Chicago Union Station

I was enjoying myself, and was having difficulty finding my next host thru Couchsurfing that I stayed in Minneapolis a few days beyond my rail reservation and ended up taking the bus to Chicago. My directions guided me to a parking lot between Washington and 3rd street outside the downtown for a midnight ride which showed up at 1. The passengers, irritated by the delay swore blue murder at the service of the Megabus company and offered their own thoughts on the superiority of Greyhound. The driver, understandably distressed by the delay and the treatment he now received, cussed them back. He was African-American, a fact a woman, black herself, felt compelled to indicate when she shouted, "Nigger, I got two boys, a son and a nephew, 6 foot 3 and 6 foot 1, at home, and I can beat their black asses so don't think I mind taking down a shorty-stubby like yourself."

The driver, in response, laughed. As did the woman. I sat there, baffled and feverish, delirious with some malady that made my head feel like it was full of bees all busily filling every sinus with the comb and wax of their horrible hive. They went on shouting and laughing across Wisconsin, the initial anger at the late departure replaced with jabs at the others ethnic background and sexual history. How is it that Black people can make racial slurs and assaults on preference seem so normative? That "motherfucker" could almost sound complimentary? The thoughts rambled through the mucus clogged chambers of my addled head.

The bus pulled up to the corner of Canal and Jackson, not far from where the rail would have brought me. I stumbled out, my sole objective to reach the hostel I had booked. Really, no rail trip across the US would be complete without a stop at Chicago Union Station. The monument to art deco decadence and enviable acoustics that is the Great Hall, the shy Amish passengers dandling babies, the hurried business suits. Penn station in New York is busier and has a better bistro selection, but can't offer so glamorous a backdrop.

I would have liked to have explored more, but this was a lay-over for me. I had been to Chicago before and besides was deeply engaged by a program of phlegm, hacking, and fever dreams. The following day I was to be out of town, southbound on the City of New Orleans, the train ride being the real reason I had arrived at all. My only grand experience of the city came as I left it, watching the towers drop into Lake Michigan, folding up into the dark of night, realizing that my sum experience of Chicago comes to a tally of roughly 10 days yet I've been homesick for it.

I don't know where this love comes from. It could be the old-fashioned modernism - as if steam-punk updated itself by a half century - the neighborhood feel, the home-town pride. And, despite those magnificent sky-scrapers, there's a real modesty towards accomplishment. There's money alright, but fewer pretenders to it. I've never encountered the same sort of outrages of excess walking the Loop as I have on a Manhattan stroll. Maybe it has something to do with being from a state whose primary export is still a palpable, exchangeable commodity and not an abstraction. Whose own creation story isn't founded off a mythic real estate deal or a water-rights swindle, but off the good, solid swing of a sledgehammer between the eyes of a prairie steer. This feels like a good city, with the stones and stenches all in just the right places.