Lawrence Hall, HSG
Chicago, a German
U-Boat, and a Cab Driver with a Secret Sorrow
Many years ago I had occasion to take a taxi in Chicago.
I’m still doing therapy.
I had arrived by train (“Grandpa, what’s a train?”) and
had a six-hour wait for the next, so I took a taxi from Union Station to the
Museum of Science and Industry for a celebration of Young Sheldon-ness.
The temperature that day was 106, but that was before
climate change was invented so Chicago might be cooler now.
Union Station was not air-conditioned.
Chicago was not air-conditioned.
The cab was not air-conditioned.
The vinyl back seat was all greasy and yucky as if it had
recently been used for carrying corpses down to the river.
The driver was all greasy and yucky too, and really big,
so I kept the conversation to general topics and he kept it to an occasional
grunt. He seemed to be carrying a secret
sorrow and maybe weaponry.
At one point there was a traffic jam so he whipped his cab
onto the sidewalk for a block or so, scattering pedestrians. He appeared not to
be in a sporting mood so the walkers became leapers, and energetic ones at
that.
A few blocks further on we were stopped at a traffic
light when he and the equally large driver in the cab next to us began exchanging
verbal unpleasantries questioning each other’s genetic coding, modes of life, and
value systems, not unlike primeval carnivores sizing each other up for lunch.
At one point my driver pulled off his shirt – he was not
pretty – preparatory to doing battle. So did the other driver. Not pretty, no,
no.
Chicago, city of the big shoulders. Big waistlines. Big
fists.
Happily, at this moment the light changed and every
driver began honking and, um, vocalizing their impatience. I discovered that
this is a Chicago tradition: whenever the traffic light turns green everyone
within a quarter-mile radius begins honking the horn, bellowing impatiently,
and making any pedestrians around play dodge-human. Both the big men driving
the taxies magically appealed to each other’s better natures and I was carried
in safety to my destination.
You never see any of this on The Bob Newhart Show.
The Museum of Science and Industry – provided you can get
there alive – is fascinating. One of the favorite exhibits was the computer
display where you can walk through the remains of a second world-war British
computer. Beyond the huge steel frame and what looked like chain drives there is
little left.
Especially fascinating was a working replica of Blaise
Pascal’s 17th century calculating machine, often considered the
world’s first such gadget although it is possible that the Greeks and Romans managed
similar devices. No apps for games, though.
How the Pascaline Works - YouTube
The claustrophobia-inducing German u-boat is also
fascinating. Someone cut some hatches on the sides of the hulls so you can sort-of
walk through it. I don’t remember that I was able to stand up fully at any
point. I do remember the pretty blue-and-white-checked sheets and an occasional
wooden bulkhead panel. Sleep was a matter of a rotating hot-bunk system and
everyone lived and worked and often died in a milieu of heat and racket and machinery
and torpedoes and valves and gauges. In the summer heat the temperature inside
the hull was over 110, which, the docent advised us, was about the typical inside
temperature when the boat was at sea.
The deck gun had been removed and placed inside where
children played on it and pointed and trained the gun all around.
I understand that in Chicago children still play with guns.
The unarmed taxi drivers are scary enough.
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