Showing posts with label St. Gabrial's ParishCanaryville USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St. Gabrial's ParishCanaryville USA. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Tate Buckthorn - King of the Knitting Cowboys: Cadets Ain't G-Men



Tate Buckthorn Knits '. . .you have a problem with that? Let's hear it on your hind legs, barkside out, Pard.'

Some cowboys sing, some play the Guit-box, some others toss the lasso, but Tate Buckthorn's knits.  He knits sweaters, throw rugs, baby socks and when perturbed his bushy eyebrows.  Many a dry-gulching, back shooter learned that the purl'n and stich'n irons in the thick calloused hands of Tate Buckthorn can be as deadly as the shoot'n irons on his hips and  tied to his thighs.

Back in '38, when the Amerikadeutscher Volksbund was grabbing all of the best tables in Chicago's beer-gardens, Tate Buckthorn drovered a herd from the louvered rail-cars on the tracks above Canaryville's Root Street and into the Union Stockyards of Chicago.  He was tall on the saddle and knitting away like a widow woman with an eye for the Sears Catalog boys in swimming trunks, but her mind on the gospel messages. Yep, he was busy on the saddle, but with an eye on the 94% of beeves that survived the rail passage to the slaughter pens.

A group of boys from Morgan Park Military Academy were on field trip to the stockyards that day and noted the tall, bronzed figure standing on the ornate Charro saddle hugging the back and belly of  his14.2 hand bucksin stallion, Purl. Tate was doing what the Mex charros call a suerte - showing off.

The teenage boys were wowed by the cowboy's balance and command.

One big, red-headed lunk with jug-ears and buck teeth under his garrison cap halloed, " Hey Lady! Better take a chair and tend to your knitting!"

Tate slowed the pace of Purl some and went as bright-eyed as that school marm back in Fort Smith went,when Tate presented her with a hand knitted sampler containing a pornographic two-dimensional  suggestion for a mutual  day off and answered, " Pard, let me tend to your knitting."  With that, he sprung from the back of Purl and landed square in front of the cadet.





" Well, Red, ain't you the curly wolf, just!   I knit to keep focused and focus is the difference between keepin' a whole skin and taking a steer's antlers in the ribs, Pard.  Some Pokes sing, some twirl the lasso and I knit."

Tate leaped back into the saddle, " Follow me, Red and drag along all them army loafer Pards of your'n and we'll all get familiar with some Sasparilla."  They repaired to a corner store at Wentoworth and Root streets with a blue and white painted  coffin- like ice cooler packed with bottles of root beer next to the store's front steps and entrance to the shop.

Tate Buckthorn treated each of the score of boys ( that's twenty Bufflao Head, brethren) in caps and green uniforms to a bottle of Old Dutch a piece while he squatted on his haunches and knit. The boys petted and cooed over the great horse caparisoned in silver latigos and saddle strings. The door swung open with great noise and violence.  A man emerged wearing  very tight fitting black top-coat.  Under his black bowler hat set the pair meanest grey eyes this side of the Old Man.  He had a muscular thick neck that challenged the collar of his tan shirt and bulged the knot of bow tie out into the public.

" Move on away from my door so people can traffic into my shop  You have ( he said Half) your Pop now go!.  This is private, now!"

" No reason to put the bulge on, Pard. Me and these h'yar saddled-chaps and my old Cayuse, Purl, don't mean to obstruct the trail none."

" Well, take your knitting elsewhere."

It got quiet. . ..two quiet.

Tate stood full to the flush, but let the insult pass.

" Hombres, lets move across the street to that other corner." Indicating the sign above the grocery and notions shop hung sign bearing the name of the owner.

" I take it you are Mr. Hintern-Schnüffeln."

" I have that honor. Why?"

"Some handle.  I see you do not sell beer to Indians.  Get a crowd of Comanch are these parts?"



The Bowler'd square head went blood red,  " There are many tribes of Indian."

Tate Buckthorn sized up the warning sign as well as the owner proprieter.

" I'appears to me, that you lay claim to a wide field."

"  Soon, we will not need such signs, nor require an explanation to the likes of you and all Untermenschen."


" Well, Juniper, I'd wager my next six packets of hard money that you arfe one of them Papier-Aufhänger Liebhaber Wer hasst Juden, Schwarze, Katholiken, Zigeuner und Fuller Brush Männer.

" I do not hate Fuller Brush Men!  You . . . Sie sprechen sehr gut Deutsch für eine Satteltramp.

" Do you sabe un culo kansas antaño patadas?"

The store owner pulled a Ruger MK III .22 automatic from his coat pocket and threatened Tate, but more so the twenty cadets.

Alle von euch Ratten, weg von meiner Tür bzw. diesen Cowboy, der der Jude Krankenhaus auf 29th Street senden!"

The threat of violence and race-baiting rhetorical flourishes by the bowler wearing Bunds had taken the rag of the bush and Tate's wrists rolled yarn by the yard from the twin needles yet clutched in his gnarled hands.  The Bowler'd bully boy's Nazi heater clattered to the cement and the big buck-toothed red-headed cadet from Morgan Park Military Academy kicked the gat far way from the two combatants and into the Canaryville gutter,

With the Teutonic trouble-making desparado ensnarled in butternut wool, Tate tightened the yarn on the Heinie Hyena until the coppers arrived.

The man was charged with threatening boys with and unlicensed hand gun and taken to hoosegowl on 35th Street.  He was booked.

Tate was surrounded by the boys who had had an adventure in the stockyards.  The big redhead thumbed back the brim of his garrison cap and offered, " Mr. Buckthorn I learned a great lesson today."


Tate smiled high wide and handsome, " Tend to your knitting Red! Tend to your knitting and visit the gospel mill every Sunday!  . . .and drink Old Dutch Root Beer!."

Thursday, April 18, 2013

My Day? So Far, So Good.

A sinkhole swallowed three cars in the South Deering neighborhood on the Southeast Side early Thursday morning.
One person was taken from the hole, at 9600 South Houston Avenue, to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in serious-to-critical condition, according to the Chicago Fire Department.
The fire department responded to the scene around 5:30 a.m. when two cars were inside the hole. A third one slide into it after crews arrived.
Check back for details.
chicagobreaking@tribune.comSinkhole

Friday, January 11, 2013

Perseverance: You Don't Get 'Atta-boys, Trophies, or Ribbons for Doing Your Job

"In Perseverance; thunder crashes, sails billow, waves toss the fragile boat. We see that the clouds are about to break. The sea will calm; the sailor's perseverance will soon be rewarded by a return to God's safe heaven. Perhaps this painting can assure each of us that if we can simply persevere, God's hand of love will soon disperse each storm." 

    - Thomas Kinkade ( 1958-2012) American Artist

Perseverance -noun
1.
steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state,etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.
2.
Theology continuance in a state of grace to the end, leading to eternal salvation.
Origin: 
1300–50; Middle English perseveraunce  < Middle French perseverance  <Latin persevērantia.  See persevere-ance


Every morning I have the golden opportunity to engage the youth of America, Illinois, Chicago, Bronzeville and St. Gabe's Parish in Canaryville.   I bring a baker's dozen young gents to Leo High School.  All but one senior are under the age of 17 - ten white boys and three black gents. 

The senior is a quiet studious and good humored young man from Bronzeville already accepted at Rutgers University in his native New Jersey.  His Dad worked there for years, but moved back to Chicago last year. Though proud to be a a Wendell Phillips Alumnus, this successful and proud man wanted no part of the Chicago Public Schools 2012-2013 for his son and chose Leo High School, a Catholic " pay school."His son was brought up to fear God, honor his family and work.  His son's efforts and achievements are the payoff for Old School values rooted in family and reinforced by a  Leo Catholic education.

Catholic education is centered around Christ.  Christ is the reason for the school and everything that happens  with regard to a school's mission must be centered on Christ.  Most kids at Leo are not Catholic, but nearly all are Christian and a couple of the guys are Muslim -Nation of Islam.   Having God as the stablizing center -post of their school, reminds the guys that stability is essential.

Most of our guys are not as blessed with the stability and steady-direction at home the above mentioned gent enjoys. Our kids are, what the PC would call, financially challenged - in Lionese, piss poor. Sadly, most have no male presences in the home and too many have toxic male influences - one poor kid had to fight with his Dad in order to get Pa's Bear Game pals to stop smoking dope in the kid's bedroom. 

The TV Shows Shameless and My Babies Mommas are all too real  in order to be in any way amusing or valuable - other than be deemed  Chicago Values. More so, the kids living out these scripts of those shows here in Chicago have moms who just might drink up their tuition money, buy no groceries, purchase no winter clothing while Dad does a nickel for boosting freight or slinging dope. Funny?  If you are the type of person who enjoys tormenting the handicapped, I suppose it might.  Interestingly enough, it seems to me that  the very people who are offended by ethnic humor, find racism in their morning bowl of Wheaties, worry about how many sheets of Charmin other people are using, or developing educational agendas for public education match this Shameless fan- demographic. Revolution and radicalism only grow out of economic and social comfort - Hyde Park, Evanston, the Lakeshore & etc.  There are no Marxists in actual school foxholes. I have yet to run into one, after forty years in teaching. Teachers who confront miseries seem to load up on common sense.

Despite a rainbow of handicaps, these young gents achieve.  The semester grades are coming out this week and my van load has achieved a modest record of achievement - mind you, I did not factor in the young senior's 3.86 Average into the mix; thus a sampling of twelve ( two black and ten white) - 2.36 Cumulative Van GPA!  I'll take it.

One kid spent two weeks in the hospital
One kids brother was murdered in November
One kid's Mom spent some time CCDC
One kid ditches school at the drop of a hat, but has maintained 3.9 in Algebra

All of them are at core sweet and smart kids; all of them enjoy busting my aged Aggies and all of them manage to pull themselves out of bed, find something like clean socks and school clothes, eat something other than Flamin' Hotz and Mountain Dew Red and learn.

None of these kids, other than the senior who will attend Rutgers, appear to have been told that purpose is essential to living, but they manage to have great perseverance. . .my God, do they ever.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Tales of the South Side Música Por La Mañana en Back of the Yards

Dios bendiga a todos ustedes, hijos de puta!

My first stop in my Leo van route is now 46th and Laflin where I wait for BK, a tough little Irish/Polish kid from a few miles west of St. Gabe's in Canaryville.  I had drained my morning's Dunkin Donuts coffee twenty  minutes earlier at Leo, before I hiked the # 7 grey Ford van west on 79th Street and north on Loomis to 47th Street.  Loomis is the cat's nuts for driving and should be on every south side drivers short list for alternate route, when the Ryan is glutted.  I wanted  to coffee up and reluctantly chose the Mickey D's.  McDonald's is to Dunkin Donut coffee as Span is to  jamón de bellota of Barcelona.

At the McDonald's located at 47th Laflin the crowd is treated to music by man in his thirties who stands almost as tall as his guitar.

He is a Mexican gent who the City workers, cops, Leo Van drivers and the lay-abouts all with campesino tunes - the Irish would call these Culchie tunes and Americans hillybilly music.  This morning the hardest working man in Mexican folk music broke into a tune done by the Gipsy Kings:  Campesino:
No te vayas tu de miNo te vayas por favorNo te vayas tu de miEl mundo seria en florUn mundo mejor
CampesinoCampesinoCampesino sono yo
CampesinoCampesinoCampesino sono yo
Que campesino que campesinoQue campesino que sono yoQue campesino que campesinoQue campesino que sono yo
No te vayas por favorNo te vayas tu de miNo te vayas por favorUn mundo sera mejorUn mundo en flor


translates to -

Do not go 'bout me
Do not go, please
Do not go 'bout me
The world would be in bloom
A Better World

peasant
peasant
Farmer sono I

peasant
peasant
Farmer sono I

That peasant farmer
That peasant sono I
That peasant farmer
That peasant sono I

Do not go, please
Do not go 'bout me
Do not go, please
A better world will
A world in bloom

Tell me about it.  Now this is way to wake-up the human juices and get the old nose out of one's belly button.

This little guy is fully No Se, Ingles and carries a battered guitar with cut-gut strings which he thumbs out the bass notes with a thick plastic thumb plectrum and works blistered and gnarled fingers with the delicacy of a Segovia and gives full-throated appreciation of tune an lyrics.

After I got my coffee, I listened to the song and offered my Spanglished appreciation, "Maravilloso! Que dulce el canto, Senor!" I duked him three bucks and my manly grip in Adios, Bub!

What was marvelous, in all of this was the man's pride and dignity.  He stood all of four feet and change and locked smiling eyes on all of us.

¡Qué hombre!

Thursday, October 11, 2012

The Bronzeville/Canaryville Express: Leo Transportation: A Daily Giggle Mission


"I love the young dogs of this age, they have more wit and humour and knowledge of life than we had; but then the dogs are not so good scholars." Samuel Johnson from Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson

I leap out of the sack every morning, hit my knees to the floor and pray the Memorare and the Novena to St. Teresa, in anticipation of my tasks and the fun the day brings to this old high school teacher.

I get to transport the lads from Bronzeville and Canaryville neighborhoods to Leo High School. The Ford van gets stuffed like a Christmas goose with teenage lads. At 35th & Dr. Martin Luther king Drive's BP station, I pick up the giant Daylon -14 years of 300 + lbs. of muscle, bone and more than few layers of baby fat; the lean and athletic Joe who racks up football field yardage like Willie Moscani on a nine ball felt.  Then the two stops in Canaryville at Pizza Nova for AJ, Nick, Brian, Ryan and Sean and Graham Elementary at 44th & Emerald for Jeff, Mitch, Tommy, Sal and Bryan.

The patter is wild, the consumption of Dunkin Donut holes (glazed only) furious past human understanding, and the teasing of this Methuzalah behind the wheel a thing of beauty - Hip-Hop, Novice Blasphemies, pleas, male malodorousness and beefy good fellowship.

Now, I must $#$%, shower and shave and get about  to my morning's obligations and delights.  

Friday, August 17, 2012

Leo Driver Diaries - Canaryville to Leo High School



August 16, 2012  "Canaryville is a predominantly Irish American neighborhood, with borders from 40th to 49th streets between Union Pacific railroad ..."

Canaryville (St. Gabriel's Parish)  gave Leo High School hundreds of great men - Bro Farrell, Fr. Bill McFarlan, Dean Fuller, A Score of Brackin Boys,  Hugs Hughes, Square Lanham, John Caponera, Gabe Caponera, Lt. John Lehner, CFD and now Canaryville is back.

I get to Leo High School before 5AM, after picking up a box of 50 glazed Munchkins and a 20 oz. coffee.  The donut holes are for the gents that I will pick up and the coffee is mine.  At Leo High School, at 79th & Sangamon Street in the heart of Gresham,  I answer e-mails and do prospect research  beyond the Leo Alumni who give lavishly to their Alma Mater.  President Dan McGrath and I are widening the shores of the giving pond and reaching out to private and corporate sponsors.  These generous individuals, foundations and corporations provide much needed revenue to off-set tuition costs and also sponsor projects for capital improvement.

The biggest need in the last several years has been tuition assistance which, due to the lousy economy, cancerous unemployment and rising water, lighting, gas, insurance and up-keep expenses, eats into operating expenses.  You can set tuition, but families can only pay what they are able to pay. The balance is made up in fund-raising.  Increasing enrollment has helped some.

Last year, Leo welcome the first white student in decades to this Catholic college prep school for young men.  The previous year, the first Hispanic graduate in decades was our Gates Millenium Scholar, Eder Cruz; his success changed this school's demographic from 100% African American to Leo Diverse!

Five more Hispanic gents enrolled as did one young man from St. Gabe's parish in Canaryville.   Ten more white ethnc ( Catholics) enrolled, entered the summer school program and the 2013 Freshman Class.  More Carnaryvillians are expected in the next few weeks. Two others, who intended to begin high school here opted to attend De LaSalle Insitute in their own backyard.

These ten gents are tough.  Their parents work hard.  Canaryville is reputed to be one of the toughest neighborhoods in America - always has been.  It is to Chicago as Hell's Kitchen is to NYC.   My Mom's family were Canaryville tribesmen.  Her Dad had been a Ragen Colt, as well as a Lather.  Her uncle was a Ragen Colt as well as a Viatorian priest.  They were called Earl and Headsy - the Donahue boys. How one became Earl, when baptized a Francis is one of those Canaryville mysteries.  Tough is determined not so much by how much one can dish out, but by how much one can take.

Canaryville folks can take plenty. The myth goes something like this -



I drive one of the school vans to pick up Leo Students from Bronzeville and then Canaryville.  The van is Ford 15 passenger that also serves the athletic teams in the afternoons. To say the least, this conveyances gets a daily work-out that would exhaust Gale Sayers.

Here was yesterday's route:

6:40 - Depart Leo heading east on 79th Street to the Dan Ryan - construction crews are laying out barrier cones and barricades; gang trucks and back-hoes signal crowded and slow return trip. N.B. Classes begin at 7:45 AM.  Think, Hickey.
6:45 - Northbound on the Dan Ryan at State - remain in Local lanes - so good, so far.

6: 50 Exit at 35th Street and head east to Dr. Martin Luther King Drive; take a left into the lot of BP Gas station. Wait. Big Daylon . . .freshman 14 years old and sports a XXXXXL  Leo Polo shirt -6'3" and all of 350+ lbs.  and the kid can move. Daylon smiles gets to work on the Munchkin box.

7:00 - 7:14 AM Now, head out to Canaryville - 35th Street East to Wentworth frontage over by Sox Park  Head south to 43rd Street; go left to 
558 West 43rd Street - Pizza Nova - Pick up Two

7:15 Head East to 35th & Emerald take a left south to Graham Elementary parking lot - there they are!


A Collection of Youthful Hope and Determination.


" How come no Chocalate Milk, Mr. Hickey?"


When you guys all make Honor Roll on October, then we'll negotiate the breakfast menu.  Eat what's there.


" Thanks! No Powder! Awesome! AJ give over!  BK you got five! So? Can we stop at Subway?  The air's too cold. You listen to Old Man music. . . .," Remembering the street work, I exit at 75th grooveup to 76th head east and pass the big dark brown apartment building at 76th Union where I was born and continue to Morgan


7:35 AM - Leo Parking Lot and the tribe alights!


Is this a great life, or what?



Friday, July 06, 2012

Canaryville Roots


  Leo President Dan McGrath and four of the seven Canaryvillains at Leo High School with Joe's Mom and Coach Fogarty: from the left (Leo GorceyHuntz HallBobby JordanGabriel Dell,)
“When I went to take the entrance exams, it was during the famous winter storms [of 1979]. We took the test that day. They had to make arrangements to get us back home. Jay Strandring drove the Canaryville guys back home. He dropped us off at one of the viaducts because he realized he wouldn’t be able to get back out if he went under the viaduct. We walked back in the neighborhood. I think that was my first time ever at the school. I must have shadowed with my brother there once or twice, I suppose. But the first day I went to Leo as a student, I had to ask the bus driver if that was the school. We stopped at 79th, and I asked if that was Leo, and he said, “You’re going to a school you don’t even know where it’s at.”
I said, “Yeah.” He said, “That’s it.”
“My two oldest brothers went to St. Ignatius. My brother right above me went to Leo. My mom didn’t really like St. Rita at the time because my uncle—her brother—had gone there. My brother [Michael] just didn’t like school. It didn’t matter where he went. A funny story about my first day at Leo, I’m walking past the doorway and I hear: ‘McFarlane.’ I backed up, until I was in the doorway, and it was one of the [football] coaches, Dave Mutter. He grabbed me by the shirt and said: ‘Are you anything like your brother?’ I looked at him and said, ‘Absolutely not.’ That kind of shocked him. He let me go and he said something like, ‘Good for you.’ My brother had a reputation by the time I got to Leo. During my time at Leo, my brother would stop me in the hallway and say, ‘We’re going to the beach. Do you wanna go?’ With his buddies, he would just disappear. I was always afraid to do something like that with my parents.
“I took the Halsted bus when I first started at Leo, and then we had a bus service that started to pick us up. It was close to my house, I had to walk down like five houses to the corner.”

Father William McFarlane '83

This summer it has been my pleasure and pride to pick-up and deliver incoming freshman to Leo High School -one very big lad from Bronzeville and seven gents from Canaryville -One huge black kids and seven hard-scrabble pale-faces from St. Gabe's.  I pick them up between 7-7:25 AM and they are never late and very rarely absent.  My task is merely a cog in a recruitment and marketing machine developed by Leo football coach, admissions director and Father Flanagan to hundreds of Leo Men, Mike Holmes and Leo President Dan McGrath.

Leo High School is a Catholic high school for young men situated in the Gresham neighborhood on 79th Street just west of Halsted ( 7910 S. Sangamon Street -60620).  This iconic lion of a building is home to thousands of men from Chicago's stockyard, industrial and railroad past. Leo was built at the command of George Cardinal Mundelein and under the supervision of Msgr. Peter Shewbridge, pastor of St. Leo Parish, now, closed but still serving veterans through Catholic Charities. The building designed by Joseph McCarthy, lieutenant and disciple of Daniel Burnham went up in 1921;  the school opened in 1926.

Catholics from all over the industrial south side of Chicago sent their sons to Leo High School. which competed huskily with older and more established Mount Carmel, St. Rita and De La Salle. One of the most powerful cadres of talent attended Leo from St. Gabriel Parish in Canaryville.  e.g. Basketball standout James "Bro" Farrell dominated the hardwood floors of local, state and national opponents. St. Gabe's, south of Bridgeport, is the incubator of south side Catholic Chicago.
That is because of a man and an institution - Msgr. Maurice Dorney* and the Chicago Stockyards.

The Chicago Stockyards, St. Gabe's, was home to workers - not the affluent scions of burger families from Lake or DuPage counties who Occupy Chicago with Visa and Mastercards in their wallets - workers who scratched out a living, contributed to their church, built schools and spent their free-time fighting for the eight-hour day.  These workers penned, drovered, killed, butchered, rendered and cleaned every thing on four legs for meat, teeth, bones, marrow hides, horns  to be transformed for America's tables, hairbrushes, buttons, wardrobes and footwear.  They made soap, gelatin, fertilizer and bacon for the Armour, Agar, Cudahy, Swift and Hammond families.  They lost fingers, lungs and lives in the act of building community.   Father Dorney protected their paychecks from gamblers, pimps and thugs and their dignity from Social Darwinism. There is no expressway named for Msgr. Dorney. Dorney was and remains the spirit of Canaryville, That spirit is reflected in the accomplishments past, present and to come by his spiritual children.

Muhammad Ali said that, in his opinion, the greatest boxer of all time was Canaryville boxer Packy McFarland; Chicago White Sox 1st baseman George Moriarty was Canaryville born and bred and would become a Cub and later move to a long career as Detroit Tiger, where he took root as a coach and American League umpire - his grandson ( here with Robert DeNiro)would become one of America's greatest actors and accomplished musician, composer and author Michael Moriarty. Canaryville is home to priests as well as  punchers of pigs and pedestrians.

The south side Catholic union family began in the blood, bones and hides of Canary.  Many of those families became wildly successful and moved from The 'Ville but never out of it. My maternal grandfather was a lather according to his union card, but moreso a Regans Colts shoulder-hitter and utility tough guy for the Cermak/Kelly/Kennelly and Daley Reg'lar Demacrats as well as occasional operative for Ralph Sheldon.  His brother became a priest and labor chaplain - he would give the last rites to Brady, McCarthy ( Leo '67) and Delahanty in Washington D.C. when Jodie Foster's stalker tried to kill President Reagan. Carnaryville seems to be everywhere.

Canaryville is physically and spiritually manifest at Leo High School once again. African American and white Catholic Alumni have worked with Mike Holmes and Dan McGrath for the last three years to give Leo some ethnic diversity - since 1991, Leo High School has been 100% African American. Black alumni behind Mike Holmes have pushed to recruit Hispanic and white students.  Black Alumni Mike Anderson and Mike Lee have teamed with Canaryvillains and Irish Catholic alums Brian Fogarty and Jack Farnan and impressed young white guys from St. Gabe's parish to be Leo Men. Last year Jeff "White Chocolate" X___________ added his see-through Irish pelt to the darker hued Lions.  This year, Leo welcomes seven more Canaryville gentlemen:Tommy, AJ, Brian F, Brian C, Joe C, CK, Mitch C are Leo Men!


My morning's route takes me to Bronzeville, where in the shadow of the Black Doughboy on Martin Luther King Drive at 35th Street, I wait for Daylon F - a mountain of sweetness and innocence packed into 6'3" and change. Daylon is the latest in the many Leo Men from Bronzeville, like Leo Akim Hunter (Leo 2004 & Northwestern University 2008).


 Daylon and I head west past De La Salle Institute and hang a left at Wentworth on the front porch of Comiskey Park ( it will never be The Cell) and head south with this daily admonition from my co-pilot Daylon -" Don't Turn on Root Street and get to swearin' Mr. Hickey."  Architect John Root, for whom the street is named, helped Maurice Dorney build St. Gabriel's Church, school, rectory and convent, as well as affordable housing for the working families - many of whom still call St. Gabe's home more than century later.  We maintain our course to 43rd Street and hang a right westward to Emerald Street and carefully wind around the cul-de-sac lite south to Graham Elementary School parking lot. 


We are usually greeted by this school's engineer Dean Fuller Leo '71 a resident of Canaryville. The red-heads and pale faces load the Ford Van with critiques of the Dunkin Donut selection, " No long-johns?  Don't get powdered, please it's as bad as the nut-sprinkles on them, Mr. Hickey. Just get frosted and we won't have a problem"  Likewise, I get informed about the upcoming Freshman football season, Miss Meany's math and Coach Ed Adams' reading classes.  All of the young men will play football, basketball, baseball and a few will box. They are good students and delightful companions who lack not a jot for self-esteem.  None of them have central air conditioning and universally accept heat.  They are tough kids from Bronzeville amd Canaryville. Daylon's only complaint is the obviously racist hornet who torments his daily drink of water at the public fountain west of the CPS school parking lot.  The Dunkin Donuts have a very short life-span - roughly 43rd Street to 79th Street.

*Saint Gabriel Parish & Elementary School are positioned in the heart of Canaryville, a small community of several third and fourth generation Irish immigrants. The neighborhood is extremely proud of its strong roots to Ireland with family ties running deep and strong in the parish and school. Saint Gabriel is a hidden gem, tucked away amid century old homes and secluded from the neighborhoods surrounding Canaryville.
As Saint Gabriel Parish celebrates its 130th Anniversary, we would like to share how the school and parish began. Many people know that Father Maurice Dorney was St. Gabriel’s first pastor, but did you know… • Father Dorney had the foresight to purchase 20 lots (from 45th to 46th and Lowe) for $500(!) to build the church, school, convent and rectory for Saint Gabriel’s • While pastor, Father Dorney graduated from law school • Also know as “The King of the Yards,” Father was friends to both workingman and company owner, procuring jobs and helping avert strikes • Father Dorney was gifted with a block of stock from the head of National Livestock Bank – after two decades the dividends grew to $68,000, and the money was spend “for the welfare of the church, and assisting in the school’s of Saint Gabriel” • Father Traveled to Ireland in 1887 and was instrumental in the exoneration of Charles Stewart Parnell (champion of home rule for Ireland) who was accused of complicity in a murder.

 http://www.leohighschool.org/
http://www.ottawalife.com/2012/07/moriartys-musings-my-french-symphony/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragen's_Colts
http://www.leohsalumniassoc.com/alumni%20stories/mcfarlane83/mcfarlane.html
http://www.connorcoyne.com/blog/2004/09/back-to-canaryville-blues/
http://saintgabes.com/?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=56
http://www.cyberboxingzone.com/boxing/mcfarland.html

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Be Our Guests! 1%ers March Through Back of the Yards, Canaryville and Bridgeport



 Occupy anti-NATO Commandos in Bridgeport - skin that never met a day's work, God Bless Them.
A band of several dozen protesters marched up Halsted Street this evening from the South Side through Bridgeport, where some engaged in a shouting match with residents.
The marchers, some of whom covered their faces with hoods or bandanas(sic), began their protest at about 51st Street and Halsted, chanting obscenities about police and police brutality.

A few dozen well-heeled, college educated, really sincere and snappily dressed masque-ers sporting button-festooned North Face head wear, American Eagle T-shirts and bandannas marched with a police escort up through the 11th Ward.  From Back of the Yards ( 51st Street) through Canaryville (47th-39th Streets) and Bridgeport up Halsted and past Jackie Schaller's landmark Chicago dining venue Schaller's Pump, America's young  spark-plugs of change paraded their V masks, Ninja costumes, and Indie fashion apparel along with the naughty words of the truly edgy. Like Jane Addams and Dr. Cornelia De Bey in 1904, the Occupy Commandos were protected and served by the Chicago Police Department.

Halsted Street became the  Occupy/Dissident/Anarchist/ Hipster Runway.  We were given a preview of the accessory conscious young, armed with Dad-funded Visa Debit cards and Rage Against the Machine.

I'd bet a shiny new Sacagawea gold dollar that not one of these later-day Mother . . .Joneses could identify the significance of these neighborhoods in the real struggle of working people*. Below are the residents of Canaryville and Bridgeport who fought the real fight on Halsted Street the site of  yesterday's Che fashion stroll
The Residents of Canaryville circa 1904- meat cutters in Armour's & Swift's Packinghouses - one their great grandchildren attends Leo High School - a young man from St. Gabriel's parish in Canaryville.

This is where American Labor, real Labor and not the phony Reds of SEIU, won its spurs by being betrayed by Progressives and buried by Progressive History.  This is where the Jungle happened Cupcakes.  Bridgeport was the home of the real Lithuanian workmen portrayed by Upton Sinclair, another armchair recvolutionary opportunist, as protagonist Jurgis Rudkus and his co-workers. Upton watched the 1904 Amalgamated Meatcutters Strike that shut down the American Meat Packing Industry from July to September in 1904 from the front porch of a previously Packingtown blacklisted Knight of Labor John Joyce and scribbled notes.
Jane Addams, like most Progressives is affluent, imperious and a very well protected species

Dr. Cornelia  De Bey and Jane Addams and her partner at the time Mary Rozet Smith were members of the Chicago Public School Board. Doc Cornelia had another partner.

The March of the Real Workers began at the Meatcutters Hall at 47th & Ashland. Michael Donnelly the President of the Amalgamated Meatcutters held out against the Strikebreakers, Meat Packers and the phony   Out And Proud Progressives Jane Addams and Dr. Cornelia De Bey**.  Read the Chicago Tribune account of the end of the 1904 Strike - you will be required to purchase the articles in true Medill fashion; however the NYT covered the strike very well and praised the work of Father Maurice Dorney of St. Gabriel Parish in Canaryville, giving short shrift to the short-haired women and long-haired Progressives. The New York Times accounts are free.  Ask me nicely, and I might link my privately owned collection of contemporary accounts.
Father Maurice Dorney was a figure of National renown ( NYT reported on his Spanish American War Service and his heroic fight for workers in three national strikes) -try and find any mention of Father Dorney in the much ballyhooed Chicago Encyclopedia.

Too many Americans subsist on a diet of redacted historical bullshit.  Progressive revisionists have erased all traces of genuine social justice fighters.like Father Dorney, John Joyce, the Knights of Labor and actual strikers and given praise and homage to the likes of Jane Addams who sold out the strikers.

Hull House and other Settlement Houses in Hyde Park flourished immediately after the strike was broken.  Michael Donnelly, who called and led the strike, disappeared from Chicago and from history.  Upton Sinclair wrote a swell book.  Teddy Roosevelt got Progressive street cred.  The Strikers got bupkis.



*Packinghouse workers, experiencing horrible working conditions and insufficient wages, sought to secure union recognition as the Amalgamated Meat Cutters. Two long and bloody strikes (1904 and 1921) were defeated by the companies. During both strikes, many African-American workers were temporarily employed to break the strikes. Since Black workers suffered from economic circumstances as desperate as those faced by the striking White workers, and since they were excluded generally from unions and consequently the benefits they would gain from unionization, these so-called "scab" workers felt no loyalty to the strikers or the union. In the aftermath of the two defeats, hostility towards Black workers rose, and Black resentment of Whites increased as well. For years, remembrances of racism and scabbing impaired any effort to create a common front against the packers. 
**When Jane Addams's travels took her away from her close companion Mary Rozet Smith, she sometimes took along a painting of Smith, even though the portrait was a rather bulky piece of luggage. Addams, the Nobel Peace Prize–winning social activist who founded Chicago's Hull-House in 1889, clearly felt a strong emotional attachment to the aristocratic, gracious woman in that picture, which now hangs at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum—with a question mark for a caption.
For the past year, the museum has been seeking suggestions on how to label the portrait, which Addams commissioned from Alice Kellogg Tyler. Should the caption suggest Addams and Smith were companions? Lesbian lovers? Or simply focus on Smith's role as one of Hull-House's most generous financial supporters? This summer, as the museum gets ready to decide, a new WTTW documentary is stepping into the fray and staking out the position that Addams and Smith were lesbians. The producers of Out & Proud in Chicago, Alexandra Silets and Dan Andries, say their film on the history of gays and lesbians in the city wouldn't be complete without Addams. "In not revealing this part of Jane Addams's life, you're denying the rest of us a role model," says Silets, a lesbian.



 http://www.politicalaffairs.net/class-and-race-in-the-us-labor-movement-the-case-of-the-packinghouse-workers/

http://books.google.com/books?id=DW4TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA425&lpg=PA425&dq=Jane+Addams+and+Cornelia+De+Bey&source=bl&ots=dQjc7A18Xg&sig=89nzLwjY4pN7hC4BQE098u4Aws0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hpuzT5bbOabS2QWO6cnpCA&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Jane%20Addams%20and%20Cornelia%20De%20Bey&f=false
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/June-2008/Friends-With-Benefits/

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/tc/xtf/servlet/org.cdlib.xtf.crossQuery.CrossQuery?text=dorney&text-join=or