Touch and Go (9 page)

Ben and I rushed back up those fifty, sixty steps, saw the man sprawled out, moaning. His mouth was wide open. We shut his
mouth, pressing his lips tightly together. Again we descended. On reaching the desk, we heard that same chilling cry again. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Said Ben, “Let's get a safety pin.” There was no need. Again we shut his mouth, but now we actually wedged his lower and upper teeth together until they interlocked. It worked. Thus, the nighttime passed.

I was for some time mystified by his baying at the midnight moon, “Owww! Owww!”

Suddenly it hit me. You needn't be a philological scholar to understand that Joe Chch, aka Civilization, was crying out for his missing vowel. “Owww! Owww!”

The one time Civilization did get into trouble involved me and a piece of zinc. We were always reading and hearing of non-physicians who had cures of some sort. I'm not referring to the obvious W.C. Fieldsian frauds and monkey-gland “doctors.” I'm referring to thinkers like Civilization, who had an idea about increasing one's height. Civilization had experimented with zinc, so he informed me. A sliver of zinc under my heels would in one year increase my height by about two inches. I did as he advised and cut myself up pretty bad. My mother detected my bloody heels. On occasion, she arrived uninvited at the hotel. (We lived in an apartment some distance from the Wells-Grand.) She threatened to throw him out of the window. The man was unfazed. His thick accent added panache to his proclamations. He was advising her of a little known cure for ill-temperedness. Unfortunately, the world was not ready for that cure.

What really created the glory nights at the lobby were the debates between the retired Wobblies and the good “company men.” “Company man” was the favorite good-behavior phrase for the fink or the three-dollar bill. The most favored of all the synonyms for the strikebreakers was “Scissorbill.” He was the capitalist with a hole in his pocket.

I had no idea when my actions would turn political. As the favored child, I was an observer; I saw rather than did. I know that by
1933, just as I was finishing my last year at the U of C law school, I witnessed a demonstration. It was at the beginning of the Chicago World's Fair of 1933–34 that I saw Italo Balbo, Mussolini's minister of aviation, land with a flotilla of two dozen seaplanes from across the Atlantic. He came ashore to tumultuous greetings almost as lyrical as Lindy's. From then on, at the corner where the Hilton Hotel overwhelms all else, the street was no longer named Seventh. It became and remains Balbo—a small street, yet a vital thoroughfare in leading you to expressways.

Chicago may be the only large American city with a street named after a fascist. Oh, it has Goethe Street and Schiller and Mozart. You may not realize it, but early Chicago had many liberal Germans who came to be known as the Failed '48ers.
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The streets were so named in memory of a certain time in European history with ideals and dreams of a better world still in the hearts of men.

It was Bughouse Square, aside from the hot lobby disputes, plus the easy way of my father and older brother, that played a role in my political growth. Bughouse Square was much like London's Hyde Park, where free speech is the power and the glory. As in Hyde Park on a Sunday, the issues were openly and widely discussed. For years, India was the Hyde Park speakers' prime subject.

Here, in Chicago, is a small park known as Washington Square. It is much better known as Bughouse Square. In its heyday, during the 1920s and 1930s, there were five soapboxes on which the most celebrated speakers were allowed twenty minutes and then afforded the privilege of passing the hat. Among the speakers was Ben Reitman, renowned as the romantic clap doctor. He was world-celebrated for having been the favorite lover of Emma Goldman, the feminist militant, the articulate Anarchist, the star of so many tumultuous gatherings.

By the time I had discovered Bughouse Square, a short walking
distance from the hotel, Reitman had seen his best days. His black fedora was there, his cape flamboyantly draped around his shoulders in the manner of Aristide Briant (remember the Toulouse-Lautrec portrait, with that red muffler stealing the show?). There appeared on Ben's black cape a telltale egg stain. By this time, old Ben R., somewhat frail and bent, was peddling books on sexual hygiene at fifteen cents a throw.

There was Frank Midney, Mayor of Bughouse Square (each year, the participants could choose among anybody present). Midney, an old Shakespearean actor we were told, hawk-nosed, John Gielgu-dian, bony hands, eloquent in speech, once withered a heckler, pointing his accusatory finger at the miscreant: “If brains was bedbug juice, you couldn't drown a nit.”

There was the little cockney, Tom Sheridan, who claimed to have founded the British Labor Party along with Keir Hardie and George Bernard Shaw. When he grew weary after a half-hour nonstop monologue, his two froggy-voiced sons, John and Jim, took over.

And, of course, there was always One-Arm Cholly Wendorf. I was usually in attendance on a Friday or Saturday night. The workweek, five and a half days; the men at the hotel worked Saturday morning and were paid at noon. About one or so, a paycheck was shoved across the desk and the proper cash was doled out. I'd saunter toward the Cosmopolitan State Bank to deposit our weekly earnings.

On the north side of Bughouse Square stands the Newberry Library. Miss Polly Fletcher was there at the library, third-floor reading room. She was of Dorothy Parker's mien and, seeing a student hanging around Bughouse Square, suggested some book or other for me to fool around with. Upton Sinclair's
The Jungle
of course. Ida Tarbell on the Rockefellers. Dreiser's
Sister Carrie
. Miss Fletcher definitely played a role in my political growing-up.

The man who “once fought Battlin' Nelson,” the sword swallower, Goodrich, Sister Grace, Midney, the Moody Bible people,
Doc Reitman, the Sheridan boys—all have their say. But it is One-Arm Cholly Wendorf whose peroration is the most memorable. (Cholly eventually succeeded Frank Midney as Mayor of Bughouse Square.)

Cholly holds up the stub of his right arm. “Know where the rest of this is? Somewhere in France. Somewhere in a trench near Chatoo Teary.
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The French have it. Cholly Wendorf's arm is enrichin' the soil that grows the grapes that brings you da best Cognac money can buy. Coovahseer. Reemy Martin. Three-Star Hennessy. I touch nothin' else.

“Know what Omar said? What is it the vintner buys one half so precious as da stuff he sells? Lemme tell you somep'n, Omar. My arm. Only he didn't buy it. I gave it to him free of charge. When my president, Woodrow Wilson, says, Cholly, I need you. You gotta defend our free way of life. You gotta kill those Huns. You gotta save poor little Belgium. Will you do me dat favor?”

“What do ya think I tol' 'im? I said, ‘You're my president, an' if you need me, I'll go. I'm a red-blooded American and I'm gonna save da world for democracy.' ” He holds high his stub. “How da hell do you think I got this? I earned it. Look at it. Unique. I coulda been just an ordinary run-of-da-mill clown. Wit' two arms. Instead—look at me. One-Arm Cholly. A man of distinction.”

“You tell 'em, Cholly.” Another winner in the crowd. Cholly peers out. He indicates with his stub. “Can you imagine? Savin' democracy for
him.
Ain't it awful, Mabel?” Howls. The audience has come to expect call-and-response as eagerly as black parishioners do at a storefront church.

“I'm marchin' down Michigan Boulevard. I'm Douglas Fairbanks. You oughta see me in khaki. America, here's my boy. What a beautiful parade. It stirs my red-blooded American blood. There she is, da drum majorette leadin' da parade. Ain't she cute? Twirlin' her baton, her little fanny twitchin'. That trombone player's got a
hard time keepin' his mind on his work. An' here come da open cars. Da fat boys, with da stars and da chickens. And bringin' up da rear is us, da camels. Wit' sixty-pound bags on our back. And everybody wavin' at us. We're wit'cha, boys. All the way.”

An open car passes through the square. The people reluctantly part, with much grumbling. An unwritten law is being violated. Only sightseeing buses are welcome. The guides and the speakers have an arrangement.

A young soldier and two girls are in the car. The boy calls out, “Go back to Russia.”

Cholly turns toward the car. It's having a difficult time getting through. “Why, you pipsqueak! Look at him, ladies and gentlemen.” We all look. The soldier, pale and bespectacled, grins weakly. Had he been a captain in his high school's ROTC? Give it to him, Cholly. The girls seem to have no idea what it's all about. Plainly, they'd rather be elsewhere. It's no use. The soldier honks his horn. Nobody moves. Well, he asked for it.

“Why, if you ever opened your yap over there at the Holy Name—” his stub indicates the Cathedral to the east, “—why, they'd fling the pee pot of the Virgin Mary at ya!” Cholly turns back to his audience. The car squeezes through.

“So, now we're on da ocean, on our way to prove we're da big muckety-muck. We land at Brest. Where's da parade? It's all in reverse. We're at da head of it, us camels. No open car, no brass band, no drum majorette wigglin' her fanny. Across da ocean, we hear 'em sayin', We're wit'cha, boys, far, far away.

“So I'm walkin' down the Champ de Leesee, have a few drinks, some Frenchman bumps into me. I say to him, ‘Outa my way, you frog, I'm an American.' He says, ‘I beg your pardohn, monsoor. You do not own Paris.' So I haul off to sock 'im. I'm an American, by God. Next thing I know, I'm flat on my back. Knocked cold. No more Stephen Decatur.

“There I am in the trench. Chatoo Teary. Next thing I know, I'm wounded. I holler. The Red Cross comes with a canteen of
water. I say, What the hell is this? I want Three-Star Hennessy. And that's what they brung me. So here I am today, saved, thanks to demon rum.”

On the steps of the Newberry Library, and along the curb, beehives form. Here, non-featured performers find their own coteries. Though lacking the credentials for the big league, the soapbox, one can attract as many as thirty, forty followers. There is a mild-mannered Finnish barber who has the widest of these circles. Nobody understands a word he says, but as soon as he appears, a small crowd gathers around him expectantly. He speaks softly. Could he be a guru from Helsinki? He is forever smiling, wisely. And sadly. He must know something. They look toward him for the answer.

Civilization appears in this arena. Of course. This is the evening of the big confrontation. Veterans of the beehive world tell me this has been a long time coming. I, naturally, am excited and proud. Our hotel is represented. The pearl diver and the barber. The Serb and the Finn. Never, before or since, have I heard conversation so recondite. The colloquy is as convoluted as it is profound. Editors of the
New York Review of Books
would go crazy. I, along with fifty others—there are more here than usual, the word has got around—crowd in close to the sages. We try to make out what they're saying . . .

I attended Bughouse Square as regularly as possible in the years that followed. I doubt whether I learned very much. One thing I know: I delighted in it. Perhaps none of it made any sense, save one kind: sense of life.

But this particular Saturday night was filled with more than life; it was overflowing. As the gathering was about to wind up and the speakers had counted all the small change in their hats, word spread that Lucy Parsons would appear.

The stars of the square were representatives of the Socialist Party, the Communists, the Vegetarians, and, of course, the Moody Bible Institute orators. To tell you the truth, they outspoke in fervor, and certainly outsang, their godless opponents.

Grace, of perfect posture and needing no soapbox, would sing of being cradled in the arms of Jesus all last night. She'd bring forth the obvious response from the atheistic printer: “What about me, Grace?” It fazed her not at all. Her singing, clear and pure, overcame.

The square itself and the library steps of Newberry were jam-packed. These were the non-stars, who had appeared from the various hotels and the rooming houses of the neighborhood. Each one seemed to have a representative. Ours was of course Civilization. His opponent was usually the soft-spoken Finnish barber. All of us listened intently to the words, many of which we had never heard before, as, I suspect, the speakers themselves had not. The subjects were so arcane, none of us, least of all the participants, knew what it was all about.

Never mind. All became silence when it was announced that Lucy was here. She was the heroine of all of us, whom many had heard about but never seen in the flesh. She had a habit of suddenly appearing at Bughouse Square. Bam!

How to describe Lucy? This was in the late thirties. Several years later, destitute, she died in a 1942 stove fire. She had outlived her husband, Albert, by fifty-five years. He had been hanged in 1887, one year after the infamous Haymarket Affair trial of 1886. She was keeping alive the memory of Albert, his three martyred comrades, and the others who had barely survived. She was high of cheekbone, and she wore a worn old skirt and a fancy flowered hat. She was light black, part Indian, and even now you knew she had at one time been really beautiful. All of us gathered there: embattled old labor vets, hangers-on, wayfaring strangers. And a couple of curious “students” like me.

Who was Lucy? She and her gentle ex-Confederate soldier, Albert, along with August Spies, an eloquent German Anarchist advocate of the eight-hour day, and six others, had held a rally in front of the International Harvester Works.

It was the eight-hour day that working people the world over were singing and dreaming about. It was here in Chicago that it was
first being celebrated. In fact, May Day had, until the time of the Cold War, become a holiday to millions everywhere.