Mallory's Camera

Jump: Chatsworth, Il → Lexington, Il – Keller Park: 35 miles
LEFT out of the lot… arrows back to HWY 24 WEST
I-55 SOUTH to EXIT #178 for Lexington
LEFT off ramp into town… arrows to the lot
Shows at 2pm/4:30pm

We were lucky to get out of Chatsworth alive. No, really! We were. At first I figured the inhabitants were all rejects from a casting call for The Illinois Chainsaw Massacre: downtown consisted of three gun shops, three bars, a local chapter of the National Rifle Association and a bank. The phone at the local gas station (Casey’s – a state chain) had been down for a week so I couldn’t pay for gas with a debit card. Bill came to $15.01.

“Should I go back to my car and get you a penny?” I asked, trying to ingratiate myself with the guy behind the counter. I always try to ingratiate myself with strangers because I never know when I’m going to have to depend on their kindness. (Tennessee Williams, white courtesy telephone puleeze…)

“You do whatever the hell you damn well please,” he said, and spat sideways at something – a cup? The floor?

In the rack besides the door – the one that usually carries the free Autos For Sale broadsides – was a copy of the local newspaper, conjoint publication by the NRA and some organization called Jews For the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. On the front page above the seam was an ad: No Guns For Negroes.

I am not making that up.

I’ll out myself here. I’m actually a modestly enthusiastic Second Amendment enthusiast. I like guns. I don’t own one but some day I’d like to learn to shoot.

But this newspaper – this place… I got the Fear. Like any minute time-traveling Nazis were gonna spring up from an underground tunnel and cart me back to Auschwitz.

I think Chatsworth must be some secret underground KKK hotspot – the way some seemingly “normal” towns in Utah and Idaho are dens of Mormon polygamists.

We left just as soon as the tent was torn down. The collective sentiment seemed to be that if we didn’t get out before dark we’d all end up at the local NRA’s Christmas banquet under the menu subheading: Circus Longpork.

###

Circus arrived in Chatsworth after a triumphant engagement hundred miles to the north in Summit, one of those map points grimly going about the pretense of independent governance despite having been engulfed by greater metropolitan Chicago’s pseudopods at least a century before.

I took the Orange Line over to the Field Museum. I grew up literally six blocks away from the American Museum of Natural History; literally spent every Saturday of my life between the ages of 9 and 13 wandering amidst the corny dioramas. AMNH subsequently hired some museum design firm to spiff up the exhibits. Fortunately the Field Museum did not; thus the Carl Akeley masterpieces persist in all their kitschy splendor, portals into enchanted animal kingdoms – one expects to see the Leave It to Beaver family sitting round the dinner table, stuffed, behind glass next to the orangutans in the Hall of Primates.

Hundred years ago Summit was a huge Polish community – even today names embossed on the grimy storefronts that wrestle the fast food joints, industrial yards and hooker motels for easement along the main drag are all variations on “Wleklik,” “Grocholski,” “Babinski”; the checkers still speak Polish in the supermarkets. Thirty years or so ago, lured by the still-open factories and cheap housing, Hispanics began pouring into the neighborhood. Not surprisingly there’s a lot of tension between the two groups, and longtime locals seem relieved the mix is changing back: Summit is a very popular relocation choice for Serb and Croatian refugees; in another twenty-five years, the sponsor predicted, Summit would all be Eastern European again.

In the meantime, Hispanics love the circus. There were still so many people standing in line when the box office closed just before the second show that a third show was added. Attendance for the day must have topped 1500 – not bad for a tiny one-ring circus.

###

Haven’t been writing a lot here or elsewhere because – well. I just haven’t. Have a lot on my mind. The Future. The Past. I’ve been stuck somewhere in between those two points these last five months, inside a perfect present tense. But I’m moving inexorably back into the place where things cast shadows. In another week I’ll leave all this behind; in another month, I won’t remember any of it, I’ll have become Someone Else.

Last week I had to drive back to Rochester to pick up Robin. The VDub water pump went out literally as I shifted into Drive right in front of Brian and Julie’s house so I ended up staying there an extra four days. I like Rochester; it reminds me of Oakland. Robin stayed with his cousins and I bunked with Lucinda, and after a day Lucinda made me an offer: Bring Robin and stay with me for six weeks so he can start school again and you can find a job. I love Lucinda to death, she’s far nicer to me than any of my blood relations. It’s the best offer I’ve had in a long time and I’m inclined to take her up on it. BUT, of course, Ben and Robin aren’t, Robin in particular throwing a fit – “I don’t want to live in Rochester –“

“Well, you don’t want to live on the circus either! It’s the best I can do –“

“You ruined my life!” he says, and all I can think is, yeah, yeah, I know that feeling: it is nothing if not ironic that I seem to be reliving my relationship with my mother from her perspective, right down to having my kid hate me because I interrupted his life and coming down with massive panic attacks on public transport venues.

You shuffle along doing the best dance you can. I guess…