Mondays with Mike: Mayhem and kindness

Early last week I had a great experience involving, of all things, my broken upright bass. It was ripe to write about, and I thought I had today’s post in the bag.

Oh well. I was just feeling like we might be starting to get a handle on the covid thing, and then all hell broke loose.

Well, it didn’t break loose. It came out.

The two best things I’ve read so far about the riots is this piece by Steve Chapman.

And this by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Sunday (yesterday) morning, after a night of helicopters and sirens and weird sounds and marauders, Beth woke up before I did. She was going to take her Seeing Eye Dog out for Luna’s morning constitutional but was smart to first text our friend Sheila, who always takes an early morning walk, about neighborhood conditions. Sheila warned against the walk—the debris was still a problem when she was out.

So, Beth waited, and together we took a short walk to let Luna do what she does. We returned Luna to the apartment then, and Beth and I set off to explore.

Oy. It was bewildering, heartbreaking, infuriating and completely logical at the same time. It’s like your brain is one of those old newspaper comics that you put silly putty on and then stretch in different directions.

Several businesses on our little block had been hit hard. SRO (Standing Room Only), the sandwich shop on the first floor of our building, was one of them. Its cash register was found, destroyed, in our little park. SRO continually plays a satellite jazz station and pipes it to the sidewalk. Beth uses the music as a homing device. It is staffed largely by hardworking and courteous people who happen to be Hispanic. It’s not just a business. It’s part of the fabric of our block. The 711 on the first floor of our building was pretty much cleaned out. Kasey’s, the bar across the street that’s been closed by covid, had been busted open and looted. Beth and I visited Kasey’s back in 2002 when we were scouting Chicago neighborhoods to live in. Bar Louie, a chain joint, and, of all places, a knitting-focused shop called Yarnify, also had been busted open. Go figure.

It was the same for the Ace Hardware a block away. The Ace saves our neighborhood from the horrors of big-boxes like Home Depot. The damage went on for blocks and blocks. Our friends reported that they watched from their apartment windows as vans pulled up outside of the Ace and one of the independent stores called South Loop Market on State Street to load up.

During my walk with Beth yesterday we headed down Dearborn two short blocks to Floradora, a local store located in the historic Monadnock Building north of our apartment. We have (well, mostly Beth has) struck up a friendship of sorts with Floradora’s owner. Looting was the last thing on our minds Saturday morning when we headed to the store looking for a gift for a friend—Beth called in advance, described what we were looking for, and the owner readied a set of choices before we got there. We did a curbside selection and pickup of sorts and walked back to Printers Row to deliver the gift.

Floradora was a lovely store in a lovely space. This is what it looked like the day after our visit.

It was a staggering, sobering experience. Which is maybe the point.

During our walk we also gained an inspiring sense of community. By the time we hit the street yesterday, say 10:30, to take Luna out, there was no glass on our block. I learned later from our condominium board president that he and a slew of folks from the neighborhood had decided on their own to show up with masks, brooms, dustbins and bags at 6:00 a.m., when the overnight curfew expired.

By the time we got outside, the sidewalks were clean. But the Sweeper Corps kept going to adjacent blocks, doing their sweeping all day.

Last night, most of our block was boarded up—some to cover broken windows, others,  to avoid them. Happily, we had a quiet night.

Before.

After.

Meantime, about my upright bass. About a year ago, after years of not plucking it, I decided to give it a spin. I started tuning it…and that simple act had broken the scroll/pegbox.

When my stimulus money arrived, I decided, finally, to use it to get my bass repaired. I did some research and the first to reply to my online request was Chicago Bass Works. Andrew and I had a back and forth email exchange, and he guessed he could fix it for $200 or $300. We sort of hit it off virtually, and along the way, I told him we didn’t own a car, and I told him about my covid experience.

“I’ll come and get it,” he said. “I gotta get out of the house, anyway.” When he arrived, I wrestled the bass (I’m out of practice) to the sidewalk outside our building lobby.

Andrew, wearing a mask, met me. “You doing OK carrying that thing?” I suspect he didn’t really need to ask, given my panting. I asked, “Where are you parked?” He said he would take it from there.

Two days later he emailed to say he thought this bass could be saved. He’d repaired it, tuned it, and it was holding. He would return it the next week.

On the day he was to return it, I got a voice mail. “Call me,” was all it said. I did. Bad news: The repair let go. Fixing the bass now would cost more than it cost in the first place. He was sorry. He was on the way to deliver it back to me.

After a quick talk with Beth, I called Andrew back to let him know he could keep it if he could find some use for it. He was still en route and he said he really didn’t have any use for it. We hung up.

He arrived minutes later, got out of the car and handed me a check for the full amount I’d paid in advance.

“I’d like to pay you something,” I said. “No, keep it,” he insisted. “When you can, use it to go out and hear live music.”

“And I was thinking about it—I do some work for schools maintaining instruments. I might be able to use it for parts. No need for you to lug it back to your apartment, I’ll hang on to it.”

I asked him about his Chevy Volt, we had a nice conversation, and I said “Goodbye Andrew.”

“Take care of yourself,” he said.