`Why are we here?” Slats Grobnik suddenly asked.
Are you talking about the meaning of life? If so, I’ll move down the bar.
“Nah, I mean right now: What are we doing here?”
We’re here to sip a tad of 86-proof antifreeze to help ward off the unfriendly elements that we will face when we go outdoors.
“But why are we here?”
I just told you.
“Nah, I mean, why are we in Chicago?”
What a silly question. We are in Chicago because this is where we live and work. It is our hometown. We were born here. We have always lived here. We are Chicagoans.
“But the weather is so stinkin’ miserable. You go outside for a few minutes, and your nose might fall off. Not that your nose would be much of a loss.”
Yes, but that is part of the mystique of being a Chicagoan. Every winter we contend with such adversity; snow, cold or both. We are viewed as hardy, sturdy, tough Midwesterners, admired, even envied. Unlike many soft Americans, we don’t become immobilized by a few snowflakes or panic when the temperature drops below zero. We put on our long underwear, thump our chests, laugh at nature and we persevere.
“I hate it.”
You what?
“I said I hate it.”
I am shocked. I can’t believe you said that. You hate Chicago?
“This week I hate it. Come to think of it, I hate it every January. And I hate it every February and March. And I don’t think much of it in November or December. And October ain’t much to brag about, either.”
How long have you felt this way?
“All my life. That’s why I still hate my grandfodder.”
What does your grandfather have to do with it?
“Everything. He’s the answer to my question of why we’re here.”
Your grandfather? I remember him well. He barely spoke English, except for the words “Jim Beam,” and “beer chaser,” and “sharrup, woman.” How can you blame him for your treasonous hatred of Chicago?
“Because he got off the train too soon.”
What train?
“The train from New York to Chicago. He comes here as an immigrant, OK? He gets off the boat and he gets on a train. But then what does he do? He gets off here. If he stayed on the train, it would have gone all the way to San Francisco, or Portland, or Seattle, or someplace where you don’t freeze your butt. And you know why he got off in Chicago?”
To seek work in a boomtown, as so many immigrants did?
“Nah. He didn’t know they had a toilet on the train. So he got off to look for an outhouse, like in the Old Country. By the time he found a john, the train was gone. So he was stuck here. And my old man was born here, and me and my brother, Fats, was born here. My dumb luck because my grandpa had to go but didn’t know where to go. If it wasn’t for him, I could have been born in California and be a cool California kind of guy.”
You wouldn’t want such a fate.
“Why not? Gold chain, suntan, an earring, maybe a face lift and a hairpiece. Dump the wife, find some California girl with a real little brain. Hey, it beats the tip of my nose turning blue when I go home tonight.”
But you don’t want to live in California. It is no longer utopia. They have earthquakes, terrible fires, mudslides and Michael Jackson. People have been fleeing the state.
“Awright. Then I could go someplace else.”
Such as?
“One of those states down South. They don’t get this kind of miserable weather. I mean, what about Florida?”
Florida? Do you really want to look like George Burns, wearing plaid pants, a long-billed cap, Wal-Mart sneakers, bent in half while taking your morning walk like a hyperactive little bird, with a portable EKG machine attached to your chest?
“Florida don’t have no earthquakes.”
No, they have hurricanes. Some day the entire state will be washed away. Why, recent statistics show that more than 100,000 people your age were swept out to sea last year and eaten by sharks and crabs.
“Is that true?”
No, but one never knows. Stuff happens.
“Well, what about Alabama or Mississippi or Georgia or those other states down South? I could move there and I wouldn’t freeze no more.”
They are not your kind of people.
“Hey, people is people.”
Is anyone in your family named Bubba? Or Billy Bob or Bobby WaWa? Do you eat grits, a pallid version of Cream of Wheat? Don’t you realize that anyone who lives south of 111th Street in Chicago is-and let them deny it-a beady-eyed hillbilly? You cannot become a Southerner. For someone from Chicago, it is an unnatural act. Your eyes do not meet at your nose. You would be an object of distrust.
“What about New Mexico and warm places like that?”
You go there and you will spend the rest of your days getting up in the morning and shaking your shoes for lizards and snakes. Plus, there are still a lot of Apaches there. You never know when they might start plucking hair again.
“Then I’m stuck. But I feel better because so are you. I bet you freeze before I do.”
I’ll take that bet.
“Bartender, more antifreeze.”
