Determined To Succeed

I don’t know if you guys have ever visited Chicago around the last week of June/first week of July but there is a world-famous food festival that takes place during that time called Taste of Chicago. It is a foodie’s Mecca, where 70 or so Chicago restaurants take over downtown and you can sample everything from alligator (which I have tasted – it’s rather chewy) to frog legs (they DO, indeed, taste like chicken – just fishy chicken) to good old-fashioned BBQ, hot dogs and cheesecake.

When I was a kid, that same festival was called Chicagofest and it was nowhere near as renowned as it is today. In fact, it was in the days when Chicago was a much grittier, grimier city than it is now. But I’ll tell you what the food, especially to a kid who didn’t have money at all, was always spectacular. But food costs money, money we never had in abundance and money that was always in short supply.

But leave it to my mom to come up with a brilliant plan.

Usually with big city-wide festivals there is some sort of sponsored promotion involved and Chicagofest was no exception. At the time they were sponsored by either Maxwell House or Hills Bros. Coffee (I can’t remember which) and the promotion stated that if you brought one of the giant metal coffee cans (like the kind you’d find in a workplace kitchen) you’d be able to trade that in for food tickets.

Leave it up to my mom to hatch an absolutely brilliant plan.

You see, JoAnn Larson loved her coffee. Loved it, I tell you. Cream and no sugar, that’s how she took it (which to me still is icky since I like my coffee as sweet as possible, crunchy even, with sugar). Anyhow, she loved coffee and so did her co-workers at the old (long since shuttered) Sears Roebuck & Co. warehouse on Homan and Arthington in Chicago. They went through tons of coffee at that place, or it least it seemed like they did because one day this brilliant and beautiful woman brought home about twenty or so of these giant, clangy metal coffee cans.

She said to me, “Son, we’re gonna eat good this weekend,” and she laughed with an exuberant “whoohoo.” That’s when I knew she really was happy. Turns out she’d been planning this for months, asking her co-workers to save her the coffee cans so she could take her son to eat at Chicagofest. My mama was loved by everyone, so they did. They saved her twenty or so cans and she lugged them all home one Friday afternoon (since we couldn’t go during the week because she had to work).

Now to a child, any child, anything that looks weird is potentially embarrassing. So imagine my chagrin to learn we had to then take all of these cans on the 6 Jeffrey Express all the way from Hyde Park to downtown, walk a couple of blocks – IN PUBLIC – to just be able to redeem them. I was mortified. I knew we were poor but now we were gonna look it, too. But mama said “trust me,” and I did and that next day we got on the bus and headed downtown, cans and all.

Damn those things could “CLANG!” I felt mortified being on the bus with those things. I could feel eyes on me as I grasped my giant Hefty garbage bag of cans while my mom, confident as a peacock grasped hers. She knew something, I could tell. So I took that strength from her, shut my eyes (standing up) and blocked out the world.

When we FINALLY got there (can I tell you again how absolutely embarrassed I was?) we approached the ticket trade-in booth and mama said “we’ve got a lot of cans to trade in.” The lady behind the counter was shocked that one person would be trading in all those cans, not because of the cans but because of how many tickets she had to give us for them. I don’t remember how many it was but it was a TON! Back then, there were no limits of how many you could bring and my brilliant mom took full advantage of that allowing us to eat like royalty that day.

We ate anything and everything and, most importantly, she didn’t have to tell me “no, son. I don’t have the money for that.” It was amazing! Absolutely amazing. And what capped off this culinary caper? The infamous Chicago BBQ turkey leg. We each got one, a giant piping-hot turkey leg hand-dipped in a sweet and savory BBQ sauce. It was awesome. We ate all day and into the night when the Chicago fireworks would happen over Grant Park (Chicago used to for years and years and years have their major fireworks display on July 3^rd instead of July 4^th). And thanks to my mom I knew what it was like to have money that day.

On the way home she looked at me and smiled in an ever-so-slightly sly smile and said “you didn’t believe me when I said it would be O.K., did you.” I shook my head and said “no,” but from that moment on I never doubted her brain. In all my life I never met a woman who had moments of brilliance that would stun Einstein like my mom did. She smiled her smile and knew she did good that day for us both, and I was happy just being near her sharing in that love – and that food.

Mama, I miss you so much but when I need a smile I think back to that time and how well you did for us. How much food we had and how it was all because of you and you not being ashamed of bringing home simple metal canisters. Those cans became our gold that day and you made me feel like a prince. Thank you for that, Ma. But truth be told, you always made me feel that way, food, money or coffee cans or not.  I was your son and that was all that mattered in the world and that was one of those time where you were so smart it lit up the sky – like the stars or 4^th of July fireworks.

I love you, mama, and thank you for keeping and bringing home all those coffee cans for us. Who knew a little coffee could go such a long way?

You did. That’s who.