58 mayor daley made this place

Lots more vehicles in the morning. I remember the sun came out and we dried out pretty quickly... except for that sleeping bag. We just kind of got up and went. Found a little place to go number one, even though I was always good at holding it. Sorry. Stuck some toothpaste in my mouth and brushed my hair. The water got us pretty good the night before anyway.

We got picked up by another truck along Interstate 90. I was in the back, don't remember much. The trucker was heading off the western course and let us off on the outskirts of Chicago, eastern side. Hitching the entrance ramp, a fella picked us up and said he could drop us off the other side of Chicago. That sounded good to us because by the looks of where we were, we didn't want to spend too much time there.

I used to hang in some funky neighborhoods in New York, but some of the neighborhoods we were driving past were crappy to a degree that I hadn't ever seen before. The guy driving seemed pretty cool but then he said he had to make a stop. He took us into a place that I'll try to describe. I was in the backseat like usual and I all I could do was to turn my head right and look at the bowels of desperation. The buildings were tumbled. If there were any people to be seen, they were joyless. Leaned or sitting, but very few. Something you wouldn't believe could exist in this country. The 70's were fun but there was a lot of struggle for the poor and middle class alike. No excuses for some stuff though. No excuses. The rich don't feel it, usually.

Like this but lots and lots of rubble. Much shittier.

Make a stop in front of a building that didn't look like anyone should be in there. If somebody was, they had to be living way worse than Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy. This was a lot worse. Ok. Like a couple of idiots sitting in the car. Oh. We didn't want to make any assumptions, right away. Sitting there, looking around. Saying "Wow. Look at this." Oh five minutes goes by... 10 minutes goes by. "What's he doing in there?" All of a sudden LBJ blurts "He's getting other people. Let's book." We were definitely so out of place there. We walked fast and headed back down to the highway. 

Hit the entrance and put our thumbs out. Typical 70's car pulled over. The guy yelled at us "What the hell are you doing out here? Get in!"

It wasn't a cop car. I just like this picture.

I couldn't tell you the exact date but it was August 1972 sometime. The only exact date I remember was the day we left because of the Rolling Stones concert and resulting mayhem. The fella's name was Phil. Easy to remember cause we stayed with him awhile. He was very upset that we were walking in that neighborhood. He didn't work and my presumption was that he was over there to pick up drugs. Phil went on to tell us about the Mau Mau killings that just happened. It was like a contained race war in Chicago back then.

Very difficult to find information on this on the internet. You're not getting your full history at all. But people were in fear in Chicago. That shithead Daley. I'm not going to say I knew everything about what when on there... but whatever he did or didn't do was no good. Corruption. Politics.

Phil was somewhere in his 20's. Just got out of the army a little while back and was living with his parents in Oak Park, Illinois. But they were gone for a couple of weeks. Headed over to a neighborhood of Frank Lloyd Wright homes and the birthplace of Ernest Hemingway. How do these cities go from one extreme to the next with a couple of miles? 

Anyway. It was going to be weird.

Mau Mau members headed back into jail.