"L"

HT 99 Pam Rasmussen DownWeUs Street on the west side of Chicago's Loop, the "L," the city's stalwart old public transit train, rattles past the Merchandise Mart, crosses the Chicago River, and clatters past parking lots and doughnut shops, including the ghost ofthe once-famous Pixley and EUers, for years home to the cheapest cup of coffee in Chicago. My father had his cruller and coffee there for a decade before walking the half block over to the old Chicago Mercantile Exchange building on Franklin Street. And for the duration of that decade, he steadily complained that no sooner did he set down his notquite -empty cup than a waitress whisked it away and plunked a check, as coolly as a sheriffserving a summons. Of course my father knew the restaurant 's trade depended on volume, on how many cheap cups of coffee it could turn over in an hour. He also knew if you wanted to pay 75 cents, you could go another block down Madison Street to the café of the old Bismarck Hotel and sit for hours while dirndl-clad waitresses refilled your cup and let you have aU the cream and sugar you wanted. But he was stubborn, and I think he enjoyed the ritual of the morning battle for his coffee cup. After he'd retired, he finaUy admitted that the skirmishes for sovereignty over his coffee sharpened him up for the frenzy of trading in the cattle and egg pits which he dominated for many years by the sheer force of his size and his stentorian voice—one that could sometimes drown out the sound of the closing beU on the trading floor. He also confessed , with a note ofpride, that he'd never tipped a waitress in aU the years he had breakfasted at Pixley and EUers, a feat that in his mind evened the score with the restaurant for aU of those half-finished cups of coffee. Pixley and EUers finaUy and grudgingly gave way to the early fast-food franchises popping up alongside the gloomy midways under the tracks, and the ersatz milkmaids at the Bismarck hotel found work elsewhere when the old place was torn down to make way for a Blockbuster store. ? 28 Pam R^asmussen29 My earliest and indelible memories of the Chicago "L" took place in my childhood. Twice a year my mother used to take my brother, Peter, and me downtown: once at Christmas to see the store windows along State Street and to have lunch under the giant Christmas tree in the Walnut Room at Marshall Field's, and once at Easter to shop for the hats, coats, and new shoes my father insisted on for the two Easters my family celebrated. First there was "regular" Easter at St. Nicholas, an old red-bricked Catholic parish to which my mother belonged. EventuaUy, we spent several years in its elementary school over my father's loud objections that its Franciscan nuns were unholy aberrations of nature. He finaUy yielded, worn down by my mother's stubbornness, based largely on her own fond memories ofCatholic boarding school and her peculiar notion that the Chicago Public Schools were blackboard jungles from which my brother and I were sure to emerge with switchblades and prison records. "Regular" Easter was sedate, full ofcloying smeUs from banks oflilies and eye-watering incense. Weather permitting, polite conversation with other famflies on the stairs outside the old cathedral foUowed mass, along with inevitable scrutiny from a pair of elderly nuns, Sister Berthilde and Sister LudmiUa, who were always scouting for new blood for the parochial school and who looked longingly upon my brother and me. My brother's proper navy suit and my starched ruffles could not alter the fact that in the eyes of these nuns we were little more than heathens in need ofthe civilizing influences of catechism and choir practice. It was to this missionary vision that my mother indentured us, rebutting our complaints about ugly school uniforms , daily morning mass, and torture from black-hearted nuns by insisting that discipline was good for us and that we would appreciate CathoUc schooling when we got older. We never...