Part 9.5: “1060 West Addison…That’s Wrigley Field” – Jake Blues

Part 9.5: “1060 West Addison…That’s Wrigley Field” – Jake Blues

Around 8:15 AM on Wednesday, August 18 I arrived at the Jeep dealership to pick up my 2007 Liberty, which was in the shop being repaired. Inexplicably, the backseat passenger-side window fell into the door the previous Friday afternoon and couldn’t be closed.

A broken car window would be a nuisance for anyone, but for most Chicagoans it’s a huge hassle since so many of us don’t live in homes with attached garages. I live in a vintage courtyard condominium built when Calvin “Cool Cal” Coolidge was president. And unlike most friends back home in Big D who reside in eight-bedroom McMansions with attached four-car garages (and who paid roughly the same price as I did for my two-bedroom condo), I have to park in an uncovered, $30-per month city-lot adjacent to my condo building. In other words, if I don’t address the broken window my car’s interior would be exposed to late-summer rainstorms, neighborhood thugs, mangy raccoons, rabidly aggressive squirrels, and an army of brown spiders that seems to infest my neighborhood each summer. Subsequently, it was more convenient to leave the Jeep at the dealership, which could safely house it for several days until they repaired the window. Or so I thought…

Anyway, I arrived at the dealership in nearby Skokie, paid for my service and casually walked to the parking lot where my car—replete with a shiny new backseat window—awaited me. A few minutes later, while driving south on Edens Expressway toward the Loop I happened to notice a yellow receipt in my cup-holder. Initially, I ignored the yellow slip of paper. However, after a few minutes, while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the so-called “express lanes,” I grabbed the receipt to see if it was something I left in the car or was related to the recent repair work.

As I glanced at the receipt, I noticed several blue circles surrounding smaller red semi-circles. Upon closer inspection I discovered that these were Chicago Cubs logos, and the heading of the receipt read, “Brown Lot.” The next line, in smaller red letters, explained, “VALID THIS DATE ONLY MONDAY, AUG 16, 2010.” Farther down I noticed the “CUBS VS. SAN DIEGO” notation along with the parking lot fee, “$25.93.”

I hadn’t been to a Cubs game since June, and besides I never drive to Wrigley Field since the Red Line L train is so convenient. Only then did it occur to me that the yellow receipt was only two days old.

So let’s consider the facts: I dropped my Jeep off at the dealership in Skokie on Saturday, August 14 and I wasn’t in possession of it again until today, August 18. Thus, somehow a parking pass for a Cubs game played while my Jeep was in the shop mysteriously found its way to my cup-holder.

After cogitating on these simple facts for a couple of minutes I decided that there were only two possible explanations: 1) someone from the Jeep dealership borrowed my 2007 Liberty and drove it to Wrigley Field and watched the Cubs lose to the Padres 9 to 5 (poor Cubbies—they just can’t catch a break); or 2) someone at the dealership endured the ugly defeat at Wrigley then sat in my Jeep, whereby the mysterious yellow receipt fell out of his pocket and landed neatly into my cup-holder.

Of course, as a movie buff living in the Windy City, I immediately thought of Ferris Buehler’s Day Off. As you may recall, near the beginning of the movie Ferris persuades Cameron to let him drive his father’s convertible Ferrari 250 GT California, and the two of them—along with Sloane, Ferris’s girlfriend—drive to downtown Chicago via Lake Shore Drive (LSD) to enjoy teenage high jinks and ballyhoo. (By the way, does anybody really say “high jinks” or “ballyhoo” anymore?) Once downtown, they leave the car at a parking garage and tip the surly attendants $5 to park the car in a safe place. The two parking attendants, who assure Ferris and Cameron that they are “professionals,” take the Ferrari for a clandestine joyride, racking up hundreds of additional miles on the odometer. And, of course, one of the many iconic spots Ferris and his pals visit that day—while the parking attendants cruise LSD, with wind in their hair and huge smiles on their faces—was none other than Wrigley Field.

And since my mind tends to wander rapidly from one movie scene to another (i.e. at least one third of my brain’s hippocampus region is dedicated entirely to movies and TV, especially films and sitcoms from the ‘70s and ‘80s), I am reminded that Elwood Blues falsified his driver’s license and listed 1060 West Addison as his permanent address. Like the Blues Brothers, every good (north side) Chicagoan knows 1060 West Addison is the address of Wrigley Field. Next, my synapses begin firing and I am reminded of a classic Seinfeld episode in which Kramer and George begin parking their cars in an incredibly inexpensive parking garage only to discover—after George finds a used condom in his car—that rates are cheap because prostitutes are using the parked cars to service clients.

I called the dealership and spoke with Lewis—who manages the service department and looks suspiciously like Sebastion Cabot (a.k.a. Mr. French on Family Affair) with an accent reminiscent of the short order cooks at the infamous Billy Goat Tavern (i.e. you will recall the SNL skit: “cheezborger, cheezborger, cheezborger, no coke…pepsi”)—and he assured me that my Jeep was inside the dealership garage the entire time. Let’s be honest, I never trusted Mr. French with his thick beard and beady eyes, and the way he glared at Mrs. Beasley, Buffy’s doll, gave me the creeps. Mr. French was always a suspicious character, and quite frankly I feel the same way about Lewis. Of course, I can’t disprove Lewis’s claim since I didn’t check the mileage before departing the dealership.

So at least I found a receipt to a Wrigley Field parking lot rather than a used condom. And it’s no like someone took my vintage Ferrari joyriding—it’s a freakin’ Jeep Liberty, after all. And finally, it could be much, much worse—he could have driven my Jeep to a Sox game!

Part Nine: That's the Chicago Way

Part Nine: That's the Chicago Way

12:15 PM at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive

Last Tuesday while meandering north along Michigan Avenue during my lunch hour I approached the Michigan Avenue Bridge, which traverses the Chicago River a few hundred yards before the canal locks that lead into Lake Michigan, and I stumbled upon a bizarre scene: smoke and acrid fumes filled the air immediately west of me at the corner of Wacker Drive and Michigan Ave as scenes of Armageddon-like chaos filled the street before me. Burning cars and charred fire trucks littered the road as frenzied crowds ran in every direction. I looked toward the sky and noticed half a dozen base jumpers leaping off the Trump Tower, the Wrigley Building, and other nearby Chicago skyscrapers. Each of these human projectiles above quickly opened white parachutes and descended gracefully into the scorched rubble below. Inexplicably, Wacker Drive—one of the Windy City’s most picturesque boulevards—looked more like Baghdad circa April 2003 than a hot summer day in Chicago in 2010.

I wondered, “What in Sam Houston is going on here? Did Blagojevich get acquitted? Did Daley lose reelection? Did the Cubs win the pennant? 
 Did Oprah move to NYC? Did Congress repeal the 22nd amendment and allow George W. Bush to run for a third term?”

No, it was just a movie production crew filming a scene for Transformers 3. (I’m not sure why we needed Transformers 2, much less Transformers, but apparently there is an appetite—and lots of capital—for a third installment of this mediocre action series, and Chicago is the lucky host.)

As I gazed upon the movie set, hundreds of gawkers (or gapers, as they call them in Chicago) lined up against a rope peering west. I walked a bit farther north to the north bank of the Chicago River at Michigan Avenue and found yet another batch of rubberneckers trying to get a view of Shia Labeouf, John Malkovich (co-founder of Chicago’s famed Steppenwolf Theater) and other Hollywood movie stars who signed up for this cheesy, CGI-crammed, big-budget, sequel. All I could really see, however, were several hundred gawkers; a bunch of hulking security guards; a handful of fat Chicago Policemen lazily directing traffic; and dozens of skinny, hip productions assistants in matching black Transformer 3 t-shirts running to and fro trying to look busy—all of whom stood in front of the set blocking my view.

Okay, so it was actually pretty cool: burned out cars, trucks, buses, and fire trucks—some of which lay upside down or flipped on their sides—littered the street of downtown Chicago while movie stars and base jumpers plied their unique trades. A few actors several hundred yards away (perhaps Shia himself?) ambled around, each with his/her own designer bottled water with seemingly little or nothing to do. It was hot. In fact it was Texas hot. The heat index approached 100 degrees and all I could think was that at least the visiting Hollywood glitterati were earning their keep working outside in this Godforsaken climate. (Then again, so were the construction workers fixing Lake Shore Drive two miles north of us, and the local construction crew salary is but a scintilla of the compensation for actors skulking around Wacker Drive at this moment.)

I watched the scene for a minute or two then got bored and decided to keep walking north. The throng of rubberneckers—composed mostly of western suburbanites with bad haircuts and tattoos wearing knee-length blue jean shorts and Chicago Bears t-shirts—remained. (Did I mention that I hate the Chicago Bears?) In fact, their numbers continued to grow as I left the scene. Dozens of fans held digital cameras high above their heads and snapped phantom photos of the odd scene trying to capture a bit of Hollywood history-in-the-making in their own backyard. Yet, for most Chicagoans walking to and fro on their lunch hour it was just another day in the Windy City, known in the film industry as The Third Coast.

At The Movies

Chicago is a city that many people around the world know only through TV and movies. In fact, I would argue that, except for New York, Chicago is the most recognizable American city thanks to the magic of moving pictures. Indeed, Chicago has been defined on film for most Americans, and it is often hard to separate the Hollywood-made myth from reality. (Full disclosure: as a lifelong movie fanatic, I will admit that before I moved to Chicago in my mid-20s I watched Ferris Buehler's Day Off, The Blues Brothers, The Fugitive, Risky Business, The Sting, and dozens of ER episodes to prep myself for my new life in the crown jewel—if not the only jewel—of America's Midwest.)

Chicago is not unique in this respect. A handful of American cities have been defined by movies or TV shows during the last few decades. Consider San Francisco in the 1970s: Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry series framed that city during the Nixon, Ford and Carter Administrations for most Americans. For Dallas, my hometown, it was the city’s eponymous TV show that—along with the Dallas Cowboys—finally changed the national perception of Dallas from the city where JFK was assassinated to a modern, semi-urban version of Giant replete with urban cowboys, buxom beauty queens and scheming villains. Lately, Mike Judge’s animated classic King of the Hill more accurately reflects the culture of contemporary Dallas and its sprawling suburbs.

Similarly, many other places may be best known to Americans through film. Consider the following movies and/or TV shows and the respective locales they made famous (or infamous): Happy Days/Milwaukee; The Mary Tyler Moore Show/Minneapolis; Rocky (I-V)/Philadelphia; Cheers/Boston; Mean Streets/Taxi Driver (and almost all Scorsese films)/Seinfeld/Hill Street Blues/Law & Order (and countless others)/NYC, M.A.S.H./picturesque North Korea; etc. You get the picture.

“That’s the Chicago Way”

Yet, few other cities are as well known through film as Chicago thanks to a host of outstanding films and TV shows. In this humble Texpatriate’s opinion, the following represent the most iconic movies and TV shows (for better or worse) filmed in Chicago (in no particular order): The Untouchables; Ferris Buehler’s Day Off; The Blues Brothers; The Fugitive; and ER. These are not necessarily the best or most artful shows filmed in Chicago, but they are the most widely viewed depictions of the Windy City—especially to non-Chicagoans—and are thus more influential in shaping views of the Second City. In particular, two of these iconic films—The Untouchables and The Blues Brothers—are in a separate category.

Elements of The Untouchables and The Blues Brothers, from classic dialogue to classic car chase scenes, have seeped into our collective cultural consciousness and it is nearly impossible to separate the view of Chicago from the hinterlands without understanding these films. From influencing our national political speech to highlighting our unparalleled art and architecture and ethnic cultures to illustrating our city's insidious corruption and violence, these two caricatures on celluloid dramatically represent the culture of Chicago to most non-Chicagoans.

Brian De Palma’s classic The Untouchables may be the most beautifully filmed movie set in the Windy City. While portraying gangsters and G-men, De Palma recreated 1930s prohibition-era Chicago in splendid fashion. De Palma’s Chicago looks almost more authentic than the actual Chicago of the 1930s. Like a photorealist painting by Richard Estes or Chuck Close, De Palma’s Chicago—replete with saturated hues in every scene, period piece automobiles and clothing, and a moving score by Ennio Morricone—is realistic to the point of abstraction. However, perhaps the most enduring element of The Untouchables is the reference to the Chicago style—and I don’t mean architecture of economics professors.

Even more than the classic views of LaSalle Street, dialogue from The Untouchables has seeped into our vernacular and provides a shorthand for various types of behavior. For example, in recent years, political pundits and conspiracy theorists have borrowed a quote from Sean Connery’s character, Irish policeman Jimmy Malone, who suggested (when explaining how to get Capone), “You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way.”

The so-called “Chicago way” is synonymous with below-the-belt, Windy City fighting style, especially with respect to politics. In particular, political pundits have used this line to describe President Obama’s success in getting elected as well as his style in managing his administration. Whether this is fair or accurate is irrelevant, as the phrase has stuck. And just to illustrate my point, a quick Google search using the phrase, “that's the Chicago way Obama,” yielded 14,600,000 results. (To be fair, I didn’t look at all 14 million links, but I will take Google’s word for it regarding the popularity of the phrase in this context.) Creating a phrase that is immediately recognizable, viral, and illustrative of a particular city’s culture is a very difficult thing to achieve. But Connery’s line—“That’s the Chicago way”—frankly just works because it’s so damn true. This city is a cesspool of pay-to-play political corruption and organized crime.

In addition to influencing our political vernacular, De Palma’s movie has spawned a thriving tourism industry in Chicago. The “Untouchables Tours, Chicago’s Original Gangster Tour,” runs 19 tours weekly during the summer, and it takes patrons on a two-hour drive through “da city’s” most notorious neighborhoods, including Al Capone’s old stomping grounds.

The other classic Chicago film, John Landis’s The Blues Brothers, is in my opinion this city’s favorite depiction of itself. Unlike The Untouchables, it’s far less heavy handed and it’s extremely difficult not to find it enjoyable. Through the darkened shades of Jake and Elwood Blues, Chicago looks gritty, ethnically diverse, culturally rich, and just plain fun. And frankly, it is.

While there is a plot of sorts, albeit rambling and nonsensical, and more cameos than you can shake a stick at, I believe that the City of Chicago is the real star of The Blues Brothers. The movie is essentially a caricature of Chicago’s various ethnic neighborhoods coupled with dynamic post cards of every iconic building in the city. From the Daley Center to Wrigley Field, Jake and Elwood’s tour through the Windy City introduced Chicago’s many neighborhoods to folks all around the world.

In addition to The Untouchables and The Blues Brothers, there are so many good movies filmed in Chicago, each of which portrays the Windy City in a unique, vivid manner. The following are but a few diverse films that expertly captured various elements of the Chicago experience: Risky Business; The Package; Payback; Ordinary People; Planes, Trains & Automobiles; The Sting; North by Northwest; About Last Night; The Breakfast Club; Candyman; National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.

South By Southwest

Like Chicago, Texas has its own unique film culture. (N.B.: I realize Chicago is a city and Texas is a state, but there is little to praise about the state of Illinois. When asked where I live, I never say "Illinois," but when I'm asked where I'm from I always say Texas before explaining that I grew up in Big D. Thus I prefer to think of Chicago as a discrete place exclusive of the attendant boringness of downstate Illinois. Texas is different, as I can identify with an urban film set in Dallas just as easily as I identify with Lonesome Dove.) Texas on film is how most non-Texans prefer to think of the Lone Star State. And the culture of Dallas is almost exclusively known around the world for three things: an infamous assassination, America’s Team, and a second-rate ‘80s TV show.

On November 22, 1963—nearly eight years before I was born—my hometown became known as the city where JFK was assasinated. As I mentioned above, that perception began to change in the 1970s thanks to the success and class of Tom Landry and his Dallas Cowboys. It changed even more in 1980 when Big D became the site of TV's most popular evening soap: Dallas.

In the 1980s J.R. became America’s favorite villain, and every non-Texan assumed that all the denizens of Big D lived on ranches, wore cowboy hats and boots to the office, and owned hundreds of oil wells and cattle. (And of course, we all did, right? Didn’t you?) While traveling in British Columbia in the summer of 1980, just about every Canadian I met—upon learning that I was from Dallas—asked me, “who shot J.R., eh?” assuming that as a native Dallasite I must have had inside information. Since I didn’t actually watch Dallas but was vaguely familiar with the cast I made up a different answer each time, e.g. “it was J.R.’s brother Bobby, eh”; “it was Sue Ellen, eh”; “it was Cliff Barnes, eh”; etc. While the depiction of Dallas as portrayed on this soap opera was anything but accurate, at least the perception of my hometown in the 1980s was decidedly more positive than in the ‘60s and early-‘70s.

However, a mediocre 1980s TV soap opera set in Big D only skims the surface. Like Chicago, Texas is a setting that filmmakers employ time after time to examine the larger than life culture of the Lone Star State. In my opinion, the following represent the most iconic--or at least recognizable--movies and TV shows (for better or worse) about Texas: Giant; Lonesome Dove; Dallas, The Alamo; and Walker Texas Ranger (ughh...I know, but WTR was both popular and long-running, and, I am embarrased to say, like Baywatch and the entire Smokey and the Bandit canon, WTR has always been a guilty pleasure of mine; whenever I'm traveling I look for WTR reruns on the hotel room TV, and usually I can find them).

Some of my favorite movies from the Lone Star State include: Friday Night Lights; Lone Star (my favorite movie about Texas, apart from Lonesome Dove, which is in a category unto itself); The Last Picture Show; Bonnie & Clyde; Hud; Dazed & Confused (another personal favorite); Slacker; The Rookie; Office Space; Trip to Bountiful; Tender Mercies; Crazy Heart; Blood Simple; Paris, Texas; Bottle Rocket; Fandango; North Dallas Forty; Texas Chain Saw Massacre; Local Hero (another personal favorite); Terms of Endearment; JFK; What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. If you haven’t seen ‘em, check ‘em out!

In truth, most non-Texans tend to think of Lone Star culture as an amalgam of various cowboy films coupled with the lifestyle of J.R. and the rest of the Ewing clan. And Texans gladly embrace these myths just as they wholeheartedly embrace the myth of the western frontier. On film and television, Texas is almost always bigger than life. And frankly, from the perspective of this Texpatriate living in the Windy City, Texas is indeed bigger than life. After all, behind the myth, there is a kernel of truth. (And if you don’t believe me, just read other parts of The Texpatriate in the Windy City. You’ll get it.)

At Home, in Sweet Home Chicago

Perhaps that’s why I feel almost at home in Chicago. Just like Texans, Chicagoans often see their city as an oversized caricature straight out of Hollywood’s Backlot.

And just as Texans—especially Dallasites—are often insecure about being appreciated and understood by the intelligentsia on the east- and west-coasts, Chicago is an enormously insecure city. After all, we are the Second City, i.e. second to New York, of course. While that rather faded expression primarily refers to the size of Chicago’s population—which is technically inaccurate as we’re now third behind Los Angeles—for years Chicagoans have felt inferior to the folks in New York with respect to culture and sophistication. And since we’ll never have Broadway or Wall Street or The Metropolitan Opera, we prefer to embrace what makes us unique. We proudly and enthusiastically embrace our unique culture, from sleazy gangsters and corrupt politicians to throaty blues singers and gritty, ethnic neighborhoods. And why shouldn’t we…

Thank God and Sam Houston I’m a Texan, and I thank Jake and Elwood I live in Chicago.

Part Eight: Super Bowl XLV Comes to Big D

Part Eight: Super Bowl XLV Comes to Big D

While riding the Union Pacific Metra commuter train to work this morning I yanked a copy of D Magazine—the official periodical about all things Dallas—out of my briefcase to kill time while passing through various north-side Chicago neighborhoods. Somewhere around Andersonville, a trendy, gentrified neighborhood through which the train passes that features at least two gastronomic landmarks—Hopleaf, which features Chicagoland’s best beer selection (at least in this humble Texpatriate’s view), and Hamburger Mary’s, a quirky burger joint where at Sunday brunch you can order a traditional eggs-n-bacon breakfast replete a huge, greasy, mouth-watering hamburger (yum)—I stumbled across an article about Bill Lively, my dad, that would make any son swell with pride. This is especially so for a kid from Dallas, home of America’s Team. There were no tears running down my cheeks—at least not that I’m willing to share in this piece—but I did experience a palpable sense of astonishment and wonder as my train sped down the tracks toward the Loop.

The article in question was featured in a special edition of D Magazine dedicated entirely to Super Bowl XLV, which lands in North Texas in February 2011. Near the bottom of the article were two quotes from Texas legends Troy Aikman and Roger Staubach. The article explains, “Both Aikman and Staubach go out of their way to heap praise on [Bill] Lively. Aikman says, ‘I would find it very difficult to believe that any effort had been headed up by a more organized, finer human being than he is.’ And Staubach says, ‘I thank God every day that Bill Lively is Bill Lively.’”

Hail Mary, and Amen!

As I think about that quote, it’s actually rather difficult to formulate a response. Quite frankly, I’m speechless. (And that is rare.) Perhaps my feelings may best be expressed by the immortal words of Smokey Robinson, who sang, “I second that emotion.”

For any son to read such a quote from Roger Staubach about his father would fill him with pride. For a Texan—especially a kid from Dallas—such a quote is frankly overwhelming. As I think about how to express my feelings to friends in Chicago I realize I’m ill equipped to find a comparable figure other than Walter Payton, who is deceased. (Some would say Ditka, but he’s hawking cheesy time shares on cable TV and isn’t even close to Staubach. Perhaps Michael Jordan, but his status seems to have faded some lately.) But to truly understand how I feel upon reading this extraordinary quote, I must first take you back 31 years to the penultimate year of the disco era, at the end of the decade when the Dallas Cowboys became “America’s Team.”

January 21, 1979

On a cold morning in January 1979, my family boarded a plane to Miami. It was my first time to visit Florida, and I’m fairly certain it was my first time to miss school for a reason other than illness, which felt both exotic and mischievous. More importantly, I was in town to see the Dallas Cowboys—America’s Team, my team—play the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XIII. The Cowboys easily beat the Broncos in Super Bowl XII the year before, and they were in Miami to defend their title. I had just turned eight earlier in the month, and I don’t remember much before the day of the game, January 21, 1979. But the events of that Super Bowl Sunday—from morning to night—are etched in my brain.

You see, by January 1979 I had already attended several dozen Cowboys home games in spite of my youth. From 1973 until 1989, when Jerry Jones bought the team, my dad was the director of the Dallas Cowboys band. Beginning with Super Bowl XII in January 1978, Tex Schramm, the Cowboy’s larger-than-life general manager, invited the band to travel with the cheerleaders to support the team.

Early on Super Bowl Sunday, my mom, dad, sister, brother and I left the Bahia Mar Hotel in Fort Lauderdale—our home during this epic football sojourn in south Florida—and joined the band on a chartered bus, which had a sign in the front window that read, “Cowboys Players.” Rather than park in the lot near the masses of drunken tailgaters, our bus drove us through hordes of screaming fans past the stadium gates and into the Orange Bowl tunnel down toward the field.

Steelers fans had initiated the “terrible towel” tradition several years prior, and it seemed to me that they significantly outnumbered Cowboys fans based on the enormous volume of stupid yellow dish towels waved by moronic Pittsburghers wearing black and gold. They looked like a bunch of fat, drunk bumblebees with bad facial hair and hillbilly haircuts straight out of Deliverance. Let’s face it: I hate the Steelers and their obnoxious fans. Apparently, the “Cowboys Players” sign in our bus window caused fans of both teams to think—quite erroneously—that Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett, Drew Pearson, Ed “Too Tall” Jones, Harvey Martin, Randy White, Billy Joe Dupree, Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson,” Tom Landry, and the rest of America’s Team were on board. It was rather amusing, actually.

Our bus parked and we walked toward the bandstand, which was placed on the field near the end zone painted Steelers' gold at the open end of the horseshoe in Miami’s old Orange Bowl. My brother Bill and I were seated near our dad’s podium on the field. We effectively had front row seats, albeit with poor visibility past the twenty yardline nearest us. Each of us had red Super Bowl credentials tied to strings around our necks, which made us feel official, and which indicated—at least to these two young, impressionable kids—that we belonged there, in front of all the action.

Our end zone saw most of the action, including highlight reel favorites of Steelers’ fans for the past 30 years, such as the John Stallworth catch in the second quarter and the unbelievable Lynn Swann catch in the fourth quarter, not to mention the dreaded Jackie Smith drop in the third quarter. (Damn you, Jackie Smith!) In the end, Dallas lost the game, and my brother and I were heartbroken. But the game was arguably one of the most competitive and exciting Super Bowls in history.

In addition to the game, I distinctly remember watching the halftime show performers, which consisted of hundreds of dancers in colorful Caribbean outfits lined up at the fence adjacent to our seats near the end of the second quarter. Eight year-olds are easily distracted, and I remember peering all around at the Super Bowl spectacle as much as I remember watching the game. The game was amazing, but the crowd, the colors, the noise and the energy—especially since we were seated on the field—were truly unforgettable. To an eight year-old, Super Bowl XIII was a blizzard of yellow and blue; 1970s haircuts and bell bottomed pants; profane, rowdy Steelers fans mixing with cool, sedate Cowboys supporters; and Tom Landry in his fedora stoically looking toward the field trying to conjure another extraordinary comeback. I remember the roar of the crowd and the terrible towels waving frantically. I recall the final seconds when the Cowboys almost recovered a second on-side kick before the ball was smothered by the Steelers, who ran the clock out to win by four points, 35 to 31. And I remember the heartbreak of defeat, especially since I truly believed America’s Team would prevail.

But my team played with intensity that day and I was proud. Most of all, I remember seeing my heroes, Staubach, Dorsett and Pearson up close—much closer than our seats allowed at Texas Stadium. As a small kid, they were truly larger than life, especially Staubach.

Following the game, (players) Bob Breunig and Herbert Scott joined us on the bus to the hotel, and they graciously gave my brother Bill and me autographs in our Super Bowl Gameday programs. Later that night, following a late dinner at a Miami restaurant with a big-screen TV—the first I had ever seen—that was airing the Burt Reynolds classic The Longest Yard, my Mom, sister, brother, and I ate a quiet dinner and relived favorite moments from the game. We had lost the game, but we had also just seen our Cowboys play in a Super Bowl from seats located right on the field, and we were sky high with emotions.

After dinner we returned to the hotel and we made our way to a large ballroom where dozens of empty cots lay in neat rows. A few curtains here and there attempted to separate sections of the ballroom, presumably to help segregate men and women. However, the four of us were alone at the moment in this spacious, empty room. My Dad was with the Cowboys Band playing a set at the Super Bowl party, which was much more subdued relative to the year before following the victory over the Broncos (see Part Three: Coming Home with Country Music).

My mom tucked Billy, Debbie and me into bed and we fell asleep on three cots in the middle of the enormous ballroom. We awoke the next morning to find the entire Cowboys Band as well as the famed Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders sleeping in cots all around us. The once empty room was now packed with eccentric North Texas State University jazz musicians who comprised the majority of the talented Cowboys Band and dozens of bleach-blonde cheerleaders, and I was frankly stunned. Apparently, the Cowboys of the 70s traveled on a tight budget. To this day I wonder what the band members and cheerleaders thought when they returned sometime near dawn to find three kids, plus my mom, sleeping in four cots in the middle of a massive ballroom lined with rows of beds. I’m sure my brother, who was 12 at the time, was much more curious how the Cheerleaders found their way to the ballroom during the night while he slept. By 1979 the Cowboys Cheerleaders had achieved rock star status everywhere, and here they were sleeping all around us. Unfortunately, as an eight-year-old, I didn’t quite appreciate this fact at the time. Timing is everything.

We left on Monday morning and returned to Big D. Back at school I briefly had superstar status as the only kid anyone knew—except Major and Delon Greene, Mean Joe Greene's sons, who also attended my school—who had ever attended a Super Bowl. (Ironically, Delon and Major Greene, who were a few years older than I, lived near us in Duncanville. Every kid at school loved their dad's Coke commercial, even though he was a Steeler.)

I wouldn’t trade my Super Bowl experience with any other in my life except perhaps the birth of my daughters and my wedding day. (I'm sure my wife could easily think of several others.) Watching Roger Staubach, Tony Dorsett and Drew Pearson in the Super Bowl during the Cowboys’ heyday left an indelible impression on this eight-year-old. To me, Staubach was the captain of America’s Team, and anyone who played against him was simply the enemy on par with the Soviets. It was good versus evil. Period.

How ‘Bout Those Cowboys

Like every good Cowboy fan, I watched in awe as the Cowboys won three Super Bowls in four years during the 1990s. Indeed, those were great victories and wonderful times. But for a kid born in that weird period between the 60s and 70s known as the Nixon era, Staubach was near superhero status compared with just about any other football star.

Don't get me wrong—Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith and Michael Irvin, and all the Cowboys of the 1990s have a special place in that part of my heart reserved for football, which as a Texan is decidedly oversized. They won three Super Bowls, and more importantly they beat the Steelers, which made all us kids from the 70s very happy. Simply said, they returned the glory back to Big D. But the experiences from one's childhood leave a stronger impression than those from adulthood. And as a kid “Roger the Dodger”—or “Captain Comeback,” as he was also known—was my hero.

You see, over time professional sports were demystified by my overexposure to them. In high school I began working for my dad as the band’s equipment manager, and during college I worked both in the press box and on the field during the game. Actually, it was rather extraordinary to watch games from the field as a college student. The game was so fast and the players so big: nothing on TV or in the stands even comes close. But having seen more than a couple hundred live Cowboys games by 1993, the year I left Dallas, I was simply spoiled. I had seen so many games from such unbelievable vantage points that the excitement and drama of the game began to wane in spite of the remarkable success the Cowboys had begun to enjoy under Jerry Jones’s leadership.

Over time I became more interested in the game as entertainment rather than sport. Each game I would ride to Texas Stadium with my dad several hours before kickoff and watch the stadium and all its myriad workers prepare for the game. The concessionaires cooked hot dogs and popcorn, security guards moved into place, ticket takers opened their booths, photographers reviewed notes and stats while chomping on cheap hot dogs in a small room up the ramp across from the Cowboy’s locker room, and the news media—composed of radio, TV and print journalists—gathered in the press box adjacent to the luxury boxes to grab a quick bite and take a restroom break before the coin toss. In fact, two years in a row—in 1991 and 1992—I ate Thanksgiving dinner at Texas Stadium with football legends John Madden and Pat Summerall alone in the media dining room before the rest of the media descended on the press box. Mine was a surreal existence during my 20s.

All of it—the build-up, the preparation, the execution, and the artifice—was a fascinating and complicated production made possible by thousands of people each Sunday. In reality, the game was actually rather boring compared to the complicated machinations required to prepare for taking tickets, selling food and clothes, cleaning the men’s rooms, preparing for halftime, reporting on the game, and managing tens of thousands of fans coming and going peacefully. The game, which comprises only one hour of play split into four quarters, is in reality, the simple part.

As I explained, the NFL experience had become demystified to me. However, I still love the Dallas Cowboys. I still love watching them play every Sunday in the fall. And every summer in late-August my spirits begin to lift as football season approaches. However, in spite of the nearly unlimited access to players, coaches, and media, the experiences of an eight-year-old child will always create a substantially more magical and exotic memory than anything experienced in one’s teens or twenties.

Super Bowl XLV

On February 6, 2011 Super Bowl XLV will be played at Cowboys Stadium, the shiny new billion-dollar stadium—dubbed JerryWorld by the press—that is rivaled in scale and grandeur only by the coliseum in Rome. And it just so happens that my Dad is the President and CEO of the Super Bowl XLV Host Committee. Roger Staubach is the Chairman and Troy Aikman is Vice Chair. Members of the Executive Committee include Emmitt Smith and Ross Perot, Jr., among others. It’s a who’s who of Dallas.

Obviously, my dad’s position and subsequent interaction with Staubach and Aikman provides him access for which most Dallasites—or Texans for that matter—would sell their soul. And I am keenly aware of my dad’s friendship and working relationship with Staubach. I also know that my dad has a special talent for building and managing complex organizations and at crafting and staging big events. Let’s face it: in the U.S. there is no event bigger than the Super Bowl. So Roger’s quote shouldn’t be all that surprising to me knowing my dad’s working relationship with Staubach. Yet, in spite of all that, the eight-year-old deep down inside couldn’t help but swell with pride.

As my train approaches the Ogilvie Transportation Center in downtown Chicago I find myself stuck emotionally in 1979 reliving my Super Bowl Experience. Quite frankly, I don’t want to go back to 2010 for a few minutes so I close my eyes as my fellow commuters exit the train, and I try and remember the sights and sounds and smells of Super Bowl XIII. As the train empties I say a quiet, personal thank you to my dad for providing such extraordinary experiences and memories over the years. Most would say it was just football, but I know it was much more—it was an opportunity to witness a uniquely American cultural experience in the glory days of America’s Team.

Roger, I thank God (and Sam Houston) my dad is my dad every day, too.

Part Seven: Commuters in Paradise

Part Seven: Commuters in Paradise

It’s 8:02 AM and the train is just arriving at my stop, Main Street, Evanston, where I stand along with several dozen fellow Evanstonians awaiting the sleek silver commuter train that will deliver most of us within a few blocks of our respective downtown offices. It’s July and I’m already sweating as the heat index approaches 93 degrees and the humidity, always elevated near Lake Michigan, is near 80 percent. I reach up to loosen my tie and unbutton my collar while carefully balancing a to-go-mug filled with mediocre home-brewed coffee, today’s Wall Street Journal, my black Tumi briefcase—which is heavy with nonessentials and extra books (from my ever-growing queue of expensive, store-bought, hard-cover literature) that I've packed but continue to put off reading until some later date—and my iPod, which is currently playing Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried.”

As I attempt to loosen my collar, my coffee spills onto my newspaper and into my briefcase while my iPod goes crashing onto the sidewalk. I manage to gather up my dripping mess just in time to board the train and find one of the few remaining seats next to a woman with a wet, persistent cough who dresses as though she’s an extra on Maude, circa 1975. As I sit on the narrow seat, with all my wet gear settled in my lap, I can feel perspiration dripping down my neck onto my collar, which is growing moist.

Today I’m riding the Union Pacific Metra train (i.e. the suburban commuter train, known simply as the Metra), having given up on the “L” (i.e. Chicago’s elevated train) several years ago following multiple service cuts and countless standing-room-only rides in un-air-conditioned, rickety train cars that reeked of foul McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches, body odor, cheap perfume and other random effluvia of unknown origin that my dulled olfactory receptors failed to recognize. Taking public transportation is an experiment in active democracy as multimillionaires routinely sit beside homeless riders, and virtually every walk of life is represented. Actually, that democratic nature is arguably the most appealing aspect of public transportation. But democracy is not always easy, and the train can challenge one's senses and patience. Unlike most Dallasites in their comfortable, air-conditioned sports cars and SUVs cruising along the North Dallas Tollway in sanitized splendor, millions of Chicagoans endure daily L and Metra rides, both of which provide a more crowded, colorful, odorous, and messy experience—especially for riders like me who can’t juggle all their gear.

While Metra trains are far cleaner and more civilized than the L, they still have plenty of urban character—especially as they pick up passengers closer to downtown. Consider the woman with the consumptive cough and 1970s Bea Arthur outfit to my left, and the homeless man in the first row muttering at fellow passengers in Russian or Polish (I can't tell the difference); the business man in a smart Brooks Bros suit reading the WSJ adjacent to the neo-hippie whose outfit, politics and bathing habits—but not his iPhone—are stuck in 1968; and the attorney on his cell phone two rows in front of me yelling to his paralegal about some abstruse legal concept about which she is clearly oblivious. All—or at least most—are headed to jobs downtown, and upon leaving the train they scatter like fire ants toward myriad offices and coffee shops and bagel joints.

For the past few years—ever since my daughter entered pre-K and needed a ride to school—I have driven to work. However, the last few weeks I've been riding the Metra while my daughter is on summer break and my wife is at home on maternity leave. And this sudden jolt back into the world of public transportation has reminded me of my many years taking the train before I switched to driving.

During my first four or five years in Chicago I took the L to work. Eventually I got fed up with the infrequency and inconsistency of trains and subsequent crowds and switched to the Metra, which I took for a couple years. Compared with the L, the Metra feels like an oasis of calm. However, once I began driving two years ago I got used to the cool, consistent breeze of my car's air conditioner, listening to NPR’s “All Things Considered,” a guaranteed seat that is both clean and comfortable, and a relatively short walk from the parking garage on Wabash to my office (compared with a mile-long walk from the Metra station)—and I found it hard to switch back to public transportation, especially in the dead of winter or middle of summer. (Have you heard the old joke? Chicago has only two seasons: winter and construction season, plus maybe two weeks—at most—of spring and fall.)

Now I'm back on the train, and I’m trying my damndest to enjoy the simple pleasures of commuter life, including: truly fantastic people watching, discovering new and exciting smells, time to read books I bought two years ago but never got to, time to write and edit new chapters of "A Texpatriate in the Windy City"—including the one you're reading—on my Blackberry, and the absence of weaving and dodging in heavy traffic on southbound Lake Shore Drive at rush hour. Also, with a mile walk to my office from the Ogilvie Transportation Center, my train's terminus, at least I'm getting some exercise and a chance to clear my head and stretch my legs before staring at my computer screen for several hours.

Central Expressway at Rush Hour Circa 1993…Good Times

My first experience as a commuter was in Big D, where I witnessed firsthand just how awful rush hour traffic can be without having to be stuck in it myself. When I left Dallas in 1993 North Central Expressway hadn’t yet been widened and deepened. It made for some rather interesting driving experiences. (It now feels like a different road altogether.) Five years earlier, in January 1988, I got my first car: my grandmother's sky blue 1977 Monte Carlo replete with white vinyl top and white vinyl seats, including bucket seats that swiveled (yeah, that’s right: they swiveled; I know you’re jealous!). It was affectionately known as the Luv Macheen—or alternatively "that piece of shit," depending on whether the AC was working—and it was bigger than most yachts I see floating in Belmont Harbor alongside Lake Shore Drive. In this exquisite piece of 1970s machinery I could barely get up to 60 MPH on the highway without first turning off the air conditioner.

In 1993 the entrance ramps to Central Expressway near SMU seemed to be about 25 feet long, if not shorter, which was only slightly larger than the Luv Macheen itself. In order to enter this Godforsaken road I had to get up to 50 MPH before the start of each entrance ramp just to merge with traffic. Considering the Luv Macheen could do zero to 60 in about four minutes, you can imagine how much fun this was.

As a college student at SMU I didn’t have a full-time job and thus never had to endure the old Central Expressway (a.k.a. “Central”) traffic at rush hour on a routine basis. Mostly I just drove above Central on the Yale Blvd overpass on my way to campus from the cheap, rundown apartments I rented near Greenville Avenue. Each morning on my way to school I looked down at the poor folks stuck on Central in bumper-to-bumper traffic moving slower than an ambulatory centenarian on barbiturates and I thanked God and Sam Houston I didn’t have to sit in that traffic every morning and afternoon.

Now I’m one of those folks I used to pity, only I’m in even worse traffic in a city with millions more people—hence, millions more drivers. If you will agree with my rather nonscientific hypothesis that at least two in ten drivers are essentially lousy behind the wheel, and two in thirty are downright dangerous, that means—statistically speaking—that Chicago has hundreds of thousands more bad drivers than Dallas, and tens of thousands who shouldn't be driving at all. (At least public transportation mitigates traffic density here somewhat, especially when a gallon of gas regularly exceeds $3.25 a gallon.)

As almost all Dallasites and Houstonians know—along with nearly all residents of any major metro area without a major train network (in other words, every big city except New York, Chicago, Boston and D.C.)—driving in heavy traffic at rush hour isn't exactly fun. Indeed, driving in Chicago on southbound Sheridan Road and Lake Shore Drive—dodging left and right in between taxis, CTA accordion-style double-length buses, drivers making illegal turns at most intersections, and countless bad drivers going either too fast or too slow—gives one the sensation of being a stunt driver from Bullitt (absent the San Francisco hills and Steve McQueen's cool) or the French Connection (without Gene Hackman's silly hat). Without a robust public transportation system—given Chicago's population density—the volume of traffic near the Loop would make driving here virtually impossible. Quite frankly, driving at rush hour in any city—including, if not especially, the Windy City—sucks. But it is still more comfortable, fragrant and sanitary—not to mention climate controlled—than public transportation.

Quite frankly, the concept of and reasons for a long commute are rather absurd. Let’s review the basic logic (or illogic, as it were). Families tend to look for a home with the most space at the lowest price to fulfill the American Dream of owning a home big enough to raise their 2.5 kids and family dog. The idea is simple: buy as much house as possible to provide a comfortable lifestyle for the family within a reasonable distance from one’s office. Yet, the farther one goes away from downtown the longer the commute. Therefore, the desire to have a nice, big home in which to spend time with family actually ends up minimizing—and thus compromising—time spent with family since nice, big homes near work are typically unaffordable.

For every family, there is a sweet spot—the distance from work at which the family can afford a home to fit their collection of junk they’ve accumulated since becoming a unit but close enough so that the adult(s) of the household can commute without having to spend more time in the car than the office. And those are just the basics. Throw in the search for good schools, proximity to family and friends, availability of public transportation (at least in Chicago), location relative to one’s personal interests and hobbies (e.g. many folks here want to live near Lake Michigan), etc., and it takes a Ph.D. in geography and transportation logistics to identify the ideal commuter sweet spot. My goal seems rather simple: I want to find an affordable home in an attractive northern suburb with excellent schools that is closer to Chicago than Milwaukee. (It is much easier said than done.) Thus far, my real estate divining rod hasn't been too successful.

My good friend and fellow Texpatriate, Jim Nickelson, has the perfect commute: he lives with his family in the beautiful resort town of Camden, Maine and he commutes from his bedroom to his home office down the hall. Jim is a successful patent attorney who works remotely from his law firm, which I believe is based in Austin. Unlike Jim, the lucky son of a bitch (and all around great guy), my current job requires that I work most days in the office. Even if it didn't, I don't possess the willpower to work from home on a consistent basis. (After one day at home my wife would return from work to find me nearly comatose on the couch watching Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch marathons on cable TV with little or no work done.) Thus, I am stuck with the commute due to personality deficiencies coupled with my chosen profession of university fundraiser.

Commuting in Chicago, 18th Century-Style...By Canoe

I suppose my commute is a bit easier than Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable's, the first non-native to make Chicago his home. As the first non-indigenous settler—and first person of African descent in Chicago—du Sable moved to the site of present-day Chicago in the 1770s and established a fur-trading post. Without a doubt, du Sable had a vastly more difficult existence along the swampy Chicago River banks at the juncture of Lake Michigan, especially in February, compared with our rather comfortable lifestyles in quaint bungalows, roomy brownstones and swanky high rises. And our daily commute, while seemingly challenging in a 21^st century perspective, is downright glamorous in comparison. Unlike du Sable, we have access to trains, cars, Gore Tex jackets and boots, aspirin, penicillin, hospitals, paved roads, GPS, and DVD players in the back seat for toddlers—and there are far fewer outbreaks of cholera and typhoid fever today.

Du Sable lived alongside the banks of the Chicago River where the Michigan Avenue Bridge is now located. Most likely his commute required a horse, good shoes and a homemade canoe. This last part of the commute, i.e. the canoe, I can actually appreciate. Three years ago my friend Dave, an FBI pilot and ex-Top Gun aviator (yes, that Top Gun), and I paddled his canoe approximately thirteen miles, from Evanston south to Dick’s Last Resort in downtown Chicago. Okay, so our canoe trip was slightly different than du Sable’s daily grind. Anyway, our trip was still an adventure of sorts.

On a hot summer day in 2007 Dave and I packed sandwiches, a can of Pringles, and a 12-pack of original Coors in a dry-bag and we loaded up his canoe at the Oakton Street landing of the Chicago River Sanitary Canal (a.k.a. the North Shore Channel), which runs south from Wilmette toward the north branch of the Chicago River. During the first couple miles through Evanston and Rogers Park, on the far north side of Chicago, we saw an abundance of turtles, cranes and unusually exotic wildlife considering we were passing through an urban jungle better known for street gangs and pawn shops. By the time we paddled south through Ravenswood and Roscoe Village, near the confluence of the Sanitary Canal and the north branch of the Chicago River, the wildlife was all but gone. Water quality grew poorer and poorer until we reached Webster Ave in west Lincoln Park, where an old tire factory deposited foul smelling chemicals into the murky, brown water, which looked about as clean as the Gulf Coast following the BP oil spill. Thereafter we tried to avoid touching the grimy, bubbling water for fear that exposure would almost certainly lead to sterility and the possible loss of an appendage or two.

Farther south, as we paddled past the west border of Goose Island, the man-made, corrugated steel riverbanks grew taller—as did the buildings—and we began to feel slightly more exposed and claustrophobic in the deep, urban canyon. Fortunately we had each imbibed about five beers and were feeling rather robust and Hemingwayesque. At the fork we turned east toward the locks leading into Lake Michigan and we began to weave in between huge boats loaded with tourists learning about Chicago's architecture. When they looked down upon us they looked equally surprised and jealous.

We paddled beneath several drawbridges and stopped at the Trump Tower, which at the time was just a construction site eight stories tall. My friend Dave chatted up the curious construction crew who found our canoe rather quaint. A hundred yards or so farther east, just past the Michigan Avenue Bridge, near the site of du Sable’s home, we drank a toast to good ole’ Jean Baptiste. And we wondered why he chose to build his home in this Godforsaken climate along the banks of a middling river in the middle of a murky swamp. And then we drank another toast to du Sable for good measure.

A few yards beyond the Michigan Avenue Bridge we came upon three kayakers. One of the kayakers—who we later learned was the head football coach at Carleton College—offered to pay our docking fee at Dick's if we would pass him one of our two remaining beers. We obliged him and we all paddled east toward the locks then north toward a small tributary that ends at Dick's Last Resort, a cheesy watering hole. After 13 miles and nearly as many beers between us, we considered paddling back north to Evanston for all of 1/1000^th of a second—and then we decided to call Dave's wife Jane and ask her to pick us up. (It was an excellent decision as we were in no condition to paddle another 13 miles much less 13 feet, especially after a couple more beers at Dick’s with our new friends.)

As we paddled deep into the urban canyon along the Chicago River, I reflected on the differences between our view and that of ole' Jean Baptiste more than 225 years ago. He would be utterly bewildered by the changes. Not only is the landscape entirely composed of man-made objects of staggering size and occasional beauty and grandeur, but the river actually flows in a different direction. In 1900, after several deadly epidemics of cholera and typhoid fever caused by locals dumping human waste into the river—which flowed into Lake Michigan, the source of the city's drinking water—engineers figured out how to reverse the flow. (Incidentally, they’re considering reversing the flow again to keep the menacing Asian Carp, a.k.a. Kentucky Tuna, out of the Great Lakes.) Only a few spots anywhere along the river or lakefront look remotely as they did when du Sable roamed these swampy parts. At least Chicago has retained miles of parks and open space along the lakefront, unlike so many American cities that have sullied pretty views with freeways and massive developments.

"Next Stop, Ogilvie Transportation Center"

Back on the Metra, as my train approaches the Loop, I gather my wet belongings and prepare to exit. As I depart the train and begin moving toward the Ogilvie Transportation Center vestibule down a long corridor between my train and another that just arrived from the northwest suburbs, I scan the hundreds of bobbing heads in front of me walking in near unison through a narrow corridor toward the station and experience a curious sensation. The cluster of bobble-head commuters remind me of a herd of cattle meandering through a chute or cattle run, masticating on sesame bagels and Dunkin' Donuts instead of grass and hay, on their collective way to myriad destinations in the Loop.

(N.B. Ironically, the cattle industry has connected Chicago to North Texas—specifically Fort Worth, my hometown’s sister city to the west—for more than a century. When the railroads were extended to the west and southwest around 1900, cattle from Denver, Kansas City, Wichita and Fort Worth ended up in the stockyards and meatpacking plants of Chicago. In fact, the introduction of railroads coupled with Chicago’s stockyards and meatpacking plants helped to create the famous Fort Worth Stockyards, which was incorporated by businessmen from Chicago and Boston. Thus, the history of Chicago and North Texas will be forever linked by America’s appetite for beef.)

If I close my eyes for just a second I can almost hear these workaday drones mooing as they hoof it out of the station. Like cattle ambulating toward a watering hole this herd of humanity heads collectively to the nearest Starbucks for their morning dose of legal, addictive stimulants. (Don’t you just love how Texpats can always find a way to relate all their experiences in some way to the homeland?)

Coming Soon: Part 7.5, A Collection of My Favorite Public Transportation Stories and Anecdotes