The Midway

 

And so I'm back in Chicago, once my home long ago, so long ago I barely remember it as it was when we left it a when I was five, also so long ago.  Since then I've been here many times as a visitor, now an aging one, sore from walking distances which made no difference once and now are daunting.

It's been whipped by an impressive snow storm, and recently whipped through the antics of an elderly cousin of an ape-like creature whose white-box haircut, wrinkled, corroded orange-tinted skin and feeble efforts at displays of chest-pounding render him ridiculous.  But he's malicious, and like Tiberius in his dotage is prone to cruelty he confuses with strength.  And so he sends sad creatures in para-military garb to harass those they may even here, unasked for and unwanted; has motorboats destroyed by the most powerful military in the world; and spends his time threatening a much weaker nation, all while racking in money wrinkled hand over swollen foot.

But Chicago survives and so do I.  Despite the posturing and the real violence, and the storm, downtown is crowded with tourists as it has been for years. This won't change as it's a real city, The Great American City.  No Bordello-Chic as the White House now displays. It knows con men well, and gangsters, and isn't fooled where others have been by cheap imposters.

At the Palmer House real history was made.  Real Presidents stayed here.  The Reno hearings after the Battle of the Little Bighorn took place here.  Custer stayed here on his way to  his death and the mutilation of his troops by the Sioux and Cheyenne.  The real won't be displaced by gaudy fraud or fraudsters.