Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [10]
Saturday nights I’m out even later than usual. My TV shows do not end until 3:00 or 4:00 A.M., after which I take my guests to breakfast – at the intimate Club Alabam, perhaps, or the Singapore, two of my favorite places. With a Monday column to check I do not get much extra sleep on Sundays, and even less during the football season. My broadcasts of the Bears’ games take me from coast to coast, which can mean that I have to catch an early-morning jet. When that happens I may get no sleep at all.
With this schedule, when is there time for family life?
This worried my first boss, the late Times publisher, S. Emory Thomason. “Everything okay at home?” he’d ask when we met. “Be sure you spend enough time with your family.” Following his advice was not easy, but by developing such habits as eating dinner at home almost every night, I’ve managed to enjoy some family life, too. Long ago my family became accustomed to my routine, and to such quirks as my eating dinner in pajamas.
The pajamas habit is the result of a tip from Lou Lurie, ex-Chicago newsboy who made a fortune in real estate and now is known as “Mr. San Francisco.”
“When you’ve been going at a fast pace,” he told me, years ago, “get into pajamas as soon as you get home, and don’t get dressed again until you have to. You’ll feel much more relaxed.” It works.
Sounds like a whirl? Or a grind?
It’s both. But it is the only way I know to get that column in the newspaper every morning with all the gossip, entertainment, conscience, and heart it deserves. And it is the only way to keep up with Chicago, a city that never sleeps.
2. Capone to the Cardinal
When Chicago became a town in 1833, there were thirteen voters. Twelve voted to incorporate, one was opposed. That’s typical – in Chicago there is always an individualist in the crowd. “Independent as a hog on ice” is how Carl Sandburg described it. This spirit of individualism, part of our frontier heritage, is a vital factor in making the city what it is. And what it is, according to the detractors, is merely a 225-square-mile steel and concrete lump on the prairie. But according to one of our favorite sons, writer John Bartlow Martin, now United States Ambassador to the Dominican Republic, Chicago, celebrating its 125th anniversary as a city in 1962, is “the most American of cities.”
What makes Chicago special? What does it have that other cities lack?
Nothing. The ingredients are common – but the proportions are different. And, as the Frenchman said, “Vive la différence!” A unique blend of bigness, smallness, brashness, reserve, refinement, and naughtiness, found nowhere else in the world – is Chicago.
It’s a city with a stimulating, friendly, going-places atmosphere.
It’s a city where things happen: election triumphs and public frauds; political conventions dating from the time of Abraham Lincoln to that of Richard M. Nixon; legendary courtroom scenes, such as Clarence Darrow’s impassioned defense of young Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb; celebrated sports events-including a few scandals, such as the Dempsey-Tunney “long count” or the “Say it ain’t so, Joe” Black Sox World Series; revolutionary breakthroughs in scientific fields, such as Lee De Forest’s basic inventions in electronics, or the first controlled nuclear coups; and horrible disasters, such as the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the Iroquois Theater fire of 1903, and the fire that killed 93 children at Our Lady of Angels School in 1958.
But events don’t make a city. People do. They are what shapes Chicago’s personality and reputation. They are the daily grist for my reportorial mill – and the heroes and heroines of this book.
As befits a city of individualists, there has been an unending