DREAMING HISTORY

July 4 at the Chicago History Museum
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Fourth of July Chicago, by day we’re in the old times, Sauganash Inn, dancing, fiddling, drinking, trading, gambling all together, all mixing, different tribes, French, metis and music on that swampy prairie by the lake, under a winter moon.  

Music from that old time in our heads and tonight, the Fourth, all around Chicago the townships and backyards are setting off fireworks, rockets, fire crackers, the city is surrounded by explosions.  It didn’t stop all night like, like the Sauganash Inn.  

And we slept sweet and deep with that Fourth of July lullaby- pops and whistles, great geysers of sparks burning through the sky, in our dreams of Sauganash, another rowdy night in there, that fiddler’s never tired.

Some nights a lonely night shift jackhammer on the prairie will keep you up and grumbling but tonight, the Fourth, dreams are so heavy and noisy you can’t wake up; you need to see how they turn out.

THE PLEASURE OF ALL SIDESTREETS

Dark Canyons
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Side streets are where the urban allure is.  And they are streets we don’t really look at – just glimpse them as we look both ways before we cross.  But it’s the side streets that take off into the setting sun and carry miles of blocks and buildings out across the Prairie.   At our latitude and longitude, this reporter likes to look down side streets about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, when side street canyons fill with shadow that makes the streetlights glow.

BLUES LINE CHICAGO

Blue Line Chicago
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Like they say here it’s all good it’s alright it’s all blue it’s all blues.

On this Blue Line train platform so glad it’s not the Prairie any more and if on the hottest day of the year so far a girl wants to go west she just stands here and waits with the rest of us.  Something’s bound to happen bound west.  Waiting is when the most stuff goes on, dreams of homework done daydreams of more to come.  Message arriving read this before you do anything else.  Music,  jazz really but on this Blue Line platform more like blues.  He’s playing it slow so the notes just hang there in this always slightly damp air of the underground train to take us west.

 What we do when we get there is up to us.