Going to Chicago Read online

  Rule Two: Climb before the attack and dive from the rear. Altitude imparts speed in the dive. Perfect. If I cut my speed a bit, I’d arrive at the top of that hill just as he was reaching the valley on the other side.

  Rule Three: Use natural cover. Clouds and the glare of the sun. The sun would be in both our faces, but with the cloud of dust I was coughing up, Marty would look over his shoulder and think I was just some friendly Chevrolet.

  Rule Four: Attack when the enemy is unsuspecting and preoccupied with other tasks. Had him again. There were lots of ruts and puddle holes at the bottom of that hill. His eyes and mind would be on those.

  Rule Five: Do not fire until the enemy is within range and squarely in your sights. I crawled up the hill just as Marty disappeared into the valley. I dropped into low speed and edged the Gilbert SXIII’s nose over the top. There he was, head down, elbows out, ass high, enjoying the long coast, flat pancake ball glove swinging on his handlebar. I slapped her into high, throttled up and dove for the kill.

  Rule Six: The best offensive maneuver is to turn more tightly than one’s opponent, thus eventually coming into a position on his tail. Marty heard my four cylinders banging and swung to the right to let me pass. But I stayed right with him.

  Rule Seven: Never turn your back and run from the enemy. Turn and face the enemy with your guns. Marty should have known that rule. When he finally peeked over his shoulder and saw it was me, wings and propeller protruding from a cloud of white dust, his eyes went as round as cereal bowls. He started pedaling for his life.

  Rule Eight: To parry an attack from ahead, turn directly towards the opponent and present as small and fast a target as possible. Obviously that rule didn’t apply here since Marty was already in full retreat, ass and elbows even higher than before.

  Rule Nine: To parry an attack from behind, enter and maintain as tight a turn as possible to make it as difficult as possible for the enemy to stay on your tail. Marty actually tried this one. He went left and right across the road, bouncing over ruts and stones, trying to shake me. But this was Ace Gilbert he was dogfighting. I wasn’t about to shake. I went straight for the reflector on his back fender.

  Marty panicked. He pulled the ball glove off his handlebar and flung it at me. It hit my propeller and shot right back at him. Hit him right in the head. Marty, his bike, and that old pancake ball glove went flying into the ditch. I finished him off with my imaginary machine gun. Enk-enk-enk-enk-enk—enk-enk-enk-enk-enk.

  Rule Ten: Foolish acts of bravery are fatal.

  Oswald Boelcke, by the way, died during an attack on a squadron of British DH 25s, in October 1916, a year and a half before Dad and Eddie Rickenbacker ever got into the war. Flying a tight formation, he clipped the wing of a fellow Hun and plummeted into the vineyards. I’m sure he must have spent his last seconds on earth embarrassed as hell.

  As I sped up Babcock Road I took a piece of chalk from my shirt pocket and marked another little X on the side of the door. There were already dozens of little Xs there. About half courtesy of turtle-faced Marty Boyle.

  I took a right on Townline Road and flew straight to Bennett’s Corners. In the morning we’d be killing the road to Chicago. Me and Will Randall, the best friend I ever had. Maybe Clyde was coming along, too.

  “Only a hundred years ago Chicago was a huddle of huts, hewn of logs, clinging to the shadows of Fort Dearborn for safety from the Indians, and four years after its incorporation as a village, in 1833, its population, conquering patches of dreary swamp, had reached 4,000. Today it is nearly 4,000,000—3,376,438 for the sake of accuracy, by the census of 1930—and growing at a rate of 70,000 a year.”

  OFFICIAL GUIDE BOOK OF THE WORLD’S FAIR

  Three/Long Burn

  Bennett’s Corners is not a real place. By that I mean it’s not an official town. No legal boundaries. No mayor. Not on any map. It’s just a place where six roads come together like slices of a pie. A place where a few people decided to settle in and practice life. Don’t ask me who Bennett was. Probably one of the first settlers to buy land there after the Indians were chased out. Just as Sherman’s Corners to the south was named after some forgotten pioneer named Sherman and Goodman’s Corners to the west after somebody named Goodman. By the time Will and I came along, the Shermans and Goodmans and Bennetts were long gone.

  Today Bennett’s Corners is like any other lump of suburban vomit: housing developments, strip malls full of hairdressers and dry cleaners and Chinese takeouts; and a few precious pieces of open land with plywood signs heralding the coming of more housing developments and more strip malls. As I speak they’re installing not one, but two traffic lights, so all the new people who think they’ve actually moved to the country can safely maneuver through those six roads coming together, and get to their jobs in Cleveland, twenty-five miles away, alive and on time.

  In 1934 Bennett’s Corners was still a wonderful place to live, protected from the outside world by miles of cow pastures and cornfields. There were two churches, the shabby Free-Will Baptist Church and the handsome United Methodist Church. There was a barber shop just big enough for a chair and spittoon. There was the community ballfield and a cemetery surrounded by a fine black iron fence paid for by the Ladies’ Aid Society. There were a handful of white clapboard houses and a couple old sway-back barns. There was Ruby & Rudy’s General Store, a strong, two-story frame building that would years later become my first place of business, the R&R Luncheonette. And there was Randall’s Shell Garage, a low, flat-roofed brick building with one bay for repairs and a long portico that stuck out over the pumps.

  Both Randall’s garage—which from the fifties on was a beer joint—and Ruby & Rudy’s fine building—in its last incarnation Poppie’s Pizza—have just been torn down so Townline Road can be widened to four lanes. Bennett’s Corners, Ohio, like thousands of such unofficial places across the country, is being butchered on the sacrificial alter of country living.

  So, on that late August day I was flying north on Townline Road toward the Corners. I passed the Warner farm—the Ruby half of Ruby & Rudy’s General Store was a Warner before she married Rudy Zuduski and became a Polack storekeeper—and I passed the Loomis place and the Hyler place and the cemetery and the barber shop. I started my descent in front of the ballfield, skidded past Ruby & Rudy’s, landed safe and sound in front of Randall’s garage.

  Will was outside leaning against the kerosene pump, reading his Official Guide Book of the World’s Fair. I yanked off my cap and goggles and hopped to the ground. I just had to laugh every time I saw Will. We both wore our hair straight back in the fashionable pompadour style of the day. Will’s pompadour, however, never stayed pomped. It was fine when he first slicked it back in the morning with water and Brylcreem, but as the day progressed it kept rising up. By noon he looked like a porcupine. His drooping nose, timid chin, and high puffed cheeks didn’t help. Neither did his eyes. They were shy and blinky, hiding the fact that he was probably one of the smartest and most stubborn souls to ever walk the earth. “Where you been?” Will said. He carefully folded the guidebook before sticking it in his back pocket.

  “Clyde and your mother back from the doctor yet?” I asked.

  “You don’t see the tow truck, do you?”

  I didn’t.

  Will laughed at my foolishness and we went inside.

  The place had the smell of dust and oil. Will sat in his father’s brown swivel chair and spun around. After three revolutions he propped his feet on the counter and pulled out his guidebook again. “This is something we sure don’t want to miss,” he said, paraphrasing what he read as he read it. “By the Thirty-seventh Street entrance there’s a poultry show, with an international egg-laying derby as the principal feature. Champion hens from twenty-eight states and Canada, and four other nations competing. Doesn’t say which ones.”

  “We absolutely don’t want to miss that,” I said, watching out the window for the tow truck. Will made several more revolutions in the chair and t
hen slammed the guidebook on the counter. “Jeez, Ace. What if the doctor says Clyde can go?”

  I didn’t want Clyde coming along either. Still, I couldn’t stand seeing Will upset. He wasn’t sewn with very strong thread. He was liable to throw something or kick a hole in the plaster. “It’ll be swell having Clyde along,” I said. “If that’s the way it goes.”

  “You wouldn’t want that little pest along if he was your brother.”

  “It’ll be swell. We can tease the piss out of him.”

  Will wasn’t convinced. He spun some more.

  “Better than me teasing the piss out of you for a solid week,” I said. “You know that’s what I’d do.”

  Will stopped spinning and went back to the guidebook. “I guess it wouldn’t be that bad.” Again he slapped down the book. This time he clapped his hands in sweet joy. “Can you believe it? We are going to the World’s Fair! Wilford D. Randall and Ace L. Gilbert, Going to the Chicago World’s Fair! Sixteen hours and fifteen minutes from right now!”

  His excitement spread to me. I dropped on all fours and started growling like a dog. Will winced. He knew what was coming. “Come on, Ace,” he said, “don’t do it.”

  I cocked my head and snarled. I charged like a rabid bulldog. I took his pantleg in my mouth and pulled him off the chair. Soon we were both laughing and rolling on the dusty oily linoleum, a tangle of sweet joy. When we stopped, Will’s pompadour was standing straight up. He raked it back with his fingers, then made sure his zipper wasn’t broken. He had that safety pin in his pocket in case it was. “Doctor probably won’t let him go anyway,” he said.

  I fished a bottle of Coca-Cola from the huge red cooler by the door. I popped the cap and took a long burn of it. “Can’t see how he possibly could,” I said. Outside the gravel started crackling and we saw the tow truck’s nose peek under the portico.

  Mrs. Randall slid out. She was wearing baggy men’s pants and a sweater buttoned to her neck even though it was eighty-something. She carried a black purse as well as her customary scowl. Her uncombed hair was cropped short in the twenties style. Clyde slid out next. He walked with his head lying on his shoulder, cotton sticking out of his afflicted ear. He carried a paper bag and I knew from his twisted face he was humming.

  Mrs. Randall banged through the door. I quickly hid the Coke behind my back. “You owe us a nickel,” she said without looking at me.

  “Absolutely.” I raised the Coke for another burn.

  “You owe it to us now, Ace.”

  That’s how Mrs. Randall was. Hard and sour and tight with a dollar. Tight with a nickel. It wasn’t just the depression or her husband’s embarrassing death that made her that way. She was one of the Granger Township Southams. All the Southams were hard and sour and tight. My own mother, who grew up in Granger Township herself, told me once that the Southams were afraid of going broke in this life and afraid of not going to heaven in the next. As a result they overworked both their farms and their prayers, leaving them poor, guilt-ridden, and generally unhappy. How Will’s mother ended up with Will’s father is anybody’s guess. He was a laugher and a dreamer. You never had to sneak Cokes from the cooler when he was alive. He’d offer you one the second you walked into the garage, and toss you a Baby Ruth, too. I dug a nickel from my pocket and flipped it to Will, who dutifully put it in the cash drawer.

  Clyde finally shuffled in. He’d been checking the score on the door of the Gilbert SXIII. He was humming. “There’s our man,” I said.

  “Hi Ace. See you shot down another one.”

  I demonstrated my invisible machine gun for him. “Went down in a slow spiral of smoke and fire. So, how’s Clyde’s ear, Mrs. Randall?”

  She scooted Will from the chair and sat down, putting her own feet on the counter. “Looks like you got a passenger.”

  Will melted against the wall. “Jeez.”

  Clyde shook his paper bag. “Dr. Craddock gave me a bottle of drops to keep my ear from waxing up again.”

  “Two dollars for three cents’ worth of medicine,” Mrs. Randall said.

  Will started kicking the wall with his heel. “What if it does wax up? I’m not cutting short our pilgrimage to the World’s Fair because Clyde can’t keep his ears cleaned.”

  Mrs. Randall took out the cash drawer and rested it in her lap, ready to count the morning’s receipts. “Don’t have a canary, Will. Your pilgrimage will go just fine. Just make sure he gets his drops.”

  Clyde pulled the cotton wad from his ear and showed me the big spot of yellowy ooze. We let Mrs. Randall count in peace and walked up the field to their house, where Will presided over an official World’s Fair meeting. If Clyde was going along, he’d have to keep his humming to a minimum. It was also his responsibility to take his drops on time. “Ace’ll be watching the road and I’ll be watching the maps,” Will told his brother. “It’s your job to watch your watch.”

  While Will and Clyde put their gear on the lawn, I taxied the Gilbert SXIII up to the house. There was a lot to load. There was no way we could afford a hotel when we got to Chicago. We’d have to do what most fairgoers from our economic class did. Camp. On top of our suitcases and a week’s worth of food, that meant the big Boy Scout tent and blankets and pillows and cooking utensils, a saw and hatchet for cutting firewood, a lantern and small can of kerosene. Will was happy to see that I had, indeed, remembered to pack my new coffee pot. When we were finished the Gilbert SXIII was loaded to the gills. What we couldn’t fit in the backseat—we had to leave a little room for Clyde—we tied to the running boards.

  Now it was time to buy the food, an event nearly as glorious to Will as the Fair itself. It was final proof that after four years of dreaming and planning, we were actually going. We headed back down the field toward Ruby & Rudy’s. We bought pancake flour and syrup, lard, butter and sugar, cans of beans and corn and peas, Wheaties, sardines and potatoes, onions, apples and pears to keep us regular, ketchup and mustard. We had salt and pepper from the house. Hot dogs and hamburger meat we could buy on the fly. Will and I giggled when Ruby asked if we didn’t need a roll of toilet paper. We bought two. Will also bought an extra roll of film for his camera and even contemplated an additional pound of coffee. Ruby added up the damage while we played with the dollar bills in our pants pockets. We’d worked hard for that money, Will in the garage and me on any number of farms. We paid with adult pride.

  We put the groceries in the kitchen to be safe and then covered up the Gilbert SXIII with a canvas in case it rained. Which was unlikely. It hadn’t rained in three weeks and all of Ohio was as dry as chapped lips. It was now 2:30 in the afternoon. We went straight for the porch and Will’s new maps from the Shell Oil district man.

  Clyde sat on the step and hummed softly, checking his pocket watch every few minutes so he wouldn’t forget his drops. I sat next to Will in the rockers and watched him study the maps. He’d move his finger along, then write in his spiral notebook. Every few minutes he’d tell me about some spectacular exhibit we just had to see. Mrs. Randall closed the garage at six. We ate supper and then sat around the radio until nine trying to dial in WLS. Not much luck. Didn’t they know we were on our way? Didn’t they know we needed the latest information? We went to bed anxious.

  I had Clyde’s bed all to myself. Will was forced to share his with Clyde. I put a pillow over my head to block out the humming. I suppose Will’s mind was alive with images of the World’s Fair. Mine was alive with images of that faceless willing city girl I was going to find.

  Thinking back now, I don’t think I really believed I’d come back from Chicago with my wick dipped. Intercourse was a lot for an eighteen-year-old kid who looked like me to expect in 1934. But there was the real possibility that somewhere in that great metropolis I’d find some half-blind girl lacking in all carnal compunction, who’d neck with me, maybe let me rub my face across her nipples or even let me wiggle my fingers in her cupcake, things I’d never done, but needed desperately to do.

  Will’s alarm
went off at 5:00. We were already awake. Even Clyde. I helped him with his drops. We washed and went down to breakfast. Mrs. Randall was in the kitchen doing battle with a pan of fluttering eggs and snapping sausages. Pancakes were swelling on a skillet. We huddled around the table and hurt our teeth on glasses of ice-cold milk. Clyde’s head was sideways on his shoulder. Will’s face was buried in his maps. Mrs. Randall filled our plates and went back to the stove for round two.

  We ate like rats.

  “Who’s ready for more sausages?” Mrs. Randall asked.

  Mouth stuffed full, I held up my dirty plate. “That’d be me, Mrs. Randall.”

  My gluttony didn’t please Will. “Jeez, Ace. There ain’t time for more sausages. It’s almost 5:30.”

  His mother piled the sausage on my plate. “Couple more eggs, Ace?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Will started a slow shake.

  Mrs. Randall gave everybody another fried egg. “You got plenty of time. More pancakes anybody?”

  Everybody got one. Will said, “Jeez.”

  Mrs. Randall had never tried to stop us from going—she even insisted that Clyde go along—but my gut always told me she didn’t like the idea. Subconsciously I think she was trying to get us so fat we couldn’t fit through the back door. She poured more batter on the skillet and then poured me another glass of milk. “I was surprised your folks said you could go, Ace. That’s a big farm for your daddy to work alone, even for a week, considering his tire job.”

  “I guess they figured I’d be worthless all week if they forbade it,” I said.

  “I know all about worthless,” she said. “Will’s been worthless around here since the day he heard about that World’s Fair.”

  Will’s dam broke. He kicked the table leg. “I don’t have to go to the World’s Fair! I don’t have to see the technological wonders of the modern age! I can stay right here in Bennett’s Corners pumping gas and fixing flats the rest of my life, if that’ll make you happy!”