Growing up in a small town is a weird experience. Everyone knows each other and each other's business. You can't walk down the street (or school hallway) with out someone knowing you and your family. Trying to hide something is next to impossible and being an introvert who is also not a a fan of small town life, politics, or anything is exhausting. The school was phenomenal, in terms of education anyway but being a misfit is hard when your pool of people to choose friends from is already less than one hundred and fifty. Thankfully, my family loved to and was privileged enough to be able to pack up and go somewhere on the weekends. Chicago or St. Louis mostly and St. Louis was nice enough but it lacked something that I could never quite put my finger on. Chicago was another story.
As a kid, it was the zoos and museums that I loved but then it became the escape: No one knows you and you can walk, uninterrupted down the streets, taking in the sounds and sights and day to dayness of it and feel like you belong. Because Chicago is a city that is built by and for underdogs and misfits. It's the city of starting over or remaking yourself. And that was what teenage me wanted and needed more than anything. Hell, it's still what I need sometimes. But as a preteen, teenager and then again in my early twenties it was Chicago that saved me.
It's a mix of old and new, the Old Water Tower that stands at the north end of Michigan Avenue and the corner of E Chicago Ave is the perfect example. Surrounded by much newer glitzier buildings and stores, it stands looking almost exactly as it has since it was built before the Chicago Fire of 1871. It should stick out like a sore thumb and maybe it does in a way, except it looks like royalty among all the other buildings, even though it only half there size. It's a testament to Chicago's roots: Chicago was the city that burned down and came back better than ever. And it holds that close to it's heart. The history of Chicago isn't nice. It's not shy about it either. In a lot of ways it's almost too strange a history to really bury, between the mausoleum in Lincoln Park to the bullet holes in Holy Name Cathedral to Eternal Silence in Graceland Cemetery. It's not like it's just the far history either, I mean how many times has Chicago been in the news for corruption? For bloodshed? It'd be easy to pretend to be a city where that doesn't happen if it didn't happen consistently through it's history. And who needs a reminder that you can't bury your past more than teenagers?
It was the city I could see myself in and though, as I got older I knew that my anxiety wasn't going to let me live there, I still can feel the hum of it, it's still always there, in my periphery, reminding me that it's okay to not be perfect because the best stories don't come from perfect. When I found out about the North Side Gang that opposed John Torrio and Al Capone it was, as I have always described reading about a real life Robin Hood and his Merry Men, even though they were far less good and far more deadly. When you're a teenager with a chip on your shoulder though, it's the group of gangster that makes you feel like you can go up against a small town of people who you don't fit in with and come out the other side. Chicago could (and sort of did) try to hide that part of it's past but it kept coming back, always there, waiting for anyone who wanted to find it.
When I was a senior in college I went through an absolutely terrible bout of depression. I wasn't leaving my room unless it was to go to class, I was skipping classes for the first time ever, I told my parents mean things to push them away. And then on Spring Break we went to Chicago and I remember feeling happy for the first time in months. I remember the grey cloud disappearing as I tried on hats with my mom in Forever 21. I remember just walking down the sidewalk and actually feeling the wind on my face and smelling oil, sewage, rain and cigarettes. I remember thinking that I was okay and when it hit me I cried, because it had been so long since I felt that way. That weekend brought me back and I loved Chicago even more for it.
Holy Name Cathedral stands at the corner of State and Superior, just a short distance from the Old Water Tower. The front of the cathedral shows scars of bullet holes from the hit on Hymie Weiss. Across the street is a parking lot where Schofield's Flower Shop used to stand, the headquarters for the North Side Gang. And if you know what was there and you know what happened there you can still feel it, like spirits all around you, reminding you that it was real and it happened. And that's why I love Chicago. Because the hard times, the dark times, the bloody times, the bouts of depression, it's all real. It happened. And it's there to remind you that you will come back stronger than before.
I love you, Chicago.
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