CULTURE
On the Street Doing Life
By Anne Keegan
There’s nothing easy about the West Side of Chicago. It is alert even when it sleeps. It is tense even when it naps. Early mornings are not soft, they are simply empty. Twilight does not come gentle, like a balm for what has been that day but more as an anxious portent of what will come that night.
“The West Si-I-I-I-de.” There is a rhythm to the way you say it, letting the last word slide. There is a rhythm to the way life ebbs and flows here, different from the rest of the city, as if life here is determined by the spell of a separate moon, with its own tides. They walk a little different and talk a little different out here.
West Siders can spot each other anywhere. It is a small town inside a big city. This part of town wakes up when the rest of the city shuts down and goes to sleep. And it sleeps when the rest of the city is bleary and catching the morning bus.
It has hard working people and down home grandmothers from the South with grandchildren lost to the corner life. It has drug dealers, old time junkies, forgotten musicians, unpublished poets, too many unwed mothers and desperate teenagers. It has absent fathers, illiterate high school drop-outs who will never hold a job in their lives and hucksters of all kinds. It has produced kids who somehow have gone somewhere--on to college and luckily escaped--and then thousands who have gone nowhere, lost in the morass of the streets. It has a sense of humor, a natural ability to laugh from deep down inside and not care about tomorrow. It also has a violent temper triggered by dark repressions. It can dance all night and sleep til noon. It can weep and mourn and then soon, forget.
If the West Side could be embodied in the soul of a man, he’d gamble and take his losses without crying; he’d smoke a good cigar on his last three bucks and he’d give you a wink when he passed you on the street.
The West Side has one of the highest concentrated crime rates in the world. It contains one of the busiest and most violent police districts in Chicago. It is an old time district that used to be called Fillmore. Still is. But the official name is now Harrison. This is where a young policeman named Mike Cronin wanted to work when he got out of the academy more than three decades ago. And this is where he went and happily stayed….
Jerry Did His Beef In The Chair
On many a warm summer night, and even when there is a slight chill, Jerry will sit on the corner with Blue and listen to the night sounds. They become less blurred and more distinct once twilight fades and dark descends. Jerry cocks an ear and listens. He knows those night sounds well. He once was a player of the night. His youthful adrenalin pumped with the nightly call to action-- the ripping and running of a young man, strong, defiant, unencumbered by fear or hindered by rules. He could catch the distinct tenor of male voices down on the corner challenging each other on a Friday night. He recognized the degree of urgency in the rhythm of footsteps through a gangway. He was instinctively alert to the bumpity- bump beat of a banged up police squad pulling into the alley. He could tell the caliber of the gun when shots were fired two blocks away...their sharp crackle measuring from major to minor. The night and it's sounds used to send him into motion...as if the West Side after dusk was an orchestra and he the dancer who knew all the steps.
Although the music continues, louder and stronger than ever each night, Jerry can now only listen. He can't dance to the tune anymore. Not because, at 39, he is too old for the streets. But because from the waist down, he is paralyzed from a bullet that burrowed into his spine.
But he still can listen each summer night to the West Side's calamitous symphony. He does it from his wheel chair with his sidekick Blue. He knows what the music is saying... he's just not a part of it anymore. The new dance troupe has forgotten him.
Cronin remembered this old time dancer. And he stopped his squad car when he saw him on the corner. He remembered that Jerry was sticking up a gas station at Taylor and Sacramento when he got shot back in 1972. He remembered that during the hold up Jerry shot and killed a man working there. He remembers that Jerry went to the joint for what he did.
"What are you doing out here, my man?," asked Cronin.
"Just talking to the fellahs," said Jerry. "Hell, nothing else to do."
"Funny, I don't see no fellahs around," said Cronin. "And you... what's your name," Cronin said turning to the sidekick.
"My name Blue, you remember me Cronin," said Blue. "You got me over there couple of years ago on armed robbery.
"You ain't sitting on no guns, are you Jerry?" asked Cronin.
"I don't carry no gun, Cronie. I'm not allowed to carry no gun, " said Jerry.
"That's right. You been to the joint."
"I did ten and a half years, Cronin. For murder," said Jerry "I got twenty to sixty but I did ten and a half years. And I did the beef in this chair."
"You killed a guy during a stick-up right, I remember," said Cronin.
"Now this is actually what happened. I could never prove it. And I could still sue for this but...they twisted it around Cronin. I wasn't doing no hold up. They said I stuck up a gas station and killed the guy and got shot doing it. But I got stuck up and robbed for $8.50 and shot besides. They twisted it around on me, Cronin. And I had to do that beef in this chair."
"Are you a Black Soul?" Cronin asked, trying to recall.
"Am I a Black Soul? I founded the Black Souls."
"My man, were you a Black Soul when you were in the joint?"
"I started the Black Souls. Me and Pee Wee. Pee Wee got killed right behind me. Matter of fact, it wasn't even a week after I got shot he died. There was a hit out on us back then and I was trying to get out of town when I got shot."
"Yeah, you were trying to get enough money to leave town,"
said Cronin.
Jerry chuckled and made no reply.
"So if you are an old time chief, and the founder of the Black Souls, did you go to Big C's birthday party he threw for himself last week on the south side?" asked Cronin. "He's a big time Black Soul now."
"I did," said Blue .
"I didn't," said Jerry quietly. "I was home in bed watching HBO. But I got the scoop. I heard they were serving Dom Perignon."
"They were serving ribs, meatballs, chicken wings and shit," said Blue. "You had to bring the Dom Perignon for the birthday boy not for you."
"Yeah, and everybody on the invitation list was a dope dealer," said Cronin."The girls were users. The men were sellers and those not selling were using. This was a dope dealers party. Not like the old days, right Jerry, when gangs didn't mix. Now gangs mix because dope is dope, right?"
"I hear you," said Jerry. "And dope don't have no gang colors".
"That's right," said Cronin, "cause money is all green."
Jerry stopped for a minute and turned his head toward some sounds coming from the alley.
"So, why you out here now? You're an old man for this stuff," said Cronin.
"I sit here and listen, Cronin, that's all I can do now," said Jerry. "Don't play no more."
"He like a celebrity to us when they stop," said Blue.
"Oh? And who stops? Who gives a penny to him when they drive by? Who even knows his name anymore," said Cronin.
"See," said Blue, "he like a little celebrity to them now I guess cause he is paralyzed and when they see him they stop and give him a holler."
"A holler my ass," said Cronin. "There's nobody stopping here. The young players aren't anywhere around and they don't care. Celebrity? The streets don't remember celebrities any longer than tomorrow. You know, my man. You may remember being a chief of the Black Souls but these home boys were in diapers back then and the young Black Souls don't remember you. You're riding in a wheel chair and they are riding past you in Cadillacs. They ain't giving you no holler. They ain't giving you shit."
"I hear ya, Cronin," said Jerry, looking not at the policeman but wistfully down the street. "I hear ya straight."
"Blue?" he said, turning to his faithful sidekick. But Blue's hands were already on the handles of his wheelchair and his foot was kicking off the brake. "Blue," he said. "Let's try another corner before it get too cold and too late."
Editor’s Note: Mike Cronin worked as a gang crimes specialist until two and a half years ago when Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline tapped him to command the department’s two most elite units – gangs and narcotics. He retired in November 2006, after 35 years on the street, and returned last month, at Mayor Daley’s request, to serve as a consultant to the units he had commanded.
The above is an excerpt from Anne Keegan’s new book “On The Street Doing Life” now available online at Authorhouse.
