Chicago – Writer of Sweet Small Town Stories of Love and Family

Finishing up in Chicago

Published on November 3, 2019November 3, 2019 by Live Vi-Carrie-ous2 Comments

After my last post about Chicago, I thought I would be right back to finish up the rest of the Chicago adventure, but life and travel and work conspired to keep me busy. But I’m back.

Friday, Oct. 4

Senator Kimberly Lightford and our RALICares colleague Jenna

An event in Hillside, Illinois, sponsored by Illinois State Senator Kimberly Lightford. She was a pleasure to meet and her staff were wonderful to work with. It was a small event, in the parking lot of her office. The property manager wouldn’t let us set up where we were visible from the road, so there were few to no walkup visitors. But the visitors we had who sought us out were fabulous. We had an officer who’s the school liaison, and the mayor of a neighboring township, as well as the senator. The officer had a tattoo of his daughter’s name on his arm–Amber. (Some of you know where Dave has his daughters’ names tattooed.)

In personal news from home, we got some great news and some bad. My mom was rear-ended and got stitches on her forehead. The pictures were very bloody and I’ll spare you those. She’s recovered well, though the same can’t be said of the car: it was totaled.

Returning to our hotel, the CoPilot app took us on a crazy route through residential areas that we had no business going in. CoPilot: Strike 2. But on the upside, we passed an Irish

pub that looked good, so once we changed from CoPilot to Google maps and found our hotel, we dropped off the trailer and went to Irish Times for dinner. It was as real an Irish pub as we’ve found in the U.S. It even smelled right, like a peat fire. I don’t know how they did that. Our waitress said the owner is Irish and he and one of the waitresses were in Ireland just then, getting married that weekend. Dave had corned beef and cabbage (which apparently is not actually eaten by the Irish in Ireland, according to our Irish family), and I had fish and chips. Both were excellent.

Saturday, Oct. 5

Our event today was at the Way Back Inn, a half-way house in Maywood, Illinois, sponsored by State Rep. Emmanuel “Chris” Welch. I was privileged to give him a tour and he was impressed with the trailer and the information he learned. We talked privately for a few minutes after. A friend of his had taken the tour with him, and the young man’s mother is an addict. He said it was good for his friend to see this and be educated about what to watch for. We talked about the toll addiction takes on a family. I got a little teary myself then, knowing the toll my own family has paid and he expressed his condolences.

This event was small in scope, also, but still, those who came through were impacted. One of the men I gave a quick tour to was a resident of the home, a former addict. We educated each other. He gave me an idea for one more item that could be in the trash (he said it was how his parents knew he was dealing), and I showed him a hiding place he’d never used. He was fun to chat with.

After our great Irish pub experience last night, I’d been thinking: what other cuisine is Chicago known for? Duh! Chicago deep-dish pizza! Thanks to my trusty Google, I found a highly rated local chain with a restaurant not far from our hotel. We dropped off the trailer at the hotel as it started to rain. By the time we got to the restaurant, it was pouring. We were there early enough on a Saturday that we didn’t have to wait for a table, though we did have to wait for the deep-dish pizza. It takes about 35-40 minutes to bake. So we started with some deep-fried cheese curds to tide us over while we waited. And it was worth the wait! I don’t know that I’d have it all the time, instead of the pizza I grew up with, but it is definitely worth having occasionally.

Sunday Oct. 6

Today, we were up early for our event at Willow Brook High School in Villa Park. In the elevator as headed out, we saw a groomsman from a wedding at the hotel last night. Dave asked him about the wedding, and he said it was awesome, everyone had a great time, in fact he was just heading to bed. As he got off the elevator, he said, “Go, Bears!” We chuckled, and Dave muttered, “Go, Raiders.” I remarked that he was just going to catch a nap before the Bears’ game. We didn’t realize the Bears and the Raiders were playing that day.

We found out also that our event was scheduled for a Sunday morning (over our local contact’s protest that people would be in church and we’d have a low turnout) because the Bears’ game was in the afternoon and definitely no one would come during the game. So we found the school parking lot and set up. The local legislator, State Rep. Deb Conroy, and one of her staff members came, as well as a few school administrators. I had one woman, probably in her seventies, who told me she left her husband at home getting the grandkids ready for church, but she wanted to take the tour and learn all she could from the trailer.

As great as most everyone is, we do run into an occasional jerk. And we had one today. I think he was on a local council of some sort, and he was eyeing a higher office. He monopolized conversations with the representative. I offered him a tour and he said, “Yeah, I’ll be right with you,” and proceeded to keep talking, sitting on our tables, and taking up everyone’s time and attention. Half an hour later, he joined a tour, then after five minutes, looked at his watch, said, “Oops, I’ve got to go to a meeting.” He left, then stood outside talking for another twenty minutes. It was very obvious why he was there and it had nothing to do with caring about raising awareness about the opioid crisis in America.

The nice thing about an early event is we were done, packed up, and back at the hotel by 12:30. David even got to watch some of the Bears/Raiders game. We stayed at the hotel for the rest of the day, ate some of our leftovers for dinner, and visited the hotel pool for the first time.

Monday, Oct. 7

We had an evening event, so I worked most of the day while Dave did laundry and read. We went to Waukegan High School and set up. We were basically on the sidewalk, next to a door into the school. They were having a workshop on getting financial aid, and how to fill out the FAFSA, sponsored by two legislators. Both of them stopped by and took tours, a very enthusiastic school security officer came through, and several parents as well. State Rep. Rita Mayfield, came through for a tour. Congressman Brad Schneider was a co-sponsor of the event also. Some of his staffers came through, as well.

There is usually a freelance photographer at our events, hired by PhRMA, to take pictures of all the events, of the legislators, of the people on the tours. Sometimes a video team is there as well. For all our Chicago events, we had the same photographer, Ty. He’s the guy who called his wife to come be a person we could talk to at the soccer fields when we got zero people to come to our display. He’s a really nice guy and we enjoyed getting to know him. We had a few more days with him, but now feels like a good time to mention him. Because …

Tuesday, Oct. 8

We were up and out early, by 7 am, and headed to the south side of Chicago, for a health fair at a community park. Inside they offered flu shots, bone density tests, blood pressure readings, and lots of information. Elgie Simms Nick Smith

Getting there at all was a bit of an adventure. I’m now in the habit of mostly using Google Maps, but I cross-check the route with CoPilot. Heidi, our local contact (I call her “local,” but she’s actually from Missouri, so maybe I should say she’s our Midwest contact), Screen Shot 2019-11-03 at 3.31.36 PM texted to say what street we should approach from to get the best angle to bring the trailer into the driveway. I put that into Google, and two blocks from the park, we came to a low train trestle and there was no way we we’d make it under there. Luckily, there was a wide dirt area where we could tell we weren’t the first one to use it to turn around. CoPilot found an alternate route with a higher trestle that we sailed under just fine and then we were back on track.

South Chicago has a certain reputation, and I don’t know that I’d want to visit after dark, but I felt fine there during the day. There is apparent poverty and crime, but there are also lovely neighborhoods where the residents are obviously working hard to keep their homes safe attractive.

We were fairly busy this day. Everyone who came through the trailer was amazed at what they learned. I remember one woman in particular was blown away by everything I showed her. I realized I had formed an opinion that “everyone” on the south side of Chicago knew all about drug use and would be aware of everything already. No. These were mothers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, fathers, grandfathers who wanted to educate themselves and keep their families safe.

Ty and I chatted about the importance of various health screenings and somehow we got on the subject of colonoscopies. He said his mom had scheduled one because her doctor’s office told her she needed it. Well, English is not her first language, (I think he’s Filipino), so when it came time for the prep, he explained to her what exactly she had to do for the prep and what the test involved. She immediately canceled the procedure. 🙂

Tomorrow, we leave Countryside, Illinois and the hotel that’s been our home for the last ten days.

Country in the City

Published on October 19, 2019October 21, 2019 by Live Vi-Carrie-ous2 Comments

Tuesday Oct 1 – Thursday Oct 3, 2019

The day after our event in Monee was October 1 and we had the day “off.” I did my monthly ag reporting job all morning while Dave did his usual trailer fussing/tweaking. I also blogged and we found the workout room. I walked on the treadmill while he rode a stationary recumbent bike.

Our hotel was in the town of Countryside. It was fairly centrally located to the event venues I was given ahead of time. And it worked out pretty well for the venues I was given later, too. We were on Joliet Road, which is part of Historic Route 66. We also got curious about Joliet Prison. It was not near us, but we considered going there if it would have been open for a tour, or even if it had a gift shop. Alas, the timing didn’t work out for us while we were there. The jail closed in 2002 and has been used in several movies. It hosted a big music festival last summer.

Wednesday, Oct. 2 was the day making us nervous. It was our big “show.” It was the state PhRMA conference. PhRMA is a trade association for about thirty pharmaceutical companies, and is also one of our sponsors/partners for the trailer. Our bosses from DC were also coming. And it was in downtown Chicago at a hotel. We were not sure about driving the truck and trailer downtown during the morning commute. Our local contact suggested getting there about 6:30 am, to get the trailer into position. We had clearance from the hotel to park under a porte cochére outside the convention center entrance.

Dave had made a friend at our hotel, a truck driver he met while having a cigar outside. Bob was from Texas, but he drives all over. He said the best time to go downtown is 4:30 a.m. Dave and I agreed to leave our hotel at 4:30. It was a good decision. We sailed into town with little traffic, found the hotel with only one wrong turn, but were able to quickly correct since there was no traffic to contend with right there. We parked where instructed. We’d been told the hotel staff had been informed about our dimensions and we were assured we’d fit.

We did. Barely. The trailer has two heating/AC units on the roof. One of the units had inches to spare above it, but, yes, we did fit.

As soon as we parked, we went into the hotel on a hunt for coffee. It was about 5:15 a.m. and nothing was open yet. Of course. Finally, a little before 6:00, the hotel cafe had coffee ready and our DC consultants arrived. We got all set up and then proceeded to wait.

And wait. And wait.

Our bosses arrived around 8:30. We got caught up and I met the big boss for the first time. We’d only spoken on the phone before. A few PhRMA staff came out about 10 a.m. for a tour. They were definitely impressed and promised to tell attendees about us.

The bosses went into the conference and gave a presentation, and at lunch time, we finally got busy. So, so, busy. We had groups of 8, 10, and I think even one group of 12. The trailer is big, but it’s not that big. At one point we had three tours inside. One just beginning, one in the middle, and one ending. Everyone, as usual, was quite impressed.

We met the consultants we’d be working with in Florida. By 2:00 the stampede had died down and we got to have lunch. The DC consultants brought in Portillo‘s hotdogs, a Chicago specialty. They were very good, with that “snap,” you’ve heard a good hot dog must have. The rest of the afternoon was fairly steady with ebbs and flows. By 6:30, it had mostly stopped and our bosses hit the road back to DC. The wind had also picked up and it was getting quite chilly. We had to stay until 8 pm, but by 7, I was frozen. I went into the conference center, found a place to sit and warm up, and told Dave to come get me if I was needed. He never came, so at 8, I went back out, we loaded up, said good-bye to our DC consultants, and went in search of dinner.

When we’d wandered around the hotel earlier that morning, (it’s on the river which has some beautiful sights).

We’d seen an Irish pub, so we walked there. We shared a Reuben sandwich which was delicious. Since it was so late by the time we left the city, it was again super easy with little traffic. Thank you, Lord! We were exhausted by the time we got to the hotel and our bed.

Thursday, our event was in the early evening, so we spent the day much like Tuesday. I worked, wrapping up a couple of freelance projects. Our presentation was at a soccer field, home to multi-teams of all ages of kids practicing. Our local contact checked it out ahead of time. It was on the south side of downtown Chicago and there was no way we could get the trailer down those narrow streets, so we compromised and brought a popup tent and some of the props from the trailer. It turned out to be a very windy evening and we had zero interest from the watching parents.

Me. Cold.

Dave & our photographer, Ty.

Our local contact walked around, passed out flyers, told parents what we had, but still nothing. We had a photographer who was there specifically to take pictures of the “crowds” at the event. I asked a young woman walking by if I could pretend to talk to her for a photo op, but even that was declined. The photographer ended up calling his wife and she got out of the car with their two-year-old, so we could stage some pictures.

We stuck it out to the bitter, windy, cold end before we packed up. For unloading, Dave had had to park the truck in the middle of a narrow street, then we hustled getting everything out. After that, he moved the truck to a school lot around the block. Now we did the same in reverse, told our photographer, his wife and daughter, our consultant, “Thank you!” and headed out. I’d found a restaurant that looked not too far from our hotel for dinner. It had good reviews, so we unhooked the trailer at the hotel and sallied forth once again.

The food was good, if a bit slow to arrive, which seemed odd, since they weren’t very busy. It was nearly 9:00 by then. I had a raw veggie and cheese appetizer plate while Dave had chicken wings. The employees next gathered in a room nearby with their own dinner plates. Dave commented that there seemed to be a lot of employees for so few customers. We finished eating, paid the tab, and saw an exit out the back, which was closer to where we parked. That’s when we discovered the crowded and very busy pub in the rear of the building, which explained a lot.

We were still bouncing between Google maps and our trucker app, CoPilot. You may remember Google sent us to a very low bridge in Indianapolis, so we tried to use CoPilot. But CoPilot is a lousy app. It just is. I tried to like it. But half of the addresses I put in, it can’t find, so it chooses a random nearby address, or just gives us, “City Center.” That’s not very helpful. And when my phone is hooked into the truck’s display screen, whenever the CoPilot app wants to tell us a direction, it hijacks the radio and won’t return it. We have to manually return to the radio station. I figured out pretty quickly to mute the directions, but still … Anyway, given that we were going to many suburban locations, we made CoPilot our default map app. But then … Monday. Going to Monee, it sent us to a dead end street. We were able to turn around and find an alternate route, but … Strike 1.

Chicago! Chicago!

Published on October 18, 2019 by Live Vi-Carrie-ous

Our first Chicago event was in a small suburban town called Monee. I asked our hotel desk clerk how to pronounce the name of the town. Money? Moany? Mownae? She wasn’t sure, so that was no help. Our event was early evening so we had most of the day to unpack and settle in to the hotel and get our bearings. We went to Target and stocked up on snacks and water for the truck.

I had a couple of hours to work in the afternoon, then we headed to Money. Moany?

We were still using Google for highways, but using the trucker app for towns and cities. Because remember our “adventure” in Indianapolis and the low bridge?? So I had the trucker app open with the Monee address. We were rolling along, lalalalalala … and it told us to turn on to a road that was barricaded. Permanently. No entrance. This was the Indianapolis low bridge situation, but in reverse.

We were able to go past the blocked off road and turn around (no small feat with a 32′ trailer). I closed the trucker app and turned to Google. We were only a few minutes late. Our consultant, Heidi, was waiting for us at the venue. A community center. We knew Heidi from Iowa so that was a quick “Hi-good-to-see-you,” and we set up quickly.

All of the Illinois events were set up in cooperation with local/state/national legislators. This was our first event in several weeks. But we quickly regained our rhythm. I only forgot one drug hiding place on my first tour. But … as we learned in Indiana and Colorado … the local people don’t know exactly what we offer. They don’t know how to publicize the trailer. We had a fairly low turnout, but those who came through were enthusiastic. I had a village trustee and another local official who took the tour. They stopped after the first five minutes so they could tweet/post on social media in an effort to get more people out.

We were about to pack up as a few more people trickled in. I took a small group through at few minutes before the official end. As I was wrapping up at the end of the trailer, David started a new tour at the front. We have a policy of never turning away anyone, but it was already past our official end time. Oh well. We have a mindset that God knows who needs to see this and it’s not our trailer, it’s His. So if David was giving a tour, then the person on the tour needed to be there.

Heidi and I packed up the outside accoutrements. The sun set. We paced. We chatted. David and the woman were still inside the trailer. Heidi and I talked about the Iowa State Fair, where we’d seen each other last. We caught up on all the personal tidbits we knew about each other (her mom loves the outdoor furniture she bought at the fair, by the way).

The woman Dave was giving the tour to finally poked her head out of the door. Whew! But no. She was just checking on her kids in the car. Because we don’t allow anyone under 21 years old to take the tour, she’d left her kids in the car. With supervision, of course. And she checked on them regularly.

By the time she stalked out of the trailer, David was smothering laughter and she was seething. He told Heidi and I later that she’d opened her home to a couple who needed a place to live. They were drug addicts and homeless, but had promised to stay clean while in her home. They didn’t keep their end of the bargain on several issues so she and her husband were forced to ask them to leave.

After the couple left, as she was cleaning out their room, she saw stuff. She didn’t think much about it. As Dave gave her the tour, she’d see something and say, “No! Are you kidding me?” He’d say, “No. This is real.” She’d respond with a story or anecdote of what similar evidence she found when she cleaned up after this couple moved out of her home. It matched what we were showing nearly exactly. It was comical and sad and all too true.

We finished the close-up quickly, told Heidi good-bye and headed back to Countryside. In the meantime, we’d given tours to the local police chief and two of his officers, a village trustee, one of the village employees (Parks & Rec?), and a few parents. All of them were amazed and impressed at what they learned.

All in all, this first event in Monee (Mawnee!) was (in my opinion) successful, even if we didn’t have a large turnout. And even if the local legislator who helped set it up didn’t show up for the event. We talked to people, we educated people, we connected to people.

And that’s what it’s about.

Thanks for reading!