SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE 87
Where the hell is Hegewisch?
It isn’t easy to romanticize the Midwest at the end of February, when Fool’s Spring has come and gone, melting the snowdrifts to reveal a dead world of dirty brown. But someone’s got to do it. I’d turned in the final manuscript of my first book, Midwestern Death Trip, an event I had imagined as a fireworks display of euphoric freedom. But to tell the truth, I felt sort of bereft — blinking in the winter sunlight, evicted from my cave. I’d come to like my cave. It was comfortable in there. I filled the void of my daily writing practice by watching the Winter Olympics as if it were my job, catching the morning broadcast live from Milan Cortina, then revisiting the highlights on prime time at night. When the Quad God fell twice in his free skate, it left a pallor over the entire weekend. “It was like watching a goddamn nightmare!” I slurred to a stranger at Simon’s, where I, with nothing better to do, was drunk in the afternoon. The man nodded politely, scooting his stool away.
The best cure that I know of for the February doldrums is a change of scenery. So on a freakishly warm Tuesday, I found myself in perhaps the least-known neighborhood of Chicago. Hidden in the far southeastern corner of the city, bordered by the Indiana state line, lies Hegewisch, home to Chicago’s last remaining swamplands, its only working sawmill, and its sole trailer park. With a state permit, you can duck-hunt in the William W. Powers State Recreation Area, the only public hunting zone within the city limits. On the horizon is a backdrop of once-great South Shore industry on a spectrum of decline — the century-old Ford assembly plant remains, while the South Works steel mill that once produced a tenth of the world’s steel and employed tens of thousands of workers has long since closed. To the east, Gary’s blast furnaces blaze on, clouding the horizon in an apocalyptic haze. You might recognize the landscape as the potential future home of the Chicago Bears. Should the current bid to move to Indiana come to fruition, the stadium will rise over Wolf Lake, which straddles the state line between Hammond and Hegewisch.
Chicagoans hate this idea, but I can almost see the vision. As previously mentioned in the Midwest’s Favorite Newsletter, “Da Region” (i.e. Northwest Indiana) is culturally more an extension of Chicagoland than it is a part of Hoosier Country proper. Region Rats watch Chicago news stations and root for Chicago sports teams, and from the beaches of the Indiana Dunes National Park, you can see the Chicago skyline on clear days. It’s an underrated (if you ask me) clash of city and country: sand dunes and steel mills, farmland and fish fries, decent hot dogs and Malort on offer at most bars. And when it comes to bars, the area is blessed with a bounty of historic taverns, some 100-plus years old where you can smoke inside.
You might say that Hegewisch has more in common with the post-industrial towns of Northwest Indiana than it does with Chicago as it exists today. Of the locals whom I met in the watering holes of Hegewisch, most considered anything north of 100th St. as “downtown” and took pride in the neighborhood as a self-sufficient entity, rather than part of the city. And though several of the longstanding local taverns have closed in the last decade (Mugs Bunny, RIP), there remains a solid concentration of charming old-school dive bars for a remote Southeast Side neighborhood of some 10,000 people. I arrived at one of them in mid-afternoon, in time to catch the last of the men’s figure skating short program. The daytime regulars of Steve’s Lounge, uniformly in their 60s and 70s, turned from their seats to fix me with indifferent gazes. The bartender was friendly, though she seemed a bit confused to see an unfamiliar face.
Opened by the Ziemek family in 1957, Steve’s was once a post-work tavern for the Southeast Side’s industrial workers, who’d often come after their shifts at 7 or 8 a.m. Nowadays the clientele was mostly retirees, plus some cops and firefighters and a few local dock workers. I ordered a High Life and surveyed the scene. Covering just about every flat surface of the barroom were painted wooden decals (bald eagles, White Sox logos, Abe Lincoln, Elvis Presley), POW MIA flags, and a sizable deer mount. Above the bar, filling dusty display cases that wrapped around the perimeter, were hundreds, if not thousands, of antique liquor decanters in the shapes of cowboys, hunting dogs, and birds of prey. (This video shows you better what I mean.) Besides its long-running tradition of Friday fish fry, the place was famous for its house-made Polish sausages and sauerkraut, the latter on offer for ten bucks a quart.
Initially standoffish, the regulars warmed up to the stranger in their midst, shifting from their chatter about their various physical maladies to a rousing conversation about pissing where you’re not supposed to. “I like to wait to pee until I get to bed,” said one jolly old-timer, still hungover from the Super Bowl. “I call it killing two birds with one stone.”
“Buddy of mine, he gets drunk and pees in the dresser drawer,” said his friend.
“Boy, this conversation sure went down the drain,” joked my seat-mate.
“You know what they say,” said the bartender, sliding me a free drink token. “Better to be pissed off than pissed on.”
The sun had nearly set when I reached Uncle Bobby’s, a corner bar on a side street with a faded Old Style sign hanging above the door. Inside, a fish tank behind the bar cast the packed room in an algae-colored glow, while the TV played a steady stream of old MGM cartoons. “Help yourself to the buffet,” offered the bartender as a black-and-white cat prowled by. “Don’t mind him — that’s Sylvester. He takes care of our mouse problem.”
The woman to my right bought the room a round of shots and raised her glass. “To Brian!” she cried. “May he never be forgotten.” “Do you know who Brian was?” asked the fellow to my left, a retired fireman. “He was murdered in here last year. Stabbed in the back. We all knew the guy that did it. I got the call when it happened, and tried to give him CPR. He died in my arms. Don’t let that scare you,” he assured me. “It’s not usually like that.”
“Try the bruschetta!” said the shit-faced woman to my right, handing me a box of crackers and a seven-layer bean dip that was not bruschetta but delicious nonetheless. I bought her a round of shots in thanks, and she bought me one back. An old man sold raffle tickets, strong-arming me into a $10 purchase: “It’s for the kids!” Another round of shots went out. “To Brian!” “To Brian!”
It was terrible what had happened to Brian. Still, I couldn’t help but think that we should all be so lucky to have a bar full of people eating bean dip and drinking to your memory. I aspired to live a life that might end up that way.
Two weeks later I returned to Hegewisch, riding the eastbound South Shore Line past the new Obama center, the Calumet Harbor freight docks, and the Ford assembly plant, shaken from my stupor by the conductor’s call: “Next stop, HEG-wish!” The last of the snow had melted, my book’s edits were almost completed, and day by day I felt myself returning back to life. It was the last Friday in February, which meant I was bound for Steve’s, home to the best Friday fish fry you’ll find in the city outside of a Catholic church hall. Forget the Northside pubs that offer up their take on the Lenten tradition with frozen Icelandic cod. For 69 years running, Steve’s has offered up a full Friday spread of old-school Great Lakes fare: fried perch, bluegill, or walleye, served with your choice of potato, a loaf of white bread, and a relish tray of beets, coleslaw, and cottage cheese. I opted for the lake perch with potato pancakes, nursing a High Life as a man in a Pink Floyd baseball cap informed the bar of the evening’s cosmic spectacle, a rare six-planet alignment that could be seen in the night sky.
The fellow to my left was throwing down a couple Heinekens before the wake he was attending. “My condolences,” said the bartender. “He didn’t even know her,” his friend interjected. “He just likes to go to wakes and talk to people. He’s a weirdo.” The man shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell ya. I like going to wakes. Everybody’s there.”
I walked the mile to Uncle Bobby’s after dinner, past transmission towers that filled the early twilight with a loud electric hum that you could hear from blocks away. The last of the day’s sunlight filtered through the dusty blinds, illuminating a cardboard cutout of local weatherwoman Cheryl Scott I hadn’t noticed before. The bar’s handful of regulars were glued to a news broadcast of a sad Japanese monkey being bullied by his peers. “He was rejected by his mother,” said one flannel-clad old-timer to another. “If you ask me, something’s wrong with him,” his friend replied, waving for another Miller Lite. The news shifted to Nancy Guthrie, still missing. “Ah, fuck her!” said the man in flannel. “You know how many kids are missing in this country?”
“Rick, you want a shooter?” asked the bartender, pouring up a round. “I gave ‘em up for Lent,” said a dock worker glumly. “I did have three on Sunday, but that’s… ah, well, why not?”
“I’ll get her shot,” said the bald man beside me, nodding to me.
“I’m not votin’ for ya, Carl!” declared the man in flannel.
“What am I running for?” asked Carl, the bald man.
“I dunno, but you seem like you’re runnin’ for something.”
“I’m running against Johnson for mayor.”
“Alright, you got my vote.”
Suddenly the man in flannel started weeping. He’d had to put his 15-year-old terrier to sleep today. “I’m trying to think of all the good things that we did,” he sobbed into his napkin. “Jumping in the bed together. Opening up presents for Christmas. I fed him some of my steak sandwich last night, and he enjoyed that.” His seatmate clapped his shoulder with one weathered hand as the bartender poured the room another round.
I headed for the station to catch the 6:30 train, past the old sawmill and the humming power lines. Behind the line of passing freight trains, the evening sky was glowing pink and blue. Spring was on its way. “You hear about the planetary alignment?” said a man smoking on the platform. The train was 20 minutes late, but no one seemed to mind. The man lit my cigarette. “Look out there,” he pointed to a row of blinking red lights over the rail yard. “We can pretend that those are planets.”
NEXT WEEK: SCARY COOL SAD GOODBYE VISITS LAS VEGAS!