building.”

He
was now lecturing
me
. Obviously, I got more than I had bargained for.

The Wells-Grand Hotel of my memory, of my dreams, was not a flophouse. Let's get that straight. This was in the mid-twenties. There had been a rooming house, my mother, Annie, the proprietress. Now, we had the hotel, my father, Sam, the proprietor. The guests were what I remembered best. Remember, the times were still pretty good. The crash of '29 had yet to come. During the day, the lobby was empty, men at work: Some of them were old enough to be retired, ex's. There was Bill Brewer, the ex-carpenter. There was Teddy Tils, dapper and ex-mason: there was Ed Sprague, an ex-something; probably ex–boomer fireman.
¹²
His work was mostly transient. Many of the guests were Wobblies.

On weekdays, the lobby was empty save for a few ex's playing cribbage or hearts, the rest off sauntering in Lincoln Park. Teddy was often kidded, due to his Old World courteous manners, of making time with the wealthy old dowagers of the Near North Side. Bill Brewer loved shooting pool at two and a half cents a cue.
¹³
“Billiards is my game. I once played with Willie Hoppe.” (Hoppe was a billiards wizard; the world champion, for many years.) As for Sprague, his daily fare consisted of dead man's stew—a bowl of hot milk with bread dipped in it. Most of his teeth had been knocked out during the Seattle General strike of 1919. He had been a Wobbly, of course. At night, Saturday afternoons and Sundays, the guests crowded into our lobby. To me, at the time, the room seemed immense. When I visited it years later, I saw that the lobby was the size of an ordinary men's hotel room. The Abe Lincoln portrait (photographed by Matthew Brady) was still hanging askew. The September Moon calendar was still there. On Sundays, the men would express their worship of Eros rather than Jesus, with the girls on Orleans Street, two blocks west. On Sundays, those cribs were standing room only. Remember, my father ran the hotel, bum ticker or not,
and Ben and I were his associates. My mother had to do something. For a time, she resumed dressmaking.

A guest whom we called Civilization was the center of our attention. He worked as a pearl diver—a dishwasher—during the day at Mike Legda's diner down below, the Victoria. All of Civilization's spare time, and I mean
all
, was expended in letter writing. He used a pencil whose nub was always wearing down, and his markings were something of an ordeal to make out. His stationery was lined paper torn from some old composition books. His letters, running to twenty or so penciled pages, were his prescriptions for a better world. He described himself as a Czech intellectual. Among his correspondents were Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Henry Ford, Mahatma Gandhi, and Oscar Wilde. Not one had the courtesy to reply. Finally, he reluctantly concluded that civilization was doomed. Thus, his name.

What was remarkable and strangely moving was the show of respect the other guests afforded him. Oh, I imagine a good number had him down as a pistachio; but, nonetheless, they did not threaten to toss him out of the window. It is true there were occasions when Ben and I were urged to give him the heave-ho. Joe, whose real surname was Chch. It does look strange, no vowel, all consonants. All we could say was Joe Chuch. We had to include that one vowel in speech.

It was as Civilization that he brought forth our local notoriety. The moment that most irritated his fellow guests was when he'd go up to his room, number 35, on the third floor, dead, dead, dead drunk. As Ben or I tossed him onto his bed at, say, 1:00 a.m., the troubles began. As soon as we had descended to the clerk's desk three floors down, we heard the howl of a banshee. No, it was more of a cry for help. “Owww! Owww! Owww!” I'm sure the whole street resounded with this mayday howl. I expected the police at any moment.