EXTRA: How many people saw 'Extras'

One of the memories I have of this date 16 years ago was from the afternoon hours, probably about 4 p.m., when I was passing through the Loop on my way home from work.
 

Collectable? Or fish wrap?

I was with United Press International at the time, and like many other downtown businesses on that day, we closed up shop and evacuated the downtown area.

THAT DIDN’T MEAN we got the day off. We wound up reconvening at an editor’s home and spent our workday there – mostly writing react to what had occurred in Manhattan and suburban D.C. that day what with jets being hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon as a vicious political statement.

Not that I was the only reporter-type person who kept working at a time of crisis.

For when I returned to the Loop to shift over to another commuter train that would actually get me back home, I found a newsboy (actually, a little older than a boy) peddling newspapers at Wabash and Randolph streets.

Specifically, he had the “Extra” editions that both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times had put together during the past few hours to try to provide a same-day report of what had happened “out East.”

I REMEMBER THAT guy was relieved to see me, and also excited that I promptly bought copies of both papers – which I wound up reading on my commuter train ride the rest of the way home.

What makes that so unusual is that city officials had given the evacuation order of downtown Chicago, just in case there was some sort of other incident that was meant to target the Sears Tower or some other structure in the Second City.

Yes, the paranoia of that day was intense enough that nobody knew for sure what could happen.

It also means that by late afternoon, the streets of Chicago were deserted in a way I have never seen them since. The people for whom those papers were published were long gone from the Loop by the time they were available for sale. Even at 4 a.m., there is still life in downtown Chicago. But not that day. There might as well have been tumbleweeds blowing through the streets of Chicago 16 years ago today.

WHICH MEANS THAT newsboy literally had stacks of papers, and nobody to sell them to. I recall that newsboy was the only other individual I encountered in the Loop in the time I transferred from one train to another (different stations).

I still have those newspapers, tucked away in a drawer along with a few other dates of some significance that I felt compelled to keep. Not that I think I have some sort of treasure to become of great value some day.

I see on e-Bay somebody with the same Tribune “Extra” edition that I have asking $30 – and nobody posting bids for it as of yet.

I wonder how many people who wound up getting out of work early that day who merely went home just waited for the next day’s paper to come out – which gave them an overview of the previous day’s happenings?

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Has it really been a quarter century since the Great Chicago Flood of ’92?

Twice in my life I have seen the streets of downtown Chicago completely deserted. Keep in mind I used to work an overnight shift for the now-defunct City News Bureau, and the Loop doesn’t die out completely even at 4 a.m.

Chicago River wasn't so orderly a quarter century ago Thursday. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

But there was Sept. 11, 2001 when officials had the downtown area evacuated just in case someone was planning something similar for Chicago to what happened that day in Manhattan and at the Pentagon in the Virginia suburbs of D.C.

THEN, THERE WAS the date that occurred 25 years ago Thursday. The date of the Great Chicago Flood. When the basements of downtown Chicago buildings overflowed with water, engineers supposedly contemplated using mattresses to try to plug the hole and a certain generation will not forget the screwiness of that date.

Which in my mind is odd because the “flood” wasn’t really a flood. It was a leak.

As in the Chicago River sprung a leak and water flowed out and into the century-old tunnels that exist beneath the streets of downtown Chicago. When the water filled up those tunnels, the level had to rise to the various sub-basements that exist beneath downtown buildings.

Including the then-Marshal Field’s department store, where we got to hear the famed radio reports about the fish swimming in the basement at Fields.

WE LATER LEARNED that the leak was caused when workers with the Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. that was replacing rotting wooden poles in the river installed a new poll just a little bit off – and wound up puncturing a hole into the tunnel.

This occurred in September of 1991. But it wasn’t until 25 years ago today that the water level became so ridiculously high that we at street level could no longer ignore it.

Personally, I remember working that day from my post at the pressroom of the then-State of Illinois Center. Working the telephones, I was accumulating information that went into the various stories the City News Bureau reported that day. I was vaguely aware that some people were leaving the Loop.

But the level of the evacuation didn’t become apparent until my shift that day was complete and a fresh crew of reporter-types were taking over for the night.

DOWNTOWN CHICAGO CAN be an eerie place when it is deserted and the only activity taking place is the changing of traffic signals from red to green and back again – only it doesn’t matter because there’s no traffic.

No people either.

It was reminiscent of a cheesy film I once saw called “Night of the Comet” in which the passing of a comet somehow unleashes a force that reduces much of humanity to piles of dust – and the few survivors tried to make sense of their lives in the remains of Los Angeles.

It almost felt like a similar force had been unleashed in Chicago – and the city was somehow all mine to do with as I pleased!

THERE LITERALLY WAS no one else around even though there still was daylight in the sky. Not even a newsboy crying out about the “Extra” edition newspapers he had, but couldn’t find anybody to buy (which I did see on Sept. 11, 2001).

Much of downtown Chicago’s life returned the next day, although there were the inconveniences as some places had their plumbing or water service turned off while officials tried to figure out the long-term solution to the problem. I also recall my own place of employment being closed for the day a couple of days later – and we were relocated to the Sun-Times Building. Which since has been obliterated by that giant tacky tower paying homage to His Excellency, Donald the First!

But the Great Chicago Flood where the river didn’t overflow. In fact, where else but in the Second City could a river spring a leak?

It’s all a part of what gives our fair city its unique character. That, and the hot dogs (Only Mustard Ever!!!)

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