Once, I saw my father wearing some very new dress pants. I was surprised to see him so dressed up. Then he asks me, “Guess how much I paid for these pants?” I really wasn’t sure how much they cost, but knowing my father, I knew he didn’t pay full price. I said, “Thirty dollars.” He said I was way too high. I kept lowering the price until I reached ten dollars and even then I was wrong, so I gave up. My father had the biggest smile on his face. “I only paid fifty cents!” How? He went to the Salvation Army! And just to prove it to me, he unbuckled his belt and showed me the price tag that was still stapled to the waistband.
I wavered for about two weeks. I’m so wishy-washy that I couldn’t make up my mind if I should go see Hamlet or not. Well, I decided, very firmly, to see Hamlet about fifteen minutes before the show started. I mean, the play was at the UIC Theater and I was on campus anyway.
Recently, I had watched a movie from Spain on the Internet and a young woman says that she’s an aspiring actress. Then, she starts performing Hamlet’s soliloquoy in Spanish: “Ser o no ser.” That helped me decide to see Hamlet. However, I almost didn’t get in because the show sold out moments after I bought my ticket. I’m really glad I saw the play because it was a very different inerpretation by director Luigi Salerni. (I took a playwriting class with him quite a few years ago while I was still a graduate student and I must admit that he taught me a lot about playwriting.)
So in his interpretation of the play, Hamlet kisses Horatio on the lips. I really wasn’t expecting this. When I think of Hamlet, I always think of the movie version with Lawrence Olivier. Of course, the play was updated a little to represent our times, but the dialogue was the original dialogue as Shakespeare wrote it. This combination reminded me of the movie version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes set in California, which I happen to love because of this incongruous combination. I love unexpected and unusual juxtapositions. I guess because my whole life is like that.
I’ve seen a few plays before at the UIC Theater and it’s a shame more people don’t know about it. Now that I have more time on my hands, I plan to see many more plays there. Next week, I plan to see Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” Unless, of course, I change my mind.
Cougar. No, not that kind of cougar! Read on see what I’m talking about.
Despite the lopsided score, the winners continued their losing streak in Chicago. That’s right. The police were criticized for shooting the cougar in a residential neighborhood, not far from Lincoln Park Zoo. Well, the police are up against overwhelming odds in situations like this.
In Chicago, when all other city agencies refuse to answer to calls that are technically their responsibility, the 911 center dispatches a police car to assess the situation. The police department is Chicago’s last line of defense–basically, to protect the city against civil law suits. All other city agencies may refuse to respond to calls, including the fire department, but the police have to respond to every single call they receive regardless of how absurd it may seem to the average citizen.
I’m sure many residents who saw the cougar in their neighborhood called 911 to report it. And I’m sure they were surprised to see the police responding to the scene. Where was the Animal Control Unit? Certainly nowhere near the cougar. So the police show up, but it’s not like they could call the Animal Control Unit on their police radio to report a stray cougar because they are on a different frequency, in more ways than one.
When I was a police officer, several citizens reported some kind of wild cat on the lakefront in a residential area near some railroad tracks. I actually saw it running at a distance, but I couldn’t tell if it was a bobcat or a lynx or a lion, for that matter. There was nothing I could do as a police officer other than call the Animal Control Unit. When someone there answered their phone, they gave me the third degree over the phone. They wanted to know what I had seen. I said that it was either a bobcat or a lynx. But, no, they wanted to know exactly what kind of cat it was. I didn’t know. So they didn’t take me as seriously. Then they told me that they wouldn’t come out until I had secured it. What? How was I supposed to secure it? I even asked them to tell me how to secure it thinking they would actually know since they do work for Animal Control. Well, they never responded to the scene because I couldn’t secure the cat, or whatever it was.
Another time, some citizens called 911 and the police responded because there was a stray raccoon wandering around–but not just anywhere! This was in Mayor Daley’s neighborhood! This time I actually saw the raccoon up close on some rooftop patios right next door to the Mayor’s house. As I approached the raccoon, I could tell he was up to no good because he was wearing a mask. I cornered it, but I had to let it run past me because he tried to bite me. I cornered it again, but this time I didn’t approach it. I called Animal Control on my cell phone. Once again, they asked me to describe the raccon and they wanted the raccoon to be contained so they could just come by, scoop it up, and take it away. Then, I thought that they would come out sooner if I told them that the raccoon was next to the Mayor’s house. The voice at the other end immediately told me that they weren’t coming no matter what, especially now that they knew Mayor Daley lived close by. Once again, they refused to respond.
Why? Because their union was in negotiations with the city and the city wouldn’t give in on some of the issues. Well, I let the raccoon go because I sure wasn’t in the mood to get bitten by a raccoon that day, especially after that unpleasant interchange.
So, I can just imagine what the police were up against when they received this call about the stray cougar. The officers probably asked for the Animal Control Unit to come to the scene, to no avail. They probably asked the dispatcher to call the nearby Lincoln Park Zoo to send a zookeeper with a tranquilizer gun to the scene of the cougar, all for naught. Then, suddenly, an officer sees the cougar rapidly approaching him, so he opens fire, sadly, in self-defense. The officer had no other recourse but to shoot or possibly, nay, more than likely, be attacked.
Of course, the news cameras interviewed several residents who questioned why the police didn’t shoot the cougar with a tranquilizer gun. Well, because it wasn’t possible, citizens! The police are not issued tranquilizer guns! Not in Chicago, the City That Works.
Translated into Spanish, published in Moscow, Russia
When I moved from Marquette Park to Bridgeport, I really missed having a bookstore a mere block away. Bridgeport had the reputation of being the center of city politics, rather than being an incubator of intelligence. So, needless to say, Bridgeport had no bookstores at all! Even their Salvation Army lacked a book section!
One day in the early 1990s, I was shocked when I saw an empty storefront on the 3100 block of South Halsted Street open as Modern Bookstore. For a neighborhood bookstore, it was very big. I was there the very first day it opened. The woman who greeted me let me browse for a while. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this bookstore, especially for one in the heart of Bridgeport. Imagine my surprise when I saw that most of the books were about socialism, communism, and labor unions. The woman asked me if she could help me find something. I asked to see the fiction section, but there was none. Then, even though I was sure that she would say no, I asked if they had a foreign language section. I told her I was interested in buying books in Spanish. Would you believe it? They did have a Spanish section that was actually bigger than most of the others in Chicago bookstores I had visited. And they actually had books by authors and biographies of political figures that I had actually heard of.
I bought a poetry anthology by Nicolás Guillén. Later, when I read the book, I discovered that the book was published in La Habana, Cuba, and probably shipped to the U.S. violating at least one embargo law. But wait, I also bought biographies about Diego Rivera, Benito Juarez, Benardo O’Higgins, and a few others that were written in Spanish. Much later, I realized that the books were written by Russian writers and later translated into Spanish. All these books were published in Moscow, Russia. I wondered if there would be any trouble if our local politicians had actually visited the Modern Bookstore and realized what kind of books the bookstore was selling there. But then I realized that’s why there wasn’t a bookstore in Bridgeport in the first place. No one in Bridgeport reads!
Today, my sons and I went to a restaurant for supper. I often take them out to eat when they visit me. One, I’m not a very good cook. Two, I’m too lazy to cook and then wash the dishes afterwards. And three, I want my sons to know proper restaurant etiquette and protocol. My oldest son who is eighteen hardly eats out with us anymore because he’s at that age where he prefers to be with his friends. My twelve-year-old fraternal twins and I go to a restaurant at least once a week. I always make sure they learn some new fact about restaurant dining. Today, we discussed how the restaurant pays the waitress a very low wage, so she depends on tips for most of her income. Why do I do this? Because when I was a boy, we never went to restaurants. Mexicans just didn’t go to restaurants. It was cheaper to eat at home or bring your own food to the park, to the beach, to wherever. I want to save my sons from some of the embarrassment that I endured the first few times I went to restaurant because my parents had never taken me to one. I had to learn the hard way.
I must have been about eleven or twelve years old the very first time I went to a restaurant. I had found a dollar at the park and I thought that I would like to go to a restaurant. Since my parents would never take me, I would go by myself. I knew exactly which restaurant, too. There was one on the corner right by Peoples Theater at 47th and Marshfield. This restaurant caught my attention the very first time because a car had crashed halfway into its front door. I actually saw the accident, which made it all the more exciting. The next summer, I rode my bike past the restaurant minutes after another car had crashed into it. About two months later, yet another car crashed into it. Somehow, this seemed like a restaurant where I wanted to eat. Often, I would ride by on my bike and stop to look at the menu in the window. Of course, I would always listen for cars that were about to crash into the restaurant. So when I found the dollar I knew I could afford to eat there. For sixty-five cents, I could order the cheeseburger with fries and a Coke. And still have change leftover.
Well, since I had never eaten at a restaurant, I walked in and didn’t know what to do. I was staring at everyone in the restaurant when a waitress approached me. She asked me if I was lost. I said that I came to eat there and showed her my dollar. Well, actually, I handed it to her because I didn’t think she would serve until I paid first. She put my dollar back in my pocket and asked me where I would like to sit. I said, way in the back somewhere, away from the front door and windows, lest another car come crashing through.
The waitress was very nice to me, took my order, and later brought out my food. She kept coming back to ask me if everything was fine. When I finished eating, she asked me if I wanted anything else, which I didn’t, since I couldn’t afford anything else. Later, she brought me this little piece of paper which I didn’t understand. It said check at the top, but since I didn’t speak English that well, I recalled that the only time I heard the word check was when my parents talked about getting paid for work with a check.
After the waitress left me the check, I never saw her again. I waited for her to come back so I could pay her. I looked all over for her. I went to bathroom and I didn’t see her anywhere. I didn’t understand why she would give me a check when I didn’t do any work. I waited for her patiently. I’m not sure how long I waited, but it was a very long time because I started feeling hungry again. Finally, I just left–with the check and my dollar.
To this day, I feel embarrassed about what I did that day. But, hey, I didn’t know any better. In order to atone for that faux pas, I teach my sons the proper way to eat at a restaurant and the importance of tipping. When I explained this ritual to my sons, Alex told us how his friend Jack didn’t understand tipping. Jack’s family went to restaurant eat. There were a lot of people, so Jack’s father left a hundred-dollar bill on the table for the tip. When they got home, Jack told his dad, “You forgot this on the table,” and handed his dad the hundred-dollar bill!
Chicago USA 