Archive for the ‘Essays’ Category
Mr. Sentimental
It happened twice recently: I looked up from what I was doing and saw Carter crying quietly to himself. It’s not unusual for him to cry—it happens about once a day for one reason or another—but usually it’s preceded by getting in trouble or an argument with his little sister, and in most of those cases the tears are big, theatrical, stage tears that can be turned on and off like a tap. But the two times I’m talking about weren’t an act. He was legitimately upset, his mouth turned up in a sad little grimace while he tried to wipe away the tears and hide them from me.
The first time, he was looking at a laminated piece of orange construction paper Sadie brought home on the last day at her old day care before she started preschool this fall. Her handprint was pressed onto the page with purple paint, and one of her teachers had written something on it about how fast she was growing up and how much she learned at school. She brought home lots of “arts and crafts” like that where the kids smeared some paint around and the teachers dressed it up into a keepsake. Debbie asked him why he was crying and he said, “I just remember all the good times when we played together after we picked her up from school.”
How to Order a Corned Beef Sandwich at Manny’s Cafeteria and Delicatessen
New Yorkers will try to tell you that they can make a better hot dog than Chicago, as if a gray, rubbery frank served by some guy in a dirty apron on a street corner is better than a Chicago-style garden on a bun. And don’t you dare let them tell you their pizza is better. Folding a cardboard-thin slice in half to drain the grease and make it edible is not a selling point. But they might have us beat in one food category: the deli.
For such a big city full of huge appetites (and huge bellies), the deli lineup in Chicago is surprisingly thin. The classic Jewish delis are either take-out style groceries like Ashkenaz or antiseptic, yuppie facsimiles like Eleven City Diner or Max & Benny’s. But what we lack in good places for lox and schmear, we make up for in one magnificent sandwich: the corned beef at Manny’s.
Manny’s Cafeteria and Delicatessen in the South Loop on Jefferson near Roosevelt doesn’t qualify strictly as a deli. The “cafeteria” part of its name is more apt. They serve everything from short ribs to spaghetti and meatballs, and while you can get smoked fish and chopped liver, it’s not why you go there. Manny’s is best known for its heaping corned beef sandwiches, a pile of sliced meat so huge that the bread is a mere afterthought, something placed on top not out of necessity but mere custom, like a paper umbrella in a tropical drink. Throw in a potato pancake the size of your hand and a couple dill pickle spears, and two adults could split the plate and still leave fully sated.
Reading by Example
I.
My son Carter is reading Harry Potter at six years old. I’m not saying that to brag (okay, maybe a little), but it’s important to the story. He made his way through the first three books pretty well, but I know that each book in the series is progressively longer and more complex, especially for a six-year-old, and as I expected he started to slow down by The Goblet of Fire. He finished it with an assist from me, reading together each night before bed, and insisted on starting The Order of the Phoenix right away. After a few weeks though, he had stopped reading it on his own and started asking me to read other books with him at night. I asked him about it, and he admitted it was too hard. We still read it together at night but he spends most of his time now doing other six-year-old boy things like building Legos and driving his little sister crazy.
Home Instead
I.
You can see the moon at night from my parents’ house in Poseyville, Indiana. That’s not unusual. You can see the moon from where I live in Chicago too, but here it’s more of an afterthought, a blip in the ambient light of the city competing with the street lamps and headlights of cars that pass by no matter the hour. In Poseyville the moon is the main event, lighting up the whole town and surrounding countryside. On a clear night you can drive without headlights, it’s so bright. I know this because I’ve actually tried.
Poseyville is a farming community of 1,200 in the southwestern corner of the state. My parents built their one-story, three bedroom ranch house with a two-car garage in 1973 for $33,000. It’s the house where I grew up, the only place I lived until I went away to college. I know living in the same house that long is nothing unique either, but after moving four times in the 12 years since I moved to Chicago, it feels like an accomplishment. For me, the concepts of childhood and home have always meant that one place on Cale Street with the big backyard and a basketball hoop in the driveway.
First Glove
My first baseball glove sits on a bookshelf in my home office. I left it at my parents’ house when I went to college (I had been through a couple more gloves by then), but I reclaimed it when I moved out for good and left for Chicago. It’s dry and brittle, and the fingers are curved around the old ball I keep stuffed in pocket with the name of my Little League team—Poseyville I—written on it in Sharpie. The glove is a MacGregor G19T, branded all around with slogans like “Flex Action,” “Adjusta-wrist,” “Lattice Weave,” and “The Athlete’s Choice.” The lining inside is shredded from years of sweat and dirt and wear, and it’s a little small for my hand now, but it’s still serviceable. Baseball gloves are like that. The basic design and build is no different from one you could buy today, and with a little glove oil and a tug on the strings, even a 30-year-old model could be ready for a game.
Still Holding the Leash
Maybe dogs are destined to break my heart. I was terrified of them as a kid, for no good reason other than that we didn’t have one of our own. One day when I was eight or nine, I was riding past a neighbor’s house on my bike when their Irish setter Max was running loose outside his pen. I panicked, tore off on my Huffy screaming, and he chased me down and bit me on the thigh. The wound was nothing serious, but later Max was gone. My parents told me the neighbors sent him away to some relatives out in the country, which was entirely plausible given where we lived in a small town, but I also never knew if that was the old trick adults play on kids when a dog really goes off to the big farm in the sky.
Banksy, Mr. Brainwash, and the Legitmacy of an Artist
My wife and I have a streaming-only Netflix subscription that we watch on the big TV through a magic box called a Roku. We got Netflix mainly for the kids–it’s pretty hard to beat an endless supply of Dora and Spongebob for $8 a month–but we’ve also enjoyed the easy access to grown up films. Netflix doesn’t offer their top shelf selections for streaming so we can’t always get our first choice of new blockbusters, but we’ve always been able to find something good. This weekend was Banksy’s “Exit Through the Gift Shop.”
The Academy Award-nominated film purports to be a documentary about Thierry Guetta, an affable Frenchman living in Los Angeles, who is an amateur filmmaker who later becomes a breakout artist, with an assist from Banksy himself. Guetta had a habit of filming nearly every moment of his life, and eventually started tagging along with street artists like Shepard Fairey and Space Invader, documenting their exploits as they bomb the streets of LA and Paris. He envisioned a grand project of documenting the burgeoning street art movement at its inception, which led him to Banksy, by then already famous for his graffiti stunts around the world.
Albert Pujols, Jack Clark, and Our Loyalty to Clothes
The Albert Pujols will-he-won’t-he sign deadline passed last week, and now the best baseball player on the planet stands to become a free agent after the season. Rumor has it he was asking the Cardinals for $300 million, the richest contract ever, and the baseball stat wonks say he’d be worth every penny. He’s put together perhaps the best first 10 seasons of any player, and one would expect he can produce at the same level for at least another five (and the next five probably better than most hitters).
As a Cardinals fan, I obviously have a rooting interest in seeing the best player in the game stay with my team. Albert has said repeatedly that he wants to finish his career in St. Louis, and the Cardinals clearly have it in their best interests to sign him. It’s good for baseball for its marquee player to stick with one of its proudest franchises, and if ever a player was destined to show some loyalty, it was this player and this team. But so was LeBron James to Cleveland. Ask a Cavs fan how he feels about loyalty now.
Birthdays Are Big
1.
Carter’s birthday is this week. I say it this way because his birthday has seemed to stretch from Christmas up until this actual day this week. My sister has a saying, “Birthdays are big!” to justify throwing big parties and buying lots of presents (mostly to convince people to do that for her, I think) and Carter has inherited that tradition with no prompting. From the minute he finished doing inventory on his Christmas loot, he started planning what he wanted for his birthday.
Debbie and I try our best to strike a balance between buying our kids things and not totally spoiling them. We’ve resisted repeated demands for a Wii, Nintendo DS, giant sprawling Harry Potter Lego sets that cost hundreds of dollars, and Carter’s own personal cell phone. Each time he asks for too much, we explain that we simply can’t afford to buy him everything he wants, and that he’s lucky to have all the toys and games and gadgets he has already, half of which have been discarded and ignored anyway. If he’s too persistent we go for the kill: “You know some kids don’t have any toys at all.” Somehow we managed to instill liberal guilt into him at six years of age, and the argument usually stops there.
The Home Team
1.
Carter has three baseball hats that he wears on a regular basis: a crimson Indiana University hat with the Hoosiers’ white pitchfork I crossed with a U logo; a navy blue St. Louis Cardinals road hat; and a Chicago White Sox hat that is so sweat-stained it’s turned from black to brown. Each of them is there for a reason. Debbie and I met when we were in school at Indiana, and I’ve followed the Hoosiers ever since I could sit in front of a TV to watch Bobby Knight menace referees on the basketball court. The Cardinals have been my favorite baseball team my whole life, and the White Sox are my adopted hometown team now that I live in Chicago, mainly because they aren’t the Cubs.
One morning last summer I was helping Carter get dressed for his day camp and I asked him which hat he wanted to wear. He picked the Sox hat again, as he had every day that summer.