Naked Ghosts, Stewardesses & Sandburg Village at Night

Posted on December 30, 2010 by jacullman

In the fall of 1969 my older sister Lorraine moved into her first apartment on the twenty-fifth floor of a brand new, gleaming, glass walled high-rise. It was part of the Sandburg Village housing development named after the writer who called Chicago the “hog butcher for the world.” Funded with government and private money, it was supposed to serve a mix of low-income and middle-class tenants, but the only people who could afford to live there were young college graduates and singles with good jobs. My sister’s building was one of the first in a collection of skyscrapers, low rises, four-plus-ones and townhouses that slowly replaced the SRO’s and vacant lots covering acres of land between LaSalle and Clark, running from North Avenue to Division Street.

I was eleven that year, and felt like I’d outgrown Halloween until Lorraine turned my head by inviting me and my friend Babette over for dinner and an evening of trick-or-treating. Instead of going house-to-house shivering in the cold,  the prospect of hitting thirty floors, multiple apartments on each – without a wrinkle in our costumes – proved to be irresistible  — even to this worldly fifth grader.

So it was with great expectations that Babette and I arrived at my sister’s that night. And we weren’t disappointed. A cardboard skeleton greeted us at the door. Inside, orange crepe paper streamers criss-crossed the ceiling.  A tablecloth with black cats arching their backs and witches flying on brooms covered Lorraine’s desk. Black paper plates, napkins, matching plastic utensils, and a platter of sugar cookies rested on top.

The floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows displayed a spectacle one could only appreciate in Chicago:  a panoramic vista of three flats as far as the eye could see, their roofs reflecting the shimmering, golden autumn sunset.

When we finished our supper my sister lit a pair of black tapered candles while we mapped our strategy. It was simple:  Babette and I would start on the top floor and work our way down the building, using the hallway stairs. We’d empty our bags “as needed” in Lorraine’s apartment, a short elevator ride away.

Thoughts of candy mountains danced through my head as we grabbed our supplies and marched toward the stairwell door.  But just as I reached for the aluminum doorknob, the lights went out, plunging the hallway into darkness. We returned to my sister’s apartment.  Only the telephone worked, and a call to the doorman revealed that a  Com Ed transformer had exploded and it was anyone’s guess when the electricity would be restored.

While I was working through my disappointment about the aborted trick-or-treating mission,  Babette started to cry because she was frightened of the dark. It made me wish I’d never invited her because the fun could be salvaged if we viewed this development as an adventure. That’s what flashlights were for. I mentioned this to Lorraine, who offered an emphatic “no” to my suggestion.

Moments later we heard voices in the hallway.  Lorraine opened her door to reveal…the neighbors! Introductions were made, and the next thing I knew, we were in the midst of a party at a bona-fide “bachelor pad.”

The host, an airline pilot (in uniform — not a costume) who smelled like whiskey, offered to get me and my crying friend a beer, which made my friend cry even harder. We settled for Cokes.  Several pretty women in stewardess uniforms hovered around Babette, trying to comfort her while someone in the bathroom was smoking a disgustingly smelly cigarette which made me cough. Babette finally calmed down a bit, sniffled and quietly eyed our surroundings while she slurped her Coke through a straw. I was bored and hoped the lights would come on soon so we could squeeze in a few floors of trick-or-treating before my parents came to get us.

Then the ghosts arrived – in the form of six intoxicated adults wearing sandals and bed sheets. It turned out they were cast members from the musical Hair that was playing at the Schubert Theater in the Loop.  They were heading out to a party when the electricity went off.  From the way they looked, the festivities had started many hours earlier. Their leader, clearly male judging from his deep voice and hairy legs, was bumping around the cramped apartment before he flopped down on the carpet next to me.

“I don’t have any eye holes” he said. It was true…his Marimekko bed sheet was completely intact, making him a sightless, daisy sprinkled, ghost. “I need help. Will you design my costume?”

“Sure!” I said.

Someone handed me a pair of scissors.  I expected Ghost Man to take off his sheet so I could get to work, but he insisted I make the costume while he was still wearing it. Although I managed to oblige his wishes, it was not my best effort, and the eye holes ended up ragged and off-center. Nonetheless, Ghost Man seemed satisfied with the result. Anyway, I had a good excuse for poor workmanship. And he had a very good reason for not removing the sheet. He was completely naked underneath.

My sister who had been nowhere in sight, suddenly appeared, holding a flashlight.

“It’s time for you and Babette to go. Mom and dad are supposed to pick you up at ten-thirty.”

Babette wiped her nose on her sleeve and got up. We said goodbye to our host who was mixing drinks in the small kitchen. Tears started to roll down Babette’s cheeks when she realized we would be walking down 25 flights of stairs in the dark, so my sister led us in a rousing chorus of  “One-hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall” all the way to the first floor. Actually it was more like “Two-hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall” because we were pretty slow.

As we pushed through the revolving door into the cold October night, I could see the shadowy outline of my parents inside their car in the blackness. Babette and I scooted into the back seat while my sister recounted the events of the evening in the most generic of terms because, as both she and I knew, the folks would not be thrilled to hear what their eleven-year-old and her over-sheltered friend had been exposed to.

Suddenly, the lights burst on and the glass building, illuminated the entire street like the Palmolive beacon! Gradually the lobby filled with people heading out for the remainder of the night, and Lorraina left Babette and I in the custody of our parents.

My father turned the key in the ignition and was about to pull away from the curb, when a gaggle of spirits drifted in front of our car. The headlights passed right through Ghost Man’s designed-by-me sheet, revealing his silhouette and more.

“Look at those disreputable people!” my mother exclaimed as Ghost Man and his ghost friends wandered off to their party.

*Image courtesy of Chicago History Museum, ICHi-37474, Photographer – Calvin Hutchinson Photography.
*names changed.
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My Mother’s Strange Rendezvous with Richard Nixon

Posted on December 30, 2010 by jacullman

In November 1968 my parents, sister and I made our annual Thanksgiving trip to Manhattan to visit my senile-but-favorite grandmother, Bobby. She was withering away in a very small-but-immaculate apartment in an elegant building on Park Avenue. It was the kind of building where a man in a fine wool suit could walk his wife’s miniature poodle through the lobby on the way to a pay phone around the corner, so he could place a call to his mistress. And old ladies in fluffy fur coats carried itsy bitsy black purses with enough room for a lipstick, a hankie and a couple of quarters for “The Help.”

It was always an experience to see Grandma Bobby because I never knew what to expect… sometimes she couldn’t remember what city she was in, or what language to speak (and she spoke a lot of them).  Other times, she would open the door, and offer me a “‘Coke-ahh-Cola’ and cottage cheese” – my favorite foods.

Once, when she wasn’t at her best, she let a pair of jewel thieves into her apartment because she thought they were my father and his brother. Then she served them something to eat and drink while the housekeeper was bound and gagged in the bedroom. They only got away with ginger ale and ham sandwiches because she didn’t have any valuables.

We used to get a lot of interesting phone calls from the NYPD back at home in Chicago, but my uncle lived only a half-hour away from Grandma Bobby, so he usually handled things.

Since there wasn’t room for all of us at my grandmother’s, we routinely stayed at a hotel.  This time we found ourselves at the Pierre on the Upper East Side. Coincidentally, the Pierre Hotel also happened to be the transition headquarters for President Elect Richard Nixon.

From the minute the cab deposited us in front of the building, I knew we were in for an adventure. We entered the lobby, passing through a gauntlet of reporters in trench coats, technicians holding microphones on long poles and a small cluster of heavy, black, film cameras perched on tripods. Inside, swarms of men wearing navy blue suits, whispered into walkie-talkies. Some just stood around, trying to look like regular hotel guests.  And while my father checked-in, a fleet of limousines followed by a line of police cars and motorcycles, sirens wailing, pulled into the driveway.

As the bellman rolled the luggage cart through the hallway to our room, I noticed several thick black cables snaking along the baseboards and the ceiling, all of which terminated in the room next to ours.  Even stranger was the sight of the large wooden desk flanked by two law enforcement agents in jackets, ties and shoulder holsters, sitting in straight backed chairs, right outside our door. It turned out we were Henry Kissinger’s neighbors. And they were his 24-hour security detail.

As happy as I was to see my grandmother, the hotel was suddenly where I wanted to be. Every time we came or went, something seemed to happen. Not to mention that fact I was in total awe of Henry Kissinger’s agents. They were at their post when we left in the morning, and when we returned after dinner. They were there while we slept at night. And they were there whenever I felt like opening our door to pester them with questions like: Who was the most famous person you’ve EVER guarded? Did you ever have to shoot anyone? Can you take your gun out of the holster???…..Pleeeeese????  I swear I won’t touch it!

When not in the hallway annoying the agents, I was in the bedroom, holding an inverted glass to the wall trying to amplify the sounds coming from Kissinger’s room, hoping to get wind of some Top Secret Information. Although I never heard anything, I did ride with him in the elevator on one occasion, where he said in a German accent, “I have a son about your age.”

My mother who voted for Nixon, and who yelled nightly at the television set while watching William Buckley and Gore Vidal yell at each other, knew what she wanted. She was determined to meet the President Elect.  And she wanted ME to meet him, too. I wasn’t opposed to her plan, but I was perfectly satisfied talking to the inscrutable members of law enforcement who were sitting right outside our room. And there was a logistical problem. Whenever Nixon’s limousine pulled in front of the hotel, security would clear the lobby by kicking people out of the building, or by sending them upstairs in the elevators (depositing them on random floors).

After several near misses, my mother used her dubious charms on somebody at the concierge desk, and one afternoon, this person called our room and told her to get down to the lobby ASAP because Nixon was about to leave his suite on the 39th  floor.

We reached the lobby just as Nixon, along with a group of blue suited men exited another elevator and headed toward the revolving doors to leave. Who knows which notorious characters from the future administration might have been in that group? Haldeman? Erlichman, Mitchell?

So we got to see the president’s back, which was fine with me, but not mother. Oh, nooooo…she had to say something which caused Nixon to take a sharp 180 degree turn from the rest of the group and head straight for us, his security people chasing after him.  They did not look happy.  After Nixon shook my hand, he said, “Why, young lady, aren’t you in school?” It was an odd remark considering it was Thanksgiving.

Barely four years later, in August of 1972, my mother steered our mud colored Buick Century past the empty storefronts along South Michigan Avenue as we listened to Nixon give his farewell speech over the radio. She was crying so hard, that a squad car pulled her over for erratic driving.

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Adventures in Public Relations

Posted on December 28, 2010 by jacullman

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Although I was barely out of college, having never worked in a “real” office before, it didn’t take more than a day on the job for me to realize that the firm of Goldwynn, Shipp and Sullivan* had been out of the PR business for a very long time. At best, Howard Goldwynn’s dwindling roster of clients were sticking with him out of obligation, pity, sentiment or most likely, because they didn’t even realize that he was still representing their companies.

He was very tall, very old and very bald – like a human Jiminy Cricket in his three-piece suit (minus the spats and the top hat). His face was dwarfed by oversized, black framed glasses. A few wispy strands of flossy white hair lay placidly across his age-freckled head.

Mr. Goldwyn spent most of his days acting the role of a feudal landlord – hovering over a motley group of small time entrepreneurs and elderly retired businessmen who rented the empty desks and offices that had once been workspaces for G S & S employees when it was a powerhouse PR firm that handled press for a Major Movie Studio and other big time clients.

And the characters who passed through the doors of G S & S were an interesting and varied bunch: there was Myrna, an eccentric, Japanese woman who was an artist’s rep – who only wore white. Then there was the tall, extremely dapper African American gentleman who described himself as a Movie Producer with a “Big Deal” in the works — with a Major Star (he was not at liberty to divulge the identity) who was “under contract.”

Another desk squatter was a sad specimen – a man who had clearly been fired from a lot of jobs and had worked his way down and out of many respectable corporations. He was trying to sell ad space in a start-up magazine. But every morning he arrived in a pungent cloud of aftershave, his breath smelling of vodka, and he became increasingly incoherent and disheveled as the day progressed. 

In the ritzy window offices were the retirees — Mr. Atlas, Mr. Guthrey, Mr. Matus — lawyers, mostly. Like Goldwynn, they were using the space to have somewhere to go, for companionship and to retain a sense of importance and purpose.

But the most notorious tenant was Jane Byrne, Chicago’s first lady mayor, who had recently been defeated in her run for a second term at City Hall. She had a nice office with a great view — and two sweet, gregarious and doting middle-aged assistants who came in twice a week to pick up her mail.

What was my job? Mostly to provide a friendly voice to answer calls and take messages, and perform some light bookkeeping and typing for Goldwynn and his renters. Under ordinary circumstances this would be an easy gig — after all, how much is there to do in a sleepy office populated with part-timers and retirees?

Unfortunately the aged and decrepit infrastructure of the office paired with Goldwynn’s diminished mental capacity and vile temperament presented some unanticipated challenges.

The typewriters were the old fashioned black Royal manuals (retro cool!), yet the old man banned the use of any kind of correction tape or White Out. One small typo on a two-page letter meant re-typing the entire document from scratch. Perfectly. Should Goldwynn have a change of heart about the wording in one of his eloquent missives? Complete re-write.  

Adding to the long list of technological deficiencies was the fact that he was too cheap to buy a photocopier — instead, he favored the messy, smudgy, smelly duplicates rendered by 1940’s “state of the art” reproduction technology…… carbon paper! Forgot to load the carbon paper onto the platen? RETYPE THE LETTER! A one page thank-you note could occupy the entire day – and if the old man changed his mind about a word here or there, the task could exhaust reams of paper – as well as my patience.

switchboard-operator

In addition to my typing woes, there was the ongoing mortal battle with the antique switchboard that routinely disconnected calls, created unintended party lines and was the subject of frequent visits from the perplexed Illinois Bell repairman who would disappear into the supply closet for an hour and emerge grasping a handful of colorful wires while shaking his head, declaring that he hadn’t seen this system in at least “twenty years.”

Goldwynn couldn’t remember when he dipped into the cash reserves to tip bicycle messengers, or the building’s Super, or to purchase the all-important rubber bands he needed for some reason. So another time-filling activity was the “Who Stole The Petty Cash?” game — followed closely by the “You Broke The Postage Meter!” challenge.

When the need arose (just about every week), Goldwynn would send me on a fruitless scavenger hunt in the old file cabinets for his Movie Studio correspondence from the 1940’s which he used to write his friends’ obituaries. These disorganized, messy, file cabinets held an amazing trove of old movie stills and press releases and personal letters to- and from- the stars, and having just graduated from college with a minor in film history, I could have spent days amusing myself just reading them.

Since the files were in a logical order only the old man could understand, it was never a simple task for me to find what he needed. Goldwynn wore crepe soled shoes, and if he sensed I was spending too much time at the files, he would silently creep up behind my back and declare, “No wonder you can’t finish that letter! Hrumph!” Then he’d dig into a random drawer where he’d locate the precise document he was seeking.

But the entertainment didn’t stop there! Oh, no….there were always amusing mini-dramas that played out in the background, while I was re-typing letters and wrestling with the antique office equipment. Just enough to keep things lively.

Goldwynn spent at least an hour on the phone each day, schmoozing older reporters into writing stories about his washed-up (former) clients, and calling his few living friends to gossip and make lunch plans. Mostly he enjoyed terrorizing the obituary writers at the large daily papers (usually beginner cub reporters) since they seemed to receive the vast body of his work — and were most intimidated by his rants.

Frequent offenses involved misspelling the deceased’s name, cause of death and location of the funeral.  Inevitably all these egregious errors were reproduced from the very material he‘d submitted. When this fact was brought to his attention, usually by an irate editor, Goldwynn would locate his carbon copy, check to verify who was at fault, and call the poor reporter back with a sweet sounding, grandfatherly, yet face-saving apology: “So sorry for the trouble, my ‘girl’ made the mistake…..” (that would be me!)

But relief came every Wednesday in the form of his weekly luncheon at the Tavern Club in the penthouse of the office building. Frequent honored guests included old geezer reporters from the Ben Hecht days of yore, doddering entertainers in town performing in the latest version of “Sugar Babies” and a smattering of elderly retired lawyer types who seemed impressed by the other attendees. They would all convene at our offices to drop off their trench coats and briefcases, and wool Homburg hats before taking the elevator upstairs to lunch. 

homburg-hat

*All names changed;-)  **photo credits: Lee Bey & Gentlemen’s Emporium

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