You may all remember my Uncle Jimmy “Barstool” Grobnik, so named because he’s short and round with skinny legs, and he can often be found at the corner of the bar at Pete’s Tavern, drinking Old Style. Pete’s is on 26th Street in Chicago, and to get there from the Hachecristo homestead on 25th Place, where his wife, and my mother, and Jesus’ dad all grew up, all you have to do is cross the alley.
My old hometown has been in the news a lot, lately, what with the crumbling schools and the gang shootings and the crooked, brutal cops and the imperial Democratic Mayor being the target of zealous reformers of both parties. Ah, it takes me back to my yute.
But last night, Chicago showed why she’s still Da Greatest Second City in Da World.
“Ya shoulda seen it, Primo!” Uncle Barstool yelled excitedly into his cellphone. “Cops on horseback. People t’rown to da ground. Punches! Kicks! Screams!”
I thought at first that Barstool had been to a wedding. But he didn’t mention any shots fired in the air, so I concluded it was a riot. “Where was this, Uncle Jimmy?”
“It was at yer old school.”
“Mary Queen of Asphalt?”
“No, dummy, UIC. Over by Taylor Street.”
Like most Hachecristos, and our fellow parishioners, I worked my share of Chicago road crews. But I once held a job at the University of Illinois-Chicago Medical Center, and used the free tuition perq to get my Masters. Many’s the time that Uncle Jimmy and I watched the UIC basketball Flames battle in the Pavilion for respect, and a ticket to March Madness that never came.
(Actually, I watched the game. Barstool watched the co-eds.)
UIC was and is a diverse campus. The Anglo half of me was very often in the minority in my classes. And so it was with some surprise that I heard Donald Trump was planning a rally in that self-same Pavilion, in the city where one Democratic candidate grew up, another Democratic candidate got arrested in a civil rights protest, and the current Democratic President spent most of his adult life.
What could possibly go wrong?
“I was eatin’ over by Tuscany’s, den I was walkin’ back to my car when deez cop cars go screamin’ up Racine, so I walked up dere an’ into da middle of a frickin’ riot. I ast a coupla brods what’s up, and dey tole me…”
“’Coupla brods,’ Uncle Jimmy?”
“Excuse me. Coupla, two-t’ree, nice girls. Anyhoo, dey tell me dat dis a-hole Trump was bringin’ his Travelin’ Crap Show to UIC. Can ya b’leeve it? But when people got word, dey all started showin’ up to protest. Ever since he built dat crappy skyscraper and runed da skyline, people been waitin’ to get some back. I gotta tell ya, Primo, dese guys got nuttin’ on us in da Sixties, but last night, dey showed dey had some chops.”
“Uh, Uncle Jimmy, in the Sixties, weren’t you actually on the other side?”
“Ah, hell, Primo! If ya remember da Sixties den ya wasn’t dere. But I had my Streets an’ San job to worry about so, yeah, maybe. But I do remember what Hizzoner da Mare said about da cops: ‘Dey weren’t dere to create disorder, dey were dere to preserve disorder.’ It was just like dat last night.”
“Long story short, I t’ink dere was maybe t’ree-to-one good guys over Trumpistas. Talk about yer March Madness! Da a-hole never showed, lied about talkin’ to da cops about ‘safety,’ and ran away wit’ his hairpiece tucked between his legs. Dat hairpiece, I swear, it looks like a golden lion tamarin crawled up and died on his head.”
“A golden lion tamarin?”
“Or maybe da guy wit’ da can of spray tan just sprays his whole frickin’ head. I dunno. Anyhoo, what I do know is dis: when dey write da story of dis election, Chicago’s gonna go down in history as da town dat stopped Trump. It started here, kid. Dis is where we stood up to da Brown Shirts.”
“’We,’ Uncle Jimmy?”
“Primo, today, we’re ALL Chicago.”
One day after he officially endorsed Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, former rival Ben Carson said he would be “willing” to be his vice president.
Donald J. Trump announced from the stage at a rally in Kansas City, Mo., that a man who had charged him at an event earlier Saturday was “probably” linked to the Islamic State, appearing to base his statement on an Internet video that has been described as a hoax.
