The City

By George Benda

Dialogue drives the gritty action of The City through the tough streets and bare knuckled politics of Chicago in the 1970s. In a reality available only to those who lived it, first time novelist, George Benda, takes you down those streets and through the web of political power in a turbulent era.

Shredded by race riots, hung over from the violence of the 1968 Democratic Convention, Chicago in 1976 presented the greatest of leadership challenges. And at that moment its iron fisted leader, Mayor Richard J. Daley, met his end. On this canvas, Benda draws the nuts and bolts of the machinery that made Daley’s Chicago run. He uses it to raise questions that everyone living in a democratic society must answer: how does a community best survive and prosper?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 16, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483568140

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Prologue: Finding Shoeboxes

I hummed a tune to myself. A folk song that my wife Anna and I used to sing as a duet to each other, Kisses Sweeter than Wine. Hmm, mmm, kisses sweeter than wine. Now we are old, getting ready to go, we get to thinking about what happened a long time ago….

Cleaning out the house now that Anna was dead was much harder than I imagined it would be. And then I opened that closet. The one in the guest room. At the back of the closet stood a stack of boxes. Shoeboxes.

I knew what they were. I froze. Ten shoeboxes. Anna had tucked things in them: news clips, video tapes, pictures, notes. She had labeled each with magic marker on the front and top.

It had been a good life, but I liked to leave the past behind, mostly. To learn from it, not dwell on it. But here it was. Anna knew me better than anyone and she had kept what she knew I would need to remember.

I opened the first box, The City. On top was a video tape. I remembered it well. I was trying to write books when I was young. Things like autobiographical fiction, philosophical dialogues. When home video came out in the 1980s, I thought I’d use this new technology to record my stories, memories, and thoughts. This tape was the first attempt—my video journal. I stuck it in the old VCR in the guest room, settling in for my trip down memory lane.

The screen flickered and a scratchy image of myself as a young man appeared. A deep voice—my own—crackled from the tape: The Second City. Chicago. My city. I’m Jack Slack. If you’re seeing this, I’m dead. Don’t worry, that’s ok with me. They were strange words to hear, knowing Anna was dead and I was not.

My voice went on: I had a poster in my dorm room in college that said, ‘philosophers try to understand the world, we try to change it.’ It’s a paraphrase. You know who wrote that? Karl Marx. The funny thing in my mind was that he was a philosopher and he changed the world. But not all for the better. As a college kid, I thought I could figure it out. That I could do better. That I could get it right. That I could be the one who was both a philosopher and an agent of change.

Don’t think for a minute that I’m a Marxist. I just read a lot. But I digress.

On went the journal: Chicago. The mid 1970s. Hizzoner. Boss Daley. Richard J. Daley, Mayor of the City of Chicago. The last of the iron-fisted boss-mayors and the head of one hell of a political machine. Eked out his last victory with what, a seventy-eight percent margin? Can dead people vote? Only in Chicago. But she’s my city.

Memories flooded my mind. I paused the tape and my eyes welled up. Back in the 70s, Anna and I lived on the South Side of Chicago, Hyde Park. That was a long time ago. It was where we met. Where we shared our first home. The tape restarted on its own.

"My story? Well here’s the thing. I burn with a passion. I love this world. The natural world, the sky, the water, the birds and animals, the plants, and even the bugs. We are just complicated animals, beavers run amok making our own ponds. That’s Chicago, a big, kind of scummy, kind of beautiful pond that we made out of a swamp. Really, it was a swamp. Look it up.

So when I look at the city, I think, ‘Why are we making such a mess of things?’ Somehow we’ve got our connection to the natural world all screwed up. I’ve got to figure this out, and then I’ve got to fix it. Good joke, huh? Well, it’s my story.

I paused the video tape again. It was my story. It is my story. Ah, or whatever be verb tense the editor tells me. I don’t know, and I don’t care. The story flooded my mind—things I knew then, and things I know now. The story of the past as I’d dictated it on the video tape. And shoeboxes full of odds and ends to spark my memory as I write this book now. I’ll just tell you everything I know.

Chapter 1:

A Cleaner World

The explosion ripped through the Crawford Plant with the force of ten tons of TNT. In the blink of an eye, a dozer blade had caught and triggered the junked 105 howitzer shell, sending it soaring into a pile of trash and vaporizing a half-full five gallon can of gasoline that some homeowner had discarded.

Flaws in the waste sorting process. The Sanitation worker driving the dozer never even knew what happened.

The blast wall on the north side of the building blew out into the parking lot. Flames enveloped the piles of trash being sorted on the incinerator prep room floor. More exploding gas cans erupted and the crack of discarded ammunition heating to ignition cut through the air.

Black smoke circled into the sky as alarms sounded and workers scurried in search of cover and emergency gear.

The Commissioner of Streets and Sanitation, John Sullivan, sat at the head of the table.

Gentlemen, if you can’t show me an approach that keeps this city cleaner and gives us an equal or greater number of jobs, we have nothing to discuss.

Patronage jobs, Jack whispered to himself.

Commissioner.

Howard, Jack’s boss, stood to take away the disadvantage of position at the table.

You have led the world in improving the big city environment for more than a decade. But times are changing. Your systems are outdated. What we are talking about is the next stage of managing waste. You know you need it.

Howard, I respect you, you know that. But we are just starting a plant that will push technology, creating fuel out of waste. RDF, refuse derived fuel. Fix the energy problem while we solve the garbage problem. The Crawford Plant will be one of the first in the world, and the first in any big city. And you can sit there with a straight face and tell me we are behind the times?

Commissioner Sullivan, accustomed to the power of position, rocked back in his large leather chair as he spoke, hands folded across his belly. Jack recognized the familiar pose from photos of Sullivan’s boss, Richard J. Daley, Mayor of the City of Chicago.

All due respect, Commissioner, Howard replied, You know you are going to have to shut down the older incinerators. I have visited the Crawford Plant and, while it is a technological wonder, it is far from taking on the capacity of the old incinerators any time soon. And our projections—Jack here prepared these over the summer—show you are already well past a time when the incinerators and city landfills will meet your waste disposal needs. I believe you know these facts, Commissioner.

The Commissioner’s secretary knocked on the door of the conference room, entering without waiting for a response. She scurried to Sullivan and whispered in his ear. His face fell, settling into a deep scowl. He shook his head, gazed down at his folded hands, then looked up.

I’m telling you Howard, it ain’t broke and we’re not fixin’ it, Sullivan sputtered, paraphrasing one of his boss’s favorite bits of political wisdom.

His face was beet red.

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

The last of the street newsboys shouted, holding up the afternoon edition of the Chicago Daily News.

Crawford Plant Blows Up!

Jack grabbed a paper and handed the kid a quarter.

Used to be a dime, Howard. I can’t believe these kids are still on the street.

Like I told Sullivan, Jack, the world’s changing, Howard replied.

They stopped and looked at the headline and opening graph in the news story.

Sounds like there might be some trouble in paradise with this Crawford Plant explosion, Howard.

Jack flicked his finger, popping the paper’s front page with a snap. The pair started the three-block walk back from the coffee shop to their State offices on Washington Street and Franklin, Howard walking the upright walk of a former bird-colonel who had been running a big chunk of the US Army Corps of Engineers, Jack pulling his threadbare trench coat tighter over his slightly stooped frame. Rain swirled around them.

Forty degrees and raining. Another beautiful day in Chicago, Jack quipped.

He blinked away the drops while raking the rain water back through his brown hair with his fingers.

I’m telling you Howard, it’s a big spider’s web of corruption that is stopping the changes that we need in this city. That web is what Sullivan was talking about when he said it ain’t broke, Jack commented, barely able to contain himself.

He stood, then paced the Institute conference room. The small office on Washington Street housed the Illinois Institute for the Environment, a think tank of sorts for the State, the agency responsible for doing research and setting direction for its environmental programs.

Jack, you need to calm down a little here. We all know how the city works at some level. But Sullivan has been doing some good work over there, and you shouldn’t dismiss it so simply, Howard encouraged.

You heard him. This is about patronage, Jack defended. Jobs, city jobs. He’s part of a machine made to maximize the number of city jobs. That maximizes the number of votes they can control. Don’t you see it?

Look, Jack, you’re showing your inexperience here. This direction isn’t going to get us anything with Sullivan. You need to get your thinking straightened out on this. You pop that line out in one of our meetings with Sullivan, and we’ll never have another meeting.

So I should just swallow hard and buck up? All the while we just play into that same Daley Machine mentality? This is 1976, Howard. We shouldn’t have to play these games. We’ve got State legislation and Federal mandates. That should trump the damn Machine.

Wake up, Jack. You can wave that around, but you’re not going to get anywhere with it. We can have laws and mandates. They’ve got the money and the power. And I’m telling you from where I sit, if we wave legislation and mandates at Sullivan, it’s going to blow up in our faces.

Just like the Crawford Plant, Jack said.

He plopped into his chair with a grunt—partly from disgust, partly the pain inflicted by his inflamed joints and the collapsed vertebrae that caused the stoop in his back.

Softening his gaze, and tone, Howard responded.

Jack, think about it. Ed and Vito came out of the city environmental group and helped design the Crawford Plant.

Howard was referring to the Director of the Institute, Ed, and his Deputy Director, Vito, who had gotten their appointments at the State agency when Democrats took the Governorship in 1972. Ed was Howard’s boss.

Yeah, I know. And Joe did, too, Jack admitted.

Joe was an engineer, Howard’s peer, who had been the project engineer on the Crawford Plant conceptual design back in 1972. He’d worked on the other trash incinerators before that.

How about if you sit with Joe and find out how the city got where it is on waste management. I think he could give you a better idea of how the city works than I can, Jack. You guys could do that on the train home, huh?

Vito stuck his head into Joe’s office. The scent of Vito’s expensive aftershave flooded the room. Vito, the dedicated reader of GQ magazine, equated his natty dress to his position of power.

Christ, did you hear the news, Joe? The Crawford Plant just blew up. I can’t believe it.

Jack could hear Vito from his own office down the row. And he could smell the scent. Always a warning that Vito was on the prowl.

Joe, ever the engineer, looked up from the mess of his desk, papers piled high. On the desk. On the floor. On the chairs. On the window ledge. On top of the radiator, which was cooking on this cold day. He answered Vito with a crooked smile.

No, Vito. First I’m hearing of it. Do you know what happened?

Vito recounted what he had heard in the phone call from the current project manager for the start-up of the plant. Joe looked at Vito and then reached his right arm high over his bald head. Bending his outstretched arm at the elbow, he brought his hand to his forehead, scratching gently, then raking his fingernails over his scalp until he had hold of the back of his neck. His signature thoughtful pose.

I warned them, Vito. I warned them. We saw all that ammo hitting the Northwest incinerator back in the sixties, when all the vets figured it was too dangerous to keep around the house with their teenage kids. I guess that was mostly Korean War guys. The W-W-Two ordinance was probably already buried in the garbage dumps. This stuff must be coming from the Vietnam vets. I warned them, Vito. And about the gas cans, too. I told them they had to put a crew in there to pick out the dangerous stuff by hand on the dump floor before the dozer touched it. I warned them.

Didn’t do any good, Joe, Vito said. The blade of the dozer clipped the firing pin on the shell and it went straight into the trash. Had to hit that damn gas can. Bam. Blew it all to hell. Like a BLU-82 out of Nam. They were damn lucky the only person around was the dozer driver.

Yeah, the only thing they did listen to me on, Joe confirmed. They built the control room to be blast proof. Saved everyone else today, I guess.

Ok, Joe, if somebody comes back at one of us for this, that’s what you tell them.

Jack stuck his head in Joe’s office, chuckling at the mess.

Hey, Joe, I’m heading south. You ready to head home, too?

Yup. Joe stood and grabbed his parka from the coat rack near his desk.

Howard suggested I ask you a little about how the city works, Joe. You mind talking about work on the way home?

"You know I love this city, Jack. Happy