Funny how so many of you picked up the man/monster aspect of the poem and my thoughts behind it. And, yes, Capcom, the Pacific Garden Mission is known outside of Chicago, but the place is not what it used to be even a decade ago. Part of it is that so much of the south Loop is being renovated, the Roosevelt Hotel, once an SRO, is now condos. Around the corner is the Wabash Tap, near Buddy Guy's Legends blues club. About two months back, a guy and his girlfriend were celebrating her 25th birthday and had just left the tavern, which, back in 1998 likely would have been the twin to the 666 Lounge, a black man and woman ask them for a light, they presumably answer the wrong way (this being the wonderful city of equality, right?), and they proceed to get beaten nearly to death. The man, all 210 pounds of him, kicked the girl in the head at least ten times. If someone called me a cripple (if that man was even called a name), I highly doubt that I'd rail off physically on that person. I still recall the photos of the girl in the paper, she survived and is fine now. But here it is three in the morning and the two fuckheads give the cops an address of the Pacific Garden Mission. So why weren't they there and in bed? Sure, they offer religion there but the cops should have given some blue religion to that bastard who thought it just fine to kick a girl half his weight and size in the face. He's in jail on ag-assault, awaiting trial. If I was at the corner of Wabash and Roosevelt that early morning in the false dawn, there'd have been a stained chalk mark in the shape of an @$$hole after the cops finished their job and carted him off to the morgue. You gotta know who to love in this city. And you gotta know who is taking up a bed in a shelter that should be going to a much better individual. Carl Watson, a writer from Uptown, wrote it best in BENEATH THE EMPIRE OF THE BIRDS. The best religion in the world consists of two words: be careful.
I've been Major Tom this week, I took my protein pills and put my helmet on. Been very productive, not a shivering puddle of goo. Just out in space deciding what direction seemed the one I needed to take. Then I realized it was Hallowe'en coming up, and last year around this time I was posting on the way cool song "Frankenstein's Den" by The Hollywood Flames Here's a poem I wrote about twenty years ago. I had a photo of the place once, but it went into the erff. At 646 South State Street is the Pacific Garden Mission, where all of the drunks from this bar got to sleep for free if they listened to mass. I'm not going to stick up for this place in the least, because there have been numerous murders and muggings caused by the people who live here. Not homeless, not transients, killers. Well, I seem to have gone off on a bit of a rant there. Hnnh. I'll try and post again soon.
For those who asked, there is just something about "Telstar," I told Bob its like being Green Lantern or his alter-ego, Hal Jordan, up in the sky, and agreed with Rich that there is no real way to explain it. It just gives you chills from an adrenaline rush or it doesn't. I also thought to look up Mike Post's the from HILL STREET BLUES, not just for the song, but to show off a Chicago long gone. Now the television show went to great lengths to say that Hill Street might be in Baltimore or Chicago, but those are our squads and our sleets and our Old Style signs. The old 7th District station house is still on Maxwell Street, but everything else was demolished, never mind why and what was built. You should know how I feel about this century's Chicago by now. This section of Maxwell Street is also seen in THE BLUES BROTHERS, but in direct sunlight on a crowded day. The scenes from Hill Street Blues' opening credits, which they try to convey in the show but just can't, fake snow is fake snow and guys in sleeveless t-shirts walking by an alleyway doesn't help. The adult walking the two kids, I can see them in my sleep, and, again, the Old Style sign above the door to a nameless tavern. Even the viaduct beneath the Dan Ryan Expressway has changed, its not as desolate because of the newer buildings and street lighting. The show seems dated now, but more than anything, it did two things for me. It taught me how to write about more than one character at a time, and it also told me to never, ever forget that I was writing about Chicago.
Moving on. This is the song that I'll hear as I'm breathing my last and heading west into the black...Wayne
There are many people who will read a blog and instead of posting a comment, will just email the person back. I do that myself depending on my mood. Many people emailed me, and (again, links on the side of the page right there with Harry's, Cathy Van Patten and Stephen Mark Rainey also posted about HEF (as he signed his work). Almost everyone mentioned his deep; and resonant voice, if he and Rodger Gerbderding were in a conversation, I felt as if I were in a diving bell (or something like that). Peggy Nadramia, who published tons of his stuff in her magazine GRUE, told of how if she asked for something, his reply was always "I've got a lot going, but...better put on the coffee, Mother!" We'd be talking at a con, someone would make a comment, and Harry would say "well...there's that" and chuckle ominously. In fact, it was Harry himself who made me realize what a chuckle was when I saw it written in a story. And I forgot to mention that he could mold his face into the persona of Christopher Walken, don't ask me how. I watched it happen, and I still don't know. Alan Clark made the reminded, and Jeff Osier echoed, that there are many people who have Harry's photography or artwork hanging on their walls. That's a difference between writers and artists, its a great thing to see the spine of your novel (or if you are lucky, the front cover) on a shelf in a store or a dealer's room at a convention, its another to see something worth hanging on the wall of any room in your house. His work was very precise and he was always dedicated. He kept boxes of spare parts, things he might put in a photo, like the head of a doll or a piece of a china cat. I finally went to bed around three this morning, and as always, I put myself to sleep by flipping to some cable nonsense and eating ice cream. I stopped on an HBO rerun of a George Carlin special, it was only going to take five minutes to eat and Harry kind of dressed like Carlin, dark slacks and shirt, a little loose or, as they are marketed in the stores, "relaxed." As I reached to turn the TV off (I never use the remote because its, you know, technology), Carlin blurted out "Does God love America because its a great country or because we have eighteen fucking blends of Rice-A-Roni?" The TV blipped off, Carlin a white ghost for a second. If he had posed that question to Harry, the answer would have been "well...there's that." And then the chuckle. I'll catch up to you, my friend.
I cried a lot today. Its odd to not cry on the phone or at a gathering. How grim is fate that not twelve hours after I talk Yvonne up to the crowd that she emails me terrible news. Harry Fassl died on Sunday morning, and when I talked to his gal Diana I didn't cry, I got the news with more detail, then I emailed Sean. And cried. And emailed Yvonne back. And cried. So its a new experience to have tears dripping onto the R and the I keys and me filling the garbage with tissues. I effing hate tissues, they are no good. Christ, the stories involving Harry, me, Brian Jeff, Cathy, Diana, Von,Kathleen, Rodger, Andrew and from there Sean, Jessica, Erik, and the gang from MINN-CON up north. Hemlockman himself, a commenter on this blog, did work with Harry. He illustrated many of my stories. The best memories of my life are either at Yvonne's house in Hanover Park or Harry and Diana's in Oak Park and you can pick virtually any weekend during the summers of 1993 through 1996. I can add Beth Massie's get-togethers in Virginia a close third, but I'm chained to Chicago, and the collar counties are as far as I'm allowed to venture. And Harry was by Beth's, so he met Dave, he already knew Mark, Barb and Charlie, Lee, and so on. Mind you, every single name mentioned here means something in the publishing world. (Well, Barb's husband Charlie, he just has the biggest collection of Volkswagens in the galaxy).
Harry and I had fun with words. He always used the line from OUTBREAK when Morgan Freeman says to Dustin Hoffman "Get in the plane, Billy." He used it if I was jabbering too much and dinner was ready. I cut out a panel from a comic that simply said "Ed is by the turbines." That became a catch-phrase for years. For every time I signed my name Weird Alien Sausage, he would sign his HEFaLump or the oddly exotic Ted DeVeaux. And he did great photography. Don't go by the shot above, go to the link to his site. (I really just thought of this now, its still there, its not going away).
The year we went to Beth's, it was me, Harry, Andrew, Jeff, and Von. USAir to Pittsburgh then some propeller plane to the Shenandoah Valley airport. Somehow we miss the boarding call. They hold up the plane for us, even though we are like fifty feet away from it on the other side of the window, and we board and then wait for clearance. Meanwhile, back at the other airport, Beth and pretty much everybody in Staunton and the surrounding towns are told over the intercom that the propeller plane will be late by an hour because five hippies from Chicago hopped up on the joy juice made them late.
Christ, so many stories. Such a legacy of hard work and friendship. Watching crappy horror movies like THE HIDEOUS SUN DEMON and then staying up even later watching FOREVER KNIGHT, God help us all. Or SPACE PRECINCT. And then there was sumo wrestling for a time. Watching it, I mean.
From what I understand, Harry's ashes will be strewn (?) across Lake Michigan on the Winter Solstice. He died during a full moon in October, something I would like for myself also. I used to joke, talk about seeing the Grim Reaper in the doorway and telling everyone "Hey, there's my ride!" But writing this down and reminiscing with Andrew just reminds me that I'm on the tail end now, coasting as far as it will take me. For the good times, and absent friends. Get in the plane, Billy.
Bye, Harry. Your pal, Wayne
