Breakdown in Gilman

The sign on the interstate triggered an ancient memory, and my mind drifted back almost 40 years to my college days. Actually, to the very day I moved from my parents’ home for the last time.

I was making the break. I was out on my own, a free man on the freeway, heading south toward Southern Illinois and independence.

It was 1972, and the Volkswagen bug that my Dad had given to me was loaded down with all of my earthly belongings. I was leaving Chicago, my hometown, and my parents, and I took everything I would need to survive in this world — stereo equipment (with those huge speakers), crates of record albums (remember, this was before cassette tapes), boxes of books (lots of books, some of which I’d actually read), kitchen stuff (pots, pans, silverware and a collection of Mom’s recipes), laundry (mostly clean, because I had just left Mom), and a girlfriend (and all of her stuff).  

The VW was woefully overloaded, I knew that right away. And although my butt cheeks were riding about 8 inches off the pavement, I was riding high, soaring on the exhilaration of being free. 

Another tipoff that I was overloaded was that I had a hard time maintaining a speed above 50 mph.  Once I figured that out, I steered off the interstate and latched onto U.S. 45, putt-putting through Frankfort, then Bradley and Kankakee and south into the flat open agri-landscape of central Illinois. And all the while, imperceptibly, I was losing horsepower.

The realization that something serious might be wrong hit me as we entered Iroquois County. The bug couldn’t go faster than 40.

We finally rolled to a stop about three miles north of Gilman, smoke rising from the rear of the bug. It was fried. The bug was towed into town where the only VW mechanic was off duty on Sundays. So we holed up in a tavern/restaurant, the only one in town, and did the only sensible thing. I called Dad.

It was a gloomy experience. Sure, rescue was on the way, but I was reminded that I still needed my parents. Independence would have to wait. But the people in the tavern, all these strangers, once they learned of our circumstance, rallied around. They wanted to know where we were coming from and where we were going, and the owner of the tavern gave us free food, and everyone had an opinion about what was wrong with the car.  

And I remembered all of that in a flash last month as I cruised out of Chicago and came upon that sign on the interstate. Next exit: Gilman.

I got a room at the Super 8 and drove downtown. It was evening, and I was hungry. Thirsty, too. And I knew the ballgame would be starting soon. If I was lucky, I’d find that same tavern.

Well, I found everything I was looking for except that old tavern. But at a different joint, a place called Boondocks, I found a plate of chicken, $4 shots of Jameson and my own remote to the TV.

Boondocks was a new place, but it had an old feel to it. Not busy, but active. The Wednesday night euchre club was at one table, where the chatter was loud and the pennies were flying. A family was finishing dinner at another table, and a couple of regulars sat sipping cans of Busch across from me at the horseshoe-shaped bar. You can always spot the regulars.

Carol, the friendly woman behind the bar, was trying to find the Sox game for me and having no luck. She hollered over to the regulars, two older guys nursing cans of beer.

“You know where to find the ballgame?”

One of them, a bristly guy named Dale, said, “The Cubs are on Channel 9, I think.”

I couldn’t let that pass without comment.

“I was looking for the Sox game,” I said. “The White Sox.”

“White Sox?” He turned to me. “Where do they play?”

So this was how it was going to be, I thought. He sounded like a Cubs fan who wanted to talk baseball, mix it up a little and engage in a little verbal sparring. OK, I was game. This could be fun.

“They play on the South Side,” I said. “That’s where real baseball is played.”

“Oh, I know where that is,” Dale said. “That’s Nigger Town.”

Whoa.

I had not heard that word, used in that sense, in a long time, and certainly not in a public place. But maybe I didn’t hear him correctly. “What did you say?”

“You heard me,” he said. His drinking buddy was grinning. “Every time you go to the South Side, you need a police escort just to get out of your car.”

Yup, I’d heard him correctly.

If there’s anything worse than a drunken Cubs fan, it’s a drunken racist. There was no friendliness in his eyes, and it was enough to tell me this game I thought I was playing was over. It was time for me to disengage.

I guess that despite my previous experience in Gilman, this was a town much like so many others in Middle America, where there might be a junction of highways and an interstate nearby, there’s no interaction with the outside world. And no social growth.  In such an insular environment, the Civil Rights Movement never happened.

I didn’t feel anger at Dale. He’s a product of his environment. I felt sad for him because what he was saying sounded a lot like hate, but it was really just fear. Fear of the unknown, of what’s different. Fear of change.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I mistook you for a Cubs fan.”

“Can’t stand them either.”

“Just don’t like Chicago, eh?”

“Nope. The best thing to come out of Chicago was an empty bus.”

 

“Well,” I said, “I came out of Chicago.”

Dale narrowed his eyes. He might have thought he’d succeeded in insulting me and that I was about to challenge him to a duel, and we’d end up outside flailing away at each other with crescent wrenches.

But that wasn’t going to happen.

“It was back in 1972,” I said, and I told him my story. And when I was finished, I said, “The people of this town, in that tavern that night, they made me feel welcome here. That’s why I came back tonight.”

Dale listened to my story quietly. And then he asked me who the mechanic was. I didn’t remember. Dale turned to his buddy, and together they tried to figure out who it might have been. And they pretty much ignored me the rest of the evening, which was fine with me.

Meanwhile, Carol, bless her heart, had found the Sox game. Dale’s buddy left, and after a few innings, I bought a beer for old Dale. He lifted a glass in thanks to me.  Then, after a stretch, he left too.   

I ordered another Jameson, and while Carol was clearing away my plate of chicken bones, I asked her what the old guy’s name was. She told me and said, “He used to own a tavern in town. That place you were in back in 1972 was probably his place.”

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