I’m a Walsingham boy at heart, but I’ve been to Chicago too. Not lately of course but back when it was sharp edged and bleak.

“Hog butcher to the world, city of the broad shoulders”*

I remember the vast stockyards, millions of pounds of beef on the hoof from half the ranches in the west.

I remember passing the shuttered garage where Capone’s minions gunned down a good portion of the opposition on St. Valentine’s Day.

I remember being pulled over by a Chicago cop wearing one of their distinctive, cocky, crushed aviator-style officer’s cap.

“Was I lost?” he questioned.

“Probably,” I said, “why do you ask?” Or words to that effect.

“The Canadian plates and the fact that you’ve been through this same underpass three times,” he said. Or words to that effect.

Detroit smelled like the devil’s barbecue in the summer of 1968. A bunch of us, mainly the........

© Sarnia Observer