Mom defending Dad (Copy of original)

Despite the fact that he chewed tobacco, everyone in the family agreed he was swell.

Her brothers had brought him home from the glass factory to meet their sister. That was twenty years earlier.

He was a thrifty, hard-working, unassuming, church-going man and so they married.

He was good to their boys and except for penny-ante poker, he didn’t gamble. There were no women. But it turned out he was a ‘complicated’ man — at least that’s how the doctors described him.

He had lost his mother at fourteen and was raised as an only child by aunts who scorned his father and his religion. He could be heard shouting back at them decades after they died. He couldn’t lay them to rest.

As newlyweds, they were familiar with alcohol.

The young woman had her first drink during Prohibition (her father gave dances and could pick up and bounce two drunks at a time). Her husband-to-be had ran bootleg whisky out of an elevator in a downtown hotel.

By the time their second boy came, the man’s diary described how he and his crew carried hip-flasks while sorting mail on train cars. There was a photo of him bleary eyed during a labor event. He kept a circuit of distant taverns to hide his habit.

Alcohol and undetected diabetes tricked the chemicals in his brain. His outbreaks led doctors to prescribe electric-shock therapy, and the courts signed off. There was a fall from grace – nobody knew what to say.

Don’t stop reading.

It turns out that the man was as canny in choosing a mate as she had been in choosing him.

She refused to see her good and decent man as a damaged soul. She never wavered. She made sure her boys appreciated that their father, despite his afflictions, gave them full bragging rights.

The family held.

The man outlived his wife by about a year. There was beer in the house after she was gone but now it was ice cream he turned to for comfort. He kept Eskimo Pies in the freezer.fingerprint4-only-final-40px

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Carla’s painting of George Gerber (Copy of original)

Being dead didn’t suit George Gerber. And, for George Gerber, being dead didn’t last long.

By all accounts here was a sociable man, a vibrant man, something of a character.

George had moved from New York at some point and wore a Yankee’s hat to prove it. He loved baseball and its traditions. “Now it’s just ‘money ball,’” he complained.

The man lived alone in a balconied condo building within easy distance of the coffee shop. No one recalls any mention of a wife or children.

George had spent his working years at the Internal Revenue Service. We don’t know for a fact, but we should assume IRS agent Gerber was kindly when auditing widows and orphans, and was passably competent at what he did.

George kept up with a stack of newspapers each day (there’s still an honest-to-God newsstand on the corner) and he happened to have the kind of face the Chicago readers of Nelson Algren or Studs Terkel would find comforting.

The portrait that Carla Hayden painted is sizable. She plied acrylic washes until she found the whimsy and panache of the man she enjoyed. When the piece was unveiled George predicted it would end up at the Art Institute.

After George left this earth Brian and John, owners of the Brothers K, afforded the work a position of honor near the double-urn brewing machine where, as you can see, George remains very much alive and with us today.

First-shift baristas report the hint of a frown on that painted face during pre-dawn hours. But it disappears as soon as the Brazilian, Papua New Guinean or Guatemalan coffee is brewed and George breathes in the caffeine he needs to face the day.

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Harold’s cat (Copy of original)

Harold referred to Sebastian simply as “the cat.” It wasn’t until after Sebastian died that Harold told us his name.

For 12 years Harold and Sebastian (a name his previous owner had chosen) shared a comfortable, second-floor, 60s-era condominium.

For the first nine years a very pretty calico named Julie lived with them. Julie was coquettish, sunny and solicitous, something of a daddy’s girl.

Sebastian was not the smartest cat in the Friskies commercials and his play often turned into something Julie didn’t enjoy.

Harold says cats without claws (another decision by Sebastian’s first owner) feel defenseless and resort to using their teeth. Julie did have claws and could fight back but she hated being cornered by her roommate.

It wasn’t until Julie passed away that Sebastian acknowledged that Harold even existed.

On a scale of ten Harold rates his enjoyment of Sebastian as only a five, considering moments of “cuteness,” maybe a six. But there were also times when the tabby’s approval sank into Richard Nixon territory. Those teeth.

A good diet with occasional table scraps, visits to the vet, a clean and safe place to live, Harold provided everything a pet could ask for. He believes Sebastian took life on Hinman Avenue for granted. He had never foraged in the alley or needed to outsmart the coyotes.

As Harold gave us updates on Sebastian’s decline he showed the concern and exhaustion common to caregivers. “You can love a cat without liking him.” he told us. “Liking is an emotion, loving is a responsibility.”

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Jacob at Brothers K (Copy of original)

Jacob-600pxThe most dynamic scholarship being done at the coffee shop today is by a newcomer named J-Bub.That man over there studies carbon in the Hydrosphere. The other one is researching the aftermath of China’s 1911 revolution. A woman in the corner is fleshing out a one-woman play.

But by far the most dynamic scholarship being done at the coffee shop today is by a newcomer named J-Bub. J-Bub’s field of inquiry is trucks, big trucks. He watches for them through the windows.

J-Bub is a man of few words but that’s changing quickly. He knows many more today than he did a month ago. Next year he’ll know a word for almost everything, including synonyms.

This is J-Bub’s second outing to the coffee shop with his Popi and he’s noticing things. The baristas give people something and the people give the baristas something. That’s interesting, isn’t it?

He reads context. Since there are no toys on the floor, this coffee shop isn’t really for people like him. At their next stop, at the neighborhood library, he owns the floor and everything on it.

He knows large from small, likes from dislikes, dos and don’ts, hellos and goodbyes. He is studying the exercise of power and the rewards of civil disobedience.

Two-year-olds start to put concepts together. J-Bub identified a “new toy.” He doesn’t know how to ask the why of things just yet, but he’ll start soon and he’ll never stop.

One thing that impresses us all about our new colleague is that he does all this intellectual heavy lifting without so much as a drop of caffeine.fingerprint4-only-final-40px

Photo by Roland Lieber
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