I guess I am, God help me?
A local groups last hit that was a welcome sound to hear when far away...

YouTube - Buckinghams - Back In Love Again - 45 rpm

As a person who lives "behind the lines in occupied Illinois" I have to ask, WHY?

Well Joe, I rightly don't know?
The reason for the first was home coming time?
And the reason for this one, was departure.
It's yet another "Chicago hit"!
YouTube - Ides of March - You Wouldn't Listen - 45 rpm

And just because I'm in the mood for it, yet another Chicago group,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P40JyMpJm4

Don't know what to tell you man but you better do something quick.

Tell you what. Get on your motorcycle, point it south, and ride as hard and as fast as you have ever ridden before. Ride until you see rusted out 57 Chevys lying around, banana trees and leather jackets for $9.99.

Buy a house, settle down, and if you get sick move back north and we'll take good care of you.

Nothing wrong with missing Chicago...I miss NYC too....guns and politics aside, this country's major cities are still exciting wonderful places. Now you got me thinking of having a white slice of brick oven pizza from Arturo's on Houston street....

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Thirty characters. Exactly...

don't know why, next thing charge for air tax. Bill

I have visited Chicago and I think it is a good place to be from. Just as far from it as you can get. Larry

I lived in Chicago for 17 yrs.. It was a nice place 45-50 years ago. I remember a rare tornado came down 87th street (about half a mile from me) in '60 or '61 and tore up the neighborhood pretty good. Pretty soon the east side Goons were looting. Daley 1 (THE BOSS) called in the NG and they shot looters. A couple dead Goons and looting stopped dead.

Chicago today is occupied by total Urbantites. People willing to put up with crime, as being a victim is inevitable, terrible, terrible, crowding and TRAFFIC. Their justification for staying there is: they are close to work, they have learned to live with it, they are part of the large homosexual community, they are part of the large metrosexual community, or they have enough money they are buffered from anything not in their sphere of interest.

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SOS USA

I wish that I got the time to prepare all the pictures we made and make a little compilation for the forum.











Swisswife will visit Chicago again. She said there are so friendly people and forum-members. I can only agree with her.

Swissman

Truth is, it's just like the old cliche.....there's no place like home.

I still miss Lizards Lick, Tn ...............don't laugh, it used to be a real place....named something else today. I grew up in a small town a few miles from LL but my dad lived in Lizards Lick when he was boy.

Don

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Laus Deo! <><

Yeah,
But at least you could legally carry in Lizards Lick!
How were the museums and the food?

The museum was the general store/post office......it was a natural history museum with lots of deer heads, boar heads, a few bass mounts, couple wild turkey fans, and a rattle snake skin on the wall. The food was OK...it was in the general store/post office too. You had your choice of pickled eggs, pickled pigs feet or those hot sauges in vinegar....all came with soda crackers and a coke or RC cola. For desest you could get a moon pie or a goo goo cluster. Ahhhh nothing like home.

Don

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Laus Deo! <><

Sounds GREAT!
When do we leave?

A friend of mine sent me a long (5,191k).pps slide show of Chicago including many night scenes of the Loop and near North. I really loved that place from the air, flying in, came in to Meigs Feild, several times, great show. For a young single guy it was like a candy store.

Ah, but life on the ground was, well back to reality.

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Ipsis Rebus Dictantitbus

Yup Rog,
There is just a bit of grit in those streets paved with gold, no?

Life in the big city, too many compromises, I haven’t been back in 12 years.
I made a trip to Michigan (Ludington) it was as I remembered, but not the same. Partly people I suppose, no one that I knew that I wanted to see. Some places that I was fond of had changed drastically, which is sort of disturbing even if enviable.
While I was there I was offered the opportunity to spend a couple of days in Chicago I turned it down. If I were within driving distance I tell myself , I would spend the day in the Museum of S & I the Oriental M. or the Field M. sure that’s what I tell myself, but I didn’t when I was able to.....

I think Wolfe was right; You can never go home again.

Perhaps the memories are better than the real thing. Not gritty anyway.

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Ipsis Rebus Dictantitbus

I agree Rog.
You didn't happen to see the old Universal Pictures TV show "The Name Of The Game" TV series, starring Robert Stack, Gene Barry and Anthony Franciosa in rotating starring roles? Believe it or not, Orson Welles, (having no doubt fallen on lean times), was narrating an episode where Tony Franciosa's character (Jeff Dillon) was returning to his old neighborhood, only to find it taken over by drug dealers/ and protection racket operators.

T/W's writings were quoted by Mr. Welles in the shows closing.
"You (truly) cannot go home again"....

I know I can't, it's just fun to remember when you could...

There are times when I miss Fulton, Missouri the real life setting for the book and movie "King's Row".

I NEVER miss Chicago. I go back once a year to visit relatives. I can't wait to get out of there. Chicago is the way that it is because the people who live there like it that way. In fact, they're not shy about mocking people who live in places where every aspect of public life isn't profoundly corrupt. They actually don't believe that there are places where everything and everyone isn't for sale. I don't want to be around people like that.

When I went to college in Missouri and even more so when I moved to Ohio, I was like the North Korean who finds himself in the free world. It took me a while to understand what I'd never had living in Chicago.

I actually lived in Chicago only a short while, then in Oak Park and other close-in suburbs, finally for a while down state. (I am sure someone still casts my vote in Cook County though)
The aerial photos of the city at night reminded me of visits to a friend's place at Marina Towers, looking out over the city you could imagine adventure and romance. Down the elevator into your car and out on Lower Wacker Drive, grim, gritty, reality hit you in the face.
A friend's Mother (90+) who grew up on the North Side lived many years in and around the city, and still has children, grand and greats there, said she would never go back, since Marshall Fields became Macy’s. For myself I see that Kroch’s on Wabash has changed to Border’s that might be a deal breaker for me.

But it’s not just Chicago; I suppose someone may have an old family home that has never changed, where the people are the ones from childhood, very rare I suspect

I suppose I am homesick for a place that no longer exists, and perhaps never did.

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Ipsis Rebus Dictantitbus

“I know I can't, it's just fun to remember when you could...”
I think we have all tried going back only to find the memories better than the reality. The old memory system is a wonderful thing it makes everything look like those night time aerials of the big city.
In the end we are probably lucky that we are far enough away so that we don’t try the prodigal son returns thing.

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Ipsis Rebus Dictantitbus

A lot of my firearms, aviation and martial arts references came from the various Brentano's stores around Chicago. The firearms selection in Borders and Barnes & Noble there is not surprisingly, meager. My local Borders here has a better selection. I got my copy of Boothroyd's "The Handgun" at the Crown Books in the basement of the Evergreen Plaza mall. I don't think there's a bookstore at all in the mall (or much of anything else) anymore.

Brentano's actually tried to branch out of Chicago back in the late '80s or early '90s. They opened a store in the Galleria in downtown Cleveland. I guess it closed when all of the other Brentano's stores closed. As far as I know, there are no local chains in Chicago any more, just Borders and Barnes & Noble.

Like the Austrian actor Helmut Dantine, I left the place of my birth because I came to loathe the things which it stands for.

So did I Mort!
BTW, Abercrombie and Fitch actually maintained an "African hunt" or Safari connection service in it's loop location till 63' or 64'. It was downstairs with Elephant ivory and taxidermy' Cape Buffalo, Lions etc. My Dad told me that for a time H&H rifles could be measured for and ordered through them as well.
I wasn't missing Chicago as much as I was missing being 40-45 years younger!

When I first started going downtown on my own in the early '70s, Abercrombie & Fitch were still an outdoor outfitter, and not a seller of overpriced casual clothing. I saw my first American Eagle Luger and Mauser 66 there.

I remember the first time I went. 18 years old and hadn't been there since I was an infant. Dad worked up there like most Southerners did (up North) in the sixties. Mom brought me back to be born in Alabama and then we went back for a little while.
Anyway, it was like stepping onto another planet. I was made to repeat my order for fries at least 3 times at the White Castle drive through. I could hear them snickering in the background. The people seemed to be very reserved and "stand off-ish". Not real friendly. I did, however, get introduced to gyros. The trip was worth that if nothing else. Nice place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there.

Chicago(Windy City) isn't a bad place as long as you watch where you wander. That being said I wouldn't want to live where my rights to carry(gun) is violated when the constitution says I have a right to do just that.

If you think that's the ONLY right you give up by living there, you obviously haven't lived there.

That's the town where the police "arrested" a painting from the Chicago Art Institute which some in the city council found politically offensive.

Of course you don't have the right to remain silent either, and using electric shocks or a seat on a hot radiator to get you to incriminate yourself haven't been off the table. Those escapades were the major impetus behind Illinois commuting the sentences of its death row inmates and having a moratorium on the death penalty. And I'm an enthusiastic supporter of the death penalty.

Sip I know what you mean..
This is the best I could do for you right now..


Get your self to Florida and I'll make you a Sicilian Pizza that will bring tears to your eye's. Or a white pizza with Polly-O Ricotta..Polly-O whole milk mozzerlla.. a little fresh garlic.. sprinkled with Locatelli- Romano.. slight hint of fresh rubbed Oragano.. Fresh ground black pepper.. all baked on a stone reclaimed from a REAL Bakers Pride Pizza Oven

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SWCA #2306
DAV in honor of POP

Now Yer' Talkin'!
THAT THING LOOKS GREAT!
Ice cold Michelob and a napkin the only two other things needed!

The best pizza I ever had was from a little place in Manhattan, Kansas next to Fort Riley. A friend drove back to school for a visit, lost his house keys and people were fighting to drive from Fulton to Kansas to bring them to him just for the opportunity to get some of that pizza.

The old timers remember when VL&A were bought out by A & F, definitely not the teen clothes A&F. A&F were outfitters from the old school I think Teddy Roosevelt’s African hunts were all A&F. I used to stop there then go to Kroch’s and the outdoor floor at Marshall Fields which at one time sold lots of firearms.
And not to be forgotten: H.H.Harris, I think one of the largest S&W distributors in the country.

Then lunch or dinner at the Berghoff. Which brings up another reason not to return, The Berhoff closed. What a shock to the system, not as bad as the opening of the Berghoff Inn Mens Bar to the fair sex, but a tragedy.

Sort of like the Red Star Inn closing.

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Ipsis Rebus Dictantitbus

I recall VL&A quite well Rog!
My Dad was torn between there and Kleins (downtown) for purchase of his Sako Finnbear. One of the VL&A counter people went to Kleins as a department manager.
For you trivia buff's, that was the Kleins that shipped LHO his Carcano...

I remember while I was there a woman told me about her store being robbed. Naturally, I asked what the police were able to do. She told me she didn't call them. I asked why. She said you never knew which of them might have something to do with it. That's the God's honest truth. I was flabbergasted. I'm not making a general statement about Chicago's finest and that was a good while ago but it floored me. That's where I first learned of "colors" too. But that kind of stuff apparently went on in lots of places. Plenty of crooked lawmen back in the day down South too. I live right down the road from where the "Good ole boy's roundup" used to be held.
Either way, long live gyros and white pizza pie!!

Oh yeah, on the Abercrombie & Fitch note, I have an A&F scope mounted on a Marlin .35
I guess the scope's worth more than the rifle is. When I tell folks about it they usually respond with "I thought they just sold high dollar tee shirts and blue jeans".

If I remember correctly, Kresge's downtown had surplus Mausers as late as the mid '80s. I know they had them in the '60s.

There used to be a gun store in Oak Lawn, near 95th and Cicero which took the "VL&A" name. I bought a Commission '91 artillery short rifle, a .38 S&W Victory Model and an M1917 S&W there over the years. They're long gone, no doubt due to Daley.

I bought my first handgun, a Series 70 Colt, from a little shop in Oak Lawn, off of 103rd, west of Pulaski, I think. I still have it. It's my bullseye wadcutter gun. That place has been gone even longer.

I went to Quigley South Preparatory Seminary from '72 to '76. My mother and I weren't on good terms from '86 to '99 and other than interviews with the CIA and State Department, I didn't go there for thirteen years. I finally went back for a visit in '99. I decided to drive around and see different places I'd been. I drove to the high school and instead of "Quigley", it said "St. Rita". Apparently, they consolidated all of the Quigleys (N, S and another one) in a different location and moved St. Rita to the old Quigley S. location. It was like getting off of the Ohio Turnpike expecting to find Toledo and seeing a sign that says "Welcome to Detroit!"

There used to be a huge lumber yard and home improvement place behind Quigley South, G.J.'s, I think. They actually sold black powder revolvers. Across the street from the school was a CTA bus terminal, and behind that, Gee Jay's liquors. I spent literally hundreds of dollars on gun magazines there. Most times, the school gym bag I carried had more gun books and magazines than school books. I think the liquor store is gone now too.

Some of you may have heard of the anti-Semitic priest, Fr. Phleger, who pickets gun stores. He's the pastor of St. Sabina. One of my female cousins graduated from there in the late '60s or early '70s.

That would be Sundeen's, which was on 104th & Cicero. I see Corky Sundeen at the CADA shows in St. Charles. He still has his FFL but deals only in high grade shotguns.

I used to go to dances held for high schoolers at Sabinas circa '62. Fr. Pfleger is a self serving moron. The gunshop mentioned was at 104th n Cicero and named Sundeens. He had the most beautiful repro of a .22 cal all brass gatling gun complete with drum not straight magazine. It was on the floor as you entered, the store itself was an a frame.

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SOS USA

The store was a drive through hot dog stand before Sundeen had it converted.

I remember the name now, and that it looked like a fast food place on the outside. I don't remember a Gatling replica, but I wasn't there for a long time before they closed.

I bought my Ithaca Model 37 Deer Slayer Police Special from a place in Harvey. I can't even remember the name. I don't think I went in again after I bought it. I had to choose between the Ithaca and a Remington 870 with folding stock and 7 round magazine.

There used to be a place near South Holland(?) that had an indoor range. It's where I took my Series 70 to shoot it the first time. There was a cop in there one night with a Browning M1903 with a holster stock.

I was shocked a while back when I thought of all the "Chicagoland" gunstores closed since '70 or so.

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SOS USA

ALL is correct. There's only ONE (if any at all) in Cook County, if I recall. The only one I'm aware of is the one on Mannheim Rd. near O'Hare. I was there a few years ago while taking an MCSE class near there. I'd go out walking after class and found the place one night while looking for a place to eat dinner. They might be closed too. I think I bought a speed loader or a set of Hogues there.

Not to get goofy with this but: There were at least 3 of those a frame style HD stands all the same name/franchise. One was at 87th n Morgan, another at 87th n Cicero. I cannot remember the name of the places, but they're still there under different names.

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SOS USA

That was Bell's Gun Shop. It's been closed for some time now.

The one C Mort speaks of was called "Bell's", it too alas is no more (15 years +or-). That was where I qual'd for an armed guard license. (The very first gun shop my Father ever took me in to). The only one I knew of in suburban Cook county was Mid West @ 1st Ave. & Plainfield Rd. in Lyons. IIRC, Mid West was at one time was an S&W warranty repair facility. My info is now 9 years old (I moved) I can't recall whether R-Guns on Rt. 25 up in East Dundee or Carpentersville is actually still Cook county? If it is, it's just barely Cook county (far N/W burb). There may be 1 in the S or S/W burbs, but I'm not sure who/where?
There has been ZERO gun shops in Chicago for I'm guessing 15-20 years.

I thought it had a different name when I went there. This was about 2003 or so.

Bell's was closed a couple times for various "infractions" and reopened under a couple different names.

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SOS USA

Does anyone know what happened to H.H. Harris? At 1237-9 South State, very near Police HQ I think. They were the main supplier to the LEOs and PDs all around. I thought they had the political fix in big time. They got all the PD contracts and that is not done in Chicago by competitive bidding. They sort of had the fix in with S&W, if Harris wanted 5” barrels and they were not cataloged, no problem.
That was a gun store!

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Ipsis Rebus Dictantitbus

That shop IIRC was near directly across from CPD head quarters (11th & State) Roger?
I was unaware Klas there were that many in operation in Cook county! I only knew of the two I mentioned (far N/W and near S/W sub's). I had nearly given up in disgust with the anti-gun sentiment of the area. But next year, I'll be 10 years gone? To be perfectly honest at the end, it was a move made much easier by the area's politics.

There are quite a few FFL's in Cook County but just a handful of shops. There's Freddie Bear in Tinley Park, Chucks in Riverdale. Sporting Arms in Posen, and one in Lansing whose name I can't recall. Mega Sports is in Will County. There's also Rink's in Lockport and GAT in Dundee.

I knew there were a couple in S S/W Cook county. The Riverdale and Posen locations sound familiar, though I was never aware of their titling then or now. Nice to know they haven't neutered the entire county! That "R-Guns" that I listed earlier is the GAT shop you wrote of. I thing "R-Guns" may be their mail order operation? I got several sets of Meprolite's for S&W adjustable sight wheel guns through them. (Cheapest around) The MEGA shop out in Plainfield, is where I bought my no dash 696.
(EDIT) I think(?) I may have been in the Lockport location (Rinks) that's Will county also as is MEGA, correct?