Free Touch and Go by Studs Terkel

up to his full height, he’d threaten to take on “a dozen of you Mediterraneans.”
    My favorite of all was the gentle Miss Olive Leekley, who was not merely our Latin teacher (she insisted it be pronounced softly Lat-hin, which came easily because she was so thoughtful of every-one’s
feelings. She even passed the young oaf who suggested that Nero was a southpaw with the Boston Red Sox.).
    Most important, she was our debating coach. Each school had an affirmative side and a negative. At McKinley, I had suddenly developed a case of logorrhea, and I was on both sides. The favorite topic was, of course: Resolved, the Death Penalty Shall Be Abolished. There was no honor. The students did the choosing and the ’42s saw to it that I did well. They attended all the debates in which I appeared. I think of what I might have been, had I gone along with the law and maintained my friendship with the ’42s. I might have been Sidney Korshak—Mr. Clout. When Senator Estes Kefauver, a genuine public servant, headed a committee investigating the Mob, Korshak saw to it that he stepped out. Korshak had everything on everyone. Oh, when I was on the negative, I was a small boy Torquemada . I’m not sure I came out for quartering or the rack, yet some of these buggers had to be punished. I do remember saying as a grotesque small-boy epilogue: “Of course, I didn’t mean it.” “Oh yeah?” said one my ’42s classmates. “Why not?”

6
    The Hotel
    O n the southeast corner of Wells Street and Grand Avenue is an imposing three-story building of condominiums: nine spacious, elegantly appointed apartments that frequently make the style sections of our daily newspaper. The occupants, a couple of indeterminate age, seated, oh, so casually, smile in the manner prescribed by a celebrated local photographer. (Once upon a time, I had run into the camera master and asked him if Cartier-Bresson had any influence on his work. “No,” he replied. “Annie Liebowitz.”)
    Below is a four star Moroccan restaurant, whose fare is North African-cum-French—or it’s changed hands and serves Italian-cum-Californian, but the prices are always high. Each time I passed this corner, I paused, trying to recall what this place once was, and kicked at the wall of the rather opulent entrance. The doorman always appeared discombobulated, as a seventy-five-year-old (the occurrences were twenty or so years before this writing) and obviously decrepit old bum limped away.
    I was, at three score and fifteen, only performing what was the usual ritual. For me, what was once a native habitat had become alien turf. The transformation that had been happening gradually, SUVesque, seemed so sudden.
    Yes, the Wells-Grand area had once been a near-north neighborhood of sorts. Italian was the predominant ethic, though it was ecumenical
in the sharing of hard times. Yes, two blocks east was Clark. It was the strip that could reasonably be described as Skid Row East.
    I stepped inside about thirty years ago, ages after we had sold the hotel, the lease; the building itself had been owned by H.L. Flentye, a rigid ultraconservative but an honest, decent landlord. The hotel had become SRO (single-room occupancy). I, for sentimental reasons, had visited from time to time and been quite satisfied. In the still quite neat lobby, I heard an elderly guest querulously wonder where “the jokes” were. The jokes. He didn’t ask for “the funnies” or “the comics.” I felt the place was in good hands. I was made aware of the SRO veterans being given three months’ notice before being booted out. Where will they go? I had the temerity to ask this of one of the developers with whom I had become acquainted. “Out there.” He pointed west, vaguely. It was more of a genial wave.
    What, you may ask, made me, some twenty years ago, at seventy-five, sprain my foot against the brick of the