Unfortunately, it’s permanently closed.

This past weekend in our Printers Row neighborhood was Chicago autumn at its most glorious. Radiant sun and chilly breezes all at once. There was less produce at our little farmers market, because you know, that’s how it goes here. People were out in droves, and except for masks, it felt a lot like last year at this time. In fact, if anything, it was more bustling. There are three businesses that weren’t here last year—a great little market called Totto’s (pronounced like Dorothy’s dog) on the corner of Polk and Dearborn , a pizza restaurant directly across the street from Totto’s, and a lovely little café named The Grail the middle of the block.

Sadly, there is one business missing. Standing Room Only (SRO) — a great little local fast food kind of place except it wasn’t that fast and it was really good — is gone. COVID shut it down for a while like it did other restaurants. But looting killed it.

SRO’s theme was Chicago sports, and it was drenched with Chicago sports memorabilia. I’d come down to order turkey chili or a Chicago style hot dog or a Greek salad and while I waited, I looked at jerseys and photos autographed by the likes Walter Peyton, Dick Butkus, Michael Jordan, Ernie Banks, Minnie Minoso and Frank Thomas.

Today, memorabilia is an industry. There are holographic stamps of authenticity, shows where you pay to get in line to get a signature, and well, I don’t really like it. I’ve been around long enough to know that the stuff in the owners’ collection was not purchased at such shows. The people who worked at SRO were salt of the earth, Hispanic, and neighborhood fixtures. The owners opened the place when the neighborhood was iffy and it was a big gamble.

SRO piped jazz through its speakers indoors and out, and it was a homing signal for Beth and her dogs. SRO sat right next to our building’s entrance, so Beth knew exactly where she was when she heard Miles or Thelonious or whoever playing.

On May 30^th of this year, a George Floyd protest was exploited by lawless idiots who systematically looted lots of downtown businesses. SRO’s cash register was found in the next-door park, busted open. The memorabilia was either stolen or destroyed.

I was dismayed in the aftermath to hear apologists for the looters say that it wasn’t violence against a person, it was violence against property.

I call bullshit. Anyone who has operated a small business knows better. Those looters committed violence against SRO’s owners, employees, and customers. SRO and its employees were our neighbors. We miss them.

I’m not equating the cold-blooded murder of George Floyd to the looting of SRO. But if we can get out of our binary thinking, we’d see that not empathizing with businesses that suffered for the looting is exactly the kind of thing we’re trying to change.

Our neighbor Al Hippensteel generously publishes a local journal called the Dearborn Express. In a recent edition, he wrote about SRO. I couldn’t say it any better:

It appears by the sign on the window that Standing Room Only is gone for good. The looters tore its guts out. It’s one thing to break a window to steal a mass produced coat or cell phone. What they removed from SRO was love. Love of the game. The autographed memorabilia stolen from the popular eatery is irreplaceable. SRO withstood the down times that inevitably occur to a long standing business: the downsizing of the financial district, a big part of their draw. Restaurants closed after 911. Not SRO. The “Great Recession” laid claim to many struggling businesses. Not SRO.

Covid 19 was a setback to all restaurants. But it was the looting, the removal of the SRO persona that was the final out in the 9th inning. The final field goal attempt with no time left on the clock.

Today’s blogger, Cam Estes.

To honor what would have been John Lennon’s 80th birthday yesterday, I asked writers in my memoir classes to choose a Beatles song title and use that as the title of their 500-word memoir.  A few writers came back with essays about being “back in the USSR,” one wrote about how they “should have known better, and a few wrote on what might have happened “If I Fell…”. You get the picture.

Today’s guest blogger, Cam Estes, a 76-year-old retired businessman and entrepreneur, was the only one who wrote a piece about his “Taxman.” A mindful meditator and meditation guide to fellow seekers of better trained minds, Cam generously offered to share his honest and powerful essay here with you Safe & Sound blog readers.

Taxman

by Cameron Estes

Gay relationships in the 1980s meant lots of social caution. My lover/partner, Hal, and I lived and worked together as we built a business selling high end calculators mail-order and through a small shop on Lincoln Avenue in Skokie. Within months we had grown the staff, the sales and our plans for the future. We grew exponentially in our personal and business lives. The business growth culminated in taking the company public — mainly to get Hal’s father out of the business.

One year after taking Elek-Tek public, Hal committed suicide.

We had been together 13 years. The unexpected suicide left behind a devastated, PTSD me.

No marriage for gay couples in 1994 so years before we had taken a gamble and left major assets in Hal’s name. After all, he was 10 years younger, and far healthier with no vices to compare with my cigarettes. Suicide introduced me to the taxman, Inequality, and the chaos of conflicting government laws.

If we had been married there would have been no tax. Not having the same rights as heterosexual couples created a great disadvantage. Hal had 2.5 million shares of the stock in his name. Since it was a recent public offering, the stock was labeled SEC144 stock and could not be sold to the public. But the Taxman wanted 50% of the value for estate tax.

I hired the “best” estate lawyers. The attorneys told me how much trouble I was in due to Hal’s death and convinced me to pay the taxman all the cash I could raise, took $500,000 for themselves, and then told me that I was stuck for the rest of my life paying the Taxman due to their “incredible” guidance.

I still owed the taxman millions of dollars, the board forced me out of the company I had built noting that I had too many personal challenges. Eighteen months later the company was bankrupt and I had a worthless stock certificate. The idea of working the rest of my life for the taxman was not appealing. To earn those millions would take a huge effort and might not be successful.

I withdrew.

The taxman went very quiet for years. But then, when I was almost 70, the phone rang and I heard a voice say “this is the taxman.” I felt a flush of sheer black fluid run through my body. Nothing functioned for a minute. And then I responded.

The taxman started proceedings to sue me again. Seven years earlier the taxman had pulled a law suit the day before we went in front of a judge. The agent had told me that the IRS did not want to sue me but they did not know how to end the whole affair. This time the Taxman said, “If you fight and lose, we will take IRA accounts and 1/2 of your social security.” My new attorneys said “the Federalist Society controls the court, your chances are minimal.”

I succumbed to the sweet song of the taxman and gave them my all.

Certification from the City of Chicago that I was no longer radioactive after a week in the hospital and three nights at Hotel Covid.

Back in April, while I was still hospitalized for COVID, Chicago Tribune columnist Heidi Stevens wrote a piece about Beth’s plight, and my own.  Back then it took three tries for me to get a test, and I only got the result the day I checked into the emergency room.

I just reread it, and here’s the money shot:

Knezovich said it’s frustrating to watch the news from his hospital bed and hear President Donald Trump deny that the United States lacks sufficient tests.

“Setting aside partisanship,” he said, “That’s really insulting. It’s insulting to be lying here and hearing that. It’s insulting to me, but also to all the people working here so hard and having to figure out who to give tests to and who not to, because they don’t have enough of them.”

Since then, some things have improved. Testing is more available, we know more about the spread, and masks work. Vaccines are in the works.

But man, some things haven’t gotten any better. As in leadership at the top. As in there is none. That Rose Garden debacle is a fresh insult. Leadership isn’t barking at people. It’s leading by example. What lousy examples we have in the White House. And I mean literally, after that Rose Garden event for the SCOTUS nominee, they went INSIDE. Check out the pictures. (BTW, giving a lifetime appointment to a person who apparently can’t make even simple judgments correctly seems like a very bad idea.)

But no. And so we have a rogue’s gallery of infected high mucketty mucks, including the President of Notre Dame, Fr. John Jenkins.

We all have heart-wrenching stories. Not being able to visit our parents. Our children. Friends hospitalized without the benefit of outside visits. People dying with no funeral or memorial service.

But these selfish, self-important ass wipes had to have a party. And many of them flew from other states to attend.

I mean.

Heidi Stevens put it better than I can in a social media post she made today:

I see the photos and videos from that Rose Garden ceremony and think about the dozens of people I’ve interviewed since March who’ve canceled their weddings, forgone funerals, said final goodbyes to loved ones over FaceTime, missed out on graduations and otherwise sacrificed joy, comfort or ritual to help slow the spread of this virus and I’m just filled with sorrow and rage.

Argh.

PS: Heidi Stevens ended up writing a full column around the topic of that social media post. Give it a read!

I am pleased to introduce Howard Marks as our Saturdays with Seniors guest blogger today. The essay he wrote when I assigned “My Grandfather’s Job” pays homage to his maternal grandfather for exposing 12-year-old Howard to the merits of quality journalism. After graduating high school, Howard studied at the University of Illinois-Chicago and became editor-in-chief of the student newspaper. From there he worked at the Chicago Today, the Chicago Tribune, and then the Reader’s Digest in New York City. He received a Master’s Degree in Journalism from Northwestern University and worked for the late Sen. Chuck Percy (R-IL) and was an appointee at the US Department of Agriculture in the Ronald Reagan administration before retiring.

With memoir-writing classes meeting via Zoom now, Howard is able to participate from his home in Washington, DC. We feel lucky to have a pro like him with us!

by Howard Marks

Picture of Abe (Pa) Prohovnik taken in 1946 with four grandsons who later served as helpers at his West Side newsstand. Howard, today’s guest blogger, is being held in Pa’s left hand. He’s the one with a patterned shirt and mock suspenders.

My maternal grandfather, Abraham Prohovnik, was 23 years old when he immigrated to the United States in 1904 hoping for a better life. As he was affectionately known, “Pa” had lived in an area of Poland controlled by Russia. Like many in his family, he became a master baker and found himself conscripted into the Czarist Army. Legend has it that the officers so loved his tasty and moist Russian black bread that at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 they ordered him to accompany his unit when it was dispatched to the Manchurian front. Fortunately, he wisely deserted and escaped from Russia by bribing border guards. The war was a killing field for the Russians, and, of course, Jews were unjustly accused of secretly collaborating with the Japanese enemy.

Pa made his way to Hamburg, where he boarded a passenger ship for Montreal and traveled first class across the North Atlantic. Amongst the 10 percent of European immigrants who bypassed Ellis Island, Pa resumed his journey via the Grand Trunk Railroad and entered the United States at Detroit.

Finally arriving in Chicago, he lived with a first cousin, his sponsor. Pa’s wife Sarah and their first-born son joined them soon after. On July 7, 1916, he became an American citizen, requiring him to renounce any allegiance to Nicholas II, Emperor of all the Russias. The family prospered and eventually owned a string of eight bakeries in Chicagoland and northwest Indiana. By then the family had grown to three daughters — including my mom, of blessed memory, and two sons. They all lived above the main bakery on Maxwell Street and Halsted — Chicago’s famous immigrant marketplace.

Then the Great Depression hit.

Pa was forced to sell the bakery, but he later took up a second career that changed his life — and mine, too. He bought a newsstand at Jackson Boulevard and Pulaski Road on Chicago’s West Side. Although in his seventies, he sold newspapers seven days a week, arising at 5:00 am each day. He worked on Saturday nights, too. The four male cousins in the photo above served as his helpers. At age 12, I was introduced to a world I never knew existed: the excitement of the newspaper industry.

Before the internet, most Chicagoans got in-depth news from the likes of the Tribune, Sun-Times, and Herald-American. The Sunday newspaper was the most coveted of the week. What bedlam! Bundles of Tribunes were tossed six feet on the sidewalk with a thud from the back of a delivery truck that only slowed down, but didn’t stop. My job was to stuff the main print edition with the Sunday supplements. Two more editions were to arrive that evening plus one more the following morning.

After working at the newsstand for more than two years, I decided I wanted to be a newspaperman. Never would I dream that I would work for two of the newspapers I sold. Pa was still selling newspapers in 1958 when he died at age 79, while on the dance floor for his Golden Age club at his synagogue in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood. Thanks, Pa, for taking on a second career and thus launching my exciting career in journalism.

The other night we and neighborhood friends were socializing in a distanced way down in the little park next to our condo building. We got to talking about our families, and one friend wondered out loud whether she’d ever be able to talk to certain members of her family again. “It’s like we live in different realities. I don’t know where to even start.”

The view of Printers Row Park from our seventh floor window. It was once a parking lot ticketed to be a high rise. But the locals fought city hall and won: we got a park instead. Thank goodness, because it’s been an oasis these past months.

I grew up during the peaks of various 1960s flashpoint Anti-war protesters, hard-hats who liked to beat them up, civil rights activists, the sexual revolution, feminism, you name it.

It was tumultuous. And often nasty. Bad enough to blow apart my mom’s side of the family. Italians hold grudges. Not me, of course, I’m only half Italian. The other half is Serbian, which isn’t exactly a counterweight. But it wasn’t as bad as today.

In my adulthood, I used to routinely have earnest discussions, some of which can be characterized as heated arguments, with people I disagreed with. But we always drew a line. I thought it was good for me, and hoped it was good for them. The implied basis of our conversations seemed to be, “I completely disagree, but since I know you and I respect you, I need to hear you out.”

That’s mostly gone. Everyone is armed with talking points and a quiver full of derogatory names that they launch early, stopping discourse before it starts. It’s not just within families, either. I have very good friends with whom I used have substantive discussion about anything and everything. We have treated our conversations with kid gloves; politics is the third rail. And that dynamic seems to put a wet blanket on the conversations we do have. I miss it.

I’m trying to keep those days in mind in the hope that we are able one day to talk directly with each other about issues and our viewpoints, unmediated by talking heads on cable news. I need to think we will, because for this country to get back on track, we’ll have to.

Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how it’ll get better.

But then again, if Justices Scalia and Ginsburg could be close friends, maybe there’s hope.