I met John McHugh in the autumn of 1966, when I was a cub reporter on the Sun-Times and he was a rewrite man, two years my senior, on the Chicago Daily News. We are still best friends. He worked the overnight shift, and among his duties was taking calls from readers. After midnight, they wanted to settle bets. "And what do you say?" McHugh would ask. He would listen, and then reply, "You're 100% correct. Put the other guy on." Pause. "And what do you say?" Pause. "You're 100% correct." If he was asked for his name, he said, "John T. Greatest, spelled with three Ts."
One night in autumn 1969 we found ourselves in the Old Town Gate, three blocks from our customary posts at O'Rourke's Pub. "I had my first job in Chicago here," he reminisced. "I invented the Roquefort Burger. Somebody ordered a cheeseburger and I, being a dumb Mick, didn't know any better." I told him Roquefort Burgers had long been widely known. "You've got to be shittin' me."
John is one of 10 brothers from Sligo, Yeats Country, on the west coast of Ireland. His father had been a member of the IRA gang that held up the Ulster Bank of Sligo. "They were raising funds for the cause," he explained. "All of the money was never accounted for. Trooper is the only man in Sligo who has a son who graduated from Indiana University." He was entrusted to Indiana under the protection of a cousin in Indianapolis
who was a nun. John himself had studied briefly for the priesthood under the Christian Brothers, but was expelled at 15, charged with smoking. There was also some discussion that during his service as the supervising altar boy, certain wedding and funeral tips may have been mislaid.
Late that night at the Gate, we determined to pay a visit to his homeland. David Lean was filming "Ryan's Daughter" on the Dingle Peninsula, and MGM was flying in film critics to visit the location. We traded one first class ticket for a couple of cheap ones. McHugh insisted in sitting in the last row on the Aer Lingus flight, because he had read about a recent crash in which the tail had broken free, and the passengers in back had survived.
John McHugh: "Oh, we're off to Dublin in the green, in the green..." [Photo by Jack Lane; click on all art to enlarge]
"Okay, McHugh," I said, "we're thrown free and survive. Now we're in the middle of the ocean. Now what do we do?"
"We swim for shore. Do I have to explain these things to you?"
Robert Mitchum, the star of the film, was living in a rented cottage on the edge of town, and drinking Scotch one night while feeding peat to the fire and listening to Jim Reeves records with his man Harold, who had been a paramedic with the Coldstream Guards. They sang along: My heart goes where the wild goose goes... We had accumulated Eugene, John's younger brother, who had fled to London and the brickmason's trade after some trouble at home, but now had returned, the prodigal son."Mitch!" Eugene said. "Remember 'Thunder Road,' when you flew into that transformer? What a way to go!"
"I wrote that show," Mitchum said.
"Mitch, your blood's worth bottling'."Trevor Howard was co-starring in the film. "I like to have Trevor with me on a picture," Mitchum said, "because all I have to do is glom him, and I know I'm okay. One night Trevor is in the kitchen making love to a bottle of Chivas Regal and Harold steps out to take a breath of fresh air. He bolts back in. Mitch! Helen Howard has measured her length in the garden, and is passed out cold! We carry her in, put her on the sofa, and fan her back to witness. Harold examines her. I think she's broken her coccyx! We'll have to put her in the Land Rover and drive her 26 miles across that rocky mountain road to Tralee. That's going be bloody difficult on a broken coccyx.
"I thought I had best tell Trevor. Mitch, don't pay a moment's notice, he tells me. She's always pulling these stunts. Helen! Come in here and have a drink! There's a good girl.
"But, Trevor, we have to drive her 26 miles across that rocky mountain road to Tralee. That's going be bloody difficult on a broken coccyx. Right you are, Mitch! Bloody difficult! Most painful! No sense in my going."
MGM paid for a hired car and driver to take us up to Sligo. There, at 77 Tracy Avenue, I met Trooper and several of the brothers, and some of the 10 sisters who lived next door. It was decided to stroll down to John Holland's Pub at the corner of Wolfe Tone Road. "Watch yourself," McHugh cautioned me. "When the Irish aren't watching you, they see every move. And when they're not listening, they hear every word."
In Drumcliffe churchyard: "An ancestor was rector here"
Halfway into the first pint of Guinness in my life, I asked Trooper, "Mr. McHugh, is there a men's room here?" Total silence fell. All were waiting for Trooper's reply: "Well, Rogers, some of the lads, what they do, they step through that door right there." I stepped through, and found myself under the stars, with a concrete drain running alongside the building. When I returned, all eyes were on me. "Did you find it, Rogers?" I had. Trooper nodded with satisfaction. "You've not been to Sligo till you've seen the steam risin' off your piss."
The next day we jammed into a tiny car for a drive up the coast. "I used to patrol this road as an agent of the customs and excise," Trooper explained.
"Tell Ebert what they issued you for the performance of your rounds," McHugh said.
"A bloody bicycle."
John McHugh stands something over six feet tall. I would not call him athletic, although in recent years he has taken up golf. He was clean-shaven in those years, but later started, as he puts it, "cultivating under my nose what grows wild on my ass." He became the great friend of a lifetime. As young men we sowed wild oats. As middle-aged men we harvested. As old men we ripen. Always we laugh.
We flew on to Venice, where McHugh bonded with Lino, the trattoria owner I have written about elsewhere. Although they did not speak a word of each other's languages, McHugh was so successful at communicating that Lino gave him his apron and installed him behind the counter. McHugh has the ability of convincing others they are already his friend.
Sophia Loren was on the mainland, in Padua, filming "The Priest's Wife" with Marcello Mastroianni. Warner Bros. laid on a car to take me over for an interview, and I took along my friend from the Chicago Daily News. We had to rise early on the morning, and I had unfortunately been overserved the night before. On the road, I gave McHugh his instructions: "I've interviewed a lot of these stars and I know the drill. Just keep quiet and they won't know any the better." But when the great beauty swept into the room, I was paralyzed by hangover, drenched with sweat, and speechless. McHugh whipped out his Reporter's Notebook and came to the rescue.
"Miss Loren, is that a tiara you're sportin'?"
"This? It is a hair clip."
"I see." McHugh took notes. "Miss Loren, I understand you recently gave birth. Can you confirm that?"
"Yes, it is true. I had my little Cheepee. When I was pregnant, I had to stay for weeks in a clinic in Switzerland. Now I feel like a true woman. Carlo visits from Rome on weekends. If I never make another film, it is all right with me. Now I am a mother!"
A rest on Hampstead Heath during the Perfect London Walk: With McHugh and Bob Zonka. [Jack Lane]
McHugh nodded and took more notes.
"And in addition to little Cheepee, have you any other hobbies?"
"You call my baby a hobby?"
"I meant...like poker, or something?"
Later on that trip, we found ourselves in Rome, at the famous Hotel Excelsior on the Via Veneto. The bartender, Luigi, displayed a framed certificate attesting that he had placed second in the world cocktail-mixing competition at San Diego.
"If you don't mind my asking, what do you do?" he inquired.
"I'm in the movie business," John said.
"Are you an actor?"
"Luigi, I buy 'em and I sell 'em."
"Oh, my. Do you see that gentleman in the corner?"
McHugh turned to look. "Luigi, I know everybody in Hollywood, but I've never seen him before."
"That is Omar Sharif!"
"McHugh look a longer look. "Luigi," he confided, "he looks bad."
"And coming in just now, it is King Constantine of Greece. He stays here in the hotel. His wife, she has just had a baby!"
The King presented a cigar to Omar Sharif. McHugh observed this closely. The King, smiling happily, walked over and presented him with a cigar. McHugh accepted it, ran it under his nose, placed it in his vest pocket, and slapped him heartily on the back:
"King, you're one of the best!"
As the son of an IRA man, McHugh has a certain disdain for royalty and aristocracy. "The McHughs were the kings of Sligo until the British invaded," he explained. We went one day to visit Yeats' grave. Yeats was a Protestant, but a great poet, and McHugh knew yards of his work. At some point during every evening he would intone:
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, and live alone in the bee-loud glade.
One morning at the Silver Swan Hotel in Sligo we arose and went to the Lake Isle of Innisfree. There was a cottage at the end of the lane, and a rowboat tied up, but your man didn't feel like rowing us out. Later that day we drove under bare Ben Bulben's head to Drumcliffe churchyard, where Yeats is laid.
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!Then we stopped at Lissadell House, ancestral home of the Gore-Booths. It was there that Countess Constance Markiewicz, a great obsession of Yeats', had lived.
The light of evening, Lissadell,
Great windows open to the south,
Two girls in silk kimonos, both
Beautiful, one a gazelle.We were taken on a brief tour by a man who introduced himself as a distant cousin of the family. "These are the people who stole Ireland from the Irish," McHugh whispered. On his way out the door, he tipped the cousin: "Here's a copper for you, my good man."
In those years I was living in the attic of the house of Paul and Anna Dudak, at 2437 N. Burling, and paying $110 a month. The Dudaks were the nicest people on earth. Pop was a retired window-washer from the Ukraine, where he had been an anarchist playwright. Anna was an Okie from the Dust Bowl, who spent six weeks every winter in what Pop referred to as "Lost Wages." She said it cost her less than at home: "Nine dollars for a motel, $1.95 for the buffet, and I never gamble."
Another apartment opened up, and John moved in. Like me, he had to survive a severe grilling from Pop: "We have here only intellectual gentlemen, who enjoy the luxury of conversation." The Dudaks did no drinking to speak of, but these interviews were always smoothed by Pop's secret recipe cocktail, made of Pepsi and Green Chartreuse. The front yard of his house, never very popular with the neighbors, was populated by a zoo of colorful little figures, sunk in concrete to prevent theft. In the back yard was a small pond with a shower head to supply a fountain, and in this pond floated a plastic frog with an orange golf ball glued to its head.
Pop's front yard on Burling Street [Must click!]
"John," Pop asked him one day, "have you ever been to Colorado?"
"I have not."
"You must travel there sometime. There you will find Cathedral-like Mountains!"
Pop was a student of the Reader's Digest feature Toward More Picturesque Speech.
One year McHugh and I returned from an expedition to Europe having been well served. As I gather, John entered his apartment, fell in bed without turning on the lights, and awoke at dawn to see snakes crawling all over the walls. He called me, deeply disturbed, and I hurried downstairs. He had not been imagining things. The snakes were there. Pop had painted them in florescent greens and yellows."I am working in my capacity as a room decorator," he explained. "For trendy young gentleman, I have created psychedelic wall paintings."
He had also improved my attic apartment, where the roof leaned at low angles over the rooms.
"Ebert!" he had said, greeting the taxi from O'Hare. "Does your mirror steam up when you shave after a shower?"
"Yes," I said.
"Working in my capacity as an inventor, I have solved the problem!"
He led me upstairs and proudly showed me that he had cut an 18-by-18 inch hole through the roof, directly above the bathtub.
"Prop open the window when you shower," he explained, "and steam escapes to outer atmosphere, leaving mirror ready for shaving!"
This innovation proved imperfect. Even on summer days, the outside breeze blew chilly into the shower. On rainy days, twigs and leaves would wash past the sliding glass into the bathtub. And when I lay soaking, I would sometimes find myself being regarded by the beady little eyes of squirrels. They found the glass warm in wintertime, and my tub began to collect squirrel shit.
O'Rourke's Pub at 319 W. North Avenue, in the 1970s [Jack Lane]
We logged a lot of hours at O'Rourke's, which for more than two decades was the address of choice for newspapermen, writers, artists, folk singers, social workers, would-be Irishmen and bohemians in general. Nelson Algren was a visitor. Studs Terkel and Mike Royko were frequently seen. Jay Robert Nash, the legendary crime book writer, was good for one, maybe two, immortal anecdotes an evening. John Prine looked in when in town. John the Garbage Man sold chess pieces he made after melting down silverware found in the garbage. Hank Oettinger, the old lefty who was Chicago's most famous letter to the editor writer, would circulate with clippings of his latest publications. Self-Destruct Westcott, a student radical, pledged the bar's solidarity with the occupation of Ida Noyes Hall at the University of Chicago. Clean Jim Agnew, the assistant manager of the Clark Theater, which showed a different double feature every day, lectured me nightly on the supremacy of John Ford. From down the street at Second City, John Belushi, not yet famous, would come in late. Everyone remembered the night Charlton Heston autographed Natalie Nudlemann's brassiere, while she was wearing it.
One owner was Jay Kovar, who smoked Pall Malls, drank half shots all evening without getting drunk, and was the study of countless alcoholics who tried to figure out how he did it. The other owner was Jeanette Sullivan, who was Japanese. Nelson had a crush on her. One night he and Tom Fitzpatrick, the Pulitzer winner, threw shot glasses at each other. At a certain point during many evenings, John would call out, "Jay! Clear the bar! I want to drink by myself!"We had our own Sun-Times delivery truck. Red Connolly would make O'Rourke's his last stop of the night. One night Cliff Robertson was in the bar, and had fallen under its spell. Red offered to give us all a lift to Oxford's Pub on Lincoln Avenue, which was a late-night joint. We piled into the back of his big red Sun-Times truck: Robertson, McHugh, a bagpipe player, assorted other regulars, and Good Sydney Harris. Good Sydney Harris was a Spanish Civil War veteran, not to be confused with the Other Sydney Harris, the Daily News columnist. Good Sydney had fallen into conversation with a dominatrix named Jake, who joined us.
We tied the canvas flaps closed on the back of the truck, because of Red's theory that what we were doing was not technically legal. Jake took off her belt and began to flog Good Sydney. We passed around the Dew. The bagpipe player began "My Bonnie Lassie." We heard the whoop! whoop! of a police prowler, and Red pulled over to the curb.
"Top 'o the mornin', Sergeant!" he said, and handed down copies of the Sun-Times and the Wall Street Journal. The prowler pulled away.
"My last delivery," Red said.
"Chicago," said Cliff Robertson.
John was popular with the ladies, although his girl friend in the 1970s,, Mary Ulrich, who was a banker, once told me: "John's idea of being charming on a date is to look up from the bar, notice me sitting next to him, and say, Mary, me old flower! How long have you been sittin' there?"
John and Miss Mary at Billy Goat's Tavern in the 1970s, with Sam Sianis and the symbol of the famous Chicago Cubs curse.
Miss Mary, for so she was known, was a perfect lady. Skirts instead of pants. Nylons. Heels. Business suits. Every hair in place. She loved the guy. Nobody could figure it out. She cooked for him, mended his shirts, took naughty Polaroids which no one was allowed to see. She hardly drank. She reminded me of Kathleen Carroll, the longtime friend of Billy (Silver Dollar) Baxter. My theory is, after the fun of being with a McHugh or a Baxter, they couldn't easily return to the mainstream.
Mary eventually fell in love with a lawyer, but thanks to John's influence, he was a colorful one. John, in the meantime, had left the Daily News to become a feature writer for Chicago Today, the former Chicago's American. When Mayor Daley the First promised someday that, God willing, the working men of Chicagah will be able to go fishin' in the Chicago River, and catch their lunch, McHugh, sensing a story, went to a sporting goods store and asked what he needed to catch fish in the river. "You should be asking what you can catch from the fish," the salesman said. McHugh went fishing one noontime on the river banks near the Michigan Avenue bridge, and drew quite a crowd.
"The best job in town," he told me. "It's what I dreamed of when I was down in Bloomington that last summer. I had just graduated and had my degree in my pocket. I got a job with the Arab Pest Control, crawling under houses and spraying around bug poison. One day it was about 98 degrees, and a trap door opened above my head. It was the lady of the house.
"It must be hot down there," she says. "Wouldn't you like some nice cold lemonade?"
"I say I would. I stand up through the trap door but don't climb into the kitchen because I'm all covered with sweat, dust and cobwebs. She pours me out a nice big glass from a pitcher from the icebox. Then she calls her little boy into the room.
"Junior," she says, "you take a good look at that man. If you don't study hard and go to college, that's what will happen to you."
John met a woman always referred to as The Old Lady through the newspaper's contest to fulfill its readers' dreams. The Old Lady had never been to the opera. Neither had John. The paper supplied them with two tickets to a Lyric Opera matinee, and before the curtain John took her to lunch in the opera's private Graham Room.
The Old Lady, who took to calling him Johnnie, said she would order the whitefish. After being fed little but seafood, potatoes and corn flakes during the years of wartime rationing, John never ate seafood again. He ordered the roast. Their meals came.
"Johnnie, what's that on my plate?" The Old Lady's eyesight was not good.
"That's a tater. Salt it and eat it,."
She did. Then she reproachfully spit it out on her spoon. "Johnnie," she said, "that was a lemon, wrapped in gauze. By all rights, young man, you deserve a reprimand."
"You silvery-tongued devil."
John continued to visit The Old Lady for as long as she lived, bringing her chocolate ice cream, her favorite.
My attic flat at the Dudak's
"Ebert, I pay you too much to live here," Jim Hoge, the editor of the Sun-Times, told me when he saw the Dudak's house for the first time. For me, the apartment was ideal. It even came furnished. I had lured Hoge and a dozen others upstairs to continue an evening that had started at O'Rourke's. McHugh had just been made jobless when Chicago Today folded. My theory was that Hoge would offer him a job. I was gratified to see them deep in conversation on the sofa.
"How did it go?" I asked.
"Not too well, me old amigo," McHugh said. "He spent an hour and a half telling me all about his problems."
John went to work for NBC News Chicago, as the assignment manager. At one time his two principal anchors were Maury Povich and the legendary Ron Hunter, who was possibly the model for every character in the movie "Anchorman." John liked Maury but found Ron unendurable: "He's so vain that instead of wearing glasses, he has a prescription windshield on his Jaguar."
Anchormen value stories when they can go on the street and be seen in the midst of the action. One day McHugh came up with a juicy assignment for Povich. "The next day, " he said, "Ron Hunter comes into my office, puts his feet up on my desk, and says, John, that was a good story you had for Maury yesterday. What do you have for me today? I tell him, Utter contempt."
At NBC, John met the perpetually sunny Mary Jo Broderick, with whom he has lived happily now for many years. When our great friend Bob Zonka died, John took over editing and publishing his New Buffalo Times for a year. By then, he had come to like southwest Michigan, and he and Mary Jo purchased a comfy little white frame two-story in Three Oaks, the home of a dandy Fourth of July Parade where Shriners circled in formation on their power lawnmowers. John works as as a computer consultant, and Mary Jo is an online commuter who works from home designing the catalog for a company that sells the cheapest possible toys. Think along the lines of Cracker Jack prizes. John and Mary Jo have a dog named Mick Q, not named after the movie director.
Three Oaks, with barely 3,000 souls, has an excellent downtown art theater, the Vickers, which Mary Jo faithfully attends every week. McHugh never goes. When he was a child, once a year he was delegated to take all of his brothers to the movies. "It was always the same show: 'How Green Was My Valley.' Every time I saw it, nine months later I'd have another brother."
Why do I like this guy? We get along. We are amused by one another. We were eyewitnesses to all the stories, and never get tired of hearing them, although normal people do. He is a conservative, I am a liberal, but we have given up on each other. We drank together, and we stopped drinking together. That will make a bond. He introduced me to Mary Jo. He never gets in fights. In O'Rourke's, he was always the peacemaker. He pulled me away from those neo-Nazi skinheads in Amsterdam that time. He dragged me free from the gendarmes who were pounding me with rubber batons during the 1968 student riots in Paris. As the second oldest of ten, he knows how to make any baby stop crying. He defeats me at chess. He loves poetry and never goes for long without quoting some. We are both astonished at human nature. We are very well-informed. He buys his golf shoes from his poker earnings. I refuse to learn golf. Our friend Ivan Bloom says John's insistence on the rules of the game "borders upon the homicidal." When Chaz and I visit, we feel just like we're at home.
Mary Jo and John, at home in Three Oaks. [Ebert]
I lived at 2437 N. Burling for most of the years between 1967 and 1977. Then I bought a coach house behind the Four Farthings Pub on Lincoln Avenue. I held a house warming, at which one of the guests was our friend Sherman Wolf, a nice guy, a really nice guy, which helps explain this story.Sherman found me in the kitchen, and said, "Congratulations on your new house! You've worked hard and you deserve it. It's a real step up from that pig-pen you used to live in."
"Sherman," I said, "I don't believe you've met my landlady from Burling Street, Mrs. Dudak."
Sherman turned red as a fire plug. "Oh my God!" he said. "Oh, Mrs. Dudak, actually it was a very nice place, the rent was low, Roger was happy there, I was just trying to think of something nice to say to Roger."
"Now Sherman, don't you apologize for a thing. It was time Roger found something better, and we're happy for him."
Sherman fled to the deck outside the kitchen door. McHugh was sitting out there.
"How are you, Sherman?"
"Oh God, John, I'm so embarrassed I could crawl into a hole. I just told Roger this place was a lot better than that pig-pen he used to live in, and who was standing right there but Mrs. Dudak!"
"I'll bet that made you feel awful," John said.
"It's one of those things you can never take back," Sherman said.
"Sherman," John said, "I don't believe you've ever met Mister Dudak, who is sitting right here next to me."
"Good...lord!"
"And...Sherman? When Roger moved out of the pig-pen, I moved in."
¶
John McHugh's book The New Buffalo Chronicles.¶
Tom O'Bedlam reads "The Fiddler of Dooney," by W. B. Yeats
¶
Tom O'Bedlam reads "The Lake Isle of Innisfree," by W. B. Yeats
¶
William Butler Yeats reads the last lines of "Under Ben Bulben"
¶
Two of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, joined by Pete Seeger,
singing: "I Never Will Play the Wild Rover No More"
¶
On the Lake Michigan beach in the early 1990s: Monica Eng, now a Chicago Tribune reporter, McHugh, the poet and writer Patricia Smith, and Milo Zonka, now a city councilman of Palm Bay, Florida, and director of the Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast.
Thanks Roger, for the beautiful reminiscence. It made me think of the end of Lear: "The oldest hath born most; we that are young. Shall never see so much nor live so long." You're a lucky man.
Neil Steinberg
So funny -- and I don't even KNOW McHugh!
Started laughing after I diligently resonded to your urging (Must Click!) and still haven't stopped. Anchorman was on TV last night (I hope McHugh was watching.) And one quote destined to stay with me forever, I suspect, is "Working in my capacity as an inventor, I have solved the problem!"
What a great read.
What a great chapter.
What a wonderful life.
All the old familiar stories. And all in one place so I can have access to them at any time. Like a good poem or great movie, they get better each time they're heard. I'm glad that Monica and Patricia were in the picture at the beach: it distracts from the beached whales. There are some very fine photos, too. Altogether a fine piece and stumble down memory lane.
Ebert: Thanks for your photos! You are our Earl of Snowden.
Ah, Roger. I can't begin to express how much I enjoy reading your blog. I tell everyone I know that they need to read it too. I'm not much of a commenter on it, but I have to tell you just once that as a lifelong Chicagoan I've been a fan of yours since I became aware of you in the seventies, read your reviews like short stories although I rarely see films, and you even once had the patience and grace to respond to an email I sent you. Thank you. For everything.
Dear Roger,
Possibly your best yet. Thanks.
Speaking of Innisfree, The Quiet Man was on last night. The scene where Sean and Mary Kate are caught in the storm, under the ruined archway, near dusk on their first day of courting, leaps out of the movie quite suddenly, wordless, electric, with Wayne's and O'Hara's expressions and postures in the lightning flashes and the cracks of thunder showing us why men and women come together. Genius filmmaking. Yeats would have been proud.
Roger:
If there isn't a literary prize for combing references to Yeats and squirrel poo in a single work, I'll get the committee to work on creating one. A lovely read; thanks.
Ebert: Pshaw! I can combine those two in my sleep.
The good are always the merry
'I would like first to address the matter of Gandhi's relentless and unshakable optimism. Optimism has been the mark of virtually every outstanding personality, whether philosopher or statesperson, since ancient times. It is, however, perhaps impossible to find an example that compares to Gandhi, of a person whose every action and accomplishment bears the mark of a pure and refreshing optimism, untainted by the slightest hint of showmanship.
As he himself said: "I remain an optimist, not that there is any evidence that I can give that right is going to prosper, but because of my unflinching faith that right must prosper in the end." And on another occasion, this "irrepressible optimist" stated: "My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop nonviolence."
As these passages suggest, Gandhi's optimism was absolute and not relative. It was never contingent on his analysis of objective conditions or a prognosis derived therefrom. His belief in nonviolence and justice grew out of his absolute trust in humanity. This was an unconditional faith which he came to through a rigorous process of introspection, probing the very depths of his being. The indestructible conviction which he thus gained was something which not even death could take from him. In this I observe what I would term the true essence of Oriental deductive thinking, which always begins from a reflective return to the self.
Because it is unconditional, his optimism knows no deadlock or impasse. So long as one adheres to conviction, one's optimism holds out the promise of unbounded hope, vision, and victory... In the quietude of his words, we sense an indomitable self-confidence, the triumphant cry reserved only for the soul that has achieved true self-mastery'....Ikeda
Roger, you've now entered an unusual phase in my consciousness -- I'm 41 and you may be the longest, most prolific, continuous celebrity relationship I've maintained. I listened to Howard Stern regularly from his DC days to NY (I went to college in Philly where he was simulcast)but his move to satellite left me behind after 20 years. Johnny Carson is gone, Charles Schultz has passed, Stephen King's novels are no longer devoured upon their printing, and Mike Wallace has nearly left the stage of 60 minutes; even the Sesame Street characters have changed and my kids are now outgrowing them, and so on.
But my relationship with you continues... from your early PBS days to the recent halt of your TV career, to your books and your online reviews, and now to the blogs, I've effectively grown up and now enter middle-age with your words still vibrant and relevant to me -- I find myself looking expectantly at the site for a new posting -- and nervously checking the news regarding your health if there is no new posting after a few days.
It almost feels strange that we haven't spoken or met or that you have received so little from me and the other silent readers --but that is the nature of celebrity and the power of your words to entrance and transform digital bytes into emotional attachments that last for decades. Keep it up.
I too have a piece of Ireland deeply embedded in me in the eight years initial schooling in St Edward's School,Shimla run by the Irish Christian Brothers of India, most specially the Reverand Brother W I McKeough, my first igniter, particularly to the world of books, and a much prayed for person of my life. The Ireland of my mind is a gloomy twilit land of lapping water and Potato Eaters, unless it has turned into something like Japan.
Roger, you really ought to start writing a novel. I'm serious, your writing is more astute and enjoyable than most of the books I'm reading at the moment. An autobiography, perhaps? It's strange, I was lured here by your film reviews, but now I find your blog entries more fascinating.
"He's so vain that instead of wearing glasses, he has a prescription windshield on his Jaguar."
I assure you, that quote would become a classic if it were to be spoken in a film.
Roger:
If there isn't a literary prize for combing references to Yeats and squirrel poo in a single work, I'll get the committee to work on creating one. A lovely read; thanks.
Ebert: Pshaw! I can combine those two in my sleep.
You got a great laugh out of me on that one Roger. Someone needs to make the Great Chicago Newspaperman film asap so we can have you and the gang as technical advisors ;-)
Dear Roger,
I came to America in 1986 from Ireland and I do not have the words to convey the hole I had in my heart when I left my beloved country, family and friends. However I immersed myself in all things American. I could not go to Irish pubs here as my melancholy would get overwhelming. Two of the first things I fell in love with were baseball and your TV show with Gene Siskel. I never got a chance to let Mr. Siskel know how much I appreciated your show so I just want to tell you now.
These "stumbles down memory lane" of yours kept reminding of someone else--and it struck me when I reached McHugh's remark to the King of Greece: "King, you're one of the best!" Jackie Gleason did a Playboy interview in the '80s, and all of his stories began with something like, "I was in Toots Shore's joint one night and Salvador Dali came in. He had that cane of his with a sword in it, and ..."
Let us not forget he called himself The Great One--but you throw in Yeats for good measure. I have never been to Ireland, but at least I have you and W.B. Let me join the rest of us out here who thank you for sharing.
And that concrete-imbedded figurine garden is a sight: silly but adamant. Who are we to disagree with its Truth and Beauty?
Roger Great story......I miss McHugh.....remember the book signing with him, when we stayed at your mansion in the woods....that was a weekend to really remember...You always hit the nail on the head when you write your stories..except when you write about me and then you tend to exaggerate...Roger Eggplant ...you are the greatest........Billy Baxter
Ebert: Few people who know and love you have ever thought you would be possible to exaggerate.
One late night almost 40 years ago I was in O'Rourke's when you and McHugh sang a duet – "We'll Have These Moments to Remember." That was a memorable moment itself. Jay Kovar stopped in his tracks for a few seconds, watched the two of you in expressionless silence, then resumed his bar-tending. You've now added the blogger's tradition to the oral tradition as a source of story-telling. Decades from now your stories will live among the fabled blogs of yore.
Ebert: We sang a duet? Neither one of us is famous for his singing voice. Two of us together, and it's a wonder Jay could remain without expression.
As always, a fun read, Roger. I knew of Hank Oettinger from Rick Kogan, who'd asked me once if I wanted to be the new Hank with my many missives to the S-T and Trib. I had to ask who he was talking about. Still haven't decided whether he was busting my chops on that one.
While I, sadly enough, cannot combine Yeats and squirrel shit in any anecdotal writing, I did wake up with a squirrel on my chest once.
Ebert: How did the squirrel feel about it?
Thanks and thanks again for a wonderful read. My memory of my youth is not nearly the measure of yours, perhaps simply because yours was so much more memorable.
That said, I'm not sure whether to admire your incredibly keen recollection of long-ago dialog, or your gift for plausible confabulation!
Early 19th century, F, comb. racont(er) to tell (OF re + aconter to tell, make an accounting) + -eur, practitioner
I arrived in Chicago blessedly too late to participate in many of the hijinks you so lovingly share. I say blessedly because I'm certain I would not have survived. The first time I met McHugh he made me feel like I had known him a lifetime and hadn't missed out on all the fun. The last time I saw him he made me feel like we visited every day and what I had to say was actually interesting. Like McHugh I too stopped being an altar boy but it was the missing altar wine not the funds that ended my career.
Roger, please never stop sharing these wonderful stories. Reading them with the clarity of sobriety is probably nearly as much fun as experiencing them in the fog of alcohol.
Ebert: Readers: Dennis is a former editor of The Sun-Times.
The best story might have been the last. How hilarious was that?
Ebert: It happened just exactly like that. Sherman Wolf is such a sweetheart that everyone who knows him only finds it funnier.
I suspect he was almost as startled by the fact that the slab of meat on which he'd decided to take a little stroll was sentient as I was by his gentle wake-up. The relationship ended badly shortly thereafter.
I LOVED this! I actually laughed out loud at the end—-knowing Sherman Wolf makes it even funnier!
And I loved learning more about the Dudaks. They occupy a special place in my heart, and played a role in one of my TV memories: Do you remember when I was trying to teach you and Gene how to relate to a camera? I said something like “It’s important to look through the lens, through the TV screen and into a living room where you picture someone sitting on a sofa, who is looking at you and smiling.”
Whereupon Gene asked who you were picturing—-and you said “Mr and Mrs. Dudak,” and Gene became hysterical, practically rolling on the floor with laughter. For the rest of the day, Gene would say “Mr. and Mrs. Dudak,” and dissolve in fits of laughter.
And now—I’ve gotten to see their front yard. It is an absolute “must click.”
You and McHugh have a friendship that is the stuff of legend. You were lucky to find each other so young. And we’re lucky that you wrote about it.
Love,
Thea
Ebert: Readers: Thea was our very first producer on PBS.
I still marvel at the night I found you and McHugh in a bistro in Paris as the owner was about to close. I was with two film makers on our way back from the Cannes Film Festival. We were driving past and there you were! McHugh saw me and said, "see, Roger, when you need a publicist one always shows up."
You and John were out of Travelers Checks. As I remember we kept the bistro open for a few more hours and then my two friends, one a New Zealander and the other an Englishman, said we have a boat to meet in Calais at 7 am. That drive in a right hand drive Jaguar was another adventure. We made it to Calais in plenty of time. Then discovered that our reservation was at the warf in Boulogne, some 30 miles
away. We arrived at the warf in Boulogne just in time to drive on to the ferry that took us back to Dover.
And I still miss Zonka.
It feels like the McHugh I've known -- having met him three times or so, but I did have lunch with the two of you at Tom's Tavern. I think he went on to insult an entire roomful of CWA attendees.
Howie
Boulder
..."cultivating under my nose what grows wild on my ass".
It is a testament to wordsmiths in general and Irish people in particular that they can combine such mundanities as mustaches and hirsute buttocks into poetic hilarity.
Everyone needs an Irishman in their life. At least for a little while.
If it weren't for their black griefs and the welts on their backsides, I'd count the Irish the jolliest of people. What a joy to know so blithe and towering a specimen as John McHugh. In this blog Roger Ebert is slowly, surely writing a memoir that will be a match for "Child of the Century," and Roger's recollections will be the more reliable because he, unlike Ben Hecht, did not leave town. John was briefly my neighbor up the street and for a time far too short the editor and publisher of my country weekly, the "New Buffalo Times." But I know him best, sadly, at a remove, as the storied friend of storytellers, Roger Ebert and Leonard Aronson. "McHugh." The "John" was sturdy but superfluous.
"It must be hot down there," she says. "Wouldn't you like some nice cold lemonade?"
"I say I would. I stand up through the trap door but don't climb into the kitchen because I'm all covered with sweat, dust and cobwebs. She pours me out a nice big glass from a pitcher from the icebox. Then she calls her little boy into the room.
"Junior," she says, "you take a good look at that man. If you don't study hard and go to college, that's what will happen to you." - Roger
That, made me laugh out loud!
Whereas learning you'd tasted your first Guinness in Ireland? Envy not quite as bitter but no less strong seeped into me. :)
You do realize of course, that you've lived a life as a man not equally, or as readily within reach, of my own gender? I hope you appreciate your good fortune, you lucky "beep" - I'd like to see you try and watch the steam rise while squatting outside a Pub full of men; chuckle!
Ahh, Roger's adventures! I hope someone makes a movie about them one day - shot in Maxivision of course, as otherwise go away and don't bother me. :)
O'Rourke's is of particular interest, moreover, because it reminds me a little of "The Irish Heather" a pub located in the dodgy part of Vancouver before it moved across the street and lost its soul. Home of Chicago's literati along with its wannabes, O'Rourke's is the just sort of place I'd have called home, if given the chance. Not to drink myself into oblivion however tempted by a perfectly double-poured Kilkenny - but rather and like Lautrec, so as to sit and "observe" the bar flies and night owls while recording them for posterity. :)
Bummer about O'Rourke's not having survived the move. But the "Old Town Ale House" is still there, I see!
http://www.chibarproject.com/Reviews/OldTownAleHouse/OldTownAleHouse.htm
And I like the sound of it, too.
"Behind the bar is such track-lit fandango as a stuffed bear playing a trumpet, a Maltese Falcon, giant wooden gorilla head, Japanese mask, photographs of former owners Arthur and Beatrice Klug, lewd paintings, and portraits of Old Town Ale House regulars from the early 70's up until the present day. In his Cezanne-like French Impressionistic style, fellow regular Bruce Elliott is responsible for this artwork and over 125 portraits in all–the rest of which can be found hanging throughout the room." - Sean Parnell
Gee, imagine if they'd let someone do that with some actual skill and talent? Hey, he's in Chicago; what, he's gonna fly to Vancouver and take issue with my informed opinion? I'm safe enough. And in truth, jealous as Hell so there ya go. :)
But only because I can see your various adventures, be they 100% true or slight embellishments thereof (smile) inside my mind's eye, and it makes me wish I'd grown-up somewhere more conducive to writers, musicians and artists.
At the very least a city with with ONE decent Irish pub that hasn't been yuppified. Shudder!
Ebert: Bruce Elliott, of the Ale House, was a friend of McHugh's even before I was. He is a true character: Brilliant, incurably sardonic, a gossip, sarcastic, boasting of never having done a day's work before the age of 60. Like many full-time originals, he has a wonderful wife (Tobin). They gave their daughter Grace the middle name of "Littlefeather" because Bruce thought that would help her with college admissions.
The Old Town Ale House was the third point of the famed Bermuda Triangle of Riccardo's, O'Rourke's and the Ale House, so called because many a newsman sailed in and was never seen again.
I am fond Bruce's paintings, and own one of Houdini in shackles, painted halfway down after leaping off a bridge into a river. Bruce painted a Sarah Palin nude, using Grace as his model, that got some publicity last summer. See it, and Bruce, here:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/chi-sarah-palin-nude-0930,0,273867.story
Ebert: And here is a highly recommended profile of Bruce from the Chicago Reader:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/oldtownalehouse/
Sometimes I think that all by myself I could write the Reader's Digest feature, "The Most Unforgettable Character I've Ever Met." I suspect that if you could gather McHugh, Elliott and myself together and ask for a vote, our consensus would be Jay Robert Nash. Now there is a living legend.
OMG...I was actually two feet away during the bra-signing event at O'Rourke's. The sight of "Moses" leaving such an indelible mark has never left me! I loved O'Rourke's, even if the anti-British slogans emblazoning the walls were a little OTT for this Englishwoman! And as for Sherman, my boss of 8 years, the Dudak faux pas must have made him wish the floor had opened up and swallowed him. Sherman: this is ONE story I don't remember you sharing! That was a great trip back through time, Roger! Thanks for the memories.
Warmest, Gill Iltis.
Ebert: I love the way I can tell tales that look for all the world like inventions, and have eyewitnesses come along to back me up.
Long ago my uncle joined the Navy to see the world, you joined the Sun-Times and got to see everything. What a rich array of life experiences.
A thing of beauty...and Pat, in the midst of it all, too (great photo). That...is the Chicago, and the Ebert, I knew and loved so much! Tears and chills, my old friend. Tears and chills...
Ebert: Readers, Cynthia sat directly across from me at the Sun-Times for quite a time (and it was quite a time) in the 1970s, including the day the AP wire machine bell rang five times and Bob Greene read what was coming across, and looked up, and said, "Elvis is dead."
My dearly departed mother, Agnes Donelley Ryan Burke was the funniest person I have ever known. It seems everyone was placed on earth for her amusement, often to their embarrassment, more often to their cluelessness. She was well-read, well-bred, well-groomed, extremely well-informed,with a sharp mind and tongue. Opinionated. Never travelled farther than the local pub. She was 5'2, 110 pounds, blonde hair, green eyes. I felt victorious if I could get a laugh out of her as I was the ever-attentive audience.
McHugh. How is it that he reminds me so much of 'er?
Roger:
These are the kinds of adventures that could only happen to a pair of Irish-Catholic *CHICAGO* newspaper reporters!
The memoirs of reporters from, say, New York, Boston, or San Francisco would have an entirely different flavor.
By the way, I sympathize with John's finding snakes on his wallpaper. On my first night in my first apartment, I turned out the lights to go to bed -- and saw STARS! Hundreds of bright, glowing stars surrounding me on all sides! I felt as if I had been instantly warped to the center of the Milky Way galaxy!
(In fact, the previous occupant of the apartment had pasted hundreds of glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the walls and ceilings. These stars blended in with the white paint on the walls, and were invisible until you turned out the lights.)
Please take it as a compliment to your reviews that the second I started this post I thought about whether it was about that guy who screams "Clear the Bar!"
That was a delight to read and you have outdone yourself.
If it's not too intrusive a question, what did you do socially when you quit? Did you stay around and sip a ginger ale or did you leave that aspect of your professional scene behind entirely? It seems like it was your scene Baby, be it Guinness or ginger ale.
I only ask because, I sensed that you were communicating that scene's impact, and the impact of your retreat from it, to readers long before you had mentioned it directly in your writing.
Best Wishes As Always
-Andi
Ebert: For awhile I came into O'Rourke's and drank Cokes, but a bar is for drinking. My outside life expanded to such a degree that I asked myself how in the hell I'd been able to hang out in O'Rourke's every night and still get anything done.
This is exactly why I hope the American newspaper industry bounces back - I don't think it's possible to live this kind of life in our new, minimalized, social media culture.
I hate to sound patronizing, but that was an incredible read.
Great stories. I grew up on local Chicago news. I remember Walter Jacobson & Bill Curtis, Fahey Flynn & John Daly, and the late great Floyd Kalber. I even remember Jane Pauley, Ron Magers, and Jim Tilmon (pilot, weatherman, musician, talk show host). But I have no memory of Ron Hunter or Maury Povich.
Oh well. Where's the picture of the frog with the golf ball on its head?
Ebert: I'm working on it.
We were eyewitnesses to all the stories...
The essence of friendship, captured in that phrase. Goes for my 30-year marriage as well.
You've mastered the "Toward More Picturesque Speech" section. You tell an incredibly visual story. This is "The Fall" of blog posts!
Mostly it reminds me of a current country music song, with a chorus that goes: "God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy."
Love all of the pictures, especially the one with the two boats on a lake. It sets a mood.
A thoroughly good and boisterous read!
Yet another facet of the kaleidoscopic Ebert !
You chose to post a blog entry about John McHugh on the same day Rep. John McHugh (R-NY) was nominated to be Secretary of the Army.
Coincidence, or a plot to confuse Google News?
Ebert: I'll be damned! I thought it was the same guy.
"ELLIOTT WAS BORN on the south side and grew up in Downers Grove. He began painting when he was in his late teens, and he’s largely self-taught. What technical education he has he absorbed by sitting in the living room of a Hyde Park town house owned by surrealist painter Gertrude Abercrombie. An uncle of Elliott’s was part of Abercrombie’s circle, which included jazz musicians, writers, and assorted visual artists. Elliott recalls there was usually a party taking place when he visited. “She was a colossal alcoholic,” he says. “And she was mean. You couldn’t ask her any questions, but she would let you sit there and observe.” He picked up some basics from her, and also learned how to economize: Abercrombie would buy old picture frames at yard sales and flea markets, then cut slabs of Masonite to fit them. (Elliott does the same, though his surface of choice for his Ale House portraits is cardboard.)" - Chicago Reader
CARDBOARD?!
Elliott paints on cardboard...? Oh damn. As that makes it official - he's an artist all right (so I can't hate him now for his good fortune.) A fact further confirmed by recounts of sniffing through yard sales to find old picture frames; artists are poor creatures and should ever a bag of money drop from the sky, I'm going to make a REAL movie about it. :)
I loved that article, Roger! I've sent it off to friends; I know they'll smile knowingly but so too, with a sign of envy. And my heart expanded a little moreover, upon reading this...
"Aside from the ever-increasing mass of Elliott’s artwork on the walls, they’ve kept their word. They fix chairs instead of replacing them and allow nothing but jazz on the jukebox."
There is a God. And he owns a BAR in a Chicago. :)
And maybe some dirty pictures, too. Sarah Palin in the nude, complete with an automatic rifle while standing in red heels on a polar bear skin rug. Awesome. Although the strategic camera angle unfortunately blocks out the naughtier bits of the painting. It's good cheesy ART dammit.
Roger wrote: "I am fond Bruce's paintings, and own one of Houdini in shackles, painted halfway down after leaping off a bridge into a river."
Does it look kinda like this? Grin.
http://www.vermontguardian.com/images/culture/2007/Houdini.jpg
Roger wrote: "They gave their daughter Grace the middle name of "Littlefeather" because Bruce thought that would help her with college admissions."
CHUCKLE! Did it??
If so, take note young female readers! As whatever works, eh? And you sure wouldn't want to end up like that guy all covered with sweat, dust and cobwebs. :)
P.S. I wonder what the lemonade lady's son wound-up doing?
What better thing could one do for a friend than publish such a lovely tribute while they're still around. Anybody can have people acknowledge them when it's too late for them to enjoy learning that they are cherished.
A former student of my mother's wrote such a piece -- it was published in a Reader's Digest sized national magazine-- and it thrilled my mother greatly.
Thanks so much, Roger. What a motherlode of evocation. I NEED to hang out with all those people. I NEED to drink way too much Guiness! I NEED squirrels to crap in my tub. And I WANT to be Natalie Nudlemann! You've pulled so many triggers and fired off so many memories I've never had, it's all so romantic I can smell the air in those places!
So lovely!
xoxoGuy
Ebert: At last I understand. O'Rourke's was a Guy Maddin film. Especially after midnight.
"read your reviews like short stories although I rarely see films" Roberta S and I have this in common.
When things are slow at work, I read your reviews for enjoyment.
You write much more than a review...
I do watch some of the films because of your reviews but often
I just enjoy your turn of phrase, your humanity and your humor.
And to think:
I set out only to flatter beauty's ignorant ear.
Then to trace bullshit back to its source.
And thus do I find myself gazing into the eye of eternity,
ill-prepared for what's staring back.
Which is to say; more of the same.
Ebert: Is that by Yeats?
I thoroughly enjoyed this post this morning. Thanks for a rather enjoyable memoir. Ever considered publishing these journal entries one day?
Roger, a couple of your blog entries ago I responded to you privately with one simple request: "Don't stop!"
If I could make it an order, I would... but I think you're more than willing.
It's hard to explain, but I can't recall one particular story growing up around McHugh, though I'm sure you could prompt me into dragging one out of the haze.
What I do have is a presence in my memories... a feeling that McHugh was always there. He wasn't of course, but McHugh is so unique, so memorable and so wonderful that he's just there, always.
I laughed so hard each of the many times I read and reread this. That's what it is with you, my dad, McHugh... everyone. It all comes down to laughter. People tell me they love my laugh--it's a little hearty, I'll admit. My response to them is that I grew up with a lot of laughter in the room, so there was a lot of peer pressure to get at least that one thing right.
Thank you for this. Each or your memories about the people I love are better than any gift, and I love John McHugh. I constantly explain to my kids that the beauty of family is that you never have to watch your back when they're behind you, and I know that John is always behind me, as he is for so many.
Life is good and full in Florida, but I miss you all. I should have said this sooner, but thank you, Roger. Thanks to some of your regular writing subjects and readers, as well. I was a kid when I saw you all the most--you, my dad, McHugh, Sherman, Iltis... everyone--but I never felt like a kid with you all. Even after my dad died, you guys let me in, let me watch and let me share in what you did. Some of the stories you tell are familiar to me, either because I was there (I was there!) when they happened or I was there to hear them recounted, again and again.
Each time they make me laugh. Your gift--and McHugh's gift--to me.
Not to be a prat at the last minute here, but that picture at the end... that's not me. I stared at it for awhile because the mud makes it a little tough, but also because I am not one for disagreeing with you. Late last night I showed it to the lady who's woken up next to me for the last 10 years, 2 weeks and 6 days. Deb's immediate response: "That's not your belly roll. I know your belly roll." Love... ain't it cool?
Ebert: Dear, dear Milo. We are all so proud of you. Your mom and dad did good. Husband and father of a big family, pilot, financial advisor, city and regional official, and you write with such fluency. You had a somewhat unconventional upbringing, and were not always perfect (as when your aim was a little off with certain fireworks on the Fourth of July), but whatever happened, it seems to have suited you admirably for life.
Now as to the matter of that photograph. Monica Eng, who is also in it, writes me:
"Of course that's Milo!
It's 100 percent Milo.
How could he deny it?
... and a special thanks to Jack Lane for never leaving home without a camera--or three.
Roger,
Your reminiscences of that time brought back a flood of memories of the time and places that shall never be again. But they are our times and those younger can only be envious of our adventures. Let'em get their own.
I remember one night at O'Rourke's, I was sitting with two friends. You kept walking by my table with a quizzical look on your face. About the tenth of your sojourns, I decided to end your traversing the barroom. "Roger", I said and yourturned to me, "We met last week at Algren's place." "I knew I knew your face,", you said, "but was foggy from where." Which is as it should have been after an evening with Nelson.
Ebert: And often was.
A great piece, as usual. Your writing style reminds me quite a bit of some of John Steinbeck's non-fiction. The way you weave the anecdotes together and work in the humor in this one in particular made me think of his particularly hilarious portrait of his good friend Ed Ricketts which appears at the end of the "Log from the Sea of Cortez." Keep up the posts - I always look forward to them.
Roger, thank you for the laughs, especially about the bathtub window. Genius. You got me at several points, and at brief mention of Ron Hunter, it prompted me to Google, and I found this URL:
http://www.forgottenbuffalo.com/forgottenbuffalomedia/ch2wgrwgrztv.html
I had no idea a man could have that kind of ego.
God bless.
John
Hey, Oriental Trading Company has great dreck. I hope that by writing that she works "designing the catalog for a company that sells the cheapest possible toys" you do appreciate how much affection people have for that stuff.
Ebert: I have found great use for their Stretchable Flying Frogs. And they are the nation's leading supplier of pink flamingos and grass skirts. But that's not the company Mary Jo works for.
I spent a few weeks in Sligo at the Yeats School in the summer of '97. I studied "The Wind in the Reeds" with the brilliant Warwick Gould, saw performances of Yeats's "The Countess Cathleen" and "Words Upon the Window-Pane," and Samuel Beckett's "Play," went to readings by Seamus Heaney (accompanied by a man playing the Irish pipes, and who I remember saying, "To anyone who writes in English, Shakespeare is an internal zodiac against which one projects oneself") and Eaven Boland and other contemporary Irish poets.
To paraphrase Browning, I loved everything I looked on, and my looks went everywhere. And on every tour I took, the guide would say something like, "Eamonn our bus-driver will now regale us with Yeats's "Lake Isle of Innisfree," and Eamonn or whoever would dramatically declaim, "I-I-I-I will a-RISE and GOOOO" as if we had never heard it before. I honestly think I heard that poem six times, but no "The Second Coming" or "Leda and the Swan" or "Sailing to Byzantium" or "Had I the Cloths of Heaven" or "When You are Old" or "The Circus Animals' Desertion." Apparently every Irishman has to memorize "Lake Isle of Innisfree" in grammar school and never forgets it. (Interesting thing about the quotation from "Easter, 1916": the poem shows how Yeats was deeply ambivalent about the uprising, though he was a fierce advocate for Irish independence by peaceful means.)
Those experiences -- and those places -- are important to you, Roger. And for some reason it's nice to know (I'm not sure why, exactly) that someone whose words I value so highly had important experiences in the same places I did. I've stood just where you are standing in the picture at Yeats's grave. And I've picnicked on the shore near Ben Bulben and climbed Knocknarea to stand at Queen Maeve's tomb. My guess is you have as well.
Seeing the pictures of you and McHugh at Yeats's grave and reading about Lissadell House and Innisfree (which is nothing to look at, really) brought back a slew of memories. But none of the people with whom I shared the experience -- and I include myself in that characterization -- were as memorable as McHugh. Who could be? I'm only a couple of decades younger than you, and I clearly need to start hanging out with people with whom I could make these kinds of memories. Unfortunately for me, they seem rare these days.
They are Falstaffs, and this sadly is a world of Prince Hals deciding that conquering and ruling matter more than friendship and love, song and laughter.
So O'Rourke's was merry, was it, Roger? Every time I entered that place it was so dimly lit that I had to carry two flashlights (too conveniently recalled by my detractors as .38s) to make my way to the bar. Before leaving I was able to identify at least three to four fugitives from serious felonies and everyone else was guilty of a misdemeanor by simply being there. But it was filled with fun, boys and girls, because everybody ambitiously and creatively carried their own fun into that great gathering place of anticipation, dreams, desires and sweet, young hope! As the old boy said: All that was made was made to fade--the brightest yet the fleetest...
Ebert: I remember the night I reached for your umbrella, and you snapped: "Don't touch it, mug! It's loaded and cocked!"
Thanks for bringing back such great memories of two of my favorites, John and (in your later posted comments) Bruce.
I met Bruce in San Francisco around 1970 when he was working hard at not working, but that's another story. Ask Bruce about the time a coach in the NBA left the bench during a game and came into the crowd in an attempt to strangle him. Or about Timmy and the borrowed vehicle and the deer and the fire. Or any story about Tommy Turner. Those stories will all be true. The ones about me may be lies.
I worked with McHugh for many years at NBC in Chicago and spent too many hours with him on the golf course.
I long ago retired from drinking and more recently retired from golf though I still love stories about both.
As for McHugh's exchange with Ron Hunter I always make the punch line, "Utter contempt." I'd like to believe it happened that way and, anyway, I like the punch line better and I'm sticking to it.
As was once said of a king, "Roger, You're one of the best!"
Ebert: Ron Magers is news anchor of WLS/7 in Chicago. How he came to meet Bruce Elliott before he met either John or myself is an example either (1) it being a small world, or (2) of the magnetic properties of certain personalities.
I have nothing to contribute to the memories you raise here but simply wanted to say that reading this article brought such a smile to my face, and then reading all the comments from the people whom the article mentions surely will keep that smile on my face for the next few days. Keep reminiscing!
Ebert: I love getting them. They present eyewitness testimony that the events reported in the entry are not too good to be true, but, quite simply, true.
Not pertinent to this post, but this reminds me of something you wrote that made me chuckle:
http://www.mtv.com/videos/misc/395483/2009-mtv-movie-awards-digital-short-explosions.jhtml
"Cool guys don't look at explosions..."
Roger, thank you for bringing back so many memories of my childhood and a lot of people whose passings have left large gaps in my heart....Arthur, Michaela...just to name a couple.
Good Sids son Marc is taking my wedding pictures next week.
You are a wonderful writer. I cannot express how much I enjoy reading your chronicles. More, more!
By the way, here are two activities you were meant for! Drinking beer and watching/reviewing films..at the same time!
http://www.barbarycoastfilms.com/roguefilm
My favorite of the Rogues (thus far).
http://www.rogue.com/beers/dead-guy-ale.php
Thank you so much for continuing to write these wonderful memories that in turn jog so many of mine. We were all so lucky to have been young and having so much fun back in the 70's in Old Town and Lincoln Park. You really need to get this into a book, Roger!
I am John's cousin in Indianapolis and wanted to thank you for the wonderful piece you wrote recently re: your relationship with McQ. I haven't accepted sharing my thoughts with the free world via blogs, hence the short personal note. As an aside, several years ago you were kind enough to arrange for tickets for my wife and our NY based cousins to the Regis and Kelly show and I suppose a late thank you is better than none at all :)
At 41 years old today, the only McQ I have known is the sober version that told tales I was sure were blarney. As I built a relationship with him (around golf of course) in my teens and twenty's, I actually began to believe the stories as I lived a few, smaller versions. Your article validated the life experiences and the great relationship John has always spoke of. Thank you.
Our family has thoroughly enjoyed the short periods of John that we still get, and hope that they continue for years to come.
Duff
Guy Maddin wrote on June 3, 2009 7:50 AM -
"I NEED squirrels to crap in my tub."
I'm going to print that on a T-shirt and wear it to the Irish Heather in Gastown Vancouver; maybe it'll scare away the condo yuppies and I'll finally be able to enjoy a Kilkenny again. :)
Note: a girl friend reproached me today for being too hard on the Heather, as it wasn't Sean Heather's (the pub owner) fault the city decided to do seismic upgrades to the old building he was in. He didn't want to be shut down for a year, so he moved across the street. And fair enough. But what's with the chandelier hanging inside the "new" location?!
Actually, it's not just the Irish Heather - it's changes in general I'm reacting to. Vancouver also lost a great old dive called "The Marine Club" which had its "smoking" area in a dark den enclosed next to the bar. Please note the front facade of the Marine Club, Roger. Now do you understand how I could happily call O'Rourke's or the Old Town Ale House "home"..? They're hardly scary by comparison. :)
Photo links have been cut into 2 parts to defy the evil spam filter:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/ (then add) 189/506425909_f190eb94ba.jpg?v=0
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/ (then add) 50/124850916_c4c8b33803.jpg?v=0
I think one of the reasons Roger's adventures strike many the way they do (ie: I wish I'd been there too) is partly for painting a picture of a world that's rapidly fading from view - places worth walking into because of the people you'd often find there and for what they'd brought with them through the door; the unvarnished authenticity of themselves.
Note: I have found the website for The Old Town Ale House. If you click on wall art, you can see an "uncensored" version of Bruce Elliot's painting of Sarah Palin and listen to Bruce being interviewed and sharing his liberal-minded views about it out loud; chuckle! There's also YOUR portrait Roger. And tons more besides. And if people click on "Beer shots" you can hear what it's like to be "inside" the bar - cool. My compliments to the web designer; nicely done.
http://www.oldtownalehouse.net/
That aside, it's 29C in Metro Vancouver and I have no air-conditioning. 82.4 Fahrenheit. I'll be fine. I have ice cubes. :)
Ebert: The original Ale House was the first place in Chicago I ever had a drink, in about 1963. If someone were coming to town and only had time for one drink, that's where I'd send them.
Roger, thank you for bringing alive those years. When I moved back to Chicago from New York in 1979 I simply couldn't find a bar that measured up to the great times in The White Horse and the Lion's Head in Greenwich Village...but I just didn't know where to look in Chicago. However, the first time I walked into O'Rourkes I was hooked before I could even make it to the bar. Alan Zwick was being yelled at by Jay Robert Nash and Bruce Elliot in concert, Michela Tuohy was talking with Pat Colander -- who was to become my wife (and then ex-wife), Morgan Powell was arguing with Rich Warren and a group of other journalists and Jay Kovar was impassively taking it all in, judiciously measuring a shot of VO just up to the line of the shot glass...around every five-six minutes. The bar was two or three deep -- and it was a MONDAY night. I never got to know McHugh that well, but always remember his claim to that seat at the end of the bar. And his voice.
Ebert: You remember all that from just the first night. O'Rourke's made that kind of an impression.
A Monday? The regulars were lined up every night. Weekends were only more crowded because of irregulars.
Roger,Thanks for laying it out so well. McHugh, Zonka and the Greek gent who said, "By all the gods," were part of that great international only-in-Chicago circle you brought together under the portraits of the Irish poets of O'Rourke's. I also remember Sherman Wolf as the gentle PR man who begged me to get a photo of a circus-act client into the Daily News ,and some time later reciprocated by getting me an exclusive viewing of the Chinese acrobats in Montreal before they appeared in Chicago.
I also remember a sodden Fitzpatrick hauling off at a stunned Algren in one of the window booths, and Jay Robert Nash hauling me aside to say in his Cagney style,"When are you going to do some real writing, kid!" As the other Jewish bartender next to Jay Kovar, I was amazed to serve the young mothers who wheeled their baby buggies in at four p.m. for a bit of a taste, and set reeling by the amateur-night crowds on St. Patrick's Day when a bartender could not get out from behind the bar to get to the john. We had our drinks and met our mates there, some for jjust a moment and others, like you and McHugh, for a lifetime. All said, it was a good time, and you have remembered it well, for which your friends thank you.
Ebert: The Greek gent was Alcibiades Oikonomides, who also toasted "To the 10,000 years that we will drink together!"-- followed by a friendly head-butt.
In addition to being a towering personality in O'Rourke's, he was also, on the sly as it were, a scholar and publisher.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=npN&q=Alcibiades+Oikonomides&btnG=Search&aq=f&oq=&aqi=
Great stories! Very funny and endearing.
What did Siskel and McHugh think of each other?
Ebert: Affable. Both thought of himself as the superior poker player.
Thanks for introducing me to W.B. Yeats. I believe that I have a new friend--his name is Yeats--and we have a lot to learn from each other.
I enjoy reading your blog. Reading your blog is like sitting down on the rug at the foot of the rocking chair, to listen to the stories of what it was once like. Reading your experiences gives me the opportunity to pick and choose which ones I want to relive and hope to return to let you relive through my experiences.
Thank you.
You kicked off an avalanche, here, Roger, and a torrent of flooding memories, all good, including the tough ones. O'Rourke's was no bar, and you and I and almost everyone going in and out of that place knew it. It was a house of mirth and passion, of wonder and even knowledge, and God could not help the woebegone bigot, the fascist or the warmonger wandering inside from being greeted by a hundred male and female fists. (I must admit that I wore off my share of knuckle skin in those precious decades--and we were smart enough to know how fine they were when we lived inside of them.)
O'Rourke's is a thousand memories for me and more. Every woman I met there was Ingrid Bergman (particularly my dear wife, Judy, the spitting image of that inspiring lady, who--oh, sacrilege--I actually met at the Ale House, but I spirited her to O'Rourke's posthaste). Every man I met there was Bogart, grinning and snarling, ready for anything. I can still see them all and they were wonderful, even in their most debilitated states. I loved them all and love them still and always will, the whole surly, loveable, quarrelsome, slaphappy, endearing bunch of them, for they are the blood of my heart--you, too, especially, Roger, and those troublesome bozos, McHugh and Bruce. One more vital thing: When in the hell are you going to do some real writing, Marshall?
Ebert: Jay, somehow your comment inspired a memory. You once told me of my first Chicago girlfriend, Tal: "That girl would follow you into the mouth of a cannon!" Not a necessity I could easily envision.
How could I forget about Big Al, another fixture from my childhood in O'Rourke's. Jay getting me up from the baby sitter and bringing me in for last call as we picked my mom up on the way home.
Willie getting arrested for painting the green line down North Ave while dressed as a leprechaun on St. Pattys.
Roger, I loved reading about McHugh the pal, the raconteur, the lover of poetry, and the crazy drunk peacekeeper of O'Rourke's, but I'm recalling McHugh the gourmet. You were living in the carriage house, and had those nice Sunday potluck brunches. I think one of my cookbooks was on a best seller list around that time, and I thought I was pretty hot stuff. I made a delicious Tortilla Española, the great potato-onion-olive oil omelet that is served in every Spanish bar. McHugh took a doubtful look, then took a taste and said, "Hmmph. That's not nearly as bad as it look." Oh, McHugh.
Ebert: He was right!
Readers: Anna is also an Oscar nominee with Greg Nava for "El Norte."
Roger:
Another humorous McHugh-related story is the tale of the "Belfast Champ." Do you recall?
Ebert: Remind me.
Since McHugh lives in Three Oaks, Michigan, I'm assuming you and he know about Drier's Meat Market, home of the very best hams and hot dogs in the world.
I lived at the tip of Lake Michigan when I found Drier's as I was wandering around southwestern Michigan on the Red Arrow Highway more than thirty years ago. I've been sending Drier's hams as Christmas gifts ever since and there's nothing like a Drier's hot dog roasted over an open fire. Before roasting the hot dog, slash the ends about an inch deep, like spokes on a wheel. Those wedges will curl and toast to perfection.
Fires and friends make for good conversation. Throw in one of those Lake Michigan beaches and you have a time to remember!
Ebert: Butcher Drier's ham is unsurpassed. I also recommend their famous "Lake Michigan Seasoning Salt" ("Not a grain of sand on it!") and their billboard on the road into town from Harbert: "Vegetarians Renounce Their Vows at Drier's!"
I have never tasted a better smoked ham. They smoke them themselves. It's not factory food.
On their web site, they quote this verse written by Carl Sandberg, who for years owned a shore house in Harbert:
Thank you, dear Eddie
For your bottles and basket.
We've only one question
And now we will ask it.
We know cheese in a tub
And that liver's not bony.
But how in the world
Do you make your baloney?
Roger, When Marjorie and I first moved to Michigan I was only there on weekends, that wasn't so bad as after I left early on Sunday, McHugh was sort of a stand in for me during the week. In fact for a while people who saw the three us together would invariably ask who I was.
He has, as do you, this great loyalty to his friends, except those who play golf with him.
Ebert: As I recall, you once flatly refused to ever play golf with him again.
Roger:
Regarding McHugh and the Tale of the Belfast Champ. I checked with Jay Robert Nash to verify some details of the story and received the reply, below. Here is Jay's uncut version:
¶
Dear Marc:
No one will ever be able to perfectly describe O’Rourke’s to everyone’s satisfaction, for everyone’s memory is private and sacrosanct about that magical oasis, which was really a mirage and every image of that shimmering place is different in the teary eyes of those beholders.
I saw your remark about McHugh and the so-called “Belfast Champ,” and recognized it as one of my own myriad experiences with that eternally colorful character. You can post this entire message (credited to me) on Roger’s blog if you like, but this is the last time, so help me, that I write away such great tales for free. If I ever put up a blog, I will charge for my writing. I cannot count the number of times friends of mine have said to me—Jay, I hear that you have a new book out, so why not send me a copy? Would it ever occur to them to buy a copy (which is how I make my living)? At least, with my latest book last year, Roger sent me a copy of his new book and I sent him mine.
THE BELFAST CHAMP: That story goes back to 1968, when Kevin Mosley and I were lifting a few at a place called Max Marek’s Up-on-Nine, a pub just a little bit north of Old Town. “Youse guys are sluggers without gloves,” Max was fond of saying. He was a former heavyweight prizefighter dear to us since he had an inexplicable deep affection for writers. Max had adorned his drinking spa with all sorts of ring memorabilia, including myriad photos of champs and ex-champs, and there was even a photo prominently placed behind the bar showing him with Joe Louis before their bout together—a fight in which Marek knocked out Louis, but this with early in Louis’ career. Like so many I met and befriended in life, Max had lost relatives and friends in Nazi concentration camps and his passionate and justifiable hatred for Adolf Hitler was as constant as the Northern Star. Max installed a special urinal in the mens' room, where gents could step up to see below their belts a bronze bust of Hitler sitting atop a pedestal above the drain, greeted with a large sign on the wall reading: “Have one on Hitler!” We gladly participated and often.
I met Kevin Mosley the same time I met John McHugh, in the early 1960s, when both were bartending together in a saloon in Old Town . They had been friends for some time. These two scalawags had a little trick of engaging a customer in conversation as he sat at the middle of the bar (with few others in attendance) and then, as they stood at either end of the bar, and banter then barrage that customer (which was my initial experience) with witty abuse, a cross-firing, whipsawing exercise that quickly turned savage, if not maniacal. So fast were their clever epithets hurled that Leibnitz could not have slipped in a monad, and when you departed, more hastily than anticipated, you felt that you had been slapped silly by a dozen wet blankets.
Mosley went to work for the old Herald-American and, when I became editor-in-chief of ChicagoLand Magazine I hired him as my investigative reporter—this in a day when city magazines had some guts to expose corruption. Kevin had very good law enforcement contacts and he been for years going on raids with his badge carrying friends. McHugh, as The Great Gadfly he was (and is), told Mosley that he was making a mistake in working for me, saying: “Nash is dangerous. He will ruin your career.” McHugh then told me: “Mosley is dangerous. He will ruin your career.” Since both Kevin and I had gone out of our ways to ruin our separate careers by then, such trouble-making remarks not too cleverly couched as avuncular caution was, as usual, promptly ignored.
Mosley did some incisive and explosive exposes for my magazine and did cause more than a stir in underworld quarters. One of Mosley’s exposes about the mob in Lake County, Indiana, prompted some of its more irate members to seize several thousand copies of the magazine slated for distribution in that locale and dump them into the Little Calumet River. I got a call a few hours later in my office, a deep voice spitting: “You run one more piece like that Mosley article and you’re going to be floating down that river with your magazines!” Could McHugh be clairvoyant, I asked myself.
All of this goes back to that afternoon at Max Marek’s place a few days after the mob story and its rather dramatic reaction. McHugh walked into the place and sat down next to us. He had heard about the magazines in the river and Mosley told him about the call I got from the unknown man in what was most likely a pin-stripe suit. “I told you,” McHugh said smugly. “You guys will ruin each other—together you’re too damn dangerous.” He lifted his beer in salute: “You both want to get bumped?” He drank down the whole glass than placed it gently on the bar, staring sagely at himself in the mirror opposite, “then keep it up.” He was crowing well and kept it up, but to the man he most trusted, himself: “Some people cannot be helped, no matter what you tell them.”
Mosley said: “John, you know we can’t help ourselves—it’s the Irish in us. And by the way, I think you had that actor friend of yours, the guy with the booming bass voice, call Jay with that phony threat.” (This I did not believe, as McHugh’s caprice never ran to the vicious, but it was Mosley’s predictable way of creating more sturm und drang.)
At that moment, one of three burly fellows sitting at the end of the bar shouted: “You say you boys are Irish?”
“We’re not only Irish,” Mosley said, “but the big fellow here is the Belfast Champ!” He hooked a menacing thumb in McHugh’s direction.
Irony and happenstance fused in that moment to create a volatile incident never anticipated.
The three men at the end of the bar, it turned out, were not only ex-prizefighters, old pals of Max’s, but all were Irish, men of the Republic, who had no regard for Ulster men, particularly those from Belfast . This we did not know until later and had we known it, I would never had said the following: “He’s not only the Belfast champ, but he has beaten every man coming up from the southern counties!”
McHugh looked at me and Mosley and glanced at the three brawlers as they slowly moved toward him, saying quietly to us: “Cut it out.”
“That’s right,” Mosley said, “and he has knocked out every IRA man, too! Flattened those punks like pancakes! No one messes around with the Belfast champ, gentlemen!”
Max Marek, behind the bar, saw what was coming. He waved his pug friends back to their stools, walked up to us, pointing to Mosley and then to me: “You and you are leaving—now.”
We got up and asked McHugh to go out with us, but he was too miffed to move. We stepped outside and a moment later out came a stumbling McHugh with two or three of these broken-nosed men tumbling after him. He was suddenly on the cement with a hard crack to the head (he wore a bandage for some time thereafter) before we and Max could pry these Irish Republican pugilists from the top of him.
After Max drove off his ring pals and while applying a wet towel to McHugh’s head, he told Mosley and me: “You two are barred for six months—take your trade to O’Rourke’s. I guess they like what you do down there.” He then turned to McHugh and said in his most consoling voice: “Sorry, John, you’re always welcome in my joint. Come on back in and I give you a free one.”
“Go back in there?” McHugh said. “Are you crazy!” With that, he walked off, without saying a word to us and, in fact, did not talk to us for weeks thereafter.
About a month later, Mosley and I were at O’Rourke’s, somewhere down the bar, while McHugh was sitting at the north end of that bar in his usual spot (against the wall, where he could not be blindsided) when some bruiser came in and sought us out. “Are you the fellas who know this guy the Belfast Champ?” One look at this muscle bound character and you knew that he was an apprentice pug looking to put another scar on his knuckles as a gunslinger might carve a niche on a gun butt after dispatching a fast, competitive gunman.
“Yes, we know the Belfast Champ,” I said. “He left Chicago , vowed that he would never come back.”
“That’s right,” Mosley said. “Went to an island— Okinawa , I think—where he works as a scavenger, selling war surplus.”
“What did you want to see him about?” I asked.
“This, dammit!” He held up a big fist, then stomped out, disillusioned and unsatisfied.
McHugh, I think, was watching our conversation with this fight-seeker, but we never told him about our conversation with the man so eager to track down and do immortal battle with the legendary Belfast Champ. It was our way of apologizing to John, I suppose, for taking that joking boast out too far, as far as Hemingway’s old man went out, to a place where the sharks are always waiting to attack and devour.
It is now forty-one years later, John, and I make my formal apology to you for crowning you (in more ways than one) with a title you never sought to wear. You can get your apology from Mosley any way you can. He is a utility executive in Arizona , known locally as The Phoenix Terror.
–Jay Robert Nash
¶
PS: McHugh’s poker playing is overrated. I beat him every time I sat in for hands. You knew he had nothing in his hand when he started bumping the bid at the end, to scare out everybody, but I always stayed with him to catch his bluff and take the pot. You could also tell when John had a good hand by simply watching his movements; on such occasions he telegraphed his hold since his left nostril would flare as he poked his tongue into the right side of his cheek, tapped his cards with his right index finger, and then furtively glanced sideways to the floor with squinty eyes and a grimace as if a bevy of mice were running toward his feet. And this is the guy who taught Roger how to play poker, which is why Roger always lost, at least to me, and, I think to just about everybody else.
Ebert: Thank you, Jay, for this most excellent memory. I do not pay for contributions here at the old blog, but I salute you by providing a link to the Jay Robert Nash store on Amazon, which lists a mere 29 of your more than 90 books. Your novel A Crime Story is dedicated to McHugh and myself.
What a fun read! Newspaper people used to be so colorful. I think of Hunter Thompson saying (paraphrasing) that he couldn't be anything but a journalist if only because he preferred to drink with them. I wonder why it is that journalism has become so comparatively staid and buttoned-down. Is it because journalistic outfits have all been taken over by mega-corporations? Have we as a society become less interesting, less tolerant of colorful characters? Something has been lost. There are no more Menckens, no more Roykos. Or am I just an aging crank pining for the good old days that never really existed?
A relative of the Cubs' Hall of Fame second baseman, Ryne, or were you perhaps referring to Carl Sandburg, O exalted Pulitzer-winning denizen of the City of Big Shoulders?"
Ebert: Ouch! Yes, the exalted Carl Sandberg, although this was not one of his greatest verses. I wrote the Introduction, centering on his Michigan home, for the collection of all his reviews for the Chicago Daily News: The Movies Are : Carl Sandburg's Film Reviews And Essays
Actually, the "exalted" was written in salutation to you, Roger (even though you only have one Pulitzer to his two). That Carl Sandberg couldn't hit a fuckin' curve to save his life!
And thanks for the link, although as a better book finding tool, I would recommend http://www.abebooks.com; in this case, since the book appears from your link to be out-of-print, the only one available from a third-party seller on Amazon is a bit pricey at $61. Check out the 14 (currently) available at the site I mentioned.
Hi Roger,
Is that a Billy Baxter Pan Am bag I see John with? I think based on your descriptions such a token is the equivalent to Charlie's golden ticket. The worlds such a thing unlocks sound incredible, keep bringing me stories from afar!
Ebert: Close, but no cigar. It's a Pan Am, but Billy's were American Express.
Hello Roger,
What a wonderful tribute to dear, dear John, and such interesting memories you unearth, not only of O'Rourke's but Ireland of course. Unfortunately I didn't tread the ole sod with you two delightful fellows, but I've spent my share of time with my Irish friends and intend to once again this summer. Many a night we closed down the pub at the strictly enforced hour of 11 p.m. only to continue in the back room or close the curtains and watch for the Guarda.
But back to John, one of the more interesting and wonderful fellows I know. As I recall (that's difficult for me these days), we would sit around enjoying lively discussion and John would intercede and come up with his very adroit comment. But if nothing else, my thoughts about John are how protective he was and is of you, Roger, his dear friend.
I am so fortunate to have both of you in my realm of great friends over the years.
You have mentioned your friend McHugh several times in your reviews, and I was a little curious about him. I read your review of "Starship Troopers"(excellent lithmus paper movie for checking whether you're kid or grown-up) recently, and you ended the review with bug exterminator story. I found it amusing and I am delighted to find that story again in your writing. And you provide other nice moments with him. Sherman Wolf story is quite funny and O'Rourke's must be nicer than my bars.
P.S.
Some of my colleagues are non-drinkers, but they go to bars and have some good time like you. Last week, one of them ordered a glass of cold water while I bought Guinness(580ml for each) for others.
Hi Roger,
You've always been such a great raconteur! I loved your stories of McHugh and company. Looks like the best picture of The Perfect London Walk is the one I never saw. (Sorry, Jack.)
Ebert: Remember the great planning session we had at the Italian restaurant in Chicago?
I first met McHugh shortly after he arrived in Chicago. He had just graduated from the University of Indiana and was cooking burgers at Second Chance, a new saloon on Wells Street. I was immediately impressed by two of his most prominent skills: his ability to blend in with much older people, a talent that helped him immensely when he launched his journalism career, and his even more impressive ability to discern real booze from bar booze. I was personally present on two occasions, (his former rat-partner Kevin Mosely on one), when upon ordering a shot of Johnny Walker Black, he immediately spat it back in the face of the offending bartender. This was not an intentional act, but a reflexive one. Invariably the bartender wiped the offending bar booze from his face and apologized for the unfortunate mistake as he poured McHugh a real shot of Johnny Walker Black.
Old Town was a fantastic place in the early 60's. Rent was dirt cheap and a beer at the Old Town Ale House was just a quarter. When O’Rourke’s moved from Wells Street to North Avenue it was just another bar, albeit one with very bad heating and pictures of famous Irish writers on the wall. McHugh loved it. However, it would have forever remained nothing more than a rather colorful neighborhood bar had McHugh not started bringing his fellow journalists down there from the Billy Goat.
Although no one realized it at the time a new era was launched the day McHugh brought Ebert into O’Rourke’s....Ebert and McHugh became inseparable bar mates as well as personal friends. They were definitely a study in contrasts seated next to each other every night at their end of the bar. At the time McHugh could have easily passed for forty, Ebert looked barely twenty-one. Soon Ebert brought not only more journalists, but did most of his celebrity interviews there. Suddenly O’Rourke’s was the place to be. In spite of their notoriety, O’Rourke’s had a series of sullen bartenders that had a universal hatred of not just me, but people in general.
Really, where else in Chicago could you meet Tennessee Williams, Alan Ginsburg, or Norman Mailer, not to mention all of the movie stars Roger brought in. Twenty years later when Ebert announced to the world that he had quit drinking, the golden age of O’Rourke’s soon ended, although it did have a brief renaissance after it moved to Halsted Street when the Steppenwolf crowd made it their hangout. Unfortunately Kovar's heart wasn't really into it and when they lost their lease it was over. It's a shame someone didn't keep it going somewhere else, it was a great bar and there aren't too many of the old-time one's left.
I take full responsibility for teaching McHugh how to play golf. For a man who spent his entire adult life sitting on chairs and barstools he was a quick learner-very good hand-eye coordination. Within months he was consistently beating all the hackers at the Saddle Club, which was the bar located between O’Rourke’s and the Ale House. He was hooked. Unfortunately I drilled into his head the importance of etiquette. Now normally, when in the company of civilized adults, this is not a bad thing. As fate would have it, there was nothing civilized about the people McHugh was playing with. Hence, he was soon dubbed the Golf Nazi by his opponents because he dared to insist that people not talk while he was hitting the ball. His intolerance for fools and buffoons increased significantly when he started to play poorly. I guess I should have pointed out a little earlier in his lessons that golf was ultimately meant to be a social game and the object was to have fun. For not stressing that enough I take full blame.
Roger, when you pick Nash as the most unforgettable O’Rourke’s' character, it's hard to argue. However, I think Nash might be willing to grudgingly share the title with Mike Tuohy. One of my favorite Nash stories took place the night before he was leaving for New York to appear on the Johnny Carson show. I was standing next to the late Paul Galloway when Nash started haranguing Jim Tuohy, Mike's husband. After Nash yanked a couple of buttons off of Tuohy's new shirt, I mentioned to Galloway that I thought Tuohy was going to punch Nash. Sure enough, a moment later Tuohy decked Nash. Nash was now lying on the floor staring up at Tuohy. "Jimmy, nice punch." Cagney and Robinson would have been proud of not only the line, but his delivery. Unfortunately, five minutes later Nash ruined everything by calling the cops on Tuohy. As Tuohy took off for the safety of the Ale House Ed McCahil commented to Nash that Hemingway would not have called the cops. Fortunately, Nash was bumped the night he was supposed to go on Carson by a kid who did bird imitations, giving his black eye an extra day to heal. The next night, Nash, with the aid of generous amounts of stage makeup, was a huge success.
This reminds me of another night in O’Rourke’s. Once again I was talking to Galloway when Tom Fitzpatrick, a well known Royko wannabe, spit on Nelson Algren who was seated in the corner talking to Big Sam. Algren, who had to be close to 70 years old at the time, jumped up, and after taking perfect aim, bounced a shot glass off of Fitzpatrick's forehead. Fitz beat a hasty retreat and afterward pretty much everyone in the bar wanted to buy Algren a drink.
Roger, in answer to your philosophic question of how I would chance to know Ron Majors before you and McHugh, I think the answer is - birds of a feather. The bar we hung out at in San Francisco, Slater Hawkins, was just down the street from the TV station where Ron was the ten o'clock anchor. It was inhabited by media types, big-time pro athletes and small time gangsters. We would all watch the ten o'clock news and then bet on whether Ron and his two side kicks, Barry Tomkins and Mike Lee, would manage to come in the door before the credits stopped rolling. About fifty-percent of the time they'd make it. In those days Ron would drink. When I think of the
great drinkers I've known, I have to break them down into categories. But when it comes to guys I've known with straight jobs, McHugh wins, but you and Ron come tied for a close second. Congratulations. Also, I want to thank you for this walk down memory lane. You realize, of course, you've just scratched the surface. Keep it coming!
Ebert: It is a great honor to welcome the proprietor of the Old Town Ale House to the blog!
From what I heard or saw, all of your stories are true, except for one. McHugh did NOT introduce me to O'Rourke's. He may well have known it when it was on Wells Street, but he wasn't there on opening night on North Avenue. I know, because I was.
Nan Lundberg had been campus editor of The Daily Illini when I was editor. We both came up to Chicago at around the same time. I was living in South Shore at the time, and doing most of my drinking at Jimmy's in Hyde Park. I got a call from Nan:
"Roger, you can call me Nan Kilkeary now. I've married a great guy named Will Kilkeary, and he's opening a bar at 319 W. North Avenue. New Year's Eve is opening night. You gotta come!"
I did, and fell under its spell. It felt nothing like a new bar, because it wasn't. Willy had purchased all the fixtures, furniture, the bar itself, and the famous photographs, and according to Nan, although the bar arrived by moving truck, everything else was carried by regulars in a stately parade down North Avenue.
Nan's brother was Jim Lundberg, the famous Uncle Jim, who was possibly one of the surly bartenders you mentioned. Jay Kovar wasn't surly, just detached and bemused. Bobby Shaw, now a full-time artist living in Italy, was the soul of good cheer. Jeanette Sullivan was always friendly.
You are right that it was ill-heated in those years. All it had was a wood-burning pot-bellied stove. Ice often formed on the inside of the front window, inspiring my motto, "Dress warmly and drink in a cold bar."
That first night a terrific fight broke out, the stovepipe was ripped from the stove, the pub filled with smoke, and we had to grope our way to the bar. "I've had it!" Willy announced. "I'm never opening on New Year's Eve again! And so was born my annual New Year's Eve party.
Tennessee was there several times, mostly because Henry Hanson and his buddy Dakin, Tennesee's brother, came there a lot. It was in the front booth of O'Rourke's that Henry agreed to become the campaign manager for Dakin's unsuccessful gubernatorial bid. I recall him enthusing: "Tennessee can deliver East St. Louis!"
Readers: To view Bruce's world-famous nude portrait of Sarah Palin and order posters or T shirts, go here and click on the obvious link.
Rodger
very funny story,Mc Hugh is my uncle, i have only meet him a few times as a child and im told you were with him on one occasion, but after reading that piece i feel i know him a hell of a lot better!! good job.
Ebert: I wonder if an accurate count has ever been made of his nephews and nieces, and great-nephews and great-nieces. I seem to remember he was up to 26 some years ago.
Roger, I stand corrected. You found your own way to O’Rourke’s. My information was anecdotal. I was in California at the time. Although, to be fair to McHugh, you probably would not have been as enchanted with O’Rourke’s had he not been there to greet you every night. As to my charges of surly bartenders, I also stand corrected. There were a few nice one’s. Of the three owners, Jeanette was certainly the most pleasant. However, if you recall she almost always serviced what Hank used to refer to as the toilet-end of the bar. She was frightened of people like Mike Tuohy and Tracy Berg. Hank made an interesting observation one night when our end of the bar was particularly raucous. The only time the toilet-end engaged in conversation with each other was when someone bought a round. For a brief moment there would be a clinking of glasses, then just as quickly a return to their glumly staring at the mirth and jollity being displayed at our end.
If ever there was a man in the wrong business, it was Big Jim. I’m really surprised he didn’t end up killing someone. By the way, away from the bar he was a fine fellow. When you were still hanging around the bar Kovar probably was pretty much detached. However, by the time the bar moved to Halsted Street he was intolerable. On the night of Paul Bradley’s 60th birthday party the place was jammed with old-timers. It was unseasonably warm and somebody had propped the front door open. Everyone was having a great time until Kovar arrived on the scene. He immediately slammed the door closed, walked behind the bar without acknowledging anyone, including Bradley, and within ten minutes, half the people had left. My personal favorite bartender was Kathy Kilbourn. Hennigan was good, too. In fact, all of the actor bartenders were great when Kovar wasn’t around.
Now now, lads. Settling old scores shouldn't be done in daylight when everyone's sober. Better in a dark alley after the last call. And to balance the surly bartenders score, shouldn't we at least compile a rollcall of all the horsehit drinkers who graced the other side of the log in O'Rourke's night after night for what seemed an eternity?
mcQ
Ebert: I can't think of who you could be referring to.
i'd wager that john must have been a lot of fun when he had gas.
Ebert: He doesn't sport that complaint.
I've been prowling around these entries for a while now, always meaning to comment but never actually doing it. The parts here about Ireland finally pushed me. In college I took a poetry class, and towards the end of the semester our professor assigned us to memorize and then recite a poem for the next class. From a friend's suggestion, I recited "The Lake Isle of Innisfree". Good suggestion. I still love that poem. And I made it to Ireland, finally, a few months ago for my honeymoon. My husband and I celebrated St. Patrick's day in Dublin with several pints of Guinness.
As much as I love reading your entries here, I'd say I love just as much reading the reader comments. This site gave me back a little hope and sanity when I was working a miserable job (which I recently got up the nerve to quit). What a great reminder - there ARE still smart people out there!
Lovely article Roger. Im Sligo born and bred .I was always aware that you had some link to Sligo as i recall in some review you mentioning that some time in the 1960s you were "in a in a working-class pub in a poor neighborhood of Sligo". I thought that pretty cool Roger Ebert one of the most famous movie critics has been to my town!. The 1960s was a bit before my time, i was born in 1983 but have been a regular reader of your movie reviews for some time now. Any plans on a return visit ?
ps i hope you are well on the way to recovery...
Roger, a chara
The propensity for John McHugh to play havoc with both the English language, in particular, and the Western world, in general, has long been the stuff of legend in his native North West of Ireland.
We simply rate him as the home boy done good. Or rather the one that escaped!
I was the oldest of Trooper McHugh's grandchildren, so the mere mention of the great Uncle John landing home, was akin to that of the Dalai Lama pitching his tent in your front yard.
But as the years progressed, it was more mythical than mystical. My memories are somewhat oblique, being a mere ‘gasur’, but I do recall the energy and vitality of those times.
You were described as being one of our lost McHugh cousins from America, coming home to visit the ancestors. It stayed with me for years and I had no reason to believe otherwise.
I recall being introduced to you at Granddad’s house on Tracey Avenue in Sligo. The most striking memory was the horn-rimmed glasses. Or was it the faint brewery smell of Guinness and ‘uisce beatha’?
The boys are going down the road for a ‘jar’, I remember overhearing in conversation one time, but when I asked what they were getting the jars for, one of my youthful uncles nonchalantly mentioned strawberry jam.
In reality, it was Holland's Bar at the end of Church Street, within spitting distance of the red tin roof of Sligo Rovers football park, the Showgrounds.
Sadly my boyhood hero and grandpa, Trooper passed away in 1977 and it was never the same again.
John travelled over another time with some guy called Buckovitch, who was a photographer.
In Ireland, even the exotic names of the guys he hung around with, were wonderful talking points.
John McHugh was visiting the North West on another occasion when Pope John Paul II got an assassin’s bullet. Getting chauffeured back to Dublin airport was a sight that few had seen at that time. A limousine pulled up outside the house and he was whisked away like some foreign ambassador to get to Rome, pronto!
He wore his watch on the inside of his wrist. He told me that it was to ensure he knew what time he was shot, if he were ever to take a bullet himself and he could still file copy.
He also explained to me the politics of getting the perfect camera shots for petrol bombers attacking the security forces in Northern Ireland.
It often took more than one take and greenbacks were exchanged, if a camera crew missed the action first time around.
I was about 12 years of age at the time, mesmerised by his tales, his ability to paint pictures with words was inspiring to a young Irish lad.
It was part a great “seanachai” tradition, passed down from one generation to another.
On another occasion, I was shocked when he brought me to a local drinking emporium and asked the bartender for a bottle of Perrier water.
It was obviously a time after the “jars” were returned.
The order shocked me, as he was genuinely the first person I had ever witnessed paying for water in Ireland. At that stage, bottled water was about 100 bucks a bottle.
I recalled that story when I was working in a Galway bar ten years later, while at College.
This bucko saunters up to the bar and asks for a bottle of water. I ask him does he want ice with it.
He replies: “After me giving you £1.30 for a bottle of water, you can F%^* off with your free county council ice.” McHugh was ahead of his time.
Funny, you mention his disdain for Royalty and the ‘Sasanach’, as he actually had a soft spot for the old Duke’s game of cricket.
It was in Trooper’s house, I recall and these boys running around in the middle of summer with what appeared to be Aran knitted woollen jumpers. He started explaining the rules of the game, but I just thought it was just hilarious.
My prized possessions were the press cards he presented to me on an early visit, including one as an NBC Crime Reporter in 1975.
To me, the Uncle newly adopted home was the country of the great adventurers and gangsters.
Jack Lord was the king of the little box in the corner of the room on the Emerald Isle.
“Book ‘em Dano, Murder One!”
Those press cards are still in my possession today. For my own sins, I followed some years later into the same profession. And I blame the Uncle 100%. He had that kind of affect.
Ebert: Words run in the family. I was out for dinner a week ago with John and Mary Jo, and and I don't believe he noticed that due to a medical condition I was not talking. There was no dead air.
August 18
Roger, I know it's a long time since your article appeared in the Sun-Times, and I hope you have a chance to reply to it.
Jodi(Anna Dudak's daughter) and I moved into 2437 Burling St. around 1980 after "Pops" Dudak had passed away, We moved into the second floor apartment that you formally occupied. Jodi and I have some great memories, from the stories that Anna told of the coming and goings of various characters that you and John McHugh hosted, and the outragious party that Russ Meyer attended and brought along one of his porn stars, "Kitty". Pops Dudak, never stopped relating stories about what she was wearing, or barely wearing that night.
There's a picture of the house and the frount yard and some of the animals that gave the neighborhood children a lot of pleasure. One of those, was a duck we found at a roadside stand in Vienna , Illinois, and we christened it "Annie from Vienna", since they pronounce it "VI EN NA" , in southern Illinois, in honor of Jodi's mom. "Annie" ended up with more cerimonial outfits than we had clothesin our own closets. She had an outfit for every holiday, season, or celebration imaginable. Since "Annie" was a perfect childs size 2, we bought all of her clothes at the second hand stores for a doller or two.
I had never met Roger prior to Anna Dudaks terminal illness, but I was very impressed when, one day after Jodi had notified him of Anna"s condition, Roger arrived at the door, without any fanfare and proceeded to spend almost an hour with Mrs. Dudak,who was confined to her bed at the time, remminessing about the past. Roger may not have realized it , but he did a lot to make her final days a bit moe enjoyable.
In going through the photos of the house, I"ve discovered a few pictures of Roger, "Pops" Dudak, and Anna Dudak, together with an article tht appeared in the local paper about the Dudaks, and Roger, if you'd like reprints of them, just ask.
Jodi and I have had our own memories, adventures and misadventures in the house on Burling St, the people who lived there, the parties and the neighborhood in general, but none so colorful as the time that Roger lived there.
We sold the house on Burling St. this last June to a couple who bought our house and the house to the south. They will demolish both houses and create their own home. We'll hate to see it go, but we'll always have the memories.
Ebert: I would love copies of those photos. Those were good people.
Me? Surly?
Thanks for the flashbacks.
Ebert: Hi, Jim. That wasn't me was said that.
Nash should talk about surly.