By J.J. Tindall
West Town Blues
Rose of Sharon thrived in the odd patch of hard dirt
Amid the asphalt, concrete and steel when I lived in West Town.
Defiant rose, city rose, hard rose. “Jaybird, when Joey the Clown
Ran the neighborhood, women could walk home from work
At 2:30 in the morning and feel safe,” declared my landlord, Dominic.
I would watch my neighbors celebrate their daughter’s Quinceanera
Across the back alley, uncertain what it was at first but
Guessing it was a coming of age ceremony in the Hispanic community
Like Confirmation or Bar Mitzvah. Right:
When a young woman turns fifteen, when the rose grows thorns.
For decades, when ethnicities were segregated
By neighborhood, West Town was largely Italian.
Dominic had houses throughout a three-block radius, his investment portfolio.
True to form, he was secretive about the basement.
The water heater was just one of many cut corners.
One time I found him down there kibitzing the repairman
To NOT repair the thing properly because the replacement parts
Would cost too much.
Lately it became a more Hispanic neighborhood,
Though the “white” folk were still mostly Old School
Italian. Like, literal stone-cutter Italians, descended from the
Original residents. Then one morning, I get in my car
To run errands, and here comes Dominic,
In the middle of the morning street, loudly, and with a smile:
“I’d vote for a nigger, Jay, before I’d vote
For your Irish buddy Daley!”
I hadn’t asked. Him, and the remnants of a legacy where it mattered
Which white you were and
When one revered men like Joey the Clown.
Fuckin’ Dominic.
This is how they roll: bigots can’t wait
To trot out their slurs, especially if they think
You’ll be offended. I did wonder
How I hadn’t “passed,” what with my English Protestant sounding
Last name, how he sussed that I was Potato Famine
Irish on both sides. This was my West Town
From 1987 until 2007, when the Developers
Finally took moved in. I faced the music: “You got to move.”
So: west up Grand to Humboldt Park. Many ethnic Chicagoans followed
A common diagonal boulevard upwards and outwards by generation:
Poles up Milwaukee, Germans up Lincoln, Scandinavians up Clark, etc.
For the Italians, west up Grand to Elmwood Park
Where they finally found Joey in hiding at a friend’s,
On the lam in ’05. Late in life, he fled
His home on Ohio Street just west of Hoyne,
A block from my old flat, charged with racketeering,
Extortion and loan sharking. He’d grown a long beard
A la Saddam Hussein. Beard of thorns.
Hard rose. I wonder how he voted.
–
J.J. Tindall is the Beachwood’s poet-in-residence. He welcomes your comments. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.
–
More Tindall:
* Chicagoetry: The Book
* Ready To Rock: The Music
* The Viral Video: The Match Game Dance
Posted on October 15, 2018