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What can YOU say in six sentences?
What Did I Really Learn From Him…
“Hindsight’s always 20/20 but you can’t spend your life looking out your ass…cause the past is for learning, the present is for living, and the future is for dreaming.”
My Grampa would say things like this to me all the time, but I was just an eight year old tool monkey at his bike shop, the famous Art’s Cycle at 87th between Stony Island and Jeffery on Chicago’s south side, but at the time, these words just seemed to all blend together into his nonstop chattering.
Everyone used to call him Art, some long dead phantom who Grampa bought the shop from decades before, but his name was Harry, and if you ever saw him at the JCC swimming pool, you’d understand the irony.
He was a real enigma, a south sider who loved the Cubbies, a racist that only hired local black kids to work at the shop and even sent a few through college, an orthodox Jew who swore like a sailor, and a 2-pack a day Camel smoker who almost broke my arm when he caught me out back trying a puff.
It’s interesting how we’re shaped by people like him, those who’s passive influence, and spurts of wisdom mingled with bouts of such blatant hypocrisy that you can’t help but look back on as more of a lesson than a weakness.
“You know Bruce, when they made you they broke mold…and I hear they beat the shit out of the mold maker too”, he’d say to me dozens of times as he’d walked off giggling to himself, lighting up another cancer stick…his term, not mine.
Comment
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Comment by Kristine_ES on October 22, 2012 at 1:41pm -
Wonderful to meet him, this Art/Harry. he came through loud and clear.
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Comment by Kaylynn Phillips-Temple on October 22, 2012 at 9:04am -
Favorite! This piece resonates through me as my grandfather raised me also. He used to tell me all sorts of quirky little things. He also had Art's "Do as I say not as I do" theory about smoking, drinking, etc. Brings me back. Great job!
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Comment by Jeanette Cheezum on October 22, 2012 at 1:28am -
nice 6.
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Comment by Robert Crisman on October 21, 2012 at 10:26pm -
Nice.
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Comment by Mike Handley on October 21, 2012 at 3:53pm -
Great character sketch, Bruce.
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Comment by Gita on October 21, 2012 at 10:26am -
southside? I would have figured the near north side.
Most of his chatter seems pretty banal, but, as you say, he was a paradox. Or maybe it is you who makes him more interesting as seen through your filters.
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Comment by Justine Dunn on October 21, 2012 at 4:40am -
What a wonderful character, would like to have met him :)
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Comment by Angela on October 20, 2012 at 2:31pm -
Fine remembrance of a very interesting man. Glad you shared it with us.
© 2013 Created by Robert McEvily.
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