Page 49 (1/2)

1

ALLEYS, THINKS JOHN Lincoln At least Chicago has alleys He puts down his pencil and ambles the three steps from his desk to the small, round —about the size of a mediuht now,pedestrians off the sidewalk Without alleys, everybody’s business is on the street One spiteful strike by the sanitation workers and New York is turned into a landscape of dark plastic hills and vile odors, leeful rats

Lincoln looks down through his roundat the wall of garbage bags noering along one side of the alley below At least in Chicago, people tuck the offal of their lives away, off thehe could say about this place One thing

He returns to his desk and to the 462-pagefor the last four days: 37 Rah the Windy City, by Norh the nineteenth rae and draws a sharp line with his pencil over “Rah” What pretension, Lincoln tells himself No one has ra around soe in front of him and then strikes “37” What’s with that number, anyway? No one ever uses 37 There’s never 37 of anything Now he pencils in three alternative words and studies the new title Walking Tours of the Windy City Prosaic, but it gets to the point, and cleaning up the verbiage creates alliteration, which will help hold the title in memory Better

Lincoln turns back to ramble—now tour—nineteen, a stroll from Clark Street in Lincoln Park twenty-five blocks south to the Loop Past the site of the garage where somebody—maybe Al Capone’s boys?—rubbed out sevenin the 1929 St Valentine’s Day Massacre (now an e); past the ornate 1893 structure that once held the Chicago Academy of Sciences (snore); past the intersection where the Weathere through Old Town during the Days of Rage in 1969 (all evidence was cleaned up within a week); past the Moody Bible Church (does anyone care?), the Chicago History Museum, the Latin School, and then block after block of sixties-era residential towers and forgettable mid-rises, a wall of vapidity that John Lincoln shudders to contemplate, let alone walk past It’s 2009 Get in your car and drive, he thinks

In New York twelve years ago, the su in an apartment on West 115th Street, he used to spend every Saturday walking Usually the journey was the same: he’d start at Colu his tih the Upper West Side, into Tie, past City Hall, all the way down to Battery Park The Broadway excursion took the whole afternoon Every block, every step, he found so, a celebrity That was a walk And you could repeat it all over Manhattan, in alo, on the other handwell, you’ve got the lakefront, from Hollywood Avenue to Hyde Park, and that’s pretty lively, at least in summer, and then there are patches of nificent Mile of North Michigan Avenue, the old, struggling Loop, with a surviving Louis Sullivan building here and there (sparkling jewels compared to the blocks that have been turned black and somber by Mies) And in between are vast stretches ofvapidity Close your eyes and you don’tat his desk, Lincoln closes his eyes

But try telling that to Professor Fleace, thinks Lincoln The old coot is so decrepit, it’s probably been decades since he left his University of Chicago office (in the geography department, naturally) The one tiot up from his desk, just sat there, a s patterns topped by a scraggly white fur ball But Fleace desperately wanted to bring out an update of his walking book (the 1987 edition offered only twenty-six rambles) And who better to publish hi, and literary aspirant who ever thuh a thesaurus?

Eyes open again, back to tour nineteen: “As we advance down the block, we find the io History Museu Saint-Gaudens statue of our beloved sixteenth president, standing, in a s” John Lincoln’s pencil is poised over the word “secreting” when a knock intrudes on his office door

“Yes,” he calls out irritably

A compact round head with sandy hair peeks in “Do you have a second?” asks Byron Duddleston, the owner of Pistakee Press

“Of course,” says Lincoln, quickly stiffening at the sight of his boss “Come in, come in Or ‘Advance!’ as Professor Fleace would say”

The owner takes a few steps into the small office, then pauses, lifts his chin, and sniffs the air Given Duddleston’s light brown coloring and taut, sinewy body, Lincoln thinks of a se strike,” Duddleston says “The s to seep inside”

“Right,” says Lincoln, wondering why he hadn’t noticed “Please, have a seat”

The two men sit and face each other over Lincoln’s desk, a chaotic landscape of azines, books, referencea thick ?” he asks

So shopworn and familiar about the manuscript in Duddleston’s lap makes Lincoln uneasy “Fine, fine,” he tells his boss “I’ve been working on Professor Fleace’s walking book A nice job, really—I’hten it up a bit”

&n

bsp; “He’s a beloved figure at the school,” Duddleston interrupts “In ht to be in line to sign up for his class on the geography of Illinois”

“I alished I’d taken that course,” Lincoln lies

“So at the world that stays with you,” Duddleston muses “In my time, the U of C was full of men like that Women, too” He ticks off a few names, some faintly familiar to Lincoln “I don’t know if you had that experience there”