Free Touch and Go by Studs Terkel Page A

wall? I realize the kicks made no sense; yet they brought back a memory. That obdurate wall had once upon a time been the glass-door entrance to the Wells-Grand Hotel. For years, after we had left, that entrance was unchanged. Gilt-edged letters across the glass proclaimed the name. On the fabled (for me) corner hung the neon sign bearing those sweet words—Wells-Grand.
    During my last kick-time, I ran into a construction worker, the only one left, who was putting some last-minute touches to the masterwork. I said to him, with the prudishness of an old puritanical schoolteacher: “These were once fifty rooms. Do you know who lived there? Working people like you.”
    He simply looked at me for a good while. At last he replied, “Of course I know that. It’s my job.”
    â€œDid you ever wonder about the people you kicked out—how many years ago? Did you ever wonder where they went?”
    â€œOne day,” he casually responded, “these new people will be kicked out, too. This might become a great big office building.”

    He was now lecturing me . Obviously, I got more than I had bargained for.
    The Wells-Grand Hotel of my memory, of my dreams, was not a flophouse. Let’s get that straight. This was in the mid-twenties. There had been a rooming house, my mother, Annie, the proprietress. Now, we had the hotel, my father, Sam, the proprietor. The guests were what I remembered best. Remember, the times were still pretty good. The crash of ’29 had yet to come. During the day, the lobby was empty, men at work: Some of them were old enough to be retired, ex’s. There was Bill Brewer, the ex-carpenter. There was Teddy Tils, dapper and ex-mason: there was Ed Sprague, an ex-something; probably ex–boomer fireman. 12 His work was mostly transient. Many of the guests were Wobblies.
    On weekdays, the lobby was empty save for a few ex’s playing cribbage or hearts, the rest off sauntering in Lincoln Park. Teddy was often kidded, due to his Old World courteous manners, of making time with the wealthy old dowagers of the Near North Side. Bill Brewer loved shooting pool at two and a half cents a cue. 13 “Billiards is my game. I once played with Willie Hoppe.” (Hoppe was a billiards wizard; the world champion, for many years.) As for Sprague, his daily fare consisted of dead man’s stew—a bowl of hot milk with bread dipped in it. Most of his teeth had been knocked out during the Seattle General strike of 1919. He had been a Wobbly, of course. At night, Saturday afternoons and Sundays, the guests crowded into our lobby. To me, at the time, the room seemed immense. When I visited it years later, I saw that the lobby was the size of an ordinary men’s hotel room. The Abe Lincoln portrait (photographed by Matthew Brady) was still hanging askew. The September Moon calendar was still there. On Sundays, the men would express their worship of Eros rather than Jesus, with the girls on Orleans Street, two blocks west. On Sundays, those cribs were standing room only. Remember, my father ran the hotel, bum ticker or not,
and Ben and I were his associates. My mother had to do something. For a time, she resumed dressmaking.
    A guest whom we called Civilization was the center of our attention. He worked as a pearl diver—a dishwasher—during the day at Mike Legda’s diner down below, the Victoria. All of Civilization’s spare time, and I mean all , was expended in letter writing. He used a pencil whose nub was always wearing down, and his markings were something of an ordeal to make out. His stationery was lined paper torn from some old composition books. His letters, running to twenty or so penciled pages, were his prescriptions for a better world. He described himself as a Czech intellectual. Among his correspondents were Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, Henry Ford, Mahatma Gandhi, and Oscar Wilde. Not one had the courtesy to reply.