After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story by Michael Hainey

7/29/2019 After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story by Michael Hainey

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AFTER VISITING FRIENDSA SONS STORY

MICHAEL HAINEY

A decade in the writing, the haunting story of a sons quest to understand the

mystery of his fathers deatha universal memoir about the secrets families keepand the role they play in making us who we are.

Is there any more powerul story in the world than a boy looking or his ather?....Tis is a beautiul work o reporting and redemption. Parts o this story will stay

with me orever. I nished it in tears.

ELIZABETH GILBERT, author oEat, Pray, Loveand Committed

I inhaled this story. Everything you want and need in a book. I started chapterone with my cofee in the morning and then never made it to work.

A beautiul book.

GABRIELLE HAMILTON, author oBlood, Bones & Butter

Michael Hainey makes his quest or answers about his ather read like a thriller.

J.R. MOEHRINGER, author oSutton and Te ender Bar

Haineys writing is balletic, nimbly avoiding both sentimentality and sensational-ism, making grie and absence into powerul and ully elt orces....A narrative that

transcends his own and spans generations.... Part elegy, part mystery and wholly

unorgettable. KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred review)

A beautiully written exploration o amily bonds and the secrets thatmay test them.

VANESSA BUSH,Booklist


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T H E S H A D E , R A I S E D

April 24, 1970. Friday morning. The sun, searing the shade, my

brothers and mine. We share a room. Twin beds above the kitchen,

side by side. Headboards against the wall beneath the window that

looks down on a tiny cement patio. A small house next to an alley

next to a grocery-store parking lot. Kroger.

Scraggly orsythias divide our alley rom the parking lot. Fragile

yellow fowers the color o Peeps pop on the thin branches. Mostlythe branches catch the trash that orever swirls in our lot. Flyers

and circulars. Papers.

This is on the Far Northwest Side, a block rom the Kennedy

Expressway, in the shadow o OHare.

My mothers hand on my shoulder. Time or school, she says.

She wears a blue robe and pale blue slippers that look like san-

dals. She is thirty-three, thin with rosted brunette hair and deep,

heavy-lidded almond-shaped brown eyes and a tight mouth. She


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A F T E R V I S I T I N G F R I E N D S

looks like Queen Elizabeth. Its like theyre twins in time. Pick a

photo o Elizabeth rom any year and lay a photo o my mother

next to it. Sisters, youd say. Especially in the mouth and eyes. Same

hair, too. My mother has always wished her hair were curlier, that

it had more body. For years, my grandmother gave her a perm every

ew months, my mother hanging her head in our cold gray washtub.

The doorbell rings. My mother says, Who could that be?

She walks to the window and raises the shade.

What the hell are they doing here? she says.

Below, my grandather and grandmother, my uncle Dick andaunt Helen, are standing on the porch in the shadow o our honey

locust tree, its tiny leaves futtering in the breeze.

My mother walks out.

From the air vents along the foorboards my brother and I can

hear the adults in the kitchen below. No words. Just sounds.

I remember exactly what happens when I get into that kitchen

and every moment aterward. But sitting with my brother on theedge o our beds in our pajamas, that bright morning in April, him

eight and me sixeven now I eel like Im imagining it.My brother and I pause at the top o the stairs. Then there we

are, on the edge o the living room.

The boys are here, Uncle Dick says.

He pushes us orward, into the kitchen. The sun is bright. The

linoleum white and cold on my bare eet. My mother sits at thekitchen table, in the chair she will sit in the rest o her lie. Her

chair to solve the Jumble. Her crosswords chair. Her chair or soli-

taire. My grandmother stands behind her, a handkerchied st to

her mouth.

My mother reaches out. Come over here.

She sets us on her chair, my brother and me, side by side. Were

still that small.

Your dad is dead.

Her eyes are red but she is not crying. Its going to be okay, she

says. Well be ne.


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She hugs us. And as I sit there, crushed against my brother, held

tight by my mothers arm, I can eel, against my chest, my brothers

chest, quivering. I struggle to pull back rom my mothers embrace.

Hes crying.

In that moment I think only one thing: how excited I am. Because

my whole lie up until then, my brother has never cried. Whenever

I have cried, hes always teased me, told me I was a baby. I point at

him and start to laugh and I say, Crybaby! Crybaby!


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T H E N I G H T S L O T

My ather was the night slot man. Thats a newspaper term. From

the time he is a young boy o six or seven in Dust Bowl Nebraska,

back in the Depression, all he wants is to work in newspapers. All

he wants is to escape, to get to Chicago and be a newspaperman,

just like his brother.

My dads name is Bob. He idolizes his brother, who is twelve

years older. His brothers name is Dick.Their ather was many things, but mostly he was a switchman

and, when called upon, a griever. Those are railroad terms. Their

ather passes most o his lie in the windblown rail yard o McCook,

a town barely bigger than an aterthought. Day ater day, he cou-

ples and uncouples strings o boxcars and then waits or the engines

that will come to pull them apart or carry them away.

At eight, my ather gets a job as a paperboy, delivering the

Omaha World-Herald. In high school, he edits The Bison, the

school paper. Come graduation in 1952, the Omaha World-Herald

declares him one o Nebraskas brightest newsboyswho has


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worked his route with diligence and dedication. They give him

a Carriers Scholarship$150. He also earns a $450 scholar-

ship rom Northwestern University and uses it to attend the Medill

School o Journalism, just like Dick, who is by now an editor at the

Tribune. Dick delivers the address at my athers commencement.

The Omaha World-Heraldruns a story headlined TWO BROTHERS

GET ATTENTION AT MCCOOK HIGH GRADUATION. The editors

print head shots o Dick and my ather. Beneath them, a caption:

Richard, Robert . . . Speaker, Listener.

Five years later, in May 1957, my ather graduates with a mas-ters degree in journalism. A ew days ater commencement, he

packs up his room in a boardinghouse run by an Armenian woman

on Foster Street. A Sigma Nu raternity brother drives him and his

suitcases down to Chicagos Union Station, where he boards the

Burlington Zephyr, bound to McCook.

He doesnt want to go back to Nebraska, but Dick, who is the

chie o the local copy desk at the ChicagoTribune, tells him that itis all but impossible to get hired at the Tribune straight out o col-

lege. Most o the reporters didnt even graduate rom high school.

You need experience. Thats the only way theyll respect you.

The McCook Daily Gazette is in search o a managing editor or

a special project, and my ather takes the job. The town is getting

ready to celebrate the seventy-th anniversary o its ounding. In

1882, the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad needs a way sta-tion between Denver and Omaha where it can switch out crews and

add a more powerul locomotive or the climb through the Rock-

ies. They name the nothingness ater General Alexander McDowell

McCook, a Union soldier in the Civil War who spends his prewar

years wandering the rontier, putting down Indian uprisings.

The Gazette is a small paper, but my ather consoles himsel with

the act that its a daily and it covers all o southwest Nebraska. Just

as the Great Depression hits, the Gazette buys a propeller plane,

christens it the Newsboy, and claims to make journalism history

by becoming the rst paper in the world to be regularly deliv-


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ered by airplane. Every day, the Newsboy takes fight rom an air-

strip notched into a corneld on the outskirts o town and zigzags

through the skies o southwestern Nebraska and northwestern Kan-

sas. Through a hole in the planes thin foorboard, the pilot o the

Newsboy drops bundles o papers down onto towns even smaller

than McCook. Its all very successul until a windstorm sweeps into

town and hurls the plane end over end, splintering it. So dies the

Newsboy.

The paper is published in a limestone building on Norris Ave-

nue where, above the ront door, someone has chiseled: SERVICE ISTHE RENT WE PAY FOR THE SPACE WE OCCUPY IN THIS WORLD .

My ather dedicates himsel to his work, creating the Gazettes

seventy-th-anniversary issue. He spends that summer interview-

ing old-timers and digging through records at City Hall and the

town library. He edits stories or the paper, as well as reports and

writes.

One night, so the story goes, he and a high school buddy, BobMorris, drive out o town and spend the night drinking beer. On

the way back, they come across a road-construction site. My ather

climbs onto the earthmover and drives it toward the darkened river.

What are you doing? his buddy yells, laughing on the bank.

Getting some experience, my ather says.

The ollowing morning the Red Willow County sheri calls the

Gazettehe asks or a reporter to drive out to the river. My atherarrives at the scene o the crime. Once there, he interviews the o-cers as well as the construction oreman and then publishes a story

in the next days paper: MYSTERY VANDAL HITS CONSTRUCTION

SITE. The sheri thanks him or helping to draw attention to the

crime.

He publishes the Gazettes commemorative edition, says his

good-byes, walks to the redbrick train station at the bottom o Nor-

ris Avenue, and buys a ticket or Chicago. His brother has gotten

him a job as a copy editor on the Neighborhood News desk at the

Chicago Tribune.


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#

By September 1957, my mother has been working at the Tribuneor almost ve years. She starts when shes sixteen, still a senior

at Gage Park High School. My mother ends up there because my

grandmother sees a help-wanted ad in the Tribune classieds. Years

later, my mother sends the ad to me. My grandmother had kept it

packed away and my mother uncovers it ater she moves her into

Central Baptist. My mother scribbles a note: Mike, A step back in

time. Love, Mom

GIRL FOR TRIBUNE

16 TO 19 YEARS OF AGE.

ERRANDS, CLERICAL, IN NEWS DEPT.

DAY SHIFT. 40 HOURS A WEEK.

MUST BE WILLING TO WORK SATURDAYS

AND SUNDAYS. THIS JOB AVAILABLE

AFTER AUGUST 28. ANSWER BY LETTER

ONLY TO TONY STEGER, NEWS DEPT.4TH FL. TRIBUNE TOWER

435 NORTH MICHIGAN AVE.

When my ather arrives rom Nebraska, my mother is barely

twenty-one years old, a gal Friday or the papers editorial cartoon-

ists. She attends college part-time but will not graduate. Shes too in

love with the newspaper lie. Later she will work on the TribunesRadio-Television desk, writing up listings or the television guide.

The Tribune was the happiest time o my lie, she tells me.

In a room ull o crusty old guys with cigarettes singed to their lips

and hal-drained bottles rattling in their desk drawers, she stands

out. She was all our daughters, one o them tells me years later.

We adored her. She blossoms under their attention. She begins to

see there is a world beyond the world she knows. A world o smart,

knowing men. A world at the center o the world. A world that

knows whats happening. A world where things happen. Like the

day Bob Hope drops by. She gets her photo taken with him. Her par-


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ents cant believe it. Or the day she goes down to the Radio Grill and

buys drinks or the guys. A slew o screwdrivers in paper cups on

a plastic caeteria tray that she carries across Michigan Avenue and

up the elevator into the City Room. Twenty drinks, to go. Her idea.

I thought itd be unny, she tells me. All the guys loved it.

Then she does that thing she always doeswaves her hand andlooks away and says, I dont know.

All the while, shes living with her parents in the West Elsdon

neighborhood, by the runways o Midway Airport, on the citys

Southwest Side. A small, tidy house among row ater row o small,tidy houses built on old prairie, just ater World War II was won

and the men came home. Each with a small yard. In theirs, my

grandather plants a silver maple. Broad-limbed and overarching.

Its seeds, come spring, green and conjoined. Thin wings. As a boy

I would gather handuls o them. Split them rom each other. Cast

them to the wind. Watch them helicopter to places beyond my

reach.In the all o 1957, the man who will become my ather walks

into the Tribune newsroom and starts working with his brother as

a copy editor. I have a photo o the two o them sitting ace-to-ace

at the copy desk, my uncle speaking, and my ather, listening.

My ather covers the city. He writes a eature about the construc-

tion o Chicagos new water-ltration plant. (WORLDS BIGGEST

WATER FILTRATION PLANT HERE NEARLY A THIRD COMPLETED);he writes about a man trying to get the Dukes, a West Side gang,

o the streets (DUKES NO LONGER HAVE THEIR DUKES UP; HERES

WHY); he writes a piece about the dead-letter oce (DEAD LET-

TERS? POST OFFICE SLEUTHS KEEP EM ALIVE); the 4-H Fair (DOZ-

ING ENTRIES BELIE BUSTLE AT 4-H FAIR); the tale o a man named

Otis T. Carr, trying to raise money to build the fying saucer he

wants to fy to the moon (TRIP TO MOON? OTIS IS READY); about

a reunion o men whove been saved by the Pacic Garden Mission

(SKID ROW GRADS HOLD A REUNIONEX-ALCOHOLICS PRAISE

GOD AND MISSION). He cuts these stories rom the paper and mails


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them home to Nebraska, where his mother pastes them in another

scrapbook.

For the next couple o years, he will move rom general assign-

ment reporter to copy editor to assistant picture editor. Its a lot

o movement because the Old Men, as management is known,

have marked him as an up-and-comer, and they want him to get

experience.

By 1957, the Tribune is the biggest and most powerul o Chi-

cagos ve dailies. As a morning paper, it competes with the Sun-

Times. The Defender is also a morning paper, but since it is or the

citys black population, the other dailies dont pay much attention

to it. The two aternoon papersthe Daily News and the ChicagoAmerican (which later changes its name to Chicago Today)aresister publications o the Sun-Times and the Tribune, respectively.

The Tribune still labors under the shadow o the ColonelColonel Robert McCormick, the recently dead owner. Grandson

o the papers ounder and grandnephew o Cyrus McCormick,the man who developed the reaper, the Colonel is a rabid Republi-

can and uses the paper to crusade against the New Deal, back Joe

McCarthy, and rant against the Commie threat, wherever he imag-

ines it to be. He plants an American fag on the banner and dubs

the Tribune An American Paper or Americans. In November

1948, it is the Colonel and his obsessive Republican wishul think-

ing, as much as any editors ineptitude, that results in the Tribunesmost inamous headline: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN. The Colonel

dies in 1955our days beore Richard J. Daley gets elected tothe rst o his six terms as mayorbut his presence looms overthe paper or years. Thats not the way the Colonel would want

it is what men say in the newsroom to keep someone in check. A

paper edited by a dead man.


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After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story by Michael Hainey