Tag: Back of the Yards

Labas


Holy Cross Church

Labas. That’s right. Labas. To all my Lithuanian friends: Labas! In fact, I’d like to greet everyone reading my blog: Labas! That’s hello in Lithuanian. My Lithuanian friend Vito taught me that word because he always insisted that we greet each other by saying Labas. Now, I always greet Lithuanians with Labas and they always smile. I especially love to greet them with Labas especially if they didn’t think I knew they were Lithuanians. I’m not sure why, but they’re always thrilled to hear me say Labas. So, to all my Lithuanian readers: Labas! I guess sometimes I go on and on, don’t I? Well, my friend Vito taught me another Lithuanian word: tylėk. Sometimes we would go to the show, I would just keep on talking even after the movie started. He would keep telling me tylėk until I finally shut up. That’s right, tylėk means shut up in Lithuanian. But I never did. And I never will.

For as long as I can remember, I have always lived near Lithuanians in Chicago. In Back of the Yards, Holy Cross was the Lithuanian church I attended. At Holy Cross School, the nuns always praised The Jungle by Upton Sinclair because the protagonist was Lithuanian, and the novel was set in Back of the Yards. When we moved to Marquette Park, 2509 W. Marquette Road, many Lithuanians lived there, and they even had a street named Lithuanian Plaza Court. In fact, that neighborhood was the unofficial capital of Lithuania during the Soviet era. Maria High School, run by Lithuanian nuns, was at Marquette Road and California Avenue. Right on the same campus was the retirement convent for the Sisters of Saint Casimir at 2601 W. Marquette Road. The Lithuanians also had their own Holy Cross Hospital at California Avenue and Lithuanian Plaza Court. I met my friend Vito when I lived in Marquette Park. Vito and I used to eat at the Lithuanian McDonald’s at 68th and Pulaski. I don’t know if it was actually Lithuanian, but Vito told me that the tiles on the wall were typical Lithuanian colors, so it became a Lithuanian McDonald’s in my mind. When I moved to Bridgeport, there weren’t that many Lithuanians there anymore, but they did have a street named Lituanica Avenue. My favorite restaurant in Bridgeport was a Lithuanian restaurant named Healthy Foods at 3236 S. Halsted Street. When I saw the movie Chariots of Fire, I was thrilled to learn that the family of Harold Abrams were Lithuanian Jews.

When I was a student at Holy Cross, my best friend was Patrick McDonald, but when he moved away, I became friends with Adrian Stanislovaitis and Anthony Kivenas, both Lithuanians. Whenever I was with them, we spoke English, but when they were with their parents, they spoke Lithuanian. I never understood what they said, and it didn’t bother me at all. However, I never even learned one Lithuanian word from them. And when they came to my house, I spoke Spanish with my parents and grandmother. I envied Adrian and Anthony because they got to go to Lithuanian classes on Saturday morning. I wanted to go with them. I wished Mexicans would have Spanish classes for Mexicans. Anyway, Adrian and I spent a lot of time together. For school holidays, we used to take the bus downtown and just wander around, but he showed me a few points of interest, such as the Prudential Building because it used to be Chicago’s tallest skyscraper.

When we moved to Marquette Park, we met more Lithuanians. Marquette Park has a monument for Lithuanian aviators Captain Steponas Darius and Lieutenant Stasys Girenas. This is where I met Vito and other Lithuanians. I went to Lithuanian restaurants and bars with Vito. At one bar on Lithuanian Plaza Court, it might have been Knight’s Inn, we met a Lithuanian improv group that was named Second Village, which is Antras Kaimas in Lithuanian. It was inspired by the name of Second City. We talked to them for a while, and Jim, Vito, and I told them that we performed standup comedy. We ended up making a little skit/song/dance for them sung to the tune of “Skip to My Lou.” I still remember it, but don’t know how to spell it because it was in Lithuanian. Vito wrote most of the song. My contribution to the song? Labas and tylėk! No surprise there!

We once went to a Lithuanian festival on Western Boulevard near the Lithuanian V.F.W. Hall, which if I remember correctly was named after Darius and Girenas. Anyway, there were all kinds of Lithuanian food. One vender was selling empanadas, which really surprised me because as far as I knew, empanadas were Mexican food. The Lithuanian cook tells me that empanadas were invented by Lithuanians. He could tell that I didn’t believe him. He pressed on with his explanation and tried to convince me that I really didn’t know Mexican food. He was so convincing that I almost believed him. Almost, but not quite. Finally, he told me that he learned to make empanadas in Argentina. During WWII, his family went to Argentina before they came to America.

That’s how I think of Lithuanians. They’re always ready to play a friendly practical joke on you. Vito was always the joker and had a great sense of humor that not everybody got. I could tell he got it from his father. Once I went to Vito’s house so we could go to the show. His father answered the door and I asked for Vito. He knew very well that I was asking for his son, Vito, my friend, but he said, “You’re talking to him.” I said, “No, Vito Junior.” He said, “I am Vito Junior!” This went on much longer than was comfortable for me, but Vito’s father was really enjoying this. Finally, he said, “Vito’s not home.” Why didn’t he just tell me that in the first place? Well, he wanted to play a joke on me. I laugh now that I think of it. But that day I learned that both Vito’s father and grandfather were named Vito. What really made me uncomfortable about them was how they greeted each other and how they said good-bye. Vito would always kiss his father on the lips. Talk about culture shock! For a while, Vito lived with his grandfather Vito. Before we would go out, Vito would kiss his grandfather on the lips before he went out. It was as shocking since I had finally gotten used to him kissing his father. But one day we were talking, and Vito told me that his father was adopted. Suddenly, it hit me. “Vito, you kiss your grandfather on the lips, and he’s not even related to you!” He thought nothing of it. I still can’t get over it!

DDR

Mexican jokes


My business card in 1986

When I was growing up, in an age before everyone tried to be politically correct, everyone told ethnic jokes. They were always insulting and mean-spirited to whatever group was targeted. Sure, some people were offended by these jokes, which only led to them being the target of more ethnic jokes. However, these jokes also brought a lot of joy and laughter among friends. For example, I worked in a peanut butter factory, named Derby Foods, with various ethnic groups who lived in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. In general, we all got along very well. Shirley, one of my Polish coworkers, loved to hear any kind of joke because she loved to laugh. Her real name was Ursula, but she preferred to be called Shirley. Anyway, she especially loved to hear Polish jokes. She always insisted that I tell her any new Polish joke that I heard. And when I didn’t learn any new jokes, she insisted that I retell her the old ones. Whenever I told her Mexican jokes, she told me she liked the Polish ones better. In this age of political correctness, I will not tell any Polish jokes lest I offend anyone. But I suppose it would be okay if I told some of the Mexican jokes that I still remember. I’m not doing this to propagate any negative stereotypes about Mexicans, but merely as a scientific exercise to preserve our humorous past. Now, I’m not saying that these jokes are funny anymore, but once upon a time, people laughed at these jokes. Some of them are quite dated. Okay, you have been forewarned!

  1. Why can’t Mexicans be fireman? They don’t know the difference between José and Hose B.
  2. Mexican weather report: Chili today. Hot tamale.
  3. Why do Mexicans wear pointy shoes? To kill cockroaches in the corner.
  4. What is the name of the Mexican telephone company? Taco Bell.
  5. Why don’t Mexicans have barbecues? The beans keep falling through the grille.
  6. How can you tell if you’re at a Mexican birthday party? There are more adults than children.
  7. What do you call a Mexican basketball game? Juan on Juan.
  8. What do you get when you cross a Mexican with an octopus? I don’t know, but boy can it pick lettuce!
  9. Why doesn’t Mexico have an Olympic team? Because every Mexican who can run, jump, or swim is already in the U.S.
  10. What do you call a Mexican in a BMW? A valet.

Upon further reflection, I retract the above listed jokes because they are in extremely bad taste. With apologies to Ursula, I mean, Shirley!

DDR

Newspaper routes


Bridgeport News, Chicago, Illinois

When I was in Holy Cross School, I had several paper routes and I really enjoyed delivering newspapers. My best friend in the fourth grade was Patrick McDonnell. One day he asked me to help him deliver newspapers on his paper route. One of his older brothers had the paper route, but when he got tired of delivering newspapers, he gave the paper route to his brother Patrick. In those days, it was almost impossible to get a paper route on your own. True to Chicago tradition, you even needed clout to get a paper route.

I helped Patrick deliver his newspaper, The Chicago American, for a few days. One day, he asked me if I knew who all the customers were. Of course, I did! “That’s good,” he said. “Because you can have the paper route!” He had gotten tired of delivering papers and couldn’t quit the paper route until he found a replacement.

Well, I was extremely happy to be his replacement because I loved delivering newspapers and I especially loved having some spending money. I’m not sure how long I had that paper route, but it was long enough to see the Chicago American become the Chicago Today. I loved reading the newspaper as I walked door to door delivering it. Then one day, the Chicago Today folded and I was out of a job. But it was fun while it lasted.

Months later, my friend Patrick asked me to help him with his paper route again. He had found another paper route and again he was tired of delivering newspapers on his bicycle. He immediately thought of me as his replacement. This route had many more customers than the other one and you needed to deliver the papers on a bicycle because this route covered our entire neighborhood. This paper route was the most memorable one for me. Paper route number 9! I really learned a lot about life while delivering newspapers on this route. And I also truly learned a lot about the Back of the Yards and its residents. On this route, I delivered the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Zgoda, and the Chicagowski, the last two were newspapers published in Polish. I tried to read the Polish newspapers, but they seemed be written in a foreign language to me. And most of the Polish subscribers hardly knew English, but we always understood each other.

There were two facets to delivering newspapers. One was the actual delivery of the newspapers. Some subscribers wanted it delivered in a certain way. Folded without a rubber band, or with a rubber band. On the front porch, or on the back porch. Between the screen door and the door. There were considerate customers who didn’t mind if I just rode past on my bike and threw the paper on their front porch. And my aim was true, most of the time.

One day, as I was approaching a house next to the alley, I was about to throw the newspaper on the porch when suddenly a car sped out of the alley. I was shaken a little and when I released the newspaper, it broke the glass on the storm door. I was so scared that I kept riding and delivering papers. When I returned to the newspaper agency, the subscriber had already reported me to my boss, Ernest Pressman. I swear. That was his real name. She knew it was an accident and she only wanted me to pay for the broken window. I remember I had to pay about four dollars for a new window, roughly my weekly salary before tips.

Sometimes delivering the newspaper could be downright dangerous. One customer wanted the paper delivered in the rear hallway. What I didn’t know was that sometimes she kept her German Shepherd there. One day, I open the hallway door and saw the German Shepherd lounging at my hand that was attempting to drop the newspaper in the hallway. I quickly shoved the newspaper in his mouth and slammed the door shut. I was waiting for another reprimand from Mr. Pressman when I returned to the newspaper agency, but I was never reported for this.

The second facet was collecting the money for the subscriptions. Collecting money from some customers required an excellent memory, ruses, and stratagems. All this just to collect a measly fifty cents! I had to remember what day they got paid so I could go collect the money that day before they squandered it away on rent, food, utilities, and other such nonsense. And I also had to make sure I had enough change so they could pay, and I could give them change. They wouldn’t pay unless I gave them correct change.

One woman once asked me if I had change for a five. Of course, I did. So, then she upped it to ten dollars. I told her I had change for a ten, too. Then, she said for a twenty and I said yes. She then told me she had a fifty-dollar bill and I showed her that I had enough change. I was ready for her because she had tried this before. She then paid me in exact change and gave me a nickel for a tip.

I mean I got to know all of my customers very well. One woman told me to collect the money on Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m. and then wait for about ten to fifteen minutes until she opened the door. Not a problem, I told her. All I wanted to do was collect my money, and hopefully, a small tip. The reason she wanted me to knock on her door so early was that I was her Saturday-morning alarm clock. And she took so long to open the door because she went to the bathroom first. I always hoped she washed her hands.

I delivered the Daily News to a bar on the corner of 43rd Street and Wolcott. When the bartender paid for the subscription, he would tip me fifty cents and tell me to take a bag of Mrs. Vitner’s potato chips, any candy bar of my choice, and a pack of gum. One customer I never saw. She left me a note on her door in the rear hallway saying she would leave the money hidden in a crack in the wall. I was pleased by this arrangement because this mystery woman tipped well.

One little old Polish lady always wanted me to deliver both the Zgoda and Chicagowski directly into her hands. So, I had to get off my bike, go knock on her door, she would say something in Polish that I didn’t understand, I would say I was the paperboy, and then she would open the door. I did this every day! Actually, I didn’t mind doing it, either. Of course, she wasn’t a big tipper, either, even though she considered herself extremely generous. On the day I had to collect the money for the subscription, she would tell me to enter her apartment and lock the door behind me. She would give a crisp brand-new dollar bill to pay for her bill of ninety-nine cents. I would then give her her change of one cent, which she would give back to me immediately as my tip and insist that I put the penny in a different pocket because that penny was for me and not the newspaper agency. Most subscribers would tip a nickel or a dime and that was extremely generous in all reality. But I really loved going through this weekly ritual for my one-cent tip! Sometimes I had to run out of the apartment so she wouldn’t hear me when I couldn’t contain my laughter anymore. I really loved this little old Polish lady!

There was another little old Polish lady on paper route who received the Chicago Daily News, the Zgoda, and the Chicagowski. Her bill was about $1.50 per week. She wasn’t as demanding about her delivery, either. When I went to collect the money for her subscription, she would tip me 100%. I told her that $1.50 was way too much money for the tip, but she insisted. Well, being the polite Mexican boy that I was, I would pocket the money, in a different pocket, of course, so the Mr. Pressman wouldn’t get my tip. Sometimes, she would feel really guilty about the tip and slip me an extra nickel or dime before I walked out!

DDR

Holy Cross


Holy Cross Church, Back of the Yards, Chicago, Illinois

I spent a significant number of years during my coming of age at Holy Cross Church and Holy Cross School. This parish was founded in the 1890s by Lithuanian immigrants. In the 1930s, there was a large influx of Mexican immigrants to Back of the Yards, which is one of the main reasons our family moved to the neighborhood in the 1960s after having lived in Pilsen.

I attended Holy Cross School from kindergarten through eighth grade and I graduated on June 6, 1971. The study habits I developed during this time served me well the rest of my years in school, especially college. Of course, it helped that all the teachers were strict Lithuanian Catholic nuns, with exception of Mr. Hovanec the history teacher. Nothing instills healthy study habits better than the fear of being disciplined with corporal punishment by a nun wielding a yardstick and a man’s name such as Sister Joseph or Sister Bartholomew.

Of course, during the 1960s there was a movement to convert U.S. to the metric system and move away from the English system of measurement that even the English didn’t use anymore. Our nuns participated in the metric system conversion by trading in their yardsticks for meter sticks when they hit us. That meant 3.37 more inches of pain. These nuns really wanted us to learn so we would go on to excel in high school and college. The school was very strict and if the corporal punishment didn’t straighten out a student quickly, expulsion was imminent. Once the principal, Sister Cecilia, lectured us on the importance of behaving well because our school record now could affect us later as adults. Recently, she told us, a former Holy Cross student applied to become an FBI agent and the FBI came to Holy Cross to see what kind of student he was. Well, that was enough to scare me into being a good student.

At school most of my friends were either Lithuanian or Mexican. Everyone had to learn English. Everyone had to become a good American citizen. In fact, the nuns constantly reminded us that any one of us could one day grow up to become the President of the United States. We always had to study hard and be on our best behavior. But somehow someone always got in trouble. I used to get in trouble for laughing at the class clown. When the nun would ask me what was so funny, I would tell her and she didn’t understand why I would laugh at such a thing. Looking back, I see her point.

Above all, they taught us to be good Catholics. We went to church everyday before going to school. If we were late for morning mass, we were considered late for school. Back then I thought the whole world was Catholic. Everyone I knew was Catholic. My parents, my brothers, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, the nuns, our pastor, I mean everybody. Even famous people were Catholic. Mayor Richard J. Daley was Catholic and he was well-known for stopping at St. Peter’s on Madison Street to hear mass before going to City Hall. President John F. Kennedy was Catholic. The nuns would proudly remind us at every opportunity. To me, the whole world was Catholic. Even the Pope was Catholic! So why did he wear a yarmulke?

Of course, attending a private school meant paying tuition and having fundraisers. As I recall, we had one fundraiser after another all year, culminating in the parish carnival in June. We had raffles for everything. One year, the raffle prize was a brand new station wagon, and miraculously, one of the nuns had the winning ticket. There were bake sales, rummage sales, Christmas card sales, movie showings, and sometimes just outright petitions for donations for certain goals either at school or church.

I remember that I liked selling the Christmas cards door to door. My brother Tato and I teamed up one year on a cold, snowy day. We carried our boxes of Christmas cards with us and didn’t have much luck selling them at first. Then, we were at one house on the icy porch of a woman who had just refused to buy a box of Christmas cards from us. As my brother started walking down the stairs, he accidentally slipped on the ice and rolled down about eight stairs all the way to the bottom. Well, the woman asked if he was okay–he was because we always bundled up in multiple layers on cold days like this. Then she bought a box of Christmas cards from us. I think she was afraid of a civil lawsuit. At the next house, the woman didn’t want any Christmas cards either, until my brother “accidentally” fell down the stairs again. This was my brother’s brilliant idea and he kept falling until we had sold all our Christmas cards!

DDR

Back of the Yards


Entry to the Union Stock Yards

After we moved from Pilsen, our family moved to Back of the Yards where my tío Simón and tía Maricela lived. They lived at 4546 S. Marshfield and we moved to 4545 S. Hermitage. Back of the Yards was named thusly because it was literally located behind the International Union Stockyards if you headed southwest from downtown.

They were made famous, or infamous depending on your point of view, in Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle. In grade school, the Lithuanian nuns always mentioned the novel proudly because the protagonist was Lithuanian. They always talked about the man who drowned in the unpaved street and when I finally read the novel I convinced myself that I had deduced exactly where he drowned. The Stockyards where ever-present in our consciousness because many of our parents worked there in one of the meat-packing plants, we had to drive past them to go downtown or to the lakefront, or mainly, because of the pungent odors produced by a fertilizer company ironically named Darling and Co. The stench produced in the fertilizer-making process was inevitable if the wind blew in the direction of our neighborhood–even if we were indoors. My friend Patrick McDonnell used to take me there to play because it was the ideal playground for boys with over-active imaginations. But we had to look out for security guards, Patrick told me, and run if we saw them in order to avoid getting shot by their pepper guns. Luckily, we never saw any. One day Patrick told me where there was a swimming hole and we went swimming there. It was dirty, smelly water, but Patrick talked me into jumping in. The next day when I told one of our neighbors where I had gone swimming, he laughed uproariously. He finally told me we swam in the pool that they used to wash the pigs before they were slaughtered! Well, we never swam there again.

Our neighborhood was typical of any Chicago neighborhood in that there was a surplus of neighborhood bars. There was at least one bar on every corner. But there were some corners that actually had two or three bars. And usually there was at least one or two bars in the middle of the block. The whole theory behind having so many bars was that if the man of house went out to tipple a few beers, everyone would know where to find him. Every payday, I had to make the rounds of the bars within a two-block radius to find my father before he spent too much of his salary before he got home. Later, I got the brilliant idea of taking my shoeshine box with me when I looked for my father in the bars. I would first go to the bars where I absolutely knew my father would not be and ask for him. Some of bar patrons whom I thought were surely upright citizens would see my shoeshine box and then ask me for a shoeshine. I made some pretty good spending money this way. One day, my father didn’t recognize me because I didn’t get to him in time and he paid me for a shoeshine. And he gave me a generous tip, which I dutifully gave to my mother when we returned home.

The neighborhood served as a port of entry for many ethnic groups. When we moved there in the 1960s, the Mexicans were just starting to move in, but there were plenty of us to go around. I had friends who were Lithuanian, Polish, German, Irish, Italian, and of course, Mexican. I remember going to many a friend’s house and not hearing any of their parents speaking very much English. In my neighborhood, there were three parishes within four blocks of my house. I attended Holy Cross Church because they also had a grade school. There was also Sacred Heart of Joseph that was the Polish parish also with its own school. Immaculate Heart of Mary was the Mexican parish, but they didn’t have their own school, which is why we attended Holy Cross. The main reason I attended Holy Cross School was because it was the closest Catholic school in the neighborhood. In fact, we lived right across the street from the school.

I remember my first day at Kindergarten. My tía Maricela and her daughters Lourdes and Jane came for my mother and me and we all walked to school together. After school, I went out to the schoolyard with my cousin Jane who was in my class. We saw her mother, but my mother wasn’t there for me and I started crying. How would I get home, I wondered, even though I only lived across the street. My tía Maricela told me not to cry. My mother showed up a few minutes later. She said that she had forgotten all about picking me up and I started crying again. The next morning, my mother woke me up to go to school. I was surprised. I said, “I have to go again?” I didn’t realize that Kindergarten would get so involved. But I agreed to go only if my mother remembered to pick me up this time.

Back then, no one sent their children to a Chicago public school if they could afford to send them to a private school. Holy Cross had Lithuanian nuns and they were very strict, but it was an education that lasted me a lifetime. I remember we had to go to mass everyday before we went to school. Back then the masses were still in Latin, but I liked the old masses better. Of course, I rarely go to mass now, but I haven’t forgotten what it is to be Catholic. I still feel guilty if I even think of committing a sin. Anyway, some of the Holy Cross students, namely the Mexicans, began attending mass at Immaculate Heart of Mary because the priest said the mass in Spanish. Well, this didn’t go over well with our Lithuanian nuns. They insisted that we attend mass at Holy Cross and started taking attendance at mass by keeping track of the envelopes that we gave during the offering at mass. We had to sit with our class at the 9:00 a.m. mass. Attendance was mandatory! Unless we could bring documentation that we were hospitalized or that something more serious had occurred to us. Because of this new rule, I often went to mass twice on Sundays. My mother would send me off to mass at Holy Cross and when I returned home, we would all pile into the car, go to Immaculate Heart for the Spanish mass, and then do our Sunday visits.

Our neighborhood was very territorial. Everyone knew where everyone belonged. Territorial transgressions where sometimes retaliated with physical violence. I remember once during our school lunch, my brother and I went to the candy store that was more or less between Holy Cross School and Sacred Heart School. My brother left the store before me. When I went out, I noticed my brother was crying. It so happened that two students from Sacred Heart had beat him up. As the older brother, it was my moral obligation to defend my little brother. So I chased the two kids and I started punching them and telling them never to hit my brother again. Just then, a nun from Sacred Heart grabs me by the collar because I’m a stranger in a strange land. They take my brother and me to their principal’s office. One phone call to my school and my brother and I are in really big trouble so I try to be polite to the nuns. Luckily, I didn’t accidentally punch the nun who grabbed me. All we got was a lecture! But not a very good one. The principal, also a nun, said my brother and I reminded her of Cain and Abel. I couldn’t help it, but I absolutely had to correct her. I told her, “Cain killed his brother. I was defending my brother!” The principal told me not to talk back and she released us.

DDR