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Our Time: Homecoming can be sweet

By Jane Glenn Haas, The Orange County Register, Source: MCT News Service

I'm going back to my old hometown this week. The toddlin' Chicago.

I left about 30 years ago, after a winter with 97 inches of snowfall. California, where the snow caps the mountains like whipped cream on a latte, is much more appealing. Still, I miss the city.

Where else can a dynasty, the Daleys, rule through political kingmanship? They reward everybody _ from the appointees they control to the ordinary voter they entice with school reform, vibrant public housing projects and a city growing in population, a post-industrial capital of the world. No wonder Chicagoans would rather have a Daley than the disenchantment of post-industrial Detroit or Cleveland.

Besides, the Daleys have provided journalists with so much good material.

I always enjoyed reading Mike Royko, a Pulitzer Prize writer who had great fun mocking the Daleys.

When Richard J., the "daddy," once remarked that if someone didn't like what he did "they can kiss my ass," Royko wrote:

"Although I have not read of any king expecting a kiss in precisely the area the mayor described, why not? One of the hallmarks of Chicago is that we do so many things in an original manner. What other city has made a river flow backwards? And it would be quite original if we had a leader who greeted us backwards."

But I dwell on the past _ when I went to high school with two of the future mayor's daughters, Patricia and Mary Ellen. We were all cut out of the same Irish Catholic cookie-cutter mold back then. Still, the Daley connection gave me a boost when I got my first job. I was 15, not legally old enough to work, but I landed a position at Marshall Field's department store in the back office. My job was to approve all charge card transactions above $25. The average person had a $150 limit on a card. Life was cheaper but wages were lower, too. I made 90 cents an hour. Big money for the time.

Anyway, I needed a permit to work. So I took ink eradicator, erased my birth year from my birth certificate, rewrote the number and took the shabby looking paper to Chicago's city hall, where a clerk never looked twice. I got my work permit.

Which makes this homecoming trip a tad poignant.

A Daley, Richard M., still rules. Evan Osnos, a Chicago Tribune writer, mused about his reign in a recent New Yorker piece titled, "The Daley Show." Seems the city still runs about the same way. I'm assuming kids still get their work permits as needed.

Millennium Park dominates the downtown lakefront. The wind still howls and the snow still falls, but the streets are plowed and the garbage gets picked up on time. The only thing missing is Marshall Field's. It's now a Macy's.

And I make more than 90 cents an hour. So what's to complain about? It's still Chicago. And thanks to the Daleys, there's no place like home.

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(Jane Glenn Haas writes for The Orange County (Calif.) Register. E-mail her at jghaas@cox.net)

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(c) 2010, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).

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