Broadway Ave.
Uptown, Chicago 1965
I asked my friend if he could recommend a bar in Uptown, a poor neighborhood on Chicago’s north side. I didn’t want to always be drinking in a yuppie bar in Chicago’s hot new Old Town neighborhood. I was too shy around the girls and whenever anybody said, “Hey guy, what did you think of last night’s game?” I never knew what they were talking about. My immediate reaction was to ask what game. But I had learned that wasn’t the answer. And even though I took great pride (and still do) in the fact that I don’t know a hockey stick from a five iron, I didn’t want anybody to know that I didn’t follow sports, period.
So I thought that I’d go and hide out in a “country” bar.
My friend said that was a bad idea. He explained that each bar on Broadway reflected a community down south in Tennessee or Kentucky. So for example, not all of course, but most of the patrons at the Four Leaf Clover came from the same community in western Kentucky. And the last thing you want to be is an outsider in one of those places. And I’d be an outsider three times over, I didn’t live in the neighborhood, I wasn’t from Appalachia much less a particular valley and I looked like a college kid even though I was a stupid dropout.
He said, “You’ve got to understand the process. Some guy moves up here, gets a job in some factory assembling something like cameras or televisions, finds an apartment and sends for his wife and kids. In the meantime, he’s learning the facts of life.”
Maybe he works at Bell and Howell making cameras. It’s non-union, doesn’t pay very well and the foreman loves to say, “Oh by the way, if you don’t like it here, you can leave, we can replace you in a flash. Your kind are coming in here every day looking for work.” Then he finds out that Uptown is a neighborhood that’s seen better days to say the least, even though the rents are high. And when he wants to move, he finds out that people west of Western Avenue don’t want “hillbillies,” they won’t rent to them. So in the meantime, he calls his buddy or kid brother back home and says, “Hey, I can get you a job where I work and next week an apartment is coming up for rent in my building.” He doesn’t tell his buddy about all the bull; he can find that out on his own. He just misses his friends and family and besides if he can eat crap, so can they.
“But the tavern—that’s their place, no women whining about grocery money, no kids asking for money for school supplies, no landlord talking about the rent, no bosses yelling about keeping up with the line, nobody telling them you’re just a ‘hillbilly.’ So the last thing in the world they want to see is some kid coming in and gawking at them. They’d fix your clock, right quick.”