Six decades after deaths, my “aunt’s” lesson on life lingers in my memory

Thoughts of my “Aunt” Connie (actually, my mother’s aunt, if you want to be overly technical about it) are popping into my mind Saturday – what with all the mentions in the news of how it has been 60 years to the day that a fire killed 95 people at the Our Lady of Angels parish school in the Humboldt Park neighborhood.

Monument paying tribute to this day

I know just about every Chicagoan of that generation has some sort of personal story of what they did that day in 1958. My mother (who was 14 at the time) recalled being a Catholic school girl who joined other students in prayer for the souls of those – 92 of whom were students – who perished.

BUT MY OWN personal moment (since I didn’t exist until seven years later) came one summer in 1978. And it was due to my Aunt Connie, who managed to put a lesson about the fragility of life into the brains of my brother, Christopher, and myself.

That summer was the one in which my mother sent my brother and I for a week to stay with our uncle Spinx and aunt Connie at their home in suburban Lombard.

I actually recall that experience as relaxing, largely because my uncle and aunt had a swimming pool in the backyard, and most of the week was spent lounging around the pool at our convenience.

Youthful lives remembered this day

Of course, my aunt Connie was the type who believed that children should be put to work, and I recall spending some time in the hair salon she operated out of her basement – sweeping the floors of stray hair and sorting out various types of hair clips.

BUT THERE ALSO was the moment that week when our aunt Connie decided we should go out away from the house and experience something of life. The outing she came up with is one that my brother never forgot so long as he lived.

And it is one that I’m particularly recalling that day.

For our journey that summer was a trip to the Queen of Heaven Cemetery in suburban Hillside, which is where a monument to the children killed in the fire ultimately was erected – and where several of them wound up being buried.

Story of fatalities went national

It wasn’t so much that we were lectured. But the sight of so many young people who, it turns out, had a lifespan that wasn’t even as long as mine was that day (I was just shy of my 13^th birthday that summer), was a memory that still sticks in my mind.

I KNOW MY brother, who was only 8 at the time, was a bit creeped out by the experience. Although I recall him later remembering the experience as a lesson that took a few years to fully sink into his brain.

And it became one of the stories we could tell of our “quirky” aunt Connie. Although to be honest, that day was far from the most off-beat thing she ever did in her life.

The fragility of life is a lesson we all have to learn, and it is what makes us feel fortunate that we continue to live on – while trying to remember to enjoy every moment of life we have, because it’s not going to last forever.

That is a lesson I have had reinforced on occasions in life, particularly during my work as a reporter-type person throughout the years.

I’M NOW 53, and I know if I were to drop dead now, there would be some people who would take one look at that age and think I was somehow cheated of a proper life’s end. Although I have to confess to having known people in my life who aren’t with us any longer – and who didn’t even come close to getting as long a life-span as I’ve enjoyed.

My brother and I (in middle) with other relatives surrounding our Aunt Connie

Just as my brother and I got to see the memory of all those young people who perished 60 years ago who never even made it as far as their teenage years (they were all students between 5^th and 8^th grades at the times of their deaths).

So we’re getting the reports in recent days reminding us of the tragedy of Our Lady of the Angels and how the aging school building was not in compliance with the fire codes of that era (as an older structure, it was “grandfathered” in with lesser standards). We may even be reminded of the speculation that the fire was caused by a 10-year-old’s idea of a prank.

But for me, I’m going to be recalling my aunt, who has long been resting in peace along with those whose deaths of six decades ago are being publicly remembered this day.

  -30-

Are President Trump, along w/ backers, channeling their inner ‘Rhett Butler?’

Learning that President Donald J. Trump isn’t all that concerned about the quandary faced by children who may never be reunited with their parents who tried bringing their families with them to the United States couldn’t help but remind me of the old film, “Gone With the Wind.”

TRUMP: Even manages to intrude on family

You know what I mean, that bit at film’s end when Clark Gable’s “Rhett Butler” character tells Scarlet O’Hara, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

WHEN LEARNING THAT Trump on Tuesday is trying to oversimplify the whole situation as one of people not coming to this country “legally” (he said, “Don’t come to our country illegally. It’s not a good thing”) shows that it’s not just the Twitter version of Trump that is a nit wit.

But I also don’t doubt the kind of people who are enjoying this Age of Trump we’re now in aren’t the least bit offended. In fact, I suspect they view the upcoming political battle we’re going to engage in over Supreme Court control as an effort to cement such attitudes in place.

I suspect many of them, “don’t give a damn” either.

It was this past Saturday, around the same time that protesters trying to tie up traffic on the Dan Ryan Expressway were finishing their efforts, that I was at my aunt’s house.

SHE HAS AN annual gathering the weekend after Independence Day which often becomes the only time I see certain cousins of mine.

Sure enough, politics tainted much of the weekend conversation. I particularly noted (they were loud enough to be overheard in the next room) one conversation between a cousin whose labor union membership puts him on the “liberal” side of the equation and another cousin (who recently was able to retire early with a retirement plan that means he’ll be able to survive financially without having to work anymore) taking up (as he always does) the conservative side of the equation.

Is THIS Trump's ideal of 'America' great again?

Tempers became heated. People were being mocked mercilessly. And when “Cousin Jimmy” wound up giving me a ride home following the occasion, he insisted on giving me his rebuttal to much of the argument that had taken place.

Where Jimmy basically gave me his line of logic for approving of the Age of Trump – we ought to focus on economic issues, with everything else that gets discussed is pretty much irrelevant.

AS THINGS TURNED out, my cousin got a payout of just over $1 million. Although his finances are living proof that being a “millionaire” isn’t worth what people would dream it to be.

Basically, he leaves that money to sit, and has to count on the interest for income to survive. Which has him watching the Trump presidency for signs that he does things stupid enough that they upset the financial markets. Things that could cause his interest payments to decline.

Getting worked up over other issues? Cousin Jimmy is pretty much like Trump on the controversy of families being split, with children being seized from their parents and officials admitting they aren’t going to be able to meet any court-ordered deadlines for returning children to their parents.

Particularly those kids whose parents were already deported from the United States, or those who ultimately were released into the general population and we really don’t know where they are right now.

IT’S NOT IMPACTING their “bottom line,” so it’s not going to bother them. Just like Rhett didn’t care about Scarlet – although it should be conceded that Scarlet had pulled so much nonsense throughout that film it’s a wonder he didn’t smack her silly!

DELILAH: Will she have to fix our mess?

You might be wondering where I was in all this family squabbling. I made a point of staying in the other room – largely because it had a particularly cool breeze passing through that made it the most comfortable room in the house to be in.

But also because another of my cousins brought her daughter and 1-year-old granddaughter along. Personally, I find myself engaged in too much political rhetoric during the week to the point where I found baby Delilah to be far more interesting than any of the adults whose babbling was inane.

Although I also found my own thoughts turning to her; for it’s going to be she and her generation that winds up having to cope with the impact of all the nonsense our ideological rants are causing these days.

  -30-

Holidaze upon us; go do something real

“It’s beginning to look at lot like Christmas.” Yeah, I know you’re probably sick of hearing that lyric over and over (along with countless other holiday songs that have played repeatedly on the radio ever since mid-October).

But it really is Christmas on this Monday.

SO IF YOU’RE actually reading this now, I have but one thing to say to you. “Get a Life!” Get off your computer, or your iPhone or whatever mobile device you might be using to read the Internet.

Go out into the real world on this holiday and find something worthy to do, other than reading the latest rants that Donald Trump may be wanting to send your way via Twitter. I swear the best thing we could do as a society would be to ignore the man altogether if it were possible.

I’m at the point where I think I even respect those individuals more who will choose to spend their day at a casino – gambling away their funds in hopes they can hit a holiday jackpot that will make their lives (for a few days, at least) somewhat more pleasant.

For at least one day, let’s give ourselves a present of freedom from Internet trivialities. It will all still be there on Tuesday for us to fret over.

AND MY GIFT to you (at least before you log off your computer for the day)?

Eartha Kitt, who when she wasn’t Catwoman-clad, gave us “Santa Baby.” Along with Celia Cruz’ cheery take on “Jingle Bells” en Español.

  -30-

Photo stash memories of past holidays

I feel like I got my holiday gift a few months early. Like back in July.

It was this summer that one of my cousins, Lora Ann who now has a life in Arizona, gave to all of us in the family the digital copies she made of her mother’s photo albums – thereby sharing with us decades of family images.

My grandmother hard at work at Christmas-time

INCLUDING ONE THAT is particularly relevant this time of year. It is a photograph of my maternal grandmother, Socorro Vargas, working in her kitchen. Her fingers are a complete mess, and the table she’s working at is covered in corn husks.

Because mi abuela appears to have been hard at work making a batch of tamales – as in that delicacy that will be the basis of many a Christmas holiday meal for families with a touch of Mexican-American in them.

This photo is particularly intriguing to me because my earliest memories of Christmas celebration include going to Grandma’s house in the South Shore neighborhood on Christmas Eve (they'd moved from South Chicago by that point in life), and having a dinner that centered around dozens of tamales.

My grandfather, the real chef?

Literally many dozens, because there were eight kids (including my mother) in the family, along with all the spouses and next generation of kids (my cousins) who were present. I’m sure it was many hours of hard work to prepare the meal – because tamales aren’t an easy dish to make.

JUST ONE LITTLE thing goes off in preparing the masa that is the base of the tamale, and you wind up with an inedible mess.

Looking at that photograph makes me wonder how exhausted my grandmother must have been after she was finished with that particular batch of tamales. And also that I probably didn’t truly appreciate the level of work that went into preparing that meal that now is amongst my most pleasant of childhood holiday memories.

There is one potential flaw in this story. I know my mother always insisted that when it came to Christmas tamales, it was my grandfather, Michael Vargas, who did the work.

The family to be fed (my mother at far left)

Some guys insist on perceiving themselves as master chefs during the summer when it comes to dredging up the barbecue grill and flipping a few burgers. My grandfather supposedly took charge of that holiday meal.

ALTHOUGH I DON’T doubt my grandmother put in some work too. It was her kitchen, and I don’t think she’d have easily surrendered control of it.

Anyway, a Christmas tamale meal isn’t something I have had in years. At least not of the image of a family matriarch slaving away in the kitchen for a full day just to feed us all.

One of the quirks of the complex process of making tamales is that it is something that was NOT passed along to other family members. My mother always insisted it was too much hard work, and we could always just go to a Mexican-oriented grocery around the holidays and buy a couple dozen tamales already made.

Uncle Spinx, letting loose at a past New Year celebration

Which is something my brother and I used to do so we could have a tamale taste – usually as a meal for one day, with the other day of the Christmas holiday centering around a ham or some other “American”-oriented dish.

AS FOR THIS year, I don’t know what I’m doing for a holiday meal. Particularly since there’s now a Jewish element to the family celebrations, and there are some of us who are “holiday’ed” out from Hanukkah and all the latkes – of which there are still a few dozen sitting in the refrigerator.

But going through my Aunt Connie’s photo albums at my own leisurely pace is proving to be a nice treat. Particularly when I got to the photographs of my Uncle Spinx (Lora Ann’s father) partying it up at many New Year’s celebrations past.

Returning the holiday greetings

Although the ultimate chuckle is the shot of my uncle as part of an all-“girl” dance troupe. While the ultimate sweet moments are the photos I now have of my mother, Jenny, as a young girl.

And to mi prima Lora Ann for providing me with all these images. I hope my cousin will have a Merry Christmas as well.

  -30-

Should “Happy Hanukkah” be used as weapon against those who assault us with hostile holiday greetings?

Whenever I encounter one of those types of people who insists on using “Merry Christmas!” as a form of cultural intimidation, there’s a part of me that is tempted to turn to my step-mother for a retort.

Chicago's public menorah from five years ago can create split reactions, regardless of its actual intent. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

As in every “Merry Christmas” I hear coming from someone who is inclined to take Donald Trump’s “War on Christmas” rants seriously, I’d respond with a fake cheery “Happy Hanukkah!”

I DON’T ACTUALLY do that in part because it strikes me as tacky to use my step-mother’s religious faith to score political partisan points against the nitwits of our society. It would make me no better than those who want to use “Merry Christmas” as a weapon.

I bring this up because the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah actually began Tuesday night and will continue into next week.

And with my step-mother being Jewish (my father is a late-life convert), it means the time of year to recall the survival of the Maccabees in the face of elements of society that would just as soon have seen them exterminated is once again upon us.

Now in my own family, the little kids are growing up. So there’s not as much pressure any more to indulge my nieces and nephews with lots of presents so that they don’t feel cheated compared to their school friends for whom Christmas is the thing!

Do people notice holiday decorations when passing through the airport en route to a sunnier locale?

IN FACT, IN my parents’ household, most of the eight days will be marked with the lighting of the candles, a prayer in Hebrew, and little else.

There will be one night of various relatives coming over to the household for something of a party – whose primary purpose it will seem like is consuming the potato pancakes referred to as latkes.

Gary, Ind., govt. brightens their chambers

Much of this, I’ll admit, is lost on me. I was baptized many decades ago by a Catholic priest and personally haven’t felt any need to change.

But that isn’t held against me. I’m likely to be included in any celebration as we recall the old story of how a Godly miracle enabled the Maccabees’ oil intended to last one night actually kept their lamps lit for eight nights.

THE REASON WHY the menorahs include eight branches in their candelabrums – and why a fully-lit menorah has the potential to be a fire hazard if the celebrants get too clumsy.

All of which has just enough of a solemn effect on me to refuse to use “Happy Hanukkah” as a retort to the less-than-solemn “Merry Christmas” talk I have heard in recent days. I’d like to think I’m better than those people who want to turn the Christmas holiday and the birth of Christ that it celebrates into a weapon touting the omnipresent existence of Trump that they’d like to impose on our society.

Because I know it would be the perfect retort in that it would force those ideologues whose use of religious symbolism to tout their beliefs borders on being as offensive as the Ku Klux Klan’s uses of the cross to tout their own racist rants to have to acknowledge that theirs is NOT the only holiday in this winter season.

While I’ll be the first to admit that some of the efforts to equate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa (don’t forget the “aa” at the end) and whatever other festival one can dream up do become absurd, I’ve never felt the need to tout my own thoughts over everybody else’s.

LARGELY BECAUSE I have viewed much of religious-inspired thought as a personal one. It is something we ought to be celebrating internally.

There’s nothing wrong with sharing. But feeling the need to force one’s thoughts or celebration on others just seems wrong.

Just as it can be confusing at times when someone feels the need to say “Merry Christmas” to every single person they encounter. Are they just overly cheerful? Or are they making a politically-partisan statement that requires a retort?

Quite honestly, I resent having to try to interpret every holiday greeting to figure out if the call for sharing and celebration is more intended as an excuse to act as society’s religious-motivated bullies.

  -30-

Thanksgiving – a holiday diminished?

Thanksgiving Day! Our national festival where we’re supposed to be thankful for what we have, and can gorge ourselves to gluttony with promises that we’ll exercise or diet of the excess poundage in coming weeks.

Wishing my brother and I could be together again

I’m never quite sure what to make of this date, and not because I’m someone feeling the need to identify with the saga of native peoples to this continent having their land stolen from them by the white man!

PERSONALLY, A PART of me wants to take a can of cranberry sauce and shove it down their whiny throats when they start spewing out this tale. Then again, I say a can of cranberry sauce and not a turkey leg because I despise cranberry sauce (whether canned or made fresh) and because, personally, the leg is my favorite part of the bird.

I often hear of people for whom Christmas or Easter or other holidays get diminished for them because of the loss of someone in proximity to the so-called festive day.

For me, that has become Thanksgiving during the past seven years.

My mother, Jenny, died in early November 2010. I still remember the last time I heard her voice – my brother (also since departed) had taken her to a hospital because she wasn’t feeling well and he called me via telephone to tell me they were actually sending her home.

DURING THAT PHONE call, I could hear my mother’s voice in the background almost haranguing him with a list of stores she had to visit and tasks she would have to do in order to prepare for a Thanksgiving Day meal with my brother and I.

For all I know, her last thoughts may well have been of all the work she would have had to do for the upcoming holiday. Because on the car ride home, she suddenly lost consciousness (her final words, I’m told, were “I’m going to pass out”).

She wound up never regaining consciousness, and was pronounced dead a couple of hours later.

This Munsters mutant almost seems appetizing

Since then, Thanksgiving has become a holiday I have spent with my step-mother’s family – specifically, her sister lives in the Beverly neighborhood, and I expect to convene there with my father and others as we try to express what we’re thankful for.

ACTUALLY, THINGS USED to be worse on Thanksgiving. Because not only would I have to juggle both of those events on the actual Thursday, my father would always insist on having a post-Thanksgiving meal on the following Saturday.

Which he said was necessary so we could have all of our own personal favorite dishes – although I mostly remember them as dishes he liked that nobody else was particularly fond of.

The point being that in past years, these next few days would have been an edible orgy of heavy, fattening foods. I most assuredly would have felt more stuffed than the turkey by the time the weekend was over.

But perhaps it’s evidence my father is getting up there in years – even he doesn’t seem to want all the hassle of a post-Thanksgiving meal.

NOT THAT I’M complaining. It actually feels like a relief not to have to ration out how much I eat at each stop so that I don’t make myself ill from over-eating.

How many people really identify with this version of the Thanksgiving tale

I’ll be able to enjoy the meal, which my step-mother’s brother-in-law will prepare. And with the exception of one year when his turkey came out incredibly dry, his past experiences are such that I’m expecting to enjoy myself in a culinary sense.

Although I have to make a confession – there’s a part of me that wouldn’t mind enduring a bit of overeating if it meant I could have a few more moments with my mother.

On this day, more than most others, I find myself missing my mom.

  -30-

EXTRA: My uncle like many others who felt the call to uniform during WWII to keep us safe from the Nazis

Rummaging through some old family-type photographs my cousin, Lora Ann, gave me earlier this year, I couldn’t help but stumble across this one shot of my Uncle Spinx that feels appropriate to share on Veterans Day.

My Uncle Spinx when he was called to duty

As in Aurelio “Spinx” Salas, who actually was my mother’s uncle (he’s my maternal grandmother’s brother). But Uncle Spinx is a simpler way to think of the man than having to account for all the layers of family that come between us.

ANYWAY, BACK TO the photograph, which shows that my uncle was amongst the thousands of men who – upon U.S. entry into World War II – felt compelled to enlist in some form of service so as to be able to wear a uniform and not have others claiming they were shirking their duty to society.

He served in the Coast Guard, and I have to confess to not knowing much of the details about his military service. I came along a couple of decades later and by the time I would have been old enough to comprehend what he did, it was a part of his distant past.

The fact that he once wore a uniform wasn’t something he dwelled on during his later life, which he lived to the fullest (I still remember his 1970s years riding around  the country with my Aunt Connie on their matching motorcycles) -- rather than trying to exaggerate himself into a 'war hero' to make up for the lack of anything of substance in the rest of his life.

Although I have my own mental image that the streets of Chicago back in the 1940s were being kept safe from Nazis and other fascists who comprised the Axis powers by my Uncle Spinx.

HE’D HAVE KNOCKED out the first swastika-wearing buffoon who dared tried to walk down Commercial Avenue in his home South Chicago neighborhood (where my parents were raised and I was born a couple of decades later).

Part of that image is I can remember him talking about his later years as an educator in the Chicago school system – when he’d tell of some of the “toughs” he’d have to cope with amongst his students and would occasionally have to use some sort of force to maintain control without crossing over the fine line between discipline and excessive force.

 

My uncle ready in the (boxing) ring

But I also remember his talk about his younger days as an amateur boxer – and I can recall some of my cousins joking around with him about the boxer Leon Spinks, who back in 1978 beat an aging Muhammad Ali for the heavyweight title.

Spinks vs. Spinx – who’d win? We’d always joke about how our uncle would somehow have figured out a way to knock the block off the long-forgotten champ.

IN FACT, I often wonder if my uncle were still with us today (it’s been a couple of decades since he departed this realm of existence) what he’d think of these goofy types who see elements of the fascists as a model for our society and try to put a cutesy "alt-right" label on it – even though his generation did their part to put those Nazi crackpots down for the count.

I suspect he’d be p-o’ed! Maybe enough to figure out a way to come back from beyond the grave (he was cremated, and his urn was buried with my aunt when she died a decade ago) so as to resume the fight he and his fellow veterans of that war thought they’d finished back some seven decades ago.

  -30-

Mexican ethnic holiday takes on greater meaning for me these days

I am of Mexican ethnic origins (three of my four grandparents were born there, along with one set of great-grandparents) and always have found my background to be of personal interest.

My brother on a baseball-themed trip to Pittsburgh

Yet I have to confess, the concept of the Day of the Dead isn’t one that ever caught on with me. Until now, that is.

FOR THOSE WHO are uninformed, the holiday being celebrated Wednesday night into the early hours of Thursday is a Mexican one whose serious point is that we pay homage to those of our loved ones who are no longer with us – as in they have died.

There are those Mexicans who go so far as to build elaborate tributes to their loved ones. There are others who literally will spend the night tonight at the cemetery, visiting with their loved ones in gravesite picnics that turn into semi-festive celebrations.

I don’t plan to go that far, largely because both of the loved ones who are popping into my memory these days were cremated. I don’t have cemetery plots to visit, and in fact I have my mother’s remains with me.

In my case, my loved ones to remember are my mother, Jenny, and my brother, Christopher.

My brother and mother, in a happy moment

AS IT TURNS out, the anniversary dates of both of their deaths come up around this time of year. In the case of my brother, Sunday was the second anniversary of the aneurism he suffered that almost instantly killed his brain activity, and Monday was the anniversary of the date upon which he was pronounced dead.

As for my mother, it will have been seven years on Nov. 10 since the day she suffered a complication related to her diabetes treatments that caused her to bleed to death.

Meaning this early autumn time period that I otherwise would think of as the conclusion of the World Series and the end of the baseball season in this part of the globe (it’s just kicking into gear in professional leagues that play across the Caribbean) is one in which I find myself remembering my brother and our mother.

One of my mother's favorite family photographs

In that sense, the Day of the Dead takes on a certain convenience factor in that I can remember both of them at once – and know I’m not alone in thinking about death. Although I’d prefer to think of it as remembering the lives that used to exist – and not the piles of ash that they have been reduced to these days.

MY BROTHER (HE was younger than me) only made it to age 45. His was a case of his blood pressure reaching such high levels that he was on medication that doctors were fiddling around with at the time we lost him.

If anything, my brother’s experience has been an educational one for me, since I have developed blood pressure issues and doctors have described my own condition in ways that make it seem I’m at an earlier stage of what ultimately took down my brother.

His life may well be the warning of what could happen to me if I slack off on my own medical routine.

My mother as a child, long before I ever existed. She's with her Uncle Aurelio "Spinx" Salas, and a part of me likes to think he's keeping an eye on her these days

Although I actually feel the need to keep living in part to not embarrass the memory of those before me. Yes, a part of me feels like my mother’s spirit is watching over me, and is prepared to give me a smack or two upside the head should I ever encounter her again for everything stupid I may do with what remains in my life.

MY MOTHER ONLY made it to 66 at the time of her death, and the final decade of her life was a not-so-pleasant experience of constant medical treatment. Being that I’ve barely past the half-century mark of life, I know it won’t be all that much longer before I can say I’ve lived longer than she did.

Unless I’m amongst the ones unfortunate enough to suffer an early ending. One thing I learned a long time ago from my reporter-type person work is that there are no guarantees about life. One can go at any time, and perhaps I should view myself lucky to have survived this long.

These are thoughts passing through my head on this Day of the Dead, and perhaps this essay is my remembrance of family whose absence still leaves me longing – even though I’m fortunate enough that my father remains and is in a place where he can continue to be a pain in the behind. Although I’d give just about anything if my mother could be around in an equally annoying way these days.

But I also suspect my mother would be bothered by this commentary, particularly since I recall she used to get all creeped out at Day of the Dead imagery and thoughts – she’d probably want her memory to be the last thing possible to be associated with Wednesday in any way.

  -30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: On a not-quite-so-related point, I’m still amused by this use of Day of the Dead imagery in this animated sequence from the 2002 film “Frida” that explains just how badly bashed the body of Frida Kahlo was from a bus crash she suffered as a teenager that left her crippled through much of her life.

EXTRA: Halloweenie creepies! Or, letting the childhood beggars loose!

About the most ominous memory I have of childhood trick-or-treat activity some four-and-a-half decades ago was one time my brother, Christopher, and I were walking around the neighborhood and we encountered a house where no one was answering the door.

'Letting the hounds loose' in my case would probably create a batch of kids wanting to pet the cute puppies, no matter how much they snarled and barked

Then, I happened to look over to the side, and saw the giant sign the homeowner had scrawled out by hand – informing all of us candy-seekers to “Scram!!!” No candy, or anything available at that house.

I DIDN’T FEEL like pushing it. My brother and I got out of there, and quickly found many other places where the local residents were more than willing to cough up the desired chocolates, sugary junk and occasional spare change that would make for a Halloween bounty.

To tell you the truth, I don’t really blame that guy (or whoever it was, I never did find out) who didn’t feel like giving out any candy to the neighborhood freeloaders who felt that Halloween was an excuse to beg publicly.

There’s a part of me that jokes about using my father’s dogs to try scaring away any kids who come near me seeking candy (not that they bite, it’s just that they’ll make a lot of noise toward anyone they don’t recognize). But I'll confess to having a small bowl of Snickers bars and other candy available for anyone who shows up later Tuesday.

In short, I always think of Halloween as something relatively harmless – and something I haven’t really celebrated since the last time I went trick-or-treating; which I think was at about age 7.

SO I HAVE to admit to wondering what the heck is wrong with our society that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan felt compelled to issue a statement telling people to check the state registry of people listed as sex offenders before letting their children loose.

MADIGAN: Warning us all of threat

You might just find out that someone living near you has something in their past they’d rather keep quiet about, but which Illinois law won’t permit them. It seems we’re far beyond the point in our society where we have to worry about that old urban legend about some kid getting cut up because they ate an apple with a razor blade inserted into it.

Which is something I always wondered was just a myth created by parents to justify confiscating some of the candy collected by their kids on the grounds they didn’t need to be hyped up on so much sugar!

  -30-

Times change; so should our customs

A CLARIFICATION: My aunt, Christine, insists that her mother (also my grandmother) was actually 15 years old at the time of her marriage in 1935. Not that the difference in fact changes the larger point I was trying to make.

  -0-

I couldn’t help but reflect upon New York state altering its laws that relate to the age of consent for marriage.
 

My grandmother was a 14-year-old bride

Assuming that Gov. Andrew Cuomo doesn’t change his mind and decide to use his “veto” pen, the “Empire State” will soon require that people be at least 17 if they wish to get married.

THAT COMPARES TO the current status, where Noo Yawkers could get married as young as 14 if they had proper parental consent.

It sounds primitive. It sounds backward. It brings to mind the images of people who value a woman’s place so little that they figure her only worth is as a wife – so why wait?!? Marry her at 14, she can have the first of many babies by the time she’s 16, and if it turns out she can cook, then she’s the perfect mate for some guy.

I have read assorted comments on the Internet from people who are astounded that such a practice was ever permitted, and others who are merely astonished that such thoughts continued to exist in the 21^st Century – even if just on paper.

Yet I also have to confess that my maternal grandmother, Socorro Salas, was just such a bride. She was 14 on that day nearly nine decades ago that she was wed to Miguel Vargas – my maternal grandfather who himself arrived in this country from Mexico in 1926 when he was 17 and a few years later was a young man working in the steel mills that used to exist on Chicago’s South Side.

AS IF THE age wasn’t an old-world-enough factor, consider too that it technically was an arranged marriage. It was felt that my grandfather had become established enough in life to think about taking a wife and having a family.

Even though my grandmother was the one of my four grandparents to actually be born in this country (her parents were the immigrants from Mexico at the end of the 19^th Century), there was enough of the ethnic sentiment to have her settle down with a respectable Mexican man so they could have their life together.

Which they did, living for many years in the South Chicago neighborhood until they eventually moved up economically, first to the South Shore neighborhood, then to the suburbs of Calumet City, then Lansing, where they lived at the time of my grandfather’s death in 1978 (I was not quite 13 back then).

My grandparents on the occasion of the birth 73 years ago Friday of twin siblings, including my mother, Jenny -- who were children number four and five out of eight

In short, they lived “til death did they part.”

THEY HAD A lasting marriage of nearly 50 years – a partnership that resulted in eight children (including my mother, Jenny, who was one of the twins born 73 years ago Friday).

They fought. They quarreled. They bickered. Yet they were a couple with mutual respect, and I remember my grandmother never did get over my grandfather’s death – mourning until her own demise three years later.

In short, married at 14 wasn’t a disaster for her. Even though they didn’t encourage it for their own children (they actually thought my mother’s marriage to my father at age 20 was too young).

Yet I’m also realistic enough to know that none of the young couples who took advantage of New York’s permissive age requirements are anything like my grandparents.

IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, anybody considering getting married that young today is likely only doing so because of a pregnancy and some desire on their part to put up the appearance of a “happy family.” Meaning it’s likely they’ll never evolve into such circumstances.

And at that age, they likely never will become anything like the appearance of respectability that they’re trying to put forth.

Of course, this would be theoretical in Illinois – where the age now for marriage is 18, or as low as 16 if for some reason the parents do offer their consent.

So call it a step in the right direction that New York got with the program – although to tell you the truth, even a 17-year-old is a tad young to be married off. Somehow, I suspect even my grandparents would agree if they were still amongst us today.

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EXTRA: $40, and a new life

My Aunt Christina (who always wants me to say she's my favorite, even though I don't want to bloat her ego) managed to come up with an interesting piece of documentation -- the official record of when her father (my maternal grandfather) first entered the United States on a summer day in 1926.

And for what it's worth, he had $40 in his pockets at that significant moment in his life. Definitely a detail I'm going to have to use when I tell the tale of my family tree in the future.

THE U.S. INFLATION Calculator estimates that's about $552 in monetary value today. Or about one week's pay at some jobs I have held in my life. How many of us would be willing to skip away from everything we know with just a week's salary to tide us over?

It definitely makes me think more highly of the life change that my grandfather made nearly a century ago.

And for coming up with this documentation, I may have to break down and give my Aunt Christie the praise she has long sought.

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Is city’s “One Chicago” initiative meant to tell Trump’s nativism to ‘drop dead?’

Both of my grandfathers were Mexican-born who came to this country while technically still teen-aged back in the 1920s.
 

Grandpa Mike shows style long before my existence

Both entered the country at Laredo, Texas, and my maternal grandfather came with the understanding that a great American company had a job for him if he could get himself into the country.

WHICH IS HOW my grandfather, Michael Vargas, wound up working at the now-defunct Wisconsin Steel plant in the South Deering neighborhood for his entire adult life.

And before anybody asks, he died just before that tragic event when the steel mill closed, all its workers were laid off, their final paychecks bounced and some retirees lost pension benefits.

Whereas my other grandfather, Ignacio Tejeda, Sr., (my father is 'Junior') came with less of a plan – other than knowing there wasn’t much opportunity back home. He came to Texas, got caught up by recruiters who brought him north, and he worked jobs in Detroit and Gary, Ind., before he finally crossed over the Illinois state line into Blue Island, then Chicago where he worked at a variety of factory-type jobs throughout his life.

As things turned out, they both wound up settling in the South Chicago neighborhood just a couple of blocks from each other – which is how my parents met as children, grew up together and ultimately begat myself.

THAT’S THE QUICKIE version of my own life story – I’m here because of life-altering acts by my grandfathers who likely had no concept of my eventual existence. They were just looking for a better life, and were more than willing to work their nalgas off (or do you prefer to call it a kiester) in order to achieve it.

And in the process, I’m most likely much better off for it. A muchos gracias to my abuelos for having more ambition in life than most men.

Now what compelled me to feel the need to share this abbreviated tale?

My grandpa Nacho, along with my father and uncles Arturo and Carlos

Part of it is the new One Chicago initiative, which is going to be a public service campaign by which it will be made clear that Chicago is a city comprised of immigrants. We all have grandfathers or great-grandfathers (or some of us may be more recent) who came from some other national place and figured things might work out better in life here, rather than there.

WE’RE GOING TO be asked to do a massive share of our families’ life stories. It’s part of an effort to let people know that they’re welcome in Chicago, regardless of where they’re from.

And also that the people who have the  tnativist hang-ups are the ones who’d be better off not setting foot in the Second City.

Now all of this debate over immigration is the product of our mental midget of a president, Donald Trump, who campaigned aggressively last year by appealing to those people who can’t handle the thought of anyone not exactly like themselves being allowed a place within our society.

Part of Emanuel's response ...

Every time Trump feels compelled to take another pot shot at Chicago, we’re likely to point to yet another of these immigrant stories that make up our fair city.

EVEN MAYOR RAHM Emanuel includes himself amongst these stories – using a weekend appearance touting the One Chicago initiative to let us know of his own grandfather, who came to Chicago at age 13 not speaking English.

... to Trump's appeal to our worst nature

It’s a part of what makes the fine character of this city, no matter how much Trump wants to play politics with the FBI’s crime statistics for Chicago to make us think Englewood and North Lawndale are typical of the whole city – while also ignoring the very serious problems that exist in those inner-city neighborhoods!

Which is the very serious point trying to be made behind what might come across as a touchy-feely initiative to share family stories.

Personally, I’m pleased to add my own grandfathers’ tales to an effort meant to extend a certain vulgar digit to those individuals for whom xenophobia is their preeminent sentiment toward life.

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