Black Chicago Read online

  Now we have tourists who come only to buy the Polish sausage sandwiches “with everything on ’em, the rumor is that the whole area is going to be “reborn.” (Isaac B. Singer) I’d never heard of the man, to be honest with you, and if it hadn’t been for this Jewish chick that I was dealing with I probably never would’ve heard about him.

  “Kofi, you’ve got to read some of this man’s stuff, it’ll surprise you.” So I read. And I was stunned into reading more. “The magician of Lublin” blew my mind.

  “When he died in July of 1991 I felt kinda sad, you know what I mean? a little like a friend had passed on.”

  (Rap Love Song) “Passionate sweat made us both wet, I told you don’t fret, a baby is not what you’re gonna get … Passionate sweat made us both wet, remember I told you don’t fret, a baby is not what you’re gonna get ’cause I had the con—dom on.

  You wanna have a orgasm!”

  (Uncle Percy and Mr. Lloyd) “Right here where this ugly ass project stands is where 1150 Washborn used to be, or rather I should say, where the building we lived in used to be.

  Basement, three floors and a left. We lived in the basement, pigeons lived in the loft. Seems like I could always find cracked pigeon’s eggs that had rolled out of the loft and fell on the steps of the basement.

  My uncle and aunt ran a gambling house on the weekends, from Thursday to Sunday morning, when she went to the little Baptist church up the street. No high blown rhetoric about the immorality of gambling, or any of that, people were trying to get by the best way they could.

  The gambling scene fascinated the shit out of me, people arguing and grumbling and moving around a croupier table. I was especially fascinated by two particular gamblers, my Uncle Percy and a man named Mr. Lloyd.

  Uncle Percy and Mr. Lloyd played one on one, a card game called “skin.” I didn’t know what “skin” was then and I still don’t know what “skin” is.

  These two men (uncle Percy, Gandhi thin and cool, Mr. Lloyd, pouchy eyed and warm) would sit across from each other after the croup shooters had gone and “skin” for a couple days.

  Yes, two days at a crack. I still have the image of these two old men (they probably looked old from birth) sitting at the kitchen table, silently “skinning.”

  There were no whoops of joy for either of them when one lost and other won. It was a kind of zen thing.

  The basic idea seemed to be on who could concentrate on something the longest. That was “skinning.”

  (47th street, The Peps) “There will never be, could never be another dance hall like the “Peps,” I’ve been to all of ’em, Fillmore, the place in London, the Dand’ Paris, up in Harlem.

  Thing is I don’t think the “Peps” was ever given the recognition it deserved. Harlem had the edge because it got the publicity but the Peps was equal to any of them.

  It definitely had something to do with location, that much is certain. Forty-seventh Street just didn’t have the same ring to it as one hundred thirty-fifth and Lennox, uptown. You know what I mean.?

  Be that as it may, the place was magic. “Going up the steps” we called it. Rug lined staircase, a little tacky. We were searched by the security guard but it didn’t prevent anything we wanted to bring in from being brought in.

  The herb was smoked in the balcony and the cheap wine was drunk in the toilet.

  Huge polished dance floor of springy wood, two monster speakers on either side of the stage, real beautifully dimmed lights. We danced in each others arms, pressed to each others bodies.

  Many of us had our first sexual experience at the Peps. There were some girls there who could dance up against you so good it would make you cum.

  No lie, there’s documented proof of that. It was a tribal scene. On some Saturday nights when the D.J. was in a drum mood, he’d put one of those Chano Pozo type mambos on and send us back home. “He sent me out one night and I never returned.”

  (An “Old Timer” speaks) “It ain’t about nothin’ now. It ain’t about nothin’. The sweet part has died, its all about dope and murder now.

  Are you hip to a Black man named John Hendrik Clarke? I think he might be dead now but I went to a lecture he gave, years ago. And at this lecture he talked about what a civilization should be.

  He made it plain ’n simple that industrialization did not mean civilization. Thats what most folks in the western world think civilization is.

  He, said, “we have a civilization when people are civil to each other.”

  That statement has been ringing a bell in my head for years. I’m old enough to remember when we, Black people in Chicago, were relatively civil to each other.

  Yes I know, there were always some uncouth types running around, but not like now. What happened?

  Well, my personal opinion is that we surrendered our children to television. Let me explain what I mean. I was at my son’s house last week for dinner and the night after dinner, my grandchildren, Marvin, Sally and Tabula dashed downstairs to watch something on TV/VCR.

  It was a tape of a rap group in concert. I sat on the sofa behind them and watched an hour and a half of uncivilized behavior.

  There were no people with grey hair on the tape, no elders, just folks doing superfast dances and screaming profanity. I felt so sad I could of cried.”

  (Imani Blood Chicagoan)

  So much positive stuff happens in this city every day that its unreal. Black people and white people are not strangling each other on sight, drug crazed gang members are not blazing away with Uzi’s on every corner, the African-Americans here are not being left out of the political process and we are not going to hell this afternoon.

  Sometimes I feel like screaming when I feel that I’m being saturated with all of the negative stuff. It comes from many directions; the media mostly, and from people who buy into the negative and spread it around.

  No, of course, this is not paradise. We do have problems. That’s intrinsic to city life.

  But I refuse to allow the negative blinders to blot the positive picture art. We help each other here, people are ready, willing and able to do what they can to help the other person.

  That’s not an unusual thing, people do it ordinarily. We share. I think the greatest testimonial to the facts that most people in this city have their heads screwed on right is the fact that the city works.

  If we were as messed up as some folks want to make us believe, we’d be up to our necks in shit. I rest my case.

  We were blessed in 1991, to trip to Chicago, to retrace the motions and take a look at the sap rising. We watched the eggplant-colored people begin to glow, the butter yellows melt to brick-brown, the bleached ones acquire color.

  Thunderstorms, saliva from the jaws of Heaven, sprinkled warm spit on us, nourished us. Distant flashes of jagged spear throwing, combined with cosmic atomic clashes scared the shit out of us.

  Chicago’s trees opened up on us, budding with hardened nipples that quickly bloomed into full flowering breasts.

  The music drove us, came to us, surrounded us, penetrated us (Sarah Vaughn, Divinity, Channel 11/July 29th, 1991, 9:00PM), it was the blues, jazz, salsa, symphony, concerto, country, Creation, Subbulakshmi, Ramon Montoya, Nino Ricardo, Coltrane, the people next door that made us dance.

  We danced, waiting for the traffic light to change. We fed on soul music, inner ear stuff. We danced for a while after the music had stopped.

  Yes, of course, it was a nostalgic buy, irresistible for the price. Who wouldn’t want to return to the place where they had first sampled snow-cones in the summer? Eaten hot slices of fire red watermelon, tasted Mississippi-made biscuits and made love to Odessa and Rose all summer.

  Just to see Chicago Black style, to hang out with Bo-Manolete, doing a mental faena that few matadors have ever considered.

  To go and check out the changes and be able to say, after the first winter hip leaf had been chipped from the tree, she’s a beautiful lady and we saw her when she was putting her dress on, when she was dress
ed, when she started stripping and when she got naked. Ase.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Originally published by Holloway House Publishing Co.

  Copyright © 1992, 2011 by Odie Hawkins

  Front cover photo by Zola Salena-Hawkins,

  www.flickr.com/photos/32886903@N02

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-3566-8

  Distributed in 2016 by Open Road Distribution

  180 Maiden Lane

  New York, NY 10038

  www.openroadmedia.com