Beauty and the Beast, Beast first

[maeve66]

I am still in Chicago. I changed my ticket so I could overlap with a friend who just arrived yesterday, and also to spend more time with my family, including my Oakland family, while they were out here. That seems silly, but it's very nice to have R&R with me and with their grandparents, too. We all went to Lake Geneva. I do not have any photos of Lake Geneva that express how wonderful it is. It is the best small lake in the United States, first of all. It is glacier-created, and thus deep and clear. It is sized perfectly, thus nice and warm to cool, never cold during the summer. It has perfect sandy beaches and a smooth bottom, and gets deep very quickly. The town itself is a kind of tourist mecca, but I spent part of every summer there when I was little, and back then it wasn't so chi-chi -- no spas, not many tchotchke shops, family style restaurants and dive bars rather than ethnic food and upscale bars. Okay, wait. Lake Geneva still doesn't really have ethnic restaurants except for a not bad Mexican storefront, and several Mexican groceries, since the current wave of growth is mostly Mexican. I wonder if I could get a job teaching English Language Learners in Lake Geneva? I wonder how little it would pay?

Anyway, no photo I took can conjure up how serene and comforting and home-y LG is to me, so I won't post any. Plus, there is the proscription on posting pix of my nieces, or I'd totally put up a picture of them. SO cute. But you are denied, O LJ friends.

So. On to Chicago.

The weather's been that kind of humid Chicago summer stuff where it gets unbearable and then there's a satisfyingly dramatic thunderstorm with lightning, like in the middle of last night. Here's what I was doing during it. This is the "Beast" part.

My father owns a Chevrolet Caprice Classic, circa 1988. He believes that it is a hotly desired make and model. It's been stolen (and recovered) twice, though not stolen by carjackers trying to fill orders for sheikhs from Qatar, which is who my father thinks wants to buy it. Just joyridden by local youth.

Here it is, in all its faded glory. Actually, I don't think there's any glory left.



Yesterday evening, I drove it down to West Town (aka East Ukrainian Village) to hang out with friends -- namecheck: mudpriestess, notaboxer, winterhart534, whorlet -- and we went to a "tasting" of Glenfiddich single malt whisky. To be perfectly honest, I am not a whisky drinker. I don't revel in a wee dram. I much prefer good beer or frou-frou drinks, which are hell on diabetes. However -- this was too much indulgence to resist: hors d'oeuvres piled high; plush carpet and little seating groups; mixed scotch drinks beforehand, and a superb view of Chicago, the Beauty of this post.



God, what a view. We were on the 56th floor of the Chase Building, at 21 S. Clark Street. Wow. I love Chicago, in all its different aspects.

Then a man in a kilt with a strong Scots accent showed us a PowerPoint presentation about the history of Glenfiddich, with little time trips back 12, 15, 18, 21, and 30 years to taste the different ages of single malt. The best thing, for me, was that there was much discussion of barrels, casks, and general COOPERAGE, which has been a theme of this summer vacation. I got to visit a cooperage at the Mystic Sea Port historical village, in Mystic, Connecticut. And the Glenfiddich people are supposed to e-mail me a copy of the picture of their little distillery cooperage and their master Cooper. We shall see. If they do, I'll totally post it, along with a photo from Mystic. Maybe I'll throw in the completely intense ship's blacksmith dude as well, pulling on the bellows.

So. On to the thunderstorm last night. I experienced it while sitting in that Beast of a Chevy Caprice Classic, which wouldn't start, when I was on the way home from hanging out, around 1:45 AM. I sat there for an hour, waiting for Triple AAA. While I sat there, the thunder crashed and the lightning zapped and a teenager asked if he could buy the car. My father is vindicated. Of course, I don't know how much this youth wanted to pay. I told him the car was a piece of shit and he didn't want it. Someone else, around 2:30 AM, offered to pump my gas for me, but I'd already put $10 worth -- a few tablespoons of gas, apparently -- in that bottomless tank, before it died. Triple AAA hadn't gotten there by 2:40 AM, so finally, and glumly, considering my age and the fact that I am purportedly an adult, I called my father. Who came, and who had the magical powers to start that fucking car, but was kind enough not to rub my ineptitude in, at all, considering that we didn't get home until 3 AM. And then this morning I had a nauseated-style hangover. And that is all, here in Chicago.

ETA mudpriestess actually WORKS in that gorgeous old building next to the Unitrin tower, the one that's lit up and has a sort of cupola at the top. It's called the Jeweler Building, apparently. It's one of those old, classic office buildings that has an ornate entryway with lots of brass scrollwork and mirrors and dark paneling and fancy, fancy old-fashioned elevators.

Comments

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

That hunk of detroit pig iron was inglorious the day it rolled off the line.

I had a '90 Lumina. Very similar. Junk.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Did you grow up with that family car-identification thing? I mean, as in Ford vs. Chevy? We did. We were a Chevy family, and Fords were anathema. I thought this was just natural, like being a socialist instead of a liberal. And when I encountered the exact same thing among my students in West Oakland a few years ago, I felt similarly buttressed, except that the student's family was a Ford family. It was like sports' teams, too.

Anyway, M's family is also a Chevy family, though he revolted against the norm and bought a Ford Focus. Which his father is still pissed about. Me, I don't buy Chevys -- I buy whatever was cheapest and available, to wit, a Subaru station wagon, and then that crappy Ford Escort. And now a Mazda. I like my Mazda. In further car synchronicity, I own exactly the same make, model, and year car as his best friends do. He can tell me everything that is going to go wrong with my car before it does!

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

We became a Toyota family - all Toyota. though my Mom just bought a Mazda. (An MX5! Total midlife car.)

I think my grandparents had a bias toward GM and away from Ford, because of Ford's famous anti-Semitism and the way Ford badges had of showing up on the grilles of trucks drive by the Wehrmacht. A lot of people in that generation were anti-Ford.

GM, on the other hand, was more progressive in those days; one of the reasons they used to be strongly preferred by blacks was that they were one of few outfits that would give them financing without wholesale redlining. I assume the same may have been true of Jews. That was part of what kept a whole generation of black (and jewish) middle class folks loyal to the GM brands as they climbed up the ladder, until they were finally ensconced in huge Caddys.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Oh, see, that's exactly the sort of personal-as-political (and for that matter, consumerist-as-grounded-in-the-political-as-personal) detail that I like. Awesome.

I'd have bought a Toyota if it had been cheaper and not a bilious beige. And ugly. It was a Camry. Ugh. I like their cheaper models; they're snappier looking. I think it's really funny that I give a shit about cars at ALL, now, because I spent 40 years not caring at all, except that I liked my old cranberry-colored Subaru, even without power anything or a/c or, sometimes, heat.

[mistersmearcase.livejournal.com]

This made me miss Chicago a little, which I generally don't.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

Aw. I'm kinda glad. Lord, I wish I could just travel around easily and visit everyone and have good places to stay everywhere. For free. With wifi.

[john-b-cannon.livejournal.com]

That is a fascinating genealogy of the "urban Caddy."

My family was definitely a GM family through the 80s, though the identification has weakened lately - my aunt had a Mercury (made by Ford), my grandmother had a (Ford) Mustang, and my uncle has had two Jeeps (made by Chrysler). The funny thing is though that my uncle S. who knows enough about cars to sort of care though not enough to fix them will always blame Ford or Chrysler for anything that went wrong with my aunt's car or his jeeps. In fact he personally blamed Lee Iacocca for most of his jeep's problems years after Iacocca was no longer chairman of Chrysler. He was, after all, a Democrat.

When I went to buy my second car (having been given the first, a Chevy Nova from my aunt), I sort of clung to buying US-made with some kind of theory that the car would fit me better.... And what was an intense family rivalry in the Midwest seemed like a rivalry within the family on the coast. When I bought my third car, a Mazda, I interpreted this as yet one more way I was gradually turning into a coastal dilettante with liberal social mores.

[john-b-cannon.livejournal.com]

p.s. if you tricked out your father's car with a paint job (I'm thinking bright red or maybe kind of a cream color) and gave it some new rims, the Sheiks might not want it still but it would be a positive trophy for local youths. Maybe a fuzzy ball on top of the antenna would help too.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

But they want it anyway! I got a buy offer that very night.