When My Chicago Comes Out

If you’ve walked around Chicago (downtown or suburbs), you’ve heard, not just seen, the city. Like a spoiled child, it demands your attention. Drivers are aggressive, always in a hurry, and they’re not shy about it. They honk. A lot. Like an angry mob of urban geese, they unleash.

I didn’t realize how acclimated I was to Chicago ways until I moved to Texas. Driving around the other day, a guy cut me off, I mean totally ignored all common sense rather than wait the two seconds for me to pass. I laid on the horn, gave him a healthy blast of Chevy Colorado, Chicago style. When I pulled beside him, he looked forlorn, like I had drop-kicked his puppy into a sliding glass window.

Then I remembered. We don’t honk in Texas, at least not in the burbs. It’s not polite, Southerly, and besides, they may be packing.

Sometimes my Chicago comes out. My Chi-CAW-goh. I drive the Chicago speed limit, which is to say I add nine mph to the posted sign. Thus, 40=49. Same at a stoplight. If there are five cars in one lane and three in the other, I choose the shorter lane, assuming I’ll just pull around the slowpokes and jut into the other lane. They’ll get over it.

I’ve acclimated to most food choices here. Most, not all. I don’t care for Tex-Mex, still longing for “authentic” Mexican food. I haven’t found a place close to Salsa 17, my fave place in the Chicago burbs. Plus, Texans don’t put beans in their chili. What? It’s no bueno. In Chicago we call that “soup.”

The funny thing is I was born and raised in California, twenty-five years in total, before I ever moved to Illinois. In Southern California, we mostly referred to freeways with the, as in “Take the 5 to the 91 to the 57.” Even now, forty-one years removed from my Cali roots, I’ll still say, “Take the 121 to the 75.” Sometimes my California comes out. That’s improper diction in Chicago or Dallas.

It’s also tough to get a good hot dog or deep dish pizza in these parts. I betray my Chicago roots when I order a dog with ketchup. Big, big no-no in the Windy City. The acceptable order is, “I’ll have a dog and run it through the garden.” I lack the stomach for all that greenery on my dog, preferring the simplicity of onions and a few condiments. The pizza here? Forget it. It’s like trying to find great bbq in Chicago. And you’ll find neither in California.

A week ago in class, I asked a group of students, “You guys have any questions?” Sometimes my Chicago comes out.

The group, all female, looked sideways at me. “Um, we’re not guys,” one quietly replied. She was, of course, correct and very polite. I thought about explaining, but just offered a simple “Sorry. My bad.”

I wanted to elaborate more fully. “You guys” is just the Chicago translation of “Y’all” or the plural version “All y’all.” Both Southern phrases sound silly coming out of my Midwest mouth (with California molars), but almost all phrases here sound elegant and endearing with a Texas drawl. My favorite Southern expression is “Bless your heart,” a beautifully delivered insult for which there is just no Chicago equivalent, except maybe “Hey, %#@^&*, whaddya doin?”

Also, we Texans call a car collision a wreck, not an accident. I still haven’t quite acclimated to that one. I do love the manners here. Students and store employees, no matter their age or ethnicity, almost 100% call me sir. And friendliness is not an act; it’s way of life. I walk out of Jimmy John’s (or anywhere else) and hear, “Thanks for coming!” Or a stranger will simply greet me as we pass on the street. Someone does that in Chicago, you put your hand on your wallet and run.

My Chicago wardrobe is largely useless here. Winter coats, thick hoodies, long underwear, wooly socks, gloves, scarves, boots…so much great clothing just sits idle in my closet. There’s a week in February every year, a week of temps in the 20’s and 30’s, when I can don the heavy hitters, maybe even bust out some handwarmers. But that’s it. Mostly, the coats are a reminder of winters past, relics of life in the Illini tribe. My new tribe is flip-flops, t-shirts, and shorts. Gone too are the implements of winter, the scrapers and snow shovels and bags of salt. Now, my garage smells like grass and leaves.

Call me, I suppose, a ChiCaliTex.

I just don’t think I’ll ever move again. The culture shock is too great and the learning curve too steep. When I open my mouth these days, I’m not sure which geography will leak out. At my age, I don’t need anything else leaking out.

And now, I’m done and I need a soda. I mean a Coke. Or a pop.

Sometimes my Chicago comes out.

Thanks for reading!

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