I'll pass your take on Michigan drivers to my sister in Lowell, my parents in Lake Odessa, and my brother in Ann Arbor.

Here in New Jersey they recently passed a law making it illegal to sleep and drive at the same time. In fact, you can go to jail for SWD (Sleeping While Driving).

People in Chicago drive like assholes.

They don't drive all that fast - they just drive like they all took the same course at Sears.

You know what pisses me off most about drivers?

They don't know the purpose of the left lane on a freeway.

If someone is tailgaiting you in the left - you're going too slow. GET THE FUCK OVER!

Chicago, New York, LA...child's play compared to Seoul. But to be fair it's very unlikely that you are going to see a altered motorcycle with a mini washer/dryer stacked on the back of it crossing 6 lanes of traffic, cruise through an active crosswalk then proceed to drive down 100 yards ON THE FRIGGIN SIDEWALK, then get back into traffic in order to save a few seconds during rush hours. Grand Prix drivers have nothing on Seoul taxicab drivers. And the middle finger is really useless in Asia as most South Korean drivers NEVER suffer from roadrage. Must be the Buddhist thing.

Ted:
"Here in New Jersey they recently passed a law making it illegal to sleep and drive at the same time. In fact, you can go to jail for SWD (Sleeping While Driving)."

Meaning that all the grandmas who haven't already moved from Bergen County to Boca Raton will be in the lock-up by the time I'm there next? Co-ol!

Actually, if your car is sufficiently banged up, putting on your turn signal, even when heading todaloop on the Ryan during the rush, will get you room to change lanes. Be that as it may, now that I've learned not to stop for yellow lites I prefer driving in Milwaukee.

Now and then I have this recurring bad dream.

There's a piece of water-streaked glass in front of my face. Two little metal sticks with rubber edges are wigwagging across it. Back and forth; back and forth. Straight in front there are 10,000 winking little red lights. In front to the left are a rather smaller number of bright white lights appearing and disappearing to the side. All this time, a metallic voice is chirping my ear.

It's 7:15 in the morning and I'm headed south on the Outer Drive through Lincoln Park in light rain, on my daily trip to work at the McCormick Estate building, 332 S Michigan Av, and the radio is on.

---

Then, with my right foot frantically groping for a brake pedal that it can't find, I wake up with a start.

Because I'm laying in bed looking out my window at the wooded bluffside under which my house is nestled. I take a moment to readjust myself to reality, and I smile the smile of those just returned from a tour of Purgatory.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Dean you got it right. Chicago is a fast city and people there move faster. It is like they have a definite purpose to their daily routine. I think that is why you felt what you did.

Look at all the big corporations that are still there in the Windy City and so many motion pictures are made there. There is an aura about that great city. I move slower myself, and would get a bit nervous and I loved what you had to say.

I could not tell you how many times the second the lights would turn I got screamed at and almost smashed over by wild Chicago drivers! The truth is, I did not know how to drive the pace, that's all. I really preferred being a passenger while I was there because I just was not a civilized driver in that great town Mr. Esmay.

Oh man Arnold named a famous and absolutely glorious street. Michigan Avenue! I am sorry it turns out to be a bad reoccuring Dream Arnold.

Oh that street is part of the Era I just love to write about and the crooners sing of. Dean you always seem to touch me lil heart in someway even when you talk about a fast trip to Chicago.

A man by the name of Tony DeSantis that I worked for at the renowned Drury Lane Theatre played saxaphone on the south side of Chicago. Opened up his first Drury Lane on the South side. Then he opened near where your friend Arnold is talking about. Drury Lane Water Tower. The Gold Coast. And then Drury Lane Oak Brook.

Yep, I hear you Dean. I will miss that great place and pace. I realized on Christmas day I wrote something to OUR TROOPS because I was in between adjusting from Chicago to the slow pace of San Antonio. I thanked them that I could hail a cab. Silly me.

You know the cab trivers here have a fine sense of humor. I told them that I have a hard time as a writer with political correctness. This cab driver looked like he was a mexican. I am a white woman with blonde hair, blue/green eyes and told him I was jus Heinz 57. I really did not know any more.

I asked him if he knew how the streets of San Antonio were made? He looked at me in the rear view mirror w/ a smile and said, no mam, how were they? I said. By a drunk mexican on a blind mule. He busted out laughing and said, yeah, we are known for our mules.

I am going to go listen to Frank Sinatra belt out some great tunes. I sure am glad Tim corrected himself about a another crooner I like and said he did not go down, in history (clearing my throat) as yet. Tim it would really be quite enlighting to have you write about some of the places you have travelled to so far. I was amazed when I read your post above. I wanted to travel like my grandmother that I have written about. She was quite the traveller in her lifetime and how I loved to hear her tales.

Thanks for the memories Dean!

Play it again Sam.

Play it again Sam

Janelle,

It wasn't the nice office in a building on Michigan Avenue, facing out onto Grant Park, that was the bad dream. It was driving from the far north side each morning to get there, then driving back home again each night, through all that rush hour traffic, that I still remember, 35 years later.

(Now I commute 13 steps down to my office, and back up again when Stefi has my weight reducer's ration ready to eat. Comparatively easier on me, my car, my waistline.)

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Oh my gosh Arnold! I was just getting ready to go to bed and I was looking over Dean's comments. I am so glad you cleared that up for me about your dream. I reread your post and I can absolutely understand why that drive was so rough. I do remember that you and I had Wacker drive in common when I worked for Merrill Lynch on that street.

My oh my, where did the time go? That was in the 70's and even then you were already a real go getter in an up and coming high rise over looking the Chicago River.

It sounds like you have a slice of heaven there in Mount Horeb, WI. Arnold, and from the writings you have posted here in Dean's World....you deserve that delicious and yummy Bearclaw you once told us you enjoyed for breakfast. So to heck with the waistline at breakfast Sir!

Janelle, to clear up some of what you think you know about me from what I write:

1) I worked for the same corporation at 332 S Michigan Avenue (just north of Van Buren) from early 1963 through late 1971. From early 1963 through early 1967 I lived in the Marina City towers apartment complex right on Chicago river across from Wacker Drive. From summer 1967 through late 1972 I lived on the far north side. Stefi and I were overseas (Israel, Croatia, assorted stops in between) during 1973-1974 and at Champaign-Urbana in 1975-1976. We've been up here in Wisconsin ever since.

2) Those yummy bearclaws (almond croissants) I enjoy for breakfast (actually, I split one of these each day with Stefi) constitute about 15-20% of my daily food intake.

3) My waistline is shrinking with my weight. (From 210 lbs in early June to about about 175 this week. Weight control is easy; just starve yourself and work your ass off on a treadmill. Literally. Works fine if you have a compulsive personality.)

4) Mount Horeb can be equated to heaven only if you think all life on planet Earth is hell, and if you like cheese, fattening foods, and endless chatter about Vikings mouthed by people who don't know one word of Norwegian. But it has its moments. The taxes are low (I actually live in the town of Cross Plains in an unincorporated area) and the Madison DemLibs don't wander out this far into western Dane County to amuse us with their dripshit political prattle.

5) Every now and then we drive down to Chicago, fight the traffic (it's actually worse getting through the suburbs than it is downtown) and take in some nice exhibit at one of the great museums. Stefi is a real trained anthropologist, so more than a little of our quality time is in the Museum of Natural History. Fish don't interest me, except on the dinner table, so we avoid the Shedd Aquarium. After a few hours of the traffic, the crummy drivers, the horrendous prices for everyting this side of a greaseburger, and we're filled with nostalgia for rural south central Wisconsin.

6) Now that my daughter has lived and is studying at the university in Milwaukee for a few years, we are discovering that place's little delights. Alterra's is a great coffee place that occupies an old retired municipal water pumping station right on the city's Lake Michigan front yard. A good old-fasioned Croatian neighborhood, if you want tasty but really fattening chow. A good old-fashioned German neighborhood, if you want tasty but even more fattening chow. Truly high quality public museums. Some of the finest urban architecture I have ever seen, especially the graceful mansions along the lake front. The usual decrepit Milwaukee major league baseball team, albeit with a fancy stadium whose roof opens up like a grapefruit (mostly by courtesy of the local taxpaying suckers).

7) Home is where you make it, Janelle. Here's looking at you, kid.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

I don't live in Chicago (thank Jeebus), but I often floor it when starting from a stop.

Of course, I drive a 3500 pound car with a 76HP engine, and said engine runs better and cleaner when pushed hard.

0-60 in 18 seconds. Oh, yeah.