Sept 17
Do not want to go straight into the big city. Part of me is scared. Scared of driving around with this big rig, or scared of what I might find there? Both. Plus first I want to explore the Kishwaukee R. When I was a kid I lived 3 blocks down the street from Salt Creek. It was so polluted that there was a health advisory for it. Not only were there no fish living in it, we were not even allowed to touch the water, cuz it was poisonous and toxic. The Kish was the closest stream to my home that still had a good population of "game fish" - bass, pike, etc.
I spend a few hours blogging in a coffee shop in Belvidere. My car was parked on an empty street when I went in, but when I get out there is big festival underway next to my car.
Are they celebrating the arrival of the Bullship? No, it is an annual latino festival.
E of Belvidere is Garden Prairie, where I used to fish. Used to be a great pool here, until the US Army Corps of Engineers straightened out the river. Upsteam from the bridge were pools shaded by big oaks and maples. Could barely get a canoe upstream thru this jungle. Then theyy put in a new bridge, and the Corps plowed down the riparian zone, and plowed the curves out of the river. No problem getting a canoe upstream any more.
There was a back channel full of submerged wood, shaded by trees. Once had 10 consecutive surface hits on a rap fronm SMs in this slough. Never again. Now the slough is a shallow mudhole, inches deep, with no riparian cover. But the shoreline is very straight, the way the Corps likes it. Not a fish in it any more.
Downstream was a deep pool, then a sharp right turn. The Corps dug the channel straight thru. No bend in the river, no pool here any more. I need a change of socks, so I decide to wade around to clean my feet off before putting new socks on. Bad move. The bottom used to be clean gravel here. Now it looks like sand, but just beneath this is some kind of adhesive mud that will not wash off with water. I need to let my feet dry and scrape the mud off on the concrete. The deep pool is gone, all filled in with shallow mud. No more 15 lb lucius in this part of the river.
I sit under the bridge, depressed about the way people treat their rivers. Feel like getting a can of spray paint and writing my opinion about the Corps work here. But I see someone has already done that.
I drive around and check out some other parts of the river. Still in pretty good shape for a stream in this part of the world. A couple of kids are loading out after a canoe trip. They assure me that the big pike and SM are still here. I would like to float this river some time. Too shallow for the Bullship - need a canoe here.
I head E on Hwy 20, which turns into Lake St when it gets into Chicago. Getting closer to home now. Some cornfields are freshly plowed under. The same amazing black black dirt I remember from my youth. What a godsend this must have been for the European immigrants. Anything you plant will grow here. Don't need irrigation, cuz it rains all summer.
Don't like driving here. Traffic is getting intense, Saturday afternoon. I will let my instincts lead me to my home watershed, like a salmon returning from the ocean. Don't need a map any more, even tho it has been many years I have been away. Picking up subtle clues that trigger memories. Past Elgin, which used to be separated from the big city by miles and miles of farms when I was a kid. Now it is all one big suburb for 50 miles from here to Chicago. If I keep heading down US 20 I will surely eventually cross Hwy 45 - Mannheim Rd, La Grange Rd - that runs only a mile W of my old home in La Grange Park. But suddenly I come upon a sign for York Rd. My Uncle Lou and family used to live in Yorkshire Woods, a subdivision off York Rd, if my memory is true after 40+ years. I turn off onto York Rd, thru downtown Elmhurst. S of Elmhurst are huge changes. Used to be cornfields and forest.. Now all office buildings and tract housing. Nothing is familiar any more until I pass a turnoff to a frontage road. Something tells me this is the old road down to Uncle Lou's place. Takes me 15 minutes to find a way to turn the Bullship around and find a way back thru the traffic to be able to turn right onto the frontage road. Sure enough, my memory was correct. There is a sign for Yorkshire Woods. I drive down to what I know will be there, and it is. Uncle Lou's house, that he built himself. Now all tidied up like it never was before.
If you go around the other loop of the subdiv you go past Joey Aiuppa's house. Used to be a known mafia bigshot when I was a kid. If you were playing baseball on the street and accidentally hit the ball into Joey's yard you did NOT go in to get it. Later, after I left to go to college, Joey became the head of the entire Chi mafia. Later went to prison. Dead now.
All the houses in Yorkshire Woods are very clean and neat and upscale. Except the one I remember as being Joey's. It is empty, derelict, gutters falling off, brick guardposts at the driveway entrance smashed and broken. Some kind of huge concrete slab with electrical unit and steel posts on the street in front. What is going on here?
I know that if I follow the other road down a ways I will come to Salt Creek - my home watershed. Lou's kid Brad and I went down here once and there were little bluegills living in a backwater slough here. Abosulutely amazing to me as a kid that any fish other than carp could survive in Salt Creek. And the bridge is still there, with the creek running under it, and the backwater slough is still there.
Same mud banks, surrounded by forest preserve.
Only a few more miles downstream is the house I grew up in. I head back out to York Rd. Must turn left on 31st St. Easy now. Like a steelhead returning from the N Pacific, up the Rogue R, cannot miss the turn into Bear Creek. It is hardwired into my brain. Don't need a map, or a compass. Turn left off 31st St onto Kemman Ave, 1 block, corner house. There it is.
This whole area was empty prairie and forest when the house was built around 1950. First house on a new block of empty street then. My parents bought the house, dad had just gotten a new advertising job in Chicago, when he was drafted and sent down to Fort Knox, Kentucky, to train artillery soldiers for the Korean War. We returned here after the war and moved in. Used to be shaded by huge elm trees then, like the entire street, like the entire suburb of La Grange Park. Then the Dutch elm disease wiped them all out. Wiped out all the big shade trees and left all the houses out baking in the sunmmer sun. The street is coming back now, with other trees, not elms. The little Chinese elm (not bothered by Dutch elm desease) that we planted next to the garage - almost killed it by choking it off with a wire to hold it straight - is now a giant tree that shades the whole back yard, including the 2nd story window from my old bedroom. Am I this old? This tree was only 4" in diameter when we planted it.
3 blocks down Kemman Ave is the forest preserve, and the bridge over Salt Creek. My home stream. One summer they laid out hay all along the bank here so they could plant grass under it. Happened the be the year I was an apprentice juvenile delinquent. I lit the hay on fire, and it burned for a half mile. Got in trouble with the cops, but I denied it, just like Joey Aiuppa.
Used to be all mud bottom here. Creek was so muddy you could not see 6" down into it. Totally polluted by factories upstream and stormwater runoff. Now the stream looks incredibly clear compared to my memory. There is a gravel riffle under the bridge. Never any gravel here in the past.
Downstream the riparian canopy has grown out over the stream.
Looks like there could even be a fish living in here now. Later in the evening I google, and find that there ARE fish in Salt Creek now. In fact, there is even somebody advertising a fishing guide service along Salt Creek.
http://www.fishing-headquarters.com/guideservice/guideservice_illinois.html
Mind boggling. You can attribute this to the Clean Water Act, passed under the watch of Richard M. Nixon, while he was not paying attention and was busy doing other things like bombing millions of innocent people to death in SE Asia. And to the Phase I and Phase II Stormwater regulations which grew out of the CWA. Makes me feel that all my Phase II work with the City of Ashland, OR, is perhaps not in vain. If you can bring the wily bass back to Salt Creek you can grow bass on the moon.
In the fading light I drive down 22nd St, Cermak Rd, named after the Czech Anton Cermak, mayor of Chicago, shot to death accidentally by assassin trying to kill Franklin D. Roosevelt, with whom he was shaking hands at the time. Cermak Rd is the main street of Cicero and Berwyn, the first 2 suburbs W of Chicago, center of the Bohemian ghetto (not a poor ghetto, just the place where all the Czechs lived when they emigrated to this area). Berwyn is where my grandparents lived when them came to the US. Where I lived as a little kid, in the same house with my granparents before my parents bought the house on Kemman Ave.
Used to be that everybody here spoke Bohemian, but is almost all latino neighborhood now. Still a few Czech restaurants here tho. I want to go in to have roast duck & dumplings, but I am wearing ripped blue jeans, very dirty from a week on rivers. Cannot insult the Czechs, who are very conscious of dress and tidiness. Instead I head back to the restaurant of another Czech from Chicago, Ray Kroc, who bought up a restaurant named after a Scot named McDonald, and started a chain. They say this chain has quite a few restaurants now, across the US and the world. They have free WIFI, so I spend an hour checking the baseball and football games. Oregon is crushing their opponent, 69-0 in the 3rd quarter. But the Giants are losing to the Brewers. Giants are playing here in Chi town in a few days. Must catch one of these games in person at Wrigley.
Sleep in the car in the Wal Mart lot in Cicero.
Sept 18
I get up early, drive down to Forest Road School, where I attended from Kindergaden to Grade 8.
Then over to Lyons Township High School, my next alma mater.
Not a molecule has changed in either of these places over the long years.
The land is flat here, so every town has its own water tower. You can tell the size of the town from miles away by the size of the water tower.
Need a place to touch down, and make phone calls to see if I have any relatives left around here. Ken B grew up in Oak Park, where I was born. His family went to Afterglow Resort in Wis during the same years we did. My sister Barb has kept in touch. I will drive into the big city to meet him again. Heading into town on Ogden Ave I see a sign for Novy's Window's & Doors. My mother's family was named Novy (means “new” in Czech). Good to see that there are some Czechs left around here.
Ken lives on the S side. Horrid ordeal towing the Bullship around Chicago traffic, but I find his place.
Never went near the S side when I was young. Looks like what I expected. Trash in the streets, weeds growing up thru the cracks, 90 percent blacks and hispanics. Oddly enough, you can look around as long as you want and not find another bass rig from Oregon in this entire neighborhood.
The buildings are taller here than in Ashland.
Sept 19
I go out and walk around the neighborhood. The storm drain marking program does not seem to be completed here.
A couple blocks away is the S branch of the Chicago River. Not quite a wilderness bass river that the Menominee R in Wis.
Ken and I walk downtown. The buildings are taller here than in Ashland.
Not the kind of place I would be comfortable in. When I was a kid the Prudential Building was the tallest building in Chicago. Not any more.
Then down to Buckingham Fountain.
And the Art Institute.
Big changes downtown since I was there last.
Still some wildlife around the big town.
Then we come upon the Big Bean.
Millennium Park has a huge outdoor concert place on the lawn.
In the grass of there is the only marked storm drain I see anywhere in town.
Then we walk out to the lake.
Ken is a marathon jogger, used to this. But walking on pavement kills my feet. Not adapted to the concrete jungle.
The water of Lake Michigan is very clear now, filtered by zillions of zebra mussels. You can see 15 feet down. Could never see half this deep when I was a kid. A huge dead carp is washed up along the seawall.
It is free day at the Shedd Aquarium. Looks like killer SM habitat among the boulders they have dumped along the offshore breakwater. Love to get the Bullship out there and check it out. No SM here when I was a kid. They have moved in along with the cleaner water.
The aquarium is a disappointment. Glad I didn't have to pay to get in here. Costs $27 to see if it is not a free day. Old and tired aquarium. Must be lots of better aquariums to see around the country than this one. Lots of tanks and fish, but very little interpretation.
The hilite for me is the giant isopod, about a foot long. One of the biggest bugs I have ever seen.
And this Australian lungfish, brought to the aquarium when it opened in 1933, and still doing fine.
On the way back to Ken's we see wildlife tracks in the sidewalk.
In the afternoon I drive out to Riverside on Cermak Rd to see if my cousin Joe K is still there. Cermak Rd used to be the main street of Cicero and Berwyn.
This whole area was almost entirely Czech when I was a kid. Couldn't understand anybody, cuz nobody spoke English. Now Cicero is absolutely entirely hispanic, as is most of Berwyn. Amazing demographic transformation within my single lifetime. Can't understand anybody cuz nobody speaks English.
I find the K's house. Same house that we had so many family holiday dinners in when I was a kid. Knock on the door, and Joe is still there! Replied to my call but we did not get the message.
His sister Kathy and mother Vera both passed away in 2003. Vera was 93, same age as my mom when she passed away a few years later. I drive back into the city with Joe to pick up my boat. Better to leave it in his driveway than on the street on the S side. Reminiscing about old times. On the way back we drive around to all the Czech restaurants still left in the W suburbs, but they are all closed on Monday nite.
Joe confirms that there are now fish in Salt Creek and the Des Plaines R. I buy a one day fishing license for $5. I stay over at Joe's. Tomorrow morn I will go down and fish in my ancestral watershed.
Sept 20
I get up early, but not early enough. The oily boid gets the woim, when it comes to the wily bass. Warm muggy morn, supposed to be 90F today. It is a totally different climate here than up in N Wis only a few hundred miles away. Fall already well underway up there, but still summer down here. Today is the solstice. The Basstravaganza Tour has burned up the entire summer already. Where did the time go?
Light enough to be fishing a half hr ago, but I slept in. I drive to downtown Riverside, where there is a footbridge over the Des Plaines R.
Vis is at least 18”, much clearer than when I was a kid. Gravel riffles here now. I don't remember anything like this as a kid. A heron is fishing in the pool above. No herons here in the old, days. No fish for them to catch. I put on my flip flops and wade in. The water is surprisingly cool. Feels good even at 6:30 AM. Gonna be a hot day. I tie on a small rap and start casting. The pool is very shallow, and I keep dragging bottom with the rap. Wearing shorts. Fishing right beneath Riverside city hall, near the famous Riverside Water Tower.
No bites. I wade right across the river and start down the other side. I get another snag, but it starts moving to the side. It is a fish! Cannot be – in the Des Plaines R? Nothing in this river that would bite the rap when I was a kid. Then it comes to the surface and thrashes, shakes the hook, and is gone. I am stunned. Must have been the wily bass. Only about 8” long, but the only bass I have ever seen in the watershed I grew up in. This river is coming back to life, after many years as a dead zone. I fish out the rest of the pool, but get no more bites. Still a momentous morn for me. Bass in the Des Plaines R! After a month of fishing behind the Cheddar Curtain I do not expect to catch a lot here. One hit is enough to make my day.
I drive back to Joe's drop off the boat and head back to Cermak Rd. There are still a few Czechs living on the W edge of Berwyn, and Veseckys Bakery is still there.
I go in and load up on kolac and apple slices. Used to live on this stuff when I was a kid.
A few blocks away is Elmwood Ave. My grandpa Novy was a brick mason. He built many of these houses. I lived in one of these houses with my parents and grandparents when I was a baby.
No change here, except in demographics. Used to be 100 percent Czech. The Czechs were not racist – they discriminated against anyone who was not Czech, regardless of race. Italian, black, hispanic. Did not matter. Only place N of the Mason Dixon line where they stoned Martin Luther King when he led an integration march. Largely black and hispanic neighborhood now.
A block to the W is Gunderson Ave, where my Grandma & Grandpa Best used to live. All the houses are the same. Again, I cannot remember the exact house, but I know I am close.
Then I drive back to the river, at the Hoffman Dam in Brookfield.
A national historic site.
Unbelievable sign by the river. Musky in the Des Plaines?
Lots of people fishing here. I walk down the bank, throwing the rap. The river smells like sewage. I was wading in this stream a little while ago? Yuck. I get no bites. The bank fishermen say they rarely catch the fish listed on the sign. Mostly carp and bullheads. Today there is little foam at the dam, but a few days ago they say there was foam 4 ft deep. EPA investigated. Blamed it on O'Hare Airport, which dumped de-icer into the storm drain. EPA did nothing about it.
Very warm, and very windy, from the SW. Going to the Cubs game at Wrigley tonite. Gonna be lots of balls flying out of the park tonite.
A national historic site.
Unbelievable sign by the river. Musky in the Des Plaines?
Lots of people fishing here. I walk down the bank, throwing the rap. The river smells like sewage. I was wading in this stream a little while ago? Yuck. I get no bites. The bank fishermen say they rarely catch the fish listed on the sign. Mostly carp and bullheads. Today there is little foam at the dam, but a few days ago they say there was foam 4 ft deep. EPA investigated. Blamed it on O'Hare Airport, which dumped de-icer into the storm drain. EPA did nothing about it.
Very warm, and very windy, from the SW. Going to the Cubs game at Wrigley tonite. Gonna be lots of balls flying out of the park tonite.
Here I am very near the site of the Chicago Portage. The French explorers Marquette and Joliet had already discovered the Mississippi R almost to its mouth, heading down the Fox R from Green Bay, across the portage to the Wisconsin R (now Portage, Wis) and then downstream towards New Orleans. On the return trip they heard from the natives of another portage near the lower end of Lake Michigan. They ascended the Illinois R to its headwaters. The land is very flat here. Only a small rise of land separates the Des Plaines R - which flowed S - from the Chicago R, which flowed parallel to the Des Plaines and then ran into Lake Michigan. In between was a big swamp which became known as Mud Lake.
During high water you could paddle thru Mud Lake between the Des Plaines and Chicago rivers - between the Mississippi and St Lawrence watersheds. At low water you had to carry your canoe over the Chicago portage.
I grew up only a few miles from here, and I don't recall ever learning about this in school. It was this portage that generated a giant city. I drive out a few miles to the W, where there is a monument across the street from the oil refinery.
When Chicago later became a city they used the Chicago River as a place to dump sewage, which flowed into Lake Michigan, which was also the source of their drinking water. This caused great cholera epidemics around 1900. Engineers realized that they could dig a trench between the Chicago and Des Plaines rivers, which would reverse the flow of the Chicago R, causing it to flow W into the Des Plaines and down the Mississippi. This would carry their sewage away from Lake Michigan and send it down to other people's drinking water. It would also open up a shipping canal between the Mississippi and the great lakes. In 1900 the Sanitary and Shipping Canal was completed across this old portage
I have had enough fishing for today. Like Pere Marquette, who was also a Cubs fan, I must head downtown watch the Cubs battle the Gigantics from San Francisco. I drive back downtown to leave my car at Ken B's, and then take walk to the El train. On the way I pass a trailer on fire.
The moment I get down to from the El onto Addison St I am swarmed by ticket scalpers. They took a beating this year, cuz the Cubs are so awful. I buy a ticket for $10, and walk to the front gate.
Not much has changed inside.
Batting practice. Shagging balls in front of me is Tiny Tim Lincecum, smallest skinniest guy in the big leagues, winner of the Cy Young Award (best pitcher in the league) the past 2 seasons, busted last winter for smoking pot while driving up I-5 near Portland, OR.
Something has changed - lights at Wrigley now.
The weather forecast this morn called for "howling" SW winds, and they were right. The trashcans are blowing over all around the upper deck. A popup will become a home run tonite.
Flag on the big scoreboard is nearly ripping off its pole. Storm coming in.
Game is set to start at 7:05, but at 6:45 they start rolling the tarp out. Not raining - why?
Then, at precisely 7:05, it begins to rain.
The people in the $200 seats get dumped on.
But I am dry in my $10 seat under the roof of the upper deck. It showers a couple times, then stops. Still they will not start the game. Very boring. They are making a fortune on concessions. $7 for a can of beer, $4 for a bottle of water (when there are free water fountains all around). Some people just like spending $. Finally they take the tarp off.
Pitchers come out and warm up. Just ready to start the game when it begins to rain again.
Back out with the tarp.
Finally stops raining, and they make some neat designs to dry out the infield.
Game starts an hour late.
Wind suddenly dies off after the squalls have passed. 2 tough pitchers head to head. Carlos Zambrano for the Cubs and Matt Cain for the Gigantics. Big Z is wild but effective.
Cain is unhitable. Scoreless tie after 6 innings, when both starting pitchers are pulled. Now it is a battle of bullpens, so the Cubs will lose. I must head back to Ken B's before it gets to late, so I start heading for the exit in the 8th inning. I am walking across to right field when Giants super rookie Buster Posey tags a long one to dead center. Gone! Gigantics win 1-0.
Sept 21
Get up late. Blog till noon then pack up and say Goodbye to Ken B, Head over to Joe K's, but he is not home. Hitch on the Bullship & trailer, and start heading S, down Harlem Ave. Bad choice, Road reconstruction all the way, temp is 90F, insane traffic. Air stinks of oil refining. Never went this way much when I lived here. Now I see why. . Now I see how people go psycho. I will too if I don't clear out of this city.
Heading down to visit Gillian, Barb's daughter, & husband, father & family. I go thru Chicago Heights to get to Glenwood where they live. Take a guess and drive down a side street hoping for a shortcut, but it just goes down to an industrial plant. Black guys walking in the street, in my lane, won't look around or get out of the way. I drive by in the oncoming lane and they say something nasty. Glad I am driving the kind of car that does not break down. They shoot people around here. Only time I have been hassled by anybody on this whole trip. Looking for Glendale, I stop in a gas station and go inside to ask instructions. Lady at the till is not much help, so I ask a customer. Black guy about my age, with grey hair. He is great, gives me perfect instructions. Really nice and cool guy.
I find Gillian's house, and stay for dinner. Start talking and totally space out and forget to take pics. Wonderful evening. Then I head out again around 10 PM. Down hwy 395 to Hwy 1. In only a few minutes I am back in cornfields. The Bullship is hopping and wiggling on the trailer, glad to see the concrete ecosystem fading in its tailights. Farewell to Chi town. Fun to see nice people, but glad I got the H out of here when I did.
Heading down to Wabash college in Crawfordsville Ind. Planning to go straight S thru Ill, but the road suddenly turns left, and I am in Indiana. Onto Hwy 41, a big 4 lane. I come to a gas station, with a huge parking lot behind, full of parked semis. This is where the big trucks come to sleep. I nestle the Volvo and Bullship in among 50 dozing big rigs, tilt the seat back and go to sleep.
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