Gord Christmas, For the Reformer

Gord Christmas, For the Reformer

LATEST STORIES BY GORD CHRISTMAS, FOR THE REFORMER

 

From Walsingham to Chicago and beyond

I’m a Walsingham boy at heart, but I’ve been to Chicago too. Not lately of course, but back when it was sharp edged and bleak. “Hog butcher to the world, city of the broad shoulders,” wrote poet Carl Sandburg. I remember the vast stockyards, millions of pounds of beef on the hoof from half the ranches in the west. I remember passing the shuttered garage where Capone’s minions gunned down a good portion of the opposition on St. Valentine’s Day. I remember being pulled over by a Chicago cop wearing one of their distinctive, cocky, crushed aviator-style officer’s caps. Was I lost? he questioned. “Probably,” I said, “why do you ask?” Or words to that effect. “The Canadian plates and the fact that you’ve been through this same underpass three times,” he said. Or words to that effect. Detroit smelled like the devil’s barbecue in the summer of 1968.  A bunch of us, mainly the “Nickname men” as the locals have termed my boys from the Quarter Line, were there to take in a Tiger’s game. Not even riot and anarchy stopped the boys of summer. Being young and fleet of foot after two years in the dry, healing climate of Arizona I was ‘voluntold’ to make a booze run. A simple mission really; find a liquor store and hand the guy a list. The first two parts were easy, however, the store was a hole and the proprietor wore a foul look to go with the government-issue Model 1911 Colt pistol in a shoulder holster. Common site now I suppose, things were changing. The storekeeper with the semi-auto gave me two bags of clanking bottles, one of which I cracked two steps out the door. 1968 was just a bad year all round. Tucson in the 1960s was not all that far removed from its frontier past. In fact I knew a man that met Wyatt Earp. The man ran a gambling den next to the navy docks in San Diego and would fleece young sailors headed for a run ashore. There’s nothing new under the sun and, like today, cultures were clashing. Drugs were ramping up and motels were prime targets for fast cash and so, for a while I carried a .38 special tucked into the small off my back while trying to manage the Pima Inn. You had cowboys and hippies and they loathed each other, as I found out when I took up security work. Cowboys, real ones mind you, not the drugstore variety, were whisky, Coors and Skoal. Hippy types preferred Mexican mule weed, shrooms and acid. I worked a bar called Nashville West; biggest dance floor east of the Mississippi they said. One side was country the other rock. I remember a tough dude fresh out of San Quentin named Merle Haggard, who after a set loved to gamble. The owner of the club fancied himself a high roller and challenged the band members to a game of pool. Haggard put a thousand dollars on the table and told him he was on. Then there was Toronto, which was a hell of a town in the ‘60s. You could take in a game at Maple Leaf Gardens. I was 22 the last time they won the Stanley Cup. I live in hope. Not enough space for details More on TO later. gordchristmaas@outlook.com

January 18, 2024 Column
Gord Christmas