18th Post "THE PAST IS MYSELF"

Photo Below:
(Scene from the Movie “The Blues Brothers” singing Sweet Home Chicago)

“The Future is nothing,
But the past is myself,
My own history,
The seed of my present thoughts, the mould of my present disposition”.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of the Road

CHICAGO

Carl Sandburg’s “CHICAGO” published 1916 in Chicago Poems

HOG butcher for the world,
Tool maker, Stacker of wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked, and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse, and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half naked, sweating, proud to be the Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.



CARL SANDBURG PASSED IN 1967 AT THE AGE OF 89, HE WAS MY POET AND CHICAGO WAS NOT ONLY HIS CITY, IT ALSO WAS MINE!

The place of my origin was unknown to me in its fullest sense, until fate carried me to the place of my birth when I was twelve. I “came home” during my impressionable years to shake hands with the city of my beginnings.

I loved Chicago and Chicago was good to her son. Oft when in a nostalgic mood, my thoughts drift back in time and I wonder how life could have been, had I lived out my years, in that magical setting, with the city of “Big Shoulders”.

“First impressions are lasting impressions“, the cliché reminds us; my first impression of Chicago in the late summer of 1950 was immediate affection. I loved the smells, the sounds, the salad of humanity; different peoples with different backgrounds from different nations and names I had to learn to pronounce. I loved the foods, the sparks from the catenaries of the street cars, the exhaust fumes from the buses, the cold, blistering winter winds off Lake Michigan and the snow.
I loved Chicago and I didn’t read Sandburg until my sophomore year in high school. Sandburg spoke for me.

I loved days off. Riding the elevated into the subway from Englewood to Downtown. The quickness of State and Madison, Michigan Avenue with the elegance of the hotels and the lions guarding the Art Institute. I was in awe of the Tribune Tower and its neighbor, the Wrigley Building with the all white purity it projected. North of the Chicago River, West Kinzie and North Wells Streets intersected, there resided the Merchandise Mart, flexing it’s muscle and heaving it’s “Big Shoulders” to impress me. I feasted on the banquet of Wacker Drive, Grant Park, Buckingham Fountain and the prairie wind spooning waves of Lake Michigan and feeding Lake Shore Drive; and hats, never to forget hats blowing off heads and hat chasers, sometimes catching, sometimes failing, but always chasing.

I was taught by the Field Museum of Natural History, John G. Shedd Aquarium, Adler Planetarium and Soldier Field. Ah, the July 4th celebrations at Soldier Field with the “million dollar” fireworks display and the Chicago Parades.

I loved the Chicago Stockyards, the pens and slaughter houses that moved Sandburg to vocalize, “Hog Butcher for the world”, lessons learned from guided tours through “Armour” and “Swift and Company” meat packers. I came to their neighbor, the “International Amphitheater” and reveled in automobile shows and exhibits from conventions.

Chicago’s Brookfield and Lincoln Park Zoos taught me respect and knowledge for an assortment of Earth’s Inhabitants, previously unknown to me.

I learned appreciation for music of the masters in “Orchestra Hall“: from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Visits to McCormick Theological Seminary inspired me, although a passing dream, to pursue a life in the ministry.

The excitement of my observations on West Madison Street, the skid row and flop houses of the derelicts, visiting Jane Addam’s Hull House and studying the life of this remarkable Chicago Lady with the philanthropic desire to help. Her work inspired me to assist others less fortunate than
myself.

I have stood in the shadows of Chicago’s darkness and talked with the whores and drunks who plied the streets for money and another drink; these I would not forget as my city taught me what was on the other side of the “Million Dollar Mile”. These experiences encouraged me to study the life of “Billy Sunday” the evangelist.

Billy Sunday had been a professional baseball player. One night he came into the Pacific Garden Mission (located in downtown Chicago on State Street) and heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Chicago set the spark which lit the fire under Billy Sunday.

The classic example of two is company, three is a crowd, four is a party and one is a wanderer was me. I wandered every part of my Chicago from Navy Pier to Melrose Park, Northwestern University to Roseland. I learned my city.

Alone, I wandered through Maxwell Street and watched the pickpockets relieve a man of his wallet or a woman her jewelry. I smelled the stench of “unbathed” masses around the open air stalls, I crept inside the darkness to watch the Gypsies, look upon their smoky faces, hear their music and see them dance. They requested I call them “Roma”.

A once popular song contained the words, “Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread”, Chicago beckoned me to tread in many avenues, especially visiting congregations of worshippers in their houses of worship. Roman Catholic Churches, multi denominational Protestant Churches, the B'hai temple in Wilmette, Illinois, various Jewish Synagogues and other clandestine services. Chicago had them all within its bounds.

The popular “Saturday Nite Live” duo, The Blues Brothers sang their song, “Sweet home, Chicago”, and for this son of the city it really was a sweet home. I loved that city with all of me, I was in Chicago and Chicago was in me.

High school graduation behind me, not of legal employment age, with no money of my own, I had no alternative but to be extricated from my city. My leaving her did not purport my feelings for her. I never would forget her, Chicago had melded with my soul and graciously received, nurtured and educated her misplaced son.

Arriving in Nashville, beginning a new life, impressionable years still with me, observing the building of the first “skyscraper”, L&C (Life and Casualty) Tower and all about me were “struck with awe”, what great height to be achieved. My mind reeled and I said; “Is that all there is, to a Nashville Skyscraper?”

Peggy Lee’s popular song, “Is That All There Is” flooded my mind:
Is that all there is?

Is that all there is?

If that's all there is, my friends,

Then let's keep dancing.

Let's break out the booze And have a ball

If that's all there is.

And then there was a Nashville Parade, I observed, and all about me were applauding the magnificence, once again I said; “Is that all there is, to a Nashville Parade”?

I had arrived from the city of Big Shoulders, I had mingled and made love to the:
HOG butcher for the world,
Tool maker, Stacker of wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of Big Shoulders

She had been my mother, my mistress, my true love and she had returned my feelings a thousand fold and I missed her.

Three decades passed and on a business trip to the Mid Western United States, I purposely detoured to once again behold my city. Many changes had come over her since I last had intercourse with her, more years of maturity had made the changes and I was taken back in my mind to the penned remarks of Samuel L. Clemens, (Mark Twain) and his observation in 1883,
“that Chicago is “a city where they are always rubbing the lamp and fetching up the genie, and contriving and achieving new impossibilities. It is hopeless for the occasional visitor to try to keep up with Chicago - she outgrows his prophecies faster than he can make them. She is always a novelty; for she is never the Chicago you saw when you passed through the last time.”

As she was Carl Sandburg’s, she also belonged to me, God, how I loved her.
Robert M McClurkan (aka) Dixie