The Yarn Spinner

  Show Globes   “This will take about thirty minutes.”  “That’s Okay Mister Stoleman, I will wait.” We lived five blocks from Stoleman’s pharmacy. I really did not want to make another trip to collect the prescription. The chairs in the waiting area were comfortable and the store was air conditioned, although it did smell “drugstory.” It was not an unpleasant smell, though, just one that seemed unique – a combination of alcohol and beauty products. I sat down and waited, passing the time by looking through the pile of Life and Look magazines on the table before me, and occasionally glancing at the globes. The pharmacists’ counter was at the back of the store, typical even in today’s Walgreens or CSV, providing an opportunity for marketing displays to assail customers to purchase patent medicines and other health care items before getting their “script” filled. That is where Stoleman spent most of his day, guarded by the globes. To me they looked to be about thirty inches high and fi

                                                                                                                 “YOH. Let’s Talk Trash”   Clenched between his teeth was the stub of a Muriel Cigar. The stogie’s paper ring barely visible, struggled to stay lit under the torrent of perspiration dripping down the man’s face as he bent over to open the lower hatch. The humidity was eighty percent and the temperature hovered at ninety degrees - higher in the July afternoon sun. He was one of three sanitation workers, garbage men, we called them. (It was a matter of fact to most people I knew, not a description intended to marginalize. A used car was just that, used, and not previously owned. If you were out of work, you were unemployed, instead of non-waged. Here is how this worked: Chicagoans would place their trash in paper grocery bags (no plastic then) open the steel door on the top of a concrete garbage container and throw the bags trash in the opening. When the box was fu

  “Wazner on Milk was Like Sterling on Silver.”   If you drive through Chicago neighborhoods, you might just see a name chiseled into a building’s stonework. Sometimes it was just a name for an apartment building (The Andrew). More commonly it was the name of a bank carved in big letters on the lintel above the door to present an image of strength, security, and longevity. The Illinois Constitution of 1879 specifically prohibited branch banking but starting in 1967 and into the 1990s, things opened and eventually there was a wave of branches, mergers, and acquisitions. Stakeholders of smaller banks that were profitable were subject to attractive offers of stock and cash from larger institutions and many local banks were sold and the name on the door was irrelevant and the building itself was often sold. Business too sometimes had their names prominently displayed in stonework. Wanzer Dairy was one. Wanzer pioneered selling milk in glass bottles, used science to determine the milk

   DIVCO   Only the VW Beetle stayed in production with the same basic model longer than the Divco.   And if you looked at them from the front, they had similarities.   The Divco truck shown above bears the name “Borden Dairy,” and while I cannot forget Elsie the Cow, it was the driver for Hawthorn Mellody farms (like the man in the photo below) that delivered dairy products to our house – and then milk to the elementary school I attended: St, Francis of Assisi on Chicago’s west side. The older boys helped unload the milk each school day morning. It took two of us to carry the heavy oak crates with metal dividers between the glass bottles into the school building.     What I found fascinating about the Divco truck was that it was the only vehicle I ever saw that you drove while standing up. Divco was a brand name of delivery vehicles  made in Detroit   and sold in the U.S. The name is an  acronym  which stands for Detroit Industrial Vehicles Company. With a walk-throu