The Corona Diaries Vol. 99: On Tour With Dilla

(late-July 2023)

(Watch the prelude.)

My Frau’s green thumb continues unabated and local greenhouses are, um, rolling in the green, you could say. After a recent storm, she took these lovely pictures of some of her flowers. Those fancy (and expensive) iPhones sure do take nice pictures.

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A couple years back or so, I encountered Shermann Thomas, a.k.a. “Dilla”, a.k.a. the Chicago TikTok Historian, online somewhere. Probably Twitter. A ComEd employee by day, he makes short videos about Chicago history at night for TikTok and he’s become something of an internet sensation. He has also managed to parlay his online success into a real life tour business called Chicago Mahogany Tours which schleps folks around various south side neighborhoods as Dilla gives some history lessons.

Having listened to the Bronzeville audio drama recently and wanting to take one of Dilla’s tours, I combined the two and I registered my mother and I for a tour of Bronzeville.

The tour bus leaves from the DuSable Museum of African American History so we braved the construction on the Kennedy and drove down there. I don’t think I’d ever been to the DuSable before and was delighted to find it nestled inside the lovely Washington Park. With the sun shining and nary a drop of rain to be had for miles, it was the perfect day to be out and learning about one of Chicago's legendary neighborhoods.

I noticed that the museum was a mere hop, skip, and jump away from Stagg Field where Enrico Fermi and his pals generated the first artificial nuclear chain reaction as part of the Manhattan Project. This reminded me that I had tickets to see Oppenheimer on an IMAX screen and on film, no less, in just a week's time or so.

Other people showed up and began to wander around expectantly - these were our fellow tourists. Eventually the bus appeared across the street. At one point, I turned and saw that Dilla was walking over to us to offer greetings. It’s always weird for me seeing someone that I only know from the internet in real life. How do they compare to the image on my screen? Dilla was taller – I suspect he’s about 6’4”.

Soon we boarded the bus and were off.

The tour began with our guide announcing that our first destination was just outside of Bronzeville. President Biden had recently announced that he was designating a new national monument for Emmett Till and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley and so we drove by their home on S. St. Lawrence Avenue.

Dilla gave some background on Till’s horrible fate and how his mother’s decision to allow his battered and broken body to be seen publicly helped light a fire under the civil rights movement. It was quite moving to be sitting before their home. The building was in the process of being restored as it appeared that there were some masons working on one of the exterior walls.

From there on out, things came at us fast and furious. It seemed like there was a building of historic significance, a mural, etc. everywhere you turned and Dilla enthusiastically told us about them all. Or nearly all.

Although we saw many sites of interest, we usually ended up pulling over on the "wrong" side of the street, i.e. - so that they were not directly outside of our window. D’oh!

Most of the tour showcased Bronzeville’s intriguing history but it also served to put Chicago’s south side on display and demonstrate that, although it has its problems, it is an area of great culture and resilience, not a war zone.

For example, we stopped at Boxville which appears to be the Maxwell Street Market nouveau.

It’s a lot filled with shipping containers that act as makeshift storefronts for aspiring black entrepreneurs who hawk their wares and tempt shoppers with food.

At one point we were driving along and Dilla was talking about jazz making its way to Chicago from New Orleans and he is dropping names the whole time. As if on cue, we stopped in front of this place:

It turned out that Louis Armstrong lived in that middle residence. There’s a trumpet and a French horn in the window. How cool is that, to be at Satchmo’s place?

I first encountered The Green Book about 5 years ago via a very interesting BBC radio documentary. The Green Book was a directory for “Negro motorists and tourists” that was published the last 30 years or so of Jim Crow. It listed hotels, restaurants, etc. that were friendly to black travelers. Our bus stopped in front of 712 E. 44th Street and Dilla told us that the house was listed in The Green Book. Neat! I had never been at a site listed in it in real life before – knowingly, anyway.

And here it is in the 1948 version:

One figure that casts a long shadow over Chicago history, United States history, really, is Ida B. Wells. We got a chance to get off the bus and stretch our feet at a green space at S. Langley Avenue and E. 37th Place where we found a monument dedicated to Wells called "The Light of Truth".

Wells was one bad ass lady. Born into slavery, she would go on to become a journalist who documented the horrors of lynching, an early civil rights leader, a founding member of the NAACP, a black feminist, and more. Quite a woman. We drove by her house on S. Martin Luther King Drive but that photo was out of focus. But you can recognize it by its red turret.

As the tour wound down, we drove by a library and Dilla casually pointed out that Richard Wright wrote Native Son there. Shortly after that at a stop light, he noted a mural of Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote A Raisin in the Sun, on the side of a building on the corner.

Down at street level were scenes from the play.

Hansberry attended my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the late 1940s. While a student, she became involved with the local chapter of the Communist Party. Also involved with this chapter were my Frau’s grandparents and I believe they hosted Ms. Hansberry at their home occasionally. Often enough, anyway, for her to allow my Frau’s grandmother to do a portrait which is now in our home.

Dilla’s catchphrase is “Everything dope about America comes from Chicago” and, after going on one of his tours, you realize he’s got a good argument for the affirmative. There was just so much really interesting history there in Bronzeville that it was almost overwhelming.

Dilla barely had enough time to rattle off, “You see that parking ramp? That used to the site of the Regal Theater. Back in 1968, a Motown talent scout came down to see a show there and saw a band of 5 brothers from Gary, Indiana…” before he announced we were in the blues district. This was where such famous joints as the Checkerboard Lounge hosted the giants of the genre back in the day. Legendary venues I’ve heard of from tales of blues lore used to dot the streets. Blues luminaries such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Buddy Guy graced their stages. Koko Taylor surely belted out "Wang Dang Doodle" many a time behind some of those walls.

The tour had all sorts of moments like this. Dilla is a witty and charming guide and he made things fun and informative despite the fact that taking it all in was a bit like drinking from a firehose.

Another thing that caught my eye was all of the great architecture. The Loop may get the press, but Bronzeville is home to some really gorgeous buildings. I know that Chicago photographer and architectural critic Lee Bey has tried to bring the great south side building styles to the masses via his book Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side but it was another thing to see some of it first-hand.

In addition to enlightening us about Bronzeville and Chicago history and demonstrating that the city’s south side is not adequately and quite unfairly summed up as “Chi-raq”, Dilla also pointed out restaurants along the way and I really want to check out Honey 1 BBQ on E. 43rd someday.

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Bonus photos. What a difference a few months make.

The Corona Diaries Vol. 97: Adventures With Plums

(mid-July 2023)

I returned home from vacation to find that my Frau had acquired even more flowers. A tight squeeze at points but the carport and deck looked colorful and lovely.

Not sure what this one is. A deadly Pitcher Plant?

The purple thingies in the hanging basket were coming along nicely.

It was nice to see her develop a nascent green thumb and to have fallen into a routine of watering the flowers every morning. I am more than a bit jealous as I cannot seem to keep a plant alive for very long.

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I decided that I needed a break from my usual podcast routine and that I should find something new to listen to for a change of pace. After poking around my hard drive, I settled on the audio drama Bronzeville.

I had enjoyed the first season when it came out but had mysteriously never gotten around to putting the second into my earholes. There was no way the second season would make sense without listening to the first one again and so I set out to listen to both.

Although it concerns the titular Chicago neighborhood in the 1940s, it begins in Arkansas where a young black man, Jimmy Tillman, stabs a white man in self-defense and flees northward. He ends up in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood and lands a job with the Copeland family who run the numbers game – an underground lottery - in Bronzeville. They inherited the game from Curtis "Eyeball" Randolph, voiced by the magnificent Laurence Fishburne, who has gone legit and become a banker.

The show dramatizes the problems that the Copelands run into and the attempts by the African-American denizens of the neighborhood to carve out their own space and live their best lives in the face of the racism of the time. The family not only has trouble with the city - da mayor, the cops - but also with other gangsters who are from St. Louis.

I was reminded of the connection between the 2 cities. From what I've read, it was quite a rivalry back in the second half of the 19th century. St. Louis was the Gateway to the West and was situated on the shores of the Mississippi River and Chicago was its regional competition. The short story is, if I recall correctly, that Chicago invested in rail and became the Big Cheese in the middle of the country leaving St. Louis in its dust. I've also read that monied interests out East were reluctant to invest in St. Louis because Missouri was a slave state while Illinois was not.

Today, the rivalry seems to exist mostly in baseball with the Cubs and Cardinals taking the parts formerly played by rail barons and steamship tycoons. Amtrak connects the cities with multiple trains a day and the route was recently given an upgrade to make it competitive with driving so the regional economic connection still remains, apparently.

Sadly, today St. Louis is in a bad state. While I enjoyed myself when I was there back in 2017, there were abandoned buildings aplenty as people continue to flee the city. In fact, its population is probably just barely above Madison's these days.

Now, not every Copeland is involved in the family business. Little sister Lisa is a newly-minted college grad and her older brothers do everything to keep her out of their shady dealings.

Lisa is voiced by the lovely Tika Sumpter who does a fantastic job.

Lisa goes from a young woman seeking her way in the world away from the dealings of her brothers to being absorbed into the family business where she kicks ass and takes names. Do not mess with Lisa Copeland!

I think I may have developed a crush on Ms. Sumpter…

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For a couple weeks after my return, I sampled the goodies I had brought home and did some baking. For instance, here’s that loaf of einkorn bread I bought at the Dells Mill gift shop.

It had a crumbly texture, was tasty and was also indistinguishable from bread made with the hybridized wheat we are used to. Einkorn is truly an ancient grain. Thought to be the first wheat humanity ever cultivated, it dates back in our diets some 10,000 years. I have read that its gluten content is not well-suited for bread so I dunno how the Amish baked this loaf. Perhaps it was cut with bread flour. Or the crumbly texture is simply the result of being low on gluten.

The legend is that einkorn went out of fashion, with we Westerners, anyway, and basically disappeared from our culinary map. Then, in the 1970s, some proto-foodie discovered that it was still being used in eastern France by people who lived in a secluded valley and still clung to the old ways instead of wearing flares and big collars as they pulled bits of steak from a hibachi grill and dipped them into fondue pots. Einkorn hasn’t attained the foodie cred of, say, quinoa, but I did notice it at the store recently.

I also bought a loaf of cranberry wild rice bread up north. Very tasty stuff! I love the earthy taste of the wild rice and that hint of tartness from the fruit.

And while I am on the subject of bread, I’ll note that I baked a loaf of rye with some of those rolled rye berries that I had bought at the Dells Mill thrown in. It was that recipe I mentioned a few entries ago with cocoa powder and molasses. I am pleased to say that it turned out alright.

You can see the bits of rye on the crust. A hearty looking loaf, if I do say so myself.

While up in Spooner, I noticed a chocolate factory had opened called Mayana and so I bought a couple of their bars at the local supermarket.

These were very thick and smelled tasty. They certainly drew Grabby’s attention.

I liked the shortbread base, I loved the chocolate coating but that was just too much caramel for me.

Lastly, because I love my co-workers so much, I bought them a couple bags of poop-themed candy.

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One day I was doing some internet searching for recipe ideas and hit on the idea of lemongrass chicken. A marinade was prepared and, the next day, the grill was fired up. I was fortunate to be able to serve a glass of lemongrass pilsner from 3 Sheeps Brewing up in Sheboygan with it to complete the theme.

I was quite pleased with how those chicken thighs turned out. The lemongrass added its floral lemony flavors while the grill added its charred, smoky goodness. The fresh jalapeno was icing on the cake. Oh, and that pilsner was mighty fine too. It was light and crisp with a nice, sprightly flavor that complemented the lemongrass from the chicken and the chilies as well.

For reasons I cannot recall, I recently decided that I wanted to cook with plums. It may have been a desire to tweak my German grilling marinade recipe and plums just sounded Central Europeany. So I took the usual mix of dark lager, grainy, brown mustard, and a proprietary herb & spice blend** and then added fresh plums. Pork chops soaked in this stuff overnight.

The results were mixed. That is, the chops tasted very good but the fruit was barely noticeable. And so on the following Saturday when I was grocery shopping, I bought a bottle of plum juice and more pork chops and tried again.

Better. Kind of.

The plum was much more evident and quite tasty. But the beer taste was subdued so I am in the process of tweaking beer-plum juice proportions to maximize the flavor of both.

I then decided to approach this plum predilection from another angle: prunes.

A co-worker of mine loves to smoke meat so I inveigled my way into a batch of smoked prunes. He’d never attempted to smoke fruit before so we were both in terra incognita. Hic sunt prunes!

At work one day I was presented with a small bag of prunes.

I took about half the batch, diced them up, and threw them into a bowl of stuffing which was promptly, um, stuffed into a pair of thick pork chops.

The chops then spent some quality time on the grill.

I felt they looked and smelled quite tasty and was eager to try one.

The verdict?

While extremely delicious, the prunes needed more smokiness. I think they had spent about 2 or 2.5 hours in the smoker and I believe doubling that would do the trick.

Practice makes perfect, right?

Lastly, on a food adjacent note, a friend and I took the ancient microwave that was mounted on our kitchen wall and sent it to appliance heaven. While not older than me, I did look up the serial number and found that it was like 40 years old or some such thing. Carter was still president when it rolled off the assembly line.

The city will dispose of unwanted microwaves but for a fee. I discovered that one can no longer go to a library, pay the $10 or $15 fee, and get the requisite sticker needed to properly dispose of these things. It must be done online. This harkens back to my commentary about the Art Institute going cashless in a previous entry. It seems ridiculous to me that a city government would require a credit card and an internet connection in order to dispose of garbage correctly, to keep stuff out of our landfill that doesn’t need to be there.

Rant over.

After dismounting the microwave, we were treated some vintage wallpaper. 

If you look at the lower right by the outlet cover, you can see some of the newer wallpaper peeking out.

Our house was built in 1950 so I would guess that this kind of stuff was de rigueur in the late ‘40s. In my mind’s eye, I can see the mom of the family surrounded by this wallpaper as she pulls TV dinners out of the oven for the kids as chipped beef simmers on the stovetop for her husband. And you know there was a Jello mold in the refrigerator for dessert.

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Bonus photo. You might recall in an earlier entry that I went in search of and found a geodetic survey marker just south of Osseo when I was coming back to Madison from my vacation. Well, I looked on the USGS map and saw a smattering of them around Madison and discovered that one was quite close to a bus stop that I use.

**Probably just Penzy's Bavarian Seasoning.