| |
SLICING A PATH down the boulevard in a decked and loaded ’53 Chevy Bel Air, I hid behind sunglasses and drove one-handed. The horizon was as blue as the Bel Air’s paint job. My foot pressed pedal to metal. Wind blustered through cranked windows. The Delco radio blasted at maximum volume. My hair whipped around in a frenzy of curls and snarls. I sang Mister Sandman at high pitch. It was a good day to be alive.
In the next lane, a black Caddy weaved all over the road. A middle-aged man glanced over at me once, twice, three times. I flipped him off, crowed at the sky, and spun onto a country road.
Like the flip of a switch, the landscape changed. Teeming neighborhoods, crowded living conditions, and congested commercial districts gave way to countrified air and big skies. Stretches of fields and woods interspersed by farmhouses, hardware stores, and roadside taverns defined a world apart. Ironically, this genteel highway littered with dandelions led to the newly named O’Hare International Airport, the salvation for urban sprawl and big business.
Located fifteen miles northwest of the city and surrounded by a preexisting grid of roads and rail lines, the site offered the most promising prospect for growth. From the start, O’Hare’s expansion met with opposition. Fiscal conservatives claimed the city was being royally screwed on the project. They said nobody was going to fly into O’Hare since Midway—crowned the busiest airport in the world—was ideally positioned on the city’s south side. Given indirect routes, winding roads, and inconvenient railroad crossings, the prevailing joke was that O’Hare could only be reached by airplane.
Despite criticism, the city forged ahead with plans. After putting in runways, a control tower, parking lot, and terminal, the mayor enticed several domestic airlines with sweetheart deals. The airport was off and running with regularly scheduled flights. Naysayers moved aside and investors replaced them, surveying the lay of the land through gold-plated tachymeters. Speculators made killings. Scam artists snapped up acreage one day and sold it the next, doubling and quadrupling their cash outlay. Developers moved in, parceled lots, and put in sewer lines. Contractors entered bidding wars even while surrounding towns tried to put the brakes on expansion ... and failed. Succumbing to the inevitable, one-horse villages scrambled to incorporate adjoining townships guaranteed to generate solid tax bases, and subdivisions sprang up from dairy farms faster than milkmen could sign on the dotted line.
Practically overnight, the American dream was had being realized. Attracted by split-level houses set down on postage-stamp lots, young families scraped up enough dough for a down payment, loaded moving vans with all their worldly possessions, and transported households from city grime to rural green. Transplanted like tulips, kids contracted hay fever while frolicking over mowed lawns of fescue and rye. These were the 50s, a time to make babies, spend money as if there were no tomorrow, grab the good life, and never look back.
I turned onto a winding road that eventually straightened and zipped alongside a stretch of railroad tracks. Traffic picked up. The pavement made a jog. The landscape opened into a wide, flat expanse. Suddenly it was rush hour, even though it was still early afternoon. I followed a lineup of cars pouring off the access road and spilling onto a ramp skirting the airport terminal. Banners slapped in the wind. A high school band clad in green and white played a rousing rendition of Yankee Doodle Dandy. Cops directed cars onto a makeshift parking lot. Crowds numbering into the thousands roamed the tarmac.
After pulling into a space and locking up the car, I followed a meandering throng heading toward the terminal. A ’49 Buick Super Convertible—powered by 268 cubic inches of raw engine power in eight smoking cylinders—ripped past and claimed a spot in a fire lane. The sleek bomber body, white paint job, and black soft-top symbolized the epitome of coolness in a button-down society. Over the radio, Doris Day warbled a pop tune. The turn of an ignition key silenced her voice mid-phrase. Whistling a tuneless tune, the driver climbed out of the Buick. He left the convertible top down and the doors unlocked, and ambled across the road, looking neither left nor right. Traffic whizzed past, swerved around him, honked angrily, and braked to emergency stops. One red-faced driver flipped him off with a few well-chosen words. Hands plunged into trouser pockets, he seemed oblivious of his own mortality. Richard Starr was in his own world. Probably Mars.
He was still whistling when I sidled up to him. “What happened to the Chrysler?”
“Belongs to a friend. He let me take it for a test drive.”
“Didn’t buy it?”
“Price was too high.”
We entered the building with Starr leading the way. He seemed to know where he was going. The terminal echoed with cavernous modernity. Hundreds of voices spoke all at once. Words and phrases circulated on a breeze, fizzled in a passing draft, and expired in the din. Inching along, we followed the crowd. Starr said something I didn’t catch, put his arm around my shoulders, and corralled me through a side exit. The door closed with a heavy whoosh that sealed us inside an empty service walkway. Whitewashed walls and cement floors echoed our solitary footfalls.
“Where are we going?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Is that a rhetorical question or a philosophical one?”
He angled his head, his eyes diving into mine. I averted my glance, and he laughed. Before long, after leading the way down long passageways and around sharp corners, he opened an access door and ushered me through.
