Mini-Spring Break in Chicago

'Tis the season for holiday travel to warm and/or exotic places. I have friends and relatives who are spending extended time right now in Florida, Las Vegas, New York, New Orleans, Paris and even Haiti. Personally, my holiday was a bit less exotic and much more condensed than those.

While my wife was working Friday and Saturday, I took a 36 hour leave 90 miles south to the City of Big Shoulders and visited a couple dozen friends and family. It was a whirlwind trip that left me in need of a true vacation on a beach.

Here’s a timeline and recap of my 36 hour "vacation" (times are approximate):

Friday:

7:30 am: Depart Whitefish Bay via my fully fueled Honda Civic Hybrid.

8 am: Arrived at my first stop, Woodman's Food Store in Kenosha. I shop at Woodman’s specifically to purchase retro cereal Quisp from Quaker Oats. Last time I was there, I noted on my Twitter feed that Quisp was no longer stocked. I was impressed to see that both Woodman’s and Quaker responded with an apology and assurance that it was an oversight that would soon be corrected. I quickly snapped up three boxes – and a couple of hard to find Pearson’s Bun Candy Bars and returned to the road.

9:15 am: Dunkin Donuts, North Riverside, IL. Earlier in the week, I had brokered the sale of 11 not rare, but still 30+ year old comic books from one friend to another via Twitter. I arranged to exchange Spider-Man, Superman, Ghost Rider, Lady Thor and other comics for the cash at the Dunkin’ Donuts. It felt a bit like making a drug transaction as I exchanged the goods in plastic for cold hard cash.

9:30 am: A few minutes later I arrived at the Brookfield, Illinois home of my best friend Mike who would accompany me for most of the first half of my mini-vacation.

10:15 am: We drove into the city, parked my car near the Ashland Orange Line El stop, which we took to the Harold Washington Library in the Loop. Mike’s birthday is February 20th and he creatively asked his close friends and relatives to give him the gift of their time to do something they share an interest in rather than a tangible gift. The unique request meant his birthday celebration stretched into a second month. My gift to him – that he chose - was spending a couple hours with him in the micro film room of Chicago’s main library reviewing old Chicago American and Chicago Today newspapers.

10:30 am: It being opening day (in Texas) for our team, the Chicago White Sox, we decided to look up stories from past White Sox and Cubs opening days. I chose the 1972 Chicago Today, because I knew Dick Allen homered that day and this is the 40th anniversry of that season. I also reviewed the Chicago American papers from the second week of April in 1966. It is easy to go down a rabbit hole of nostalgia with 40 year old newspapers and the two hours we allotted ourselves flew by as we recalled memorable events and discovered forgotten ones. I marveled at the perspective of sportsWRITER Brent Musburger in the Chicago American and trivia maven Harry Sheer in the Chicago Today. The TV sportscasting legend didn't pull any punches as a writer. Some of Musburger's writing was pretty caustic.

12:30 pm: We hopped back on the Orange Line, disembarking at Ashland and drove the short jaunt to the blue collar Bridgeport Inn to watch the start of the White Sox season.

1 to 2 pm: Mike’s brother Jim had gotten a foothold at the bar before we arrived. The Bridgeport Inn is less than a mile from the White Sox home park to the south and east. It’s a dark and comfortable place with beer nuts, a pool table and coasters shaped like home plate with the White Sox logo on them. After four innings we decided we needed more sustenance than beer nuts and cheese filled crackers, so we drove the few blocks to 26th Street and the 260 Sports Bar for the rest of the game.

2 to 4 pm: 260 is a new sports bar above Ricobenes Italian Restaurant. The owners are the same and they have done a great job filling the ample walls with authentic Chicago sports memorabilia and images from Chicago sports teams’ glory days. The game didn’t go the Sox way (3-2 to Texas), but the burgers were outstanding, the company was great, we were watching baseball and the walls were packed with history - including photos of Black Sox player Buck Weaver who would be on my itinerary the next day.

4 to 5 pm: Drive to Brookfield. I figured the Good Friday commute from Bridgeport to Brookfield would be smooth even during rush hour. I was wrong as the backup on the Stevenson on-ramp evidenced. We opted for the Archer Avenue alternative instead. The Polish corridor was also slow, but it’s a delightful drive past block after block of Polish owned businesses from Pticek & Son Bakery at Naragansett to Joe & Frank’s Famous Sausage Company at Harlem.

5 to 7 pm: I used a two hour window to rest up and adjust evening plans. Original intention was to go to Vito & Nick’s on South Pulaski for their famous smelt fry with Ben Burton. Ben is the former chairman of Section 8 Chicago, the Chicago Fire Major League Soccer team’s independent supporters association. Smelt frys are seasonal and Vito and Nick’s has been a staple on the south side of Chicago since the 1930s. A flurry of texts changed that however as Ben was locked down at Simone’s in Pilsen with several of our friends who all texted me to go to Simone’s instead.

8 to 9 pm: Simone's is a hipster bar in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. I’m conflicted over Simone’s. On the plus side, it’s in a great location on Chicago’s near south side in an old building with a great exterior mural and wonderful décor using old pinball machines as tables and art and repurposed bowling lanes for the bar. On the downside it represents the hipster gentrification of the old immigrant neighborhood that is pushing out many Mexican-Americans who can no longer afford the increasing rents and mortgages. Changing demographics are inevitable in all neighborhoods however and this isn’t Pilsen’s first change. Prior to the late 20th century Mexican migration to Chicago, Pilsen was Chicago’s Czech enclave where my grandparents on my father’s side socialized and attended church.

My stay at Simone’s was enjoyable and we quickly planned a potential smelt alternative to the far south side Vito & Tony’s: we hypothesized that the nearby Lawrence’s Seafood Restaurant may serve smelt.

9 to 10 pm: Lawrence's Sea Food’s menu is all about FRIED fish…no wood planked whitefish with béarnaise sauce here. Sadly, they had no smelt. I ordered frog legs and shrimp and traded some of the latter for a couple oysters and scallops. The murals and cartoonish statue of a Gloucester-like fisherman provide some fun aesthetics to Lawrence’s basic brick building along the south branch of the Chicago River.

10 to 11 pm: Some in our group were up for AJ Hudson's on the north side for their weekly ska, rocksteady, roots record spin by Fire supporter Dave Read. Ben had a 12 hour Occupy Chicago event ahead of him the next day and I had my Buck Weaver gravesite pilgrimage scheduled, so we agreed to drop the others off at AJ Hudson’s before heading home. A few other friends were already at AJ Hudson’s including new Section 8 Chicago Chairman Joel, so Ben and I stayed for one round, had some good conversation THEN headed home.

11 to 11:30 pm: Got some quality time with Ben in the car talking about life, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music album and the Chicago Fire before dropping Ben off in Oak Park on the way to Mike’s place in Brookfield.

11:30 to 12:00 am: Mike was still up working on his taxes, so we chatted until we both ran out of gas.

Saturday

12:00 am to 6:30 am: Sleep. I rarely remember any of my dreams anymore, so I can’t provide any details except that I likely snored quite a bit.

6:30 to 8:30 am: Mike just added cable TV to the basement room I stay in during my trips to Chicago. This came in handy for me as Sunderland was hosting Tottenham Hot Spur in an English Premier League match Saturday morning. It wasn’t the best match. The final score was 0-0 and neither side had very good scoring opportunities…I may have nodded off a bit in the second half. J

8:30 am to 9 am: Showered, shaved and received a great birthday present from Mike – a book about the late season collapse of the 1969 Chicago Cubs! As a lifelong White Sox fan, my second favorite baseball team is whoever is playing the Cubs. Safe to say I’ve developed a bit of a schadenfreude attitude with Chicago’s north side team.

9 to 10:30 am: This was the big day for my pilgrimage to the gravesite of 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” third baseman Buck Weaver. But first I found time to squeeze in a cup of coffee with a former Chicago Fire co-worker at a Mexican restaurant in North Riverside. My statue obsession was sated there as the restaurant had statues of two polar bears outside, so I had to have my picture taken with them!

11:15 to 11:45 am: I got to the Midway Airport transportation center at the appointed time to pick up Night Train Veeck, but Train, as he’s known, and his train, arrived 30 minutes late. Train, who sells group tickets for the Chicago White Sox team his grandfather twice owned, was part of the entourage of seven assembled for the pilgrimage to Weaver’s gravesite at Mount Hope Cemetery. My new friend Mary, whose great uncle Tony Piet followed Weaver by 15 years as the White Sox third baseman, was also part of out group.

12:15 to 1 pm: Our pilgrimage group assembled at the Breakfast Club on 111th and Pulaski, a terrific far south side diner, where we got to know each other, told White Sox stories, learned more about Weaver and coordinated our three pronged pilgrimage plan.

1 to 3 pm: Our first stop once we arrived was the gravesite of the grandparents of Mary Kay, one of our group. They are buried in plot 32 just across the interior road from Weaver’s grave in plot 35. Before visiting Weaver, however, we all caravanned over to the Swift Mausoleum, to pay homage to Gustavus Swift, the founder of Swift Meatpacking Company. After 20 minutes of touring this old part of Mount Hope Cemetery then taking a “pilgrimage team picture” in front of the Swift Mausoleum, we caravanned back to plot 35. The seven of us fanned out across plot 35 searching for Weaver’s grave. The only site clue we had was that Weaver’s grave was “near the road”. I offered a free Slurpee to the person who found Weaver’s grave first. Sara, who just so happens to love Slurpees, cashed in moments after the offer was made.

Buck Weaver, a Hall of Fame talent third baseman, was wrongfully banned from baseball for failing to turn in his White Sox teammates who did accept money from gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series. As , it is my goal to visit the graves of all eight banned Black Sox. Visiting Buck’s grave was pretty special. As I did at Shoeless Joe Jackson’s grave in Greenville, South Carolina 25 year ago, I left a yellow Wiffle Ball bat at Weaver’s grave. Three down (Jackson, Felsch and Weaver), five to go!

3 to 3:30 pm: Driving Train back downtown was much fun. We share a passion for life, people, the White Sox and finding ways to entertain people creatively.

3:30 to 4:15 pm: After Train hopped out downtown I drove to McHenry via the JFK, which was pleasantly uncongested and made it to my Mom’s house in a tidy 75 minutes!

4:15 pm: Before I made it to my Mom’s house I made a quick stop at my Dad's grave to tell him about visiting Buck Weaver’s grave. My dad first told me about Weaver and the Black Sox scandal when I was a little boy and it felt good to share the pilgrimage with him.

4:15 to 6 pm: My Mom enjoyed seeing the picture of my Dad’s grave with the fresh cut flowers she recently placed there. She gave me some updates on her own health challenges, her latest book club reading and a DVD she gave me on baseball movies of the silent motion picture era. I rested up there, while watching a bit of moving day at the Masters then hit the road for the final leg of my whirlwind journey.

6 to 7:30 pm: The drive home was mostly uneventful. In Richmond, I noted the seminal signal of the onset of spring – the opening of the Dog & Suds colloquially known as the Arf & Barf! I gassed up just across the border in Genoa City to save 20 cents a gallon on the inflated Illinois prices. I originally decided to skip the Wisconsin State Highway 120 short cut in favor of the slightly longer US Highway 12 route. The slightly longer route turned into a much longer route when I missed the I-43 exit and U-turned back to Highway 120 for what turned into a scenic drive if not a short cut.

And so ended my condensed spring break. My "vacation" had everything I could have hoped for - except relaxation. And I got that the next day with a walk on the Whitefish Bay Riviera.