(Mid-August 2021)
I have also
heard tell that there are still a few wood block alleys left in the city. Jessica Mlinaric, the
author of Secret Chicago, discusses them here.
********
In an earlier entry I described hiking around Edna Taylor Conservation Park but noted that I left wandering around the adjacent Aldo Leopold Nature Center grounds to
another day. Well, that day came earlier this month.
I was out
the door and on my bike a little after 6 one overcast, hazy morning. It didn't
take too long to get there as it's only about 3.5 miles from home. Just across
the street from the entrance were some Sandhill cranes strolling amongst the
graves of Roselawn Memorial Park just as I did before venturing to Edna Taylor on that day last month.
More frogs were sent scattering as the bridge rocked gently under my feet. This time,
however, one brave amphibian stood its ground. Or rather its log as it was
completely unperturbed by the presence of a human.
I eventually
found my way to the border with Edna Taylor Conservation Park which reminded me of Checkpoint Charlie as it had a sign saying "You are now leaving the
Aldo Leopold Nature Center" and crossed over. This area seemed quite familiar to me as I had been on this side of that sign previously.
At first, I wandered down a path that I would have sworn I'd strolled on during my last visit but I soon discovered that this section of the park wasn't quite as familiar as I had initially thought. It wasn't long before I found myself in terra incognita. Taking the path to the right at a fork in the road, I ended up in the playground of an elementary school that had a mural of Sandhill cranes.
As I neared the exit, I came across some bees doing what bees do.
********
While I am
not the biggest Anthony Bourdain fan around, I still went to the see the new
documentary about him, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain.
While I may not have worked at a fancy restaurant in a big city, there was plenty of drug use (it being Madison, it was largely booze and marijuana instead of cocaine) and low-level mayhem in the kitchen of the private dormitory I was at back in the 90s.
As with any place of employment, various members of the staff slept with one another. For example, I dated a couple of my coworkers. But we had a cook that would sneak off with one of the hostesses for some hanky panky amidst sacks of flour in the baker's storeroom. Tangentially, another cook was a woman who was big farm girl. And tall too. Taller than me. She never hid the fact that she and her husband were swingers. Indeed, she was happy to let you know this. One day after boasting to me and my fellow prep cook about being able to balance multiple quarters on each of her nipples, she leered in our direction and rather menacingly invited us out to her place where she would "make us into men"...
It is said that college students gain 15 pounds their freshman year, the Freshman 15. We figured that 15 just wasn't enough and endeavored to give these kids their Freshman 25. Honestly, it didn't take much as, if it came out of a fryer, the gormandizers would empty the freezer for you. However, if it was something prepared from scratch, then the students mostly avoided it like the Plague. We'd go through oodles and oodles of chicken nuggets and French fries. A nice batch of ratatouille made from scratch? The staff would end up eating some of it with the rest forming the base of a soup the following morning.
One day I was offsite feeding a bunch
of very hungry athletes and we ran out of taco meat. I called back to the main kitchen and
asked for more. The reply was, "Well, we're out of ground beef but you'll
get your taco meat." There was something mildly threatening about that response
and, when the delivery truck finally pulled up, I felt a bit like the couple at
the end of "The Monkey's Paw" when there was that ominous knock at
their door. I didn't want to know what was in that "taco meat". Peeling back the foil on that first pan off the truck was more than a little like that scene at the end of Kiss Me Deadly.
Ah, the bad old days.
I had the
pleasure of seeing Bourdain speak here in Madison, have read a couple of his
books, and have watched random episodes of his TV shows. I appreciated the
curiosity he brought with him on his travels and that he didn't come across as
an ugly American.
The movie
has been criticized for various reasons including the use of an artificial
voice. A computer was used to generate a very Bourdain-like voice
that reads the transcript of a voice mail the man himself had left for a friend. Although
I don't understand the aesthetic reason for doing so, I don't have a problem
with it on an ethical level. Documentarians have deceived viewers for ages.
Some scenes from Nanook of the North were staged. Two of my favorite documentary directors, Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, use reenactments and
look for truth beyond that which a simple recitation of facts can give. This fakery may be high tech, but it's a quantitative difference, not qualitative, to my mind.
I recommend seeing Roadrunner, if you can.
********
The bonus photo this time is pure Wisconsin and was seen at the VFW a few blocks from home.
3 comments:
One could be surprised. A couple of months ago, I was travelling on north Pulaski Road. It was undergoing minor street resurfacing. But that resurfacing was sufficient to reveal streetcar tracks. This was surprising, because Pulaski Road had its streetcars replaced by trolley buses 16 September 1951. The Pulaski Road trolley bus route was one of the last three trolley bus routes discontinued on 24 March 1973. http://keptarhely.eu/images/2021/09/30/v00/20210930v00xe3j7j.jpeg http://keptarhely.eu/images/2021/09/30/v00/20210930v00xwp4tx.jpeg http://keptarhely.eu/images/2021/09/30/v00/20210930v00x2twae.jpeg http://keptarhely.eu/images/2021/09/30/v00/20210930v00xj6tw.jpeg
As well, I attended Anthony Bourdain's lecture tour when it played Chicago in 2015. Here is the ticket stub from it. 8=)}
http://keptarhely.eu/images/2021/09/30/v00/20210930v00x8qgut.jpeg
Are you familiar with this Chicago BBQ guy's weblog?
Thanks for the link. I am not familiar with that site.
I'd bet there are many miles of streetcar tracks just underneath black top in Chicago. Pulling it all out would have been egregiously expensive. Thanks for those photos.
I enjoyed seeing Bourdain live. The first part went over my head because he talked about TV chefs but I was not familiar with any of them.
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