I want to continue taking inventory of all my reactions to Margaret Atwood’s Burning Questions. Here are her themes, as I see them at this moment:
- Environment
- Second wave feminism
- Her literary appreciations
- Canada
- The 20th century
- The 21st century
- Pandemic
- Story-telling
- Tales
- Optimism
- Writing
- Her life
But wait, more than getting the list complete, I want to bear witness to how I’ve fallen under the spell of Atwood’s essayistic style. Burning Questions takes us to so many places, but the itinerary is always one of Atwood’s distinctive voice and literary appreciations and optimistic cautions and wry appreciations, while she (and the rest of us) “hang by a thread.”
It’s not unusual, I suppose, to want to write like a great writer after reading her. I find myself wanting to place down layers, or vectors of story/message, and have them, at some point connect in key, and unexpected, ways. I’ll try, but what follows, perhaps, is more a plan for bearing witness than the act itself—but I’ll see where it leads:
Seated at the kitchen table, I told my daughter Gen, who was standing some feet away at the counter, that I had gotten an email from the Cubs with a picture of Gallagher Way. Gen couldn’t see the picture, so I tried to describe it. As I did, I found myself saying positive things—things I did not want to be saying about the Cubs, or the Ricketts, or baseball. I told Gen that “July 30” (2021) had become a date for me like September 11 or December 7 for Americans, or May 28 for SXU faculty (whose union was busted that day). It was a day of crisis, a date that becomes an epithet. “July 30”: The willful dismantling of the World Series championship team was a display of ugliness that counterbalanced so much of the pastoral and idealistic and wishful and yes, childlike, joy I had associated with baseball. I vowed I would not come back, or come back quickly, or come back the same.
Still, here was this email, with the picture of Gallagher way.
I spoke to Gen of the complete take-over of Wrigleyville by the Ricketts. I told her of my days, 40 years prior, parking cars on game days across the street at the Mobil station. Gen asked, “Did you ever envision complaining about the Cubs’ owners to your adult daughter after you had received an email from the owners who were trying to purchase an English football club at the cost of several billions of dollars?”
Her question led to a swirl of meaningful strands set in motion by the Gallagher Way email. I started unraveling by asking her if she knew about the “knot hole” project at Wrigley Field? Her brother, Terry, had told me about this idea a few years ago. It was a faux nostalgic type of “hole in the outfield wall” that enabled people to walk up to the park and catch a glimpse of the game without paying. Of course, in the intervening years, the low-key idea was amped up, and evolved into the current Gallagher Way pictured in the email. The simple knot-hole had grown into a kind of theme park, with an over-sized big screen TV, concessions, and possibly other attractions (along with, of course, paid admission). Despite myself, as I looked at the families on the green artificial turf, the bright lights, the HD video, I thought, “that looks kinda fun.” And so part of me was thinking how we need to keep growing, keep changing with the times, keep searching for those essences of baseball, which, I guess, come down to sunshine, smiles, and lots of color. And let’s not forget families being together.
But … Gen and I have understandings, and one of them concerns rants, and I felt one coming on. I talked about “July 30″—how I needed, in the aftermath, to turn away from the Cubs for a period of time (Months? Years? Decades?) to heal. I told her about the sadness I felt over the changed character of the neighborhood, how the complete takeover by the Ricketts constituted a grotesque kind of gentrification—something which even in its best aspects is always heartbreaking and confusing, if not blatantly grotesque.
The talk of the neighborhood brought my focus to the gabled roofs of that iconic, but now gone, Mobil station on Clark Street. I worked there three summers while I was an English teacher at St. Scholastica Academy (1980-1983)—and every task of that job brought its own universe of meaning and significance. I wish I had the words to describe the parking of cars in our lot on game days. Somehow the memories here eased the pressure to rant. Instead, I now felt a need to capture a feeling of that time, the feeling I had in that job, of … what?
There was a lot of movement, and I became quite skilled at jockeying cars. The people handed over their cars, and they were all so happy to do so as they disembarked, with the flush of excitement and stretching after being cooped up in city traffic on their way to an adventure. Our prices were high, but we were right across the street from the ballpark, and we were “easy in-easy out” lot. To quote Terrence Mann from Field of Dreams: “For it is money they have, but peace they lack”—and so our high prices and our “easy-in-easy-out” guarantee accommodated both halves of Mann’s reflection. These people left their cars—but they also left the hurry and bother to me, which I was glad to take from them in some kind of converted and joyful purposefulness. In my efforts, I felt none of the stress but all of the exhilaration of service, of service in a happy maelstrom, of service making possible the escape that was soon to be entered into by children and parents, men and women, men and friends, women and friends, retirees, and every kind of traveler. They handed over their cars, and I put these cars into spaces, tightly, backing them into places I could find again, when the post-game chaos (after the lull of the game) required I do so swiftly and efficiently.
The memory I found myself trying to convey to Gen is one I have often thought of, and have found impossible to relay to others. It is a primal experience that can’t be characterized by comparing it to other experiences or building it through component experiences. It’s like the taste of something—how to describe it? How to convey the “taste of an orange” to one who had never tasted an orange? The experience I wanted to share was the experience of a ball game, several ball games, from outside the park. To be so close, yet so far. To be “in”—but definitely “out,” too. I have a picture of me in my gym shoes and tight fitting 80s t-shirt running here and there solving the placement of cars issues with great purpose, dexterity, and urgency—with the sound of the ball park organ, yes, the PA announcer, yes, but … most of all, the roar of the crowd, always expected, always a surprise, always communicative of something so big, so joyful, so unique … as the taste of an orange.
Gen and I talked of creating an audio documentary … of Wrigley Field, then and now. But the project seems so insurmountable. Is it my experience of “car parking guy”? Is it that “in and out” kind of participation? Is it the Ricketts tearing down of all the gabled roofs of Wrigleyville? Is it the uneasy mix of July 30-gentrificaiton-loss of soul-but sill smiling despite it all?
My essay seems to require Atwood’s masterful interweaving method and ability. Maybe I’ll just go to a ballgame with Gen instead, and we can try to talk about the passing away of things between pitches. That’s a different kind of experience, but one that, too, is its own “taste of an orange.” Fortunately, that’s an orange we have shared, and can share again, even if, at times, in silent nods.