My Writing Exercise: A Heavy Mule at the Pierian Spring

Some have at first for Wits, then Poets past,
Turn'd Critics next, and prov'd plain Fools at last.
Some neither can for Wits nor Critics pass,
As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass.

I was told by my teaching mentor, " If you plan to teach writing, you had better write for at least two hours before you come to teach."  That meant getting up well before "It's time to get up."

It also meant that I needed to steal myself to a habit of engaging my craft.  Aristotle wrote, " We are what we repeatedly do,"  The famously taciturn President Calvin Coolidge said, "  Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent."

A grammar school coach, Tom Spatz said, " Losers have potential."  He also, asked me if I had polio a few years earlier, when he saw me dribble a basketball.

I still dribble a basketball like an exceptionally challenged human being. All Up in here!

However, since signing my contract at Bishop Martin D. McNamara High School in May of 1975, I have written for two hours before I went to teach my students.

This habit did not make me a great writer, but it did help me become something of an effective teacher.

Reading, speaking and writing forces one to engage other human beings.  Reading introduces thoughts, deeds and manners of expression far beyond our immediate social circle.  Speaking helps us say what we mean.  Writing requires exactness.

I write whatever comes to mind and that is a mixed bag to be sure.  What I hope will happen by end of my scribbling and correcting and modifying will be short, satisfying defense of all the things have made my life fun, fruitful and favorable to someone who reads what I have written.

Lessons learned from good people, who have provided for other people as tradesmen, butchers, milkmen, nurses, police officers, firemen, coaches and teachers mean as much and often more than picked up from pages from Balzac, Turgenev, Gorky, Joyce, Tacitus, or Swift. The harmonies of sounds pulled from the din of a loud basement full of relatives and family friends at a Christmas Party among picnic tables lifted from the forest preserves covered in table cloth and loaded with potato salads, cold cuts, pots of Italian beef, corned beef, Kapusta, Mostaccioli, cakes and soad bread; with blaring accordions, fiddles, tin whistles played by Cuz Teahan, Jimmy Neary, Tom Masterson and Kate Neary, or a powerful HiFi loaded with Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Louis Prima and John Coltrane.  Cousin doing Irish step-dancing, or Sugar push and out back steps to Gene Krupa.  Then of course just free-form, white guy moves to This Old Heart of Mine by the Four Tops.

An uncle pulls you aside and tells you to knock off whatever the hell it is that you think you are doing.

Your aunt tells him to go and have another beer and mind his own business and to turn the car keys over - Now. 

Scores of kids scream with delight, or terror.  Several cry because they being picked on and comforted until they can go and pick on someone for themselves and all is good.

Words impact from everywhere.

The meanings of those words will be lost on the world, unless someone remembers what the hell was said.  Memory can often be very convenient.

Memory is the burden carried by one who writes and that burden only gets eased with writing down the words.

Sometimes words seem like leftovers from a party.

To Celebrate Another Debate I Will Not Watch, I Made 10 Layer Chop Suey!

Vote.  Vote and then keep it to yourself.

I can not make America Great, again.  I can make Chop Suey in the Slow Cooker. Chop Suey is as American a dish as Turkey and Stuffing - Trump and Hillary. Some believe chop suey was first mixed up for the transcontinental railroad workers, others that it was a joke on Americans.  One visitor to the U.S. in 1904 wrote that Americans ate a dish prepared by Chinese restaurant owners called chop suey, but that Chinese would not eat themselves.  Either way I am and have been a huge fan.

The greatest Chop Suey joint was George's located at 79th Street just east of Ashland, back in the 1960's.  Nothing matched George's, but he gave my Mom his recipe ( so he said) and I share it here - no wok; pig pot.  Kinda like me.

Two Lbs. of cubed pork shoulder meat and chuck beef - marinated in a dry mix of salt, white pepper, cinammon and ground star anise.

I cup of chopped celery
2 chopped onions
2 cups of mung beans sprouts
1cup of water chestnets
1- cup of chopped mushroom
3- chopped garlic cloves
2Tsps of grated ginger
1 generous pinch of crushed red pepper

I half cup of Hoisan Sauce
several manly dashes of Kikkoman Teriyaki Sauces

Layer as follows

 1. celery
 2. onions
 3. marinated meat
 4, mung bean sprouts
 5. water chestnuts
 6. chopped musrooms
 7. Chopped garlic
 8.grated ginger
 9. Hoisan sauce over all
10. Crushed Red Pepper

Cook on High for two hours
Cook on Low for four hours

Serve over good sticky white rice

South Side With Yu -1979

My film version of my imaginary date with Linda Yu at Marquette Park in August 1979.

I remember it like it was yesterday, only yesterday I cut the grass and pulled a few weeds, because Mike Regan made fun of me and my lawn again, " Hey, the Hickey Urban Prairie is in full flowering . . .I mean dandelion-ing.  Jesus, Hick do you ever put any Scott's on this patch of weeds?"

Yes; yes I do.  To my reverie.

1979 - I was beginning my fourth year as a teacher in Kankakee, Illinois at Bishop McNamara High School.  It was August and school would begin in a week and went home for the weekend and tended bar Reilly's Daughter on 111th Street.  The Chicago Ag School was still a working farm.  Jimmy Carter was in the White House. Mike Bilandic was still in the big Chair on Five. Thin Lizzy Played at Comiskey Park with Carlos Santana and Eddie Money on August 5th, Boz allowed me to pick up a few bucks behind the bar.  I also played guitar and banjo in the trio - Sons of Reilly's Daughter -but this weekend Berwyn Moose an eight piece rock big band comprised of talented medical students who played brass-rock Chicago, Ides of March, Buckinghams, Motown and jazz standards would be packing the place.


Two women worked with me; the  one behind the bar was also an assistant manager and the other as waitress for the tables in the bar and out in the big beer garden.

I worked Friday afternoons from 11 AM to 6PM, when Denny Leake took over.  I filled the coolers with Heineken's, John Courage Ale, Becks, Miller, Miller Lite, checked the barrels of Bud, Michelob, Guinness and Harp for the taps, cut fruit for the cocktails, washed the bar and glasses.  At about 11:30  AM guys my Dad's age popped in for a few toddies.  These guys, all WW2 veterans, were not huge on snappy banter, witticisms, opinions, cheerful bon mots, or other indicators for their collective semiotic evaluations," Give your ears a chance, Kid. Nobody likes a bullshitter."

Short of answers to," Got Sunnybrook?"  verbal intercourse must be kept as secret as what these guys and their brides did behind closed doors - " Get me?"

I made great martinis, old fashions, gimlets and poured a well timed shot on request and with the promptitude earned by the killers of Japs and Nazis.

By three in the afternoon, tradesmen began popping in and pitchers of draft beer would stabilize the eight hours of hard labor with an evening of domestic joys.  Crews of Street and Sanitation workers, electricians, wood butchers, fitters and laborers crowded Reilly's Daughter's beer garden and the waitress St. Pauli Girl's fists of pitchers out to the thirsty gents.

The Roman collar on a beer is as important as the aroma and the taste.  I learned that no one wants a pitcher of flat looking beer and if there was not enough foam collaring the top the pitcher, all I need to do was stick a rolled up paper towel into the brew and give a few swift swirls.  " Pitchers Up, Rennie!"

At five o'clock a gorgeous Asian girl took a stool right in front of the Jewish Typewriter - the Epstein - the cash register.   I had been stuffing the trays with fives and tens from the last order and was gob-smacked by the vision of loveliness that I had turned to see.  I was unattached.

As Mike Regan might offer, " What's it to you?"

Well, every man confronts destiny.  I gave her my best dispassionate and professional, " What can I get you."

The beauty who seemed to have brought a personal spotlight on her charms smiled, " A Guinness please."

I put one up as directed allowing the magical black and cream colors to cascade and settle - sit - add more- settle and sit - do the magic with spoon to top off and place before the client for inspection and acceptance.

In Indiana some gump pulls once on the sacred black back & forth handles and plumps the visual equal to Quaker State 40 weight before a beer swiller - that is not a Guinness.  That is an affront to St. James's Gate and centuries of porter acolytes who made Guinness synonymous with goodness.  This was Reilly's Daughter on the south side of Chicago and not some shot and beer joint in Bum Hump, Indiana.

The Black Magic was about as good a pour as I could master.

" You really know your stuff. I usually get a glass of flat black water.  I had heard that this a great place for Guinness," the girl who could shame Nancy Kwan herself had been pleased by my mean efforts.

A six Gimlet Man, veteran of WWII, called over , " Hey, kiddo, I missed a few of your cousins on Luzon a few years back."

Unfazed the pretty girl fired back," Wrong, my dear man.  I am Chinese American."

That quieted the man.

" Sorry, these old timers do the same when some one seems too German for them, as well and then the jokes start."

"Jokes?"

"Yeah," I answered, " Have you heard about the deal at the German barbershop?  Haircuts $4."

" $4," she drew out the pay-off.

" A dollar a side."

Again, I had gained smiling approval and even more exciting the old veterans were hitting the silk and heading home. I must plunge.

After collecting fees and tips from what would soon be called The Greatest Generation, I cleaned glasses and allowed the gorgeous woman to enjoy her Guinness.

She asked for change to play the juke box and played the The Logical Song, " I love Breakfast in America!"

Now, I plunged, "What is your name if you don't mind my asking."

" Linda. And you are?"

"Pat Hickey, I am a high school teacher in Kankakee?"

" Is that near here?"

" No, it is downstate a bit."

" I just took a job here in Chicago.  I was born in China and moved to Los Angeles."

" What do you do," I asked in the most probing of 'none of your damn business but friendly Chicagoans always ask anyway' manner.

" I'm in TV -I will be anchoring the NBC weekend news."

" That's great. Have you found a place to live?"

" Yes, I have an apartment in Lincoln Park.  NBC helped me find a really nice studio with great view of the park.  It is near R. J. Grunts, that is a nice spot. Have you ever been there?"

I said no but that Boz the Owner used to hit the brunch there once in a while.  I was breath taken, floored - stone in love. I asked, " Have you seen much of the south side?  Would you care to see Marquette Park.  I am off  in twenty minutes and we could leave your car here in the lot."

" That will be nice."

And Linda and I headed out to Lithuanian Plaza.  I pointed out Rockwell Hall at 71st the Home of the fruitcakes of the American Nazi Party.  

Then I suggested that we take in the art deco memorial to Lithuanian aviators Darius and Girenas, Lithuanian Deli for some good old Loogan  Kibinai

We walked around the lagoon and she took my hand. " This was a very nice visit to the park. Hard to believe that Dr. King was hit with a brick here, " she offered
       .

I Knew that it was time to end our time together, " Linda, may I ask you out on a date?  I would to take you to Baby Doll Polka Club and 6511 Club on Kedzie."

" You may ask, but seriously doubt if I will find time to seriously do anything but keep my job here, Pat. You will be going back to Kankakee and I will anchor the weekend News on Five. You pour wonderful Guinness and this Lithuanian food is a treat. but let's just leave it at that."

I asked," What is your family name, Linda?"

"Yu."

"What?"

"My family name is Yu - Linda Yu. Will you please take me back to my car - this was very nice."

We drove up Kedzie, past the Nabisco Cookie plant and through Tommy More parish, Evergreen Park, past Mac Lang's on 103rd, where I took a right to Pulaski and then south to 111th Street and Reilly's Daughter.

Yep, I like to think that I spent some quality time of the south side with Yu. Linda Yu.

If the Ag School were open then I could have spent some quality time on the south side of Chicago with ewe.

I'm Back. . .Until I Start Talking Back to the Crucifix

I had surgery on 7AM Monday morning at Advocate Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn.  Christ Advocate ranks only behind Northwestern, Rush and University of Chicago and is one of the busiest ER's on the planet - if there is a shooting victim south of Madison Avenue you can bet Christ Advocate gets the work.

The night before we took on 19.3 " of snow - taller than Chicago's Mayor and much, much more deep.

I got up at 3 AM and plowed the dive and the sidewalk - not to be a pain-in-the-ass to the neighbors, but to allow McNamara Cab easy access. It was a futile gesture. MAC CAB called me at 4:50 AM  to inform me he was stuck at 10th & Rockwell. No sweat - boots on and move them stumpy legs.

We got there in time ( 5:35 AM) and I Duked the drive a saw buck. In I go. 

I had a quickly developing tumor on my nose (left nostril) and looked like Bardolph in Kenneth Brannagh's glorious version of Henry V for the last three weeks.

I was referred to a lovely Greek American woman ( Dr. Nicki) to perform my plastic surgery.  My anaesthesiologists was guy who looked all too familiar - did I borrow a huge amount of cash from him in gaming days?   I was asked to shift from my bed to surgeon's table and told that I might get sleepy - out before my ass snuggled into the new pallet.

I spent Monday in a nice dope induced fog and yesterday getting used to the Dr. Nicki's knife work and sewing.  I have a double gauze cover for my nose sutures and long thin bikini scar from right ear to heroic jaw, where Dr. Nicki took skin grafts.  I am taking pain killers and antibiotics.

I came into work this AM and will try to get in a full day - we have a board meeting at 3PM.  I got here at 4AM and answered some e-mails.  I feel a tad dopey . . .but otherwise pretty good.

Outside of my cibicle is a huge (6') crucifix and kneeler - I made use of it and did a lap on the rosary.

Crucified Christ gave me some glances reminicent of my south side bretheran -" Gee, had an Owwee Hickey? Well, too bad about you."

Yep. You can not hide.