Writing Boots

In which I return to the Hudson Library & Historical Society where I learned to read, under the auspices of The Learned Owl bookstore, whose shelves once held books by both of my parents—and now, by me, too.

My parents had differing relationships the town they raised me in, and I guess I did too.

With readings from their books and mine, I tried to get a lot across to a packed room on a rainy Tuesday night last week in Hudson, Ohio.

Self-styled genteel white Americans like myself like to think that racism is subtle, now a quarter of the way through the 21st century.

Racism is “institutional,” it’s “systemic,” it’s “implicit.”

Every once in awhile, you get a stiff sip of the old-fashioned stuff.

At least, if you live in Chicago, you do.

In a way, it’s almost refreshing—something you can react to, for once.

Got one not too long ago, from an Uber driver who took me to O’Hare, for a business trip.

We hit it off right away, when he complained in his South Side Chicago accent about his last customer, who gave him a four-star review after what he considered a perfect ride. He said it was typical, that lots of customers give four-star reviews, because they don’t “believe in” giving five-star reviews. He said four-star reviews hurt his standing with Uber. He gets dinged, somehow, and it costs him money.

I launched into a sympathetic sweary rant about the sorts of professional customers who appoint themselves white-glove inspectors of every fucking service they receive, and what self-important, clueless asses they are. I wasn’t just trying to curry favor with the guy. This is a longstanding complaint of mine, and I believe employers who embrace the “customer is always right” philosophy wind up turning their employees into slaves of the stupid and the spiteful.

And this is how it usually begins. A Northwest Side, Southwest Side or Southside Chicago racist (two can play the stereotyping game) encounters a non-working class Northsider who seems to his astonishment not to be a bad guy. And this cognitive dissonance itch needs urgent scratching. The guy has to know: Is it possible that there is actually a regular guy who lives on the north side and takes Ubers to the airport? Or is this just a rare homosexual libtard Cub fan who knows how to talk to regular people?

And this is the part that’s hard to render here, because it actually is subtle. Ingeniously and smelling his way with his tongue, the Uber driver (or the bar regular or the paired-up golf partner) finds a topic of conversation three degrees away from “neighborhoods,” say. Or the mayor, who happens to be Black. Or the latest crime statistics. The guy doesn’t go right into the fraught topic. He sidles up to it, a tenth of a mile at a time. Until, by the time you’re pulling off on I-190 into the airport, he’s dismissing certain populations as ignorant or worse, and checking your eyebrows, in the rearview.

Having endured a few dozen of these kinds of conversations in my 34 years of living in Chicago, I can sense them coming a long way off, like a vibration on a rail. At various stages of their approach, I’ve yelled at guys, I’ve set traps for guys and I’ve gently poked guys in their eyes. Like the golfer/ComEd meter reader who was talking about how shitty all the people are on the West Side and I shrugged and told him maybe I see them differently because my schoolteacher wife works with their little kids, who don’t seem shitty to me.

I’m also sure I’ve let some of these guys off the hook entirely, knowing I wasn’t going to change them and just wanting to get onto the next thing. (And these are all guys, by the way; I know there are racist women in Chicago, but none has ever played this game with me; they seem content to let Northsiders be.)

With this Uber guy, I knew what to do by the time we approached Terminal 1. I didn’t say a mumbling word in the last minutes, just nodded and uh-huh-huh-ed and oh-boyed, until he dropped me at the curb. I thanked him for the ride, I told him to have a great day, I paid a 20% tip, and I rated my experience.