EXTRA: Just a thought

As seen in suburban Homewood. Photo by Gregory Tejeda

Let’s hope we don’t have to endure ’95-like summer any time in near future

Sunday was a summer-like day in Chicago – temperatures that got up into the high-70s Fahrenheit and enough humidity in the air that one wanted to wear as little clothing as possible while outside.

The big picture of what happened 20 years ago this week. Image provided by Pic2Fly.com

Yet aside from putting on the fan that sits near where I tend to write, my thoughts were going back to that time 20 years ago.

BECAUSE IT HAS been exactly two full decades since that five-day stretch of time in mid-July 1995 when temperatures got so intense and people were caught so off-guard that the number of heat-related deaths skyrocketed.

Some 485 people officially died in Chicago due to the hot weather, although the city Health Department has acknowledged that as many as 739 people wound up dying because of heat as a contributing factor.

Consider that we the public got all worked up that about a dozen people were killed during the Independence Day holiday weekend due to gunfire.

I’m not diminishing the severity of that many homicides in the city. But we have to be honest – that was one incredibly hot time-span. It’s not something any of us wants to relive.

HOT AS HELL? We’d have to ask a deceased politician’s soul to find out precisely how hot the afterlife is for those of us who misbehaved during life on Earth.

The most serious explanation I ever heard of what caused the intense heat was an inadvertent shift in this planet’s weather patterns. For a couple of weeks in July of ’95, Chicago became hit by the kind of heat that usually hits Saudi Arabia. Just like our recent winters reached such record cold levels due to Arctic-like blasts swooping down through Canada and hitting large swaths of the United States.

The estimate turned out to be too low

In the Middle East, the locals have learned either how to tolerate the heat, or how to make themselves more comfortable. We in Chicago were caught off guard.

Particularly those amongst us who, for whatever reason, were inclined to live shut-in lifestyles and to think of air conditioning as some sort of stupid luxury for mental weaklings.

MANY OF THOSE amongst the hundreds who died fell into that category.

Which is why many of Chicago’s efforts to make “cooling centers” easily available to the public date back to the mid-1990s; just like that winter storm we always say took down Michael Bilandic as mayor and made future officials wary of the idea of letting the streets get too sloppy from snow and ice.

We don’t want a repeat of so many people being found dead in their apartments – so many people that the Cook County medical examiner’s office gave us the image of freezer trucks having to be parked outside their West Side offices to accommodate all the bodies that had to be processed.

Now I have to admit; I don’t have first-hand memories. Because back in that decade, I was living and working in Springfield, Ill. I usually joke about how I’m a native Chicago soccer fan who missed the sight of the World Cup in ’94 and the opening ceremonies being held at Soldier Field.

YET I FEEL fortunate that this was something I merely heard about on news reports while enduring a more reasonable summer sweat while working at the Statehouse.

Although I still remember talking to my own mother, who told me how my brother took her out to movie theaters just about every single day during that heat peak so they could enjoy the air conditioning.

She felt comfortable, even though she later joked about the agony of having to endure the sight of a lot of crummy films.

Which I’m sure is the kind of story we’d like to be hearing from those hundreds of people who did die because they didn’t have a place to go to help them cope with the hundred degree-plus temperatures that we got 20 years ago this week.

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No weather-related complaints here!

I don't want to hear any complaints from people concerning the weather.


I'm talking about the fact that it is expected to be hot Tuesday. Temperatures in the 90s, with other factors in play that make it feel more like 100 degrees.


BOY, THAT'S HOT!!!!


But I can't help but find it refreshing. Because I still recall Jan. 6 and those other days early in 2014 when we got hit with Arctic-like temperatures. That was cold. And messy with the frozen snowfall.


Besides, this is summertime in Chicago. It's supposed to get hot this time of year.


Not that I objected to the cool breezes of recent days. They were relaxing. But Tuesday's heat blast across the Midwestern U.S. seems more like a jolt of reality.


THAT, AND THE fact that Chicago has two ball clubs with losing records, with a mediocre football team scheduled to begin training camp next week, means that all is right with the world in the Second City.


Which means instead of whining about the weather, we ought to focus our attention on learning to pronounce "Bourbonnais." Lest we want to sound buffoonish in our upcoming rants about the Bears.


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Some people don’t pay attention

We joke about it all the time. The phrase, “the third rail” is taken to mean instant doom when used in just about any context.

Except when it comes to being taken literally.

BECAUSE I HAVE lost count of the number of stories I have reported in the quarter-century that I have been a reporter-type person that involved someone dying because they came into contact with the rail that provides the electric power that operates the rail cars on the “el.”

Do people think that the third rail kills everybody else but them? Do they think they are invincible?

Or do they think they’re the equivalent of Wile E. Coyote? How many of those anvils did he get conked on the head with throughout the years?

Too many of these stories blend into each other, because the details are so unfamiliar. I recall one instance when I was a reporter for the now-defunct City News Bureau involving a homeless person, whom it seems publicly urinated on an “el” platform and had his urine stream hit the dreaded rail.

THE “BURNS” ON his body were restricted to his fingertips, since the electricity shot up through the urine and into his fingers. Not a pretty image.

Which makes me wonder why people don’t pay attention to all those signs that get posted warning people of the electrical danger of getting too close to the tracks. Let alone the possibility of getting hit by one of those “el” trains.

They certainly were ignored by a man who, early Wednesday, thought he could walk across the tracks to get to the “el” platform on the other side, rather than using the stairs that people are supposed to use to get from one side of the “el” station to the other.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the man in question was at the California Avenue station on the blue line.

AS SOMEONE WHO has used that particular station on those occasions when I have had to cover a story at the Criminal Courts building located just four blocks to the south, it really would have been simpler for him to use the stairs, rather than jump off the platform and try to walk across the tracks to have to climb aboard the other platform.

This particular man saw things differently. Now, he’s no longer with us.

I’m sure his family will wish he had been willing to put a little more thought into his use of the “el.” Although if he was that desperate to save himself a few seconds of time, he probably was capable of doing so many risky things.

Perhaps it was just a matter of time before he perished. What a waste!

BUT THIS MAN, whom police didn’t immediately identify, wasn’t the only one who didn’t seem to think before acting this week.

There also is the story of a Chicago woman who had to go to court Tuesday in suburban Skokie, only to find herself being arrested and hit with more criminal charges after her court appearance.

For it seems this woman had a young child and two dogs with her. She knew she couldn’t really bring them into the courthouse.

So, she chose to leave them in the car, sitting and waiting while she made her court appearance. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that she now faces charges of endangerment of a child and animal abandonment.

PERHAPS SHE CRACKED open the car windows to provide a little relief. But officials pointed out that the temperatures got into the 80s on Tuesday and that the kid and dogs were in the car for more than an hour – although the woman told the county sheriff’s police she lost track of how long she was in court.

Which makes no sense to me. Anybody appearing in court ought to realize how indefinite the process could be.

One could get lucky and be the first or second person on a court call. Or they could be the last. It’s not an experience for people in a hurry.

Her behavior kind of reminds me of a guy I once saw arguing with a sheriff’s deputy at the Criminal Courts building. He wanted to be able to walk up to the court clerk, immediately get a new court date, then leave.

BECAUSE HE HAD left his car parked right on California Avenue in front of the courthouse, not realizing he’d have to wait his turn on the court call like everybody else.

Yet another person who thinks the rules of life don’t apply to them.

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EXTRA: What is this, Miami?!?

Something needs fixing. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

CALUMET CITY, Ill. – I couldn’t help but get my chuckle for the day while driving Saturday morning through the town in which I grew up.

This Pete’s Fresh Market store was a Dominick’s back in the days when I lived there. It is a nice supermarket, in and of itself, with a particularly nice produce section and ample numbers of foodstuffs for those who are into cooking various ethnic dishes.

BUT THINK ABOUT it. When was the last time we in the Greater Chicago Metropolitan Area had a “January 4” with temperatures anywhere near 73 degrees?

Obviously, there’s a computer glitch of sorts (the real time was somewhere around 10:50 a.m.). Either that, or somebody thinks we live in South Florida these days along with Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen.

Here’s hoping they get their clock fixed soon. Or maybe we should just be thankful they got the temperature right – which means that we got a break Saturday from the maddening heat we have experienced this summer?

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EDITOR'S NOTE: For what it's worth, a typical January day in Chicago reaches a high temperature of 31 degrees, just barely below the level for freezing water.

“Hot, Hot, Hot” has nothing these days to do with Buster Poindexter

I missed the intense heat wave of 1995. That period of scorching summer when the city was so unprepared that the death toll shot up faster than the thermometer occurred back during the time I lived in Springfield, Ill.

Chicago's theme music these days?



But I read the reports and heard the stories from my brother and mother, who were here back then.

SO I CAN appreciate the fact that while these past few days have been immensely uncomfortable, we should be thankful that we don’t have an absurd death toll mounting higher and higher.

That comes even though we may set an all-time record, as forecasts on Friday were saying that Saturday’s official temperature for Chicago would exceed 100 degrees. That would be a fourth straight day of temperatures in the century mark.

And it has been a miserable string of days.

It has been a time period in which I am thankful to be a freelance writer who works from home. It reduces the amount of time I have to spend in the outdoors.

ALTHOUGH I DID have to venture outside at one point Thursday night to cover a news event for a suburban newspaper I do some work for. It was early evening, and I still wound up with notes soaking wet from my sweat. When I finally got back home, the steering wheel of my car was dripping from my perspiration.

And I couldn’t help but notice when I checked the weather forecast Friday morning, I learned that it already was 91 degrees – and allegedly felt more like 104 degrees, on a day when the temperature was forecast to reach 101 (and in reality reached 103 degrees at O'Hare International Airport by mid-day).

It has been a miserable few days. And the thought that keeps going through my mind these days is to wonder how people survived prior to the invention of air conditioning.

Even if this is a record-high and not the norm (1911 and 1947 are the only other years that Chicago had three straight days of 100-degree temperatures) for a Chicago summer, we still experience heat each and every year.

BUT IT SEEMS that no matter how much we feel miserable, we should be a little bit thankful.

Because like I have already stated, we don’t have much of a body count running yet  -- six deaths overall as of Friday night, which is barely more than the five shooting deaths that occurred Wednesday on Independence Day from hot-headed people who shouldn't be allowed near firearms, regardless of what the NRA thinks the Second Amendment means.

There have been people who have died during the past few days, but it does not appear that we have any deaths that were brought on solely by the heat.

Maybe it means we learned the lessons of ’95. At the very least, everybody seems to be aware of the concept of a “cooling center” – that special place where people can go if either they don’t have air conditioning, or it isn’t quite working properly in their homes.

ALTHOUGH IN MY case, I must confess to having adequate air conditioning AND a portable fan (which was a birthday gift from my mother just a couple of months before she died) blowing air directly on me while I work.

Which is about the only thing that has made these past few days bearable (and probably the only reason I haven’t shorted out my laptop computer with excess sweat while I write copy).

That, and one other fact. I keep seeing those long-term weather forecasts that tell me the temperatures will take a (relatively) dramatic plunge in the next few days.

Temperatures in the 80s is still summertime warm. I won’t be basking in the outdoors and shivering from the breezes.

BUT IT WILL be a notable drop – one that won’t feel quite so stuffy as though I’m being asked to inhale cotton when I breathe.

How good does this look right about now?

And when we get back to a time when we have sunny skies AND cool breezes, I think I will appreciate it all the more.

I know the weather has become extreme when I’m looking forward to the day when I can wear my leather jacket without having people around me look at me like I’m insane.

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