Canaryville Blues, Part II: Hearing Canaryville

CONCEPT

The pictures featured in the last post were taken on Tuesday, July 27th.

I walked to Canaryville via McKinley Park, Pershing, Racine, and Exchange. I photographed the Stockyards Arch and Bank, walked south on Halsted photographing the International Amphitheatre, Hart Plaza, and the remnants, than wove my way east and west, heading back north to the tracks.

Canaryville is an exceptionally small area, never more than a half-mile east-west and barely over a mile north-south. Thus, my photos encompass the area’s sights pretty well.

However, I tend to think that, for the purposes of writing, such an exercise is only of limited use. You really need to hear about people and places in their own words. So… the next day, I returned to Canaryville after work, this time to meet people.

* * * * *

I walked north to 43rd St., took a breath, and stepped into Kelley’s Bar. The bar was long and narrow, and ran straight back to a sort of enclosed outdoors terrace. When I stepped in there were only three or so people there, middle-aged men. Televisions hung over the bar at both ends. One ran game shows and the other, baseball. While I wasn’t greeted jovially (who would want to be, frankly) the place didn’t ooze that Bridgeport/Canaryville hostility I’m always warned about.

I stayed for over an hour, drinking three Old Styles, watching TV, eavesdropping, and writing notes in my journal. Here is what I wrote:

milk Crazy cash hash cigarette smokin’ an’ sitting on the porch. Watching tv. or playing pool. music and video. MTV. games. SDs. hot summer. late july. (…) Real dialogue. The thing we talk about. Listening isn’t sufficient. Who doesn’t notice what it. is down here. Brecht. Sinclair. Long days. So it goes.

I think, from the pairing of names near the end that I wasn’t getting that much deeper than the skin. I listened to the people that came and went… they were stereotypes: thick Chicago accents, loud, homophobic, and sports-obsessed. Moderately polite and sober. I wasn’t getting much deeper than the skin. The exercise was useful, but I needed to speak with someone… not just listen in. So I left.

* * * * *

One block later I encountered a woman on the street. She had flaming red hair and a bit of a wry smile as I approached her. As we passed, I said, “Excuse me, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

Her: ~ “Ask it.”

Me: ~ “Have you lived in Canaryville long?”

Her: ~ “Born and raised. I grew up here. I went to school here.”

Me: ~ “Because I’m a writer and I’m supposed to come up with a story by this weekend and I decided to set it here. But I don’t live around here. Would you mind telling me what it’s been like… living here and growing up here.”

Her: ~ “Follow me.”

And we started walking south.

The conversation was actually very broad, which was fine, because I was still reeling with the old style. Basically, the woman explained that she had grown up in Canaryville (she appeared to be thirtysomething), that it had been very nice but had gone downhill with the recent ascendence of two gangs, one north of 47th and one south. She was a tough kid, though, and now that she had her one baby and one on the way and a good guy behind her, things were looking up. “Canaryville’s a good neighborhood,” she said, “Everybody knows everyone else.” And sure enough, she seemed to greet everyone she encountered on the street.

She was moving fast, though, and I came to learn that we were going to a site where some kids and some bangers were being interrogated. “I know all the kids,” she said. What was going on, I asked. She answered that Canaryville had gone downhill since the gangs emerged. She was exhibiting a reluctance to tell me in more detail. I said a little bit about my own upbringing; I’d grown up in Flint’s East Village, which was also a nice neighborhood. But some of my friends lived across Longway, on the East Side or the North End. There, things happened… things I saw. So she explained:

“Couple days ago a kid got beat with a baseball bat down on Union and 46th.”

“Was it gang related?”

She nodded. “It was because that kid pulled a knife on one of the neighborhood kids.”

We arrived at 46th by the tracks to see the police talking to three or four boys, while another dozen people, more kids and neighbors stood by and listened, several houses down or across the street. Finally, the police put one of the kids, Z., in the back of the cruiser and drove off.

At this point my guide had bigger fish to fry, but she left me in the care of her friend J. and her husband M. Together with a couple of their kids, we walked to J.’s house, where I drank sweet iced tea, made new friends, and talked for hours about life and Canaryville.

* * * * *

S.’s house was one of those narrow and tall frame-based houses, probably built originally around the turn-of-the-century and cheaply and sporadically upgraded on numerous occasions since. It just goes to show that wood-frame houses survive in Chicago, and some aren’t even doing too badly.

The house was very clean and tastefully appointed on the inside; it almost reminded

me of the house aunt keeps. Like many Chicago houses, it made good use of space, seeming to offer more on the inside than could have been expected from its outside appearance.

We didn’t really spend much time on the inside, however. We sat out on the porch. A group of Canaryville bangers sat on the porch across the street, several houses up, while some more “respectable” neighbors, some who were apparently cokeheads, tidied up their lawn across the street.

J. was married to M. J. had four children; two sons and two daughters. The younger daughter wants to become a writer. The whole family gathered on the porch, and we talked for a long time. Much of what they said was described in the last post. Here’s some more:

1. People tend to be able to leave Canaryville, but not leave permanently. J., herself, had moved to Texas for awhile, but moved back for family reasons, and missing the connections and relationships available to her in Canaryville. She gave many examples, though, of people who’d lived their all their lives, including the upstairs tenant.

2. Racism is a major problem in Canaryville, and 15 years ago was the site of one of the most notorious racially motivated crimes in Chicago’s history. Canaryville is, as I’ve noted, the most Irish neighborhood in Chicago, and is unique in being one of the few Irish enclaves (meaning, still a destination for immigration) in the U.S. Of other groups, Mexican Americans have been there the longest, and are probably the most integrated into the “community” (in the sense that in Canaryville, they will tend to be regarded as insiders rather than outsiders). A few Chinese Americans have trickled in from the north, and some African Americans have moved in from nearby Englewood and Fuller Park. While these groups are still considered “outsiders” by most, and might be subject to disciminatory acts in Canaryville, the have become enough of a presence to open up the neighborhood somewhat.

3. The largest factor in the above is the reevaluation of inner-city bussing. Whereas Tilden High School, Canaryville’s huge public high school, had previously only drawn from white neighborhoods (particularly in that southside Irish/Italian/Polish corridor), it now draws kids from Englewood and Fuller park. Combined with the increase in the hispanic population in the stockyards area as a whole, Canaryville now hosts a racially diverse population each day. Whereas such bussing doesn’t always make a difference in local demography (I might site Doyle-Rider or Garfield in Flint), in Canaryville the difference is apparently huge. I do not know why this is; I wonder if perhaps Tilden is more closely tied to other neighborhood institutions than is typical.

4. Ironically, the Canaryville is also home to two or three parishes that maintain parochial schools (including high school). The old Irish population, however, is poor enough that they couldn’t send their kids to school there. Thus, the Catholic schools are filled with Bridgeport kids, and the Canaryville kids of all races gravitate toward Tilden.

5. In about so many words, Canaryville is a ghetto. That is, you see things you expect to see in your “generic” American ghetto; lot’s of kids and elderly, people sitting on stoops, heavy bass thudding from low-riders, the whole bit. The Irish ambience contrasts weirdly with all this. An hour walk through Canaryville is literally an experience you won’t have anywhere else.

6. Canaryville bucks ghetto trends in other ways. For the amount of drug dealing that goes on, there is a low level of violence, or more appropriately, Canaryville maintains “low-level” violence. By this I mean that firearm homicides still seem to be uncommon occurrences. Stabbings, clubbings, and fist fights seem to be the norm.

7. In my hosts’ opinion, Canaryville will get worse before it gets better, but has a bright future in the long run. They say the gangs are gaining strength. Parents are inattentive and the school does not offer afterschool activities or programs… the parishes in this overwhelmingly Catholic neighborhood draw mainly from outside neighborhoods… with most of the businesses on Halsted and 43rd boarded up and the tiny neighborhood surrounded by sprawling industries, there is simply a dearth of things to do. They maintain, however, that the successful integration of different races has already improved Canaryville, and that tried and true neighborhood institutions will win in the end.

8. The Stockyards Industrial District continues to be a major employer. Over 100 industrial companies employ over 10,000 workers, typically drawn from Back of the Yards, Canaryville, Bridgeport, and McKinley Park. Canaryville, incidentally, has a population of only several thousand.

9. The Cubs. This is almost as weird as the Celtic knots juxtaposed against bass thudding out of cars blasting Mexican rap. One notices over time that the South Side of Chicago is as fervent about baseball as anywhere. It’s the sort of place where one is as likely to be beaten for wearing the wrong cap as anything else. Ironically, that trouble-bringing hat would probably be for the “White Sox.” This situation has an old history.

The South Side Irish who worked in the meat-packing plants over a hundred years ago gradually settled into three defined communities: the Hamburg Irish, the Dashed Irish, and the Canaryville Irish. The first two had a famous rivalry with the third, who sought to distance themselves from their more affluent northern neighbors in every way possible. As Bridgeport is as much a hotbed of American league fanaticism as it is of political corruption, Canaryville support of the Cubs was a powerful strategy. It’s a real twist of the knife too; Canaryville sits practically in the shadow of Comisky.

That said, there are an increasing number of Sox holdouts these days, as Canaryville is repopulated from other neighborhoods.

In the end, we exchanged phone numbers and agreed to go to a Sox game sometime.

J. and M., at least, support the White Sox. It told them I do too, so long as they’re not playing the Tigers.

* * * * *

Only one thing remained.

I had to visit the Fairview; the notoriously grubby supermarket in Hart Plaza, literally on the lip of stockyard ruins. I bought a slip of completely inedible beef jerky that I had to throw away after a single bite.

And then I answered the question of whether one can drink three cans of Steel Reserve in Canaryville without getting caught and fined.

Delicious.