"Let's All Go to Chicago!"
“But, Honey, in January?”

by Webb Williams

Editor’s Note: Please be advised that the following story describes one northshore family’s trek to Chicago for the purpose of experiencing the city’s unique architecture, history, art and museum scene. The family’s journey was in the early part of January. Therefore, this story will not include any references to surviving the artic chill at Soldier Field, cheering “Who Dat!” to no avail or being mauled by snowballs on the way out of the stadium. If you are looking for quotes from the likes of Reggie Bush, Drew Brees or Sean Payton, you have come to the wrong place.

My wife is usually a very intelligent woman. Her work took her to Chicago during the springtime, and she spent three days in seminars and only one sightseeing. But that one day was all it took for her inspiration…

I thought perhaps she had lost her mind when she said, “Since we’re going to be empty nesters soon (daughter Helen, 21, an art history major at LSU; daughter Lauren, 18, graduating this year and going off to LSU, too), let’s do a four-day family trip to Chicago to see the art museums, architecture, and just experience more than just the same beach scene vacation in Florida.”

Same old beach scene in Florida? That smacked of sacrilege to my beach bum soul. But I got her point. She said she could get great airfare and hotel rates if we went in early January.

I Googled “Chicago in January.” The first thing that popped up was, “Chicago is a great city, but no one goes there in January if they can help it.” There were mentions that typically there would be freezing cold temperatures around 22 degrees with 10.7 inches of snow. I questioned my wife’s sanity and decision-making skills, but, being the only male in our domicile except a castrated cat, I was summarily outvoted.

My wife is value-minded, so she was justifiably proud of saving us about 1,000 bucks on airfare and hotel rooms. But then I learned we were spending about 1,500 bucks on frozen tundra-wear: Eskimo coats, hats, scarves, gloves, undergarments of every toasty variety. At this point I wasn’t about to question the economy of this venture. I was in too deep, so I kept my male mouth shut. (If a modern-day husband/father is alone in the woods, is he still wrong?)

Packing our standard-sized car trunk with all of the girls’ baggage proved to be a miracle. Three days and four nights? They were ready for a month. My wife punched and squeezed, reconfigured and then smashed the bags in so tight into the bulging trunk that I could have sworn I heard an ant gasping for air.

We landed at O’Hare Airport, which is now vying with Atlanta for being the busiest in America. Big, clean and bustling, I noticed the people seemed slimmer. I figured it’s probably ’cause the food’s not as spectacular as ours. After all, Chicago’s mainly famous for hot dogs and deep-dish pizza. Gimme a break.

I noticed that guys wore their baseball caps with the visor in front! I worried about all the big guys with Notre Dame caps and sweatshirts while my daughter Helen proudly wore her LSU scarf, but, luckily, there were no squabbles over LSU’s big win.

Complexions of the folks at O’Hare seemed to range from pale to pasty. Must be from staying indoors during their bitter cold winters. I related my observations to my wife, who snapped me back to reality when she pointed out that we were still in the airport and the people were from all over. Oh, well, I thought. The girls weren’t as pretty as they are back home, that’s for sure.

The shuttle to the hotel traversed through a cold, dismal rain along the freeway with barren trees and a few evergreens that seemed to be shivering. The driver commented on the heat wave. Yeah, pal, I thought. Must be almost 40 degrees.

The Chicago street scene is an energetic, exciting one. Folks in Chicago drive with their horns blowing a lot. I couldn’t look at a Chicago cop car or an elevated train stretch without thinking of all the crashing in “The Blues Brothers.” I looked around to no avail for Jake and Elwood as we passed Picasso’s famous unnamed lionesque sculpture at Daley Plaza.

Downtown Chicago boasts some spectacular architecture, a mix of classical and modern—and it is the cleanest city I’ve ever seen. Not only does the Windy City have pretty black wrought iron trashcans on every corner, but the citizenry actually uses them! The city also employs guys with brooms and dustpans to pick up any stray cigarette butts or gum wrappers on the sidewalks. Those Yankees have a different mindset about litter we might want to emulate.

We arrived at our beautiful, 1927 classical-rococo hotel—the Chicago Hilton—across from Grant Park’s Paris-inspired walkways bordering Lake Michigan. I was excited to look out of our room and see the Buckingham Memorial Fountain, the same one from “Married with Children.” Al, Peg, Bud and Kelly Bundy must be nearby, I thought. Sinatra’s spirited classic, “Chicago,” played in my mind as we set out to walk a few blocks to Millennium Park.

Millennium Park is a splendid transformation of old railroad yards into a gorgeous public art showplace people park, with spectacular statues, stunning sculptures, an ice rink, and a huge outdoor theatre big enough to dwarf our biggest Jazz Fest stages. With speakers overhead throughout and glorious modern architecture for the stage area, it must be awesome to see a concert there in more temperate temperatures. (Actually, we really lucked out, as it was usually above 40° the whole time we visited!) We walked over bridges that looked down on bunnies wearing their winter furs foraging for food among the shrubbery, and we gawked at the grand skyscrapers so tall they disappeared into the clouds.

An imposing sculpture called “Cloud Gate,” aka the “Bean,” is an awesome mirrored work of art that has distortion reflection qualities similar to the old funhouse mirrors that make you look as fat or skinny as you wish. It sits there like some spaceship from a planet with a grand sense of humor.

Another must-see is the incredibly creative “Crown Fountain,” which is actually two massive monolithic towers of glass blocks with projected facial close-ups of Chicagoans gently smiling in slow motion. In warmer weather, water spews from their mouths onto shallow reflecting pools and the kids go bonkers splashing and playing in the water.

It’s an easy town to get a crick in your neck as you gaze at the colossal 110-story Sears Tower, the tallest in America; the steel crisscrossing lines of the John Hancock building; the gradation of six shades of white terra cotta going up to the top of the Wrigley Building; the castellated Chicago Water Tower; and the hulking Italian Renaissance Chicago Library, the world’s largest. This is one city that knows how to build stylishly and upwardly.

“Let’s eat!” My wife picked out the Weber Grill, owned by the folks who make—you guessed it—Weber Grills. It was a neat, funky place that grilled everything on industrial-strength Weber Grills in an open kitchen. The charcoal smells and sights of the steaks, ribs and chops grilling were mouth-watering. My babyback ribs were just perfect, and the girls’ tuna and steaks were tasty, too.

After a good night’s sleep and the avoidance of a $6 bottle of “glacier” water left for our consideration, we strolled up Michigan Avenue, careful to abide by the unique 20-second countdown on the “Walk” signal, one of many such contraptions downtown. Seemed like we were legal walking targets if we dallied while crossing the street. We scurried to the glorious Art Institute of Chicago, protected at the entrance by two spectacular bronze lions.

The country’s largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist art is on display, as are the classic “American Gothic” and “Nighthawks” that we especially wanted to see. We spent the better part of the day walking through this cultural wonderland, enjoying Monet, Seraut, Manet, Dali, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Rembrandt, as well as works of art in every medium from the ancient to contemporary. Even some wacky “word art” and pennies on the floor as art were curious. Photography exhibits, miniature period rooms that look like exquisite doll houses (without the dolls), and a mid-nineteenth century paperweight collection were also among the unique compilation. It was a fascinating, broadening experience—of special import to our art-history-major daughter.

We shopped at Carson Pirie Scott & Co., a classic 1899 department store on State Street. Intricate cast-iron ornamentation and shopper-friendly street-level framed windows have drawn customers for generations. But, alas, the store is closing. Buddy Guy’s Blues Legends nightclub is also closing. Sorry we didn’t get to see him—sorry we didn’t hear any Chicago jazz or blues at all.

That evening’s dinner was at Harry Cary’s Italian steakhouse, with the legendary Cubs announcer memorabilia filling every wall. His famous “Holy cow!” and black-rimmed glasses trademarks were everywhere, and the place was lively and fun. They parade the steaks out raw before you order, and I thought surely with the mid-America stockyards so near they’d be better than we get at home. Not so, though. Mine was okay—not as good as our sizzlin’-in-butter style, but okay. The girls enjoyed salads and pasta dishes, and a baseball cake on green coconut turf was neat. We enjoyed the bar action even more than the restaurant.

Frank Lloyd Wright dominated our Chicago Architecture bus tour the next day. We marveled at the Rookery Building, with its intricate interior courts of white marble, urns and gold-leaf designs. We also were treated to a tour of his Robie House, designed and built for a bicycle entrepreneur and his family some one hundred years ago. The long and low brick marvel of architecture is one of the American Institute of Architects’ ten most significant structures of the twentieth century.

Our tour guide was a docent, an educator well versed in the history of Chicago’s rich architectural heritage. She pointed out every architectural nuance of the city as we rode past hundreds of Canada geese in parks and all-brick homes built inches apart.
Vibrant, eclectic Hyde Park, the University of Chicago, the Illinois Institute for Technology and celebrated architect Mies van der Rohe’s very simply designed campus creations were next on our tour. His famous quote reflects his style, “Less is more.” We passed by the Playboy Mansion, but Hef was nowhere to be seen.
I wanted to tour the Field Museum of Natural History and the girls wanted to shop the Magnificent Mile and visit the Navy Pier, with its vistas of the skyline and the 15-story Ferris wheel replica from the 1893 World’s Fair, so we went our ways.

Maybe it’s a guy thing, but I was enthralled with the Field Museum, feeling as though I was exploring the world and all of its cultures and creatures. I was especially fascinated by the frightening exhibit of the man-eating lions of Tsavo, the same lions that slaughtered some 140 railroad workers in Africa. Their terrifying stare had me hearing the narrator’s warning at the end of the movie “The Ghost and the Darkness.” I recall he said of this very exhibit: “Even now, if you dare lock eyes with them, you will be afraid!”

I saw every bird, every mammal, every fish, and every nation’s culture on the face of the earth—even extinct creatures. The Egyptian complex was fascinating, with tombs, burial ceremony artifacts and some 23 actual mummies. The Chinese exhibit was especially interesting, although an hour later I wanted to tour it again.

But the dinosaur exhibit was the most incredible I’ve ever seen—it is, after all, the world’s best collection. Staring “Sue,” the 65-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex (who to her credit doesn’t look a day over 60 million), the marvelous presentation takes you from the dawn of time through the evolution of the planet to the present.

The museum’s portrayal of Theropods blew me away. I’ve often thought how similar to dinosaurs our birds and chickens seem, but with feathers. Turns out, today’s birds—all 93,000 living species—are the descendants of dinosaurs that started growing feathers some 230 million years ago. Granted, it’s not as exciting seeing a sparrow at your birdfeeder as it would be to see a T-Rex there, but it sure gives me pause now when I step into my chicken coop at feeding time.

We hailed a cab and were off to savor some famous Chicago deep-dish pizza at Pizanno’s Pasta & Pizza on State Street (that great street…). The family’s been in business since 1943, and it seemed like a typical New Orleans style Italian eatery. A colorful part of the trip, to me anyway, was interaction with the taxi drivers. I found their accents and perceptions fascinating. I enjoyed talking to ’em all, to my wife and daughters’ chagrin.

We left Chicago with a newfound respect for this clean, crisp, beautiful town, and were grateful it showed us unseasonably un-frigid weather. My philosophy has always been that when faced with the choice of staying put and going somewhere else or somewhere new, I always tend to go. I’m really glad my wife came up with the idea of this January jaunt to Chicago, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. She was absolutely right about Chicago. She was incredibly lucky about the weather.
But as the song says, “It’s so nice to go travelin’, but it’s oh, so nice to come home.” Amen, brother. Now, let’s get somethin’ good to eat!