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December 1, 1972: Winter Arrives in Chicago |
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September 16-20, 1972: A Trip to North Carolina |
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Return to Index for 1972 |
In October, one of my best friends from Myers Park High School was making a trip that brought her through Chicago, so I asked her to stop in for a visit, which she was happy to do.
I didn't begin recording my "life in pictures" until I went off to Korea in 1969, and so I have almost no pictures of my life before that- which included high school and college. I wish now (1972) that I had taken lots of pictures growing up, just to record important events. (And, of course, by the time I started creating my online album at the turn of the millennium, I found myself wishing that I'd had digital photography back then so I would have not just a few snapshots but oodles of pictures from which to choose for these years before digital cameras became commonplace.)
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I met Jenny's parents quite a few times, and I liked them a lot, and I hope they liked me.
NOTE from 2019:
Our relationship never progressed past the stage of dating, but of course back then, in 1972 when she visited Chicago, and 1979 when I wrote most of the narrative you see on these pages, I didn't understand why. Maybe Jenny did, but I sure didn't. Once I figured it out, everything became clear.
I should have taken lots more pictures as we spent a couple of days around my neighborhood and down in the Loop. The only time I took my camera was when I took Jenny back to the John Hancock Building as part of a walk around the Loop; the photo at left was taken outside the John Hancock Center on Michigan Avenue.
I took Jenny up to the Observatory, but as you can see from the picture above, the weather wasn't that great. Since I had just taken some good pictures from the Observatory a month ago, I didn't take any more today. The other place I took a couple of pictures was down in Daley Plaza.
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Situated on Randolph and Washington Streets between Dearborn and Clark Streets, the Chicago Civic Center is considered one of Chicago's architectural highlights. The main building was designed in the International Style and completed in 1965. At the time it was the tallest building in Chicago, but only held this title for four years until the John Hancock Center was completed. The 648-foot, thirty-one story building features Cor-Ten, a self-weathering steel. Cor-Ten was designed to rust, actually strengthening the structure and giving the building its distinctive red and brown color.
Civic Center Plaza is the courtyard adjacent to the building, occupying the southern half of the block occupied by the building. In addition to the iconic Picasso sculpture that dominates it (see below), the plaza features a large fountain as well as an eternal flame memorial to the dead from World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
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The sculpture was commissioned by the architects in 1963. Picasso completed a maquette of the sculpture in 1965, and approved a final model of the sculpture in 1966. The cost of constructing the sculpture was $351,959.17, paid mostly by three charitable foundations. Picasso himself was offered payment of $100,000 but refused, stating that he wanted to make his work a gift.
The sculpture was fabricated by the American Bridge Company division of the United States Steel Corporation in Gary, Indiana using COR-TEN steel, before being disassembled and relocated to Chicago. The steel for this statue was rolled in the USS Gary Works, then the largest rolling mill of its kind in the world. Ground was broken in Daley Plaza for the construction of the sculpture on May 25, 1967. The sculpture was eventually dedicated to the public domain.
The sculpture was initially met with controversy. Before the Picasso sculpture, public sculptural artwork in Chicago was mainly of historical figures. All kinds of other sculptures were proposed instead- a statue of baseball player Ernie Banks and a giant pickle, to name just two. Newspaper columnist Mike Royko, covering the unveiling of the sculpture, wrote: "Interesting design, I'm sure. But the fact is, it has a long stupid face and looks like some giant insect that is about to eat a smaller, weaker insect." Royko did credit Picasso with understanding the soul of Chicago. "Its eyes are like the eyes of every slum owner who made a buck off the small and weak. And of every building inspector who took a wad from a slum owner to make it all possible.... You'd think he'd been riding the L all his life."
Having seen the few pictures that I took during Jenny's visit, I now want to include here the narrative that I wrote for these pictures at the time. Almost all the pictures I took were actually slides, and when I got them back and put them in their trays, I reviewed them and wrote narratives for them. These narratives were later (beginning in 1979) transferred to the photo albums I created when I had prints made from the slides. Later still, the same narratives became the descriptions for the pictures in my online photo album. (You can well imagine that information like the explanation of the Chicago Civic Center and The Picasso was not narrative that I, myself, wrote, but rather sourced from elsewhere.)
Sometimes, I used my narrative document to record my thoughts about events and feelings not directly associated with individual pictures, and when I was reviewing and writing narratives for the few pictures taken during Jenny's visit, I did happen to record rather a long musing on the whole visit.
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Jenny Fallis had been the only girl I dated more than once or twice in high school. After graduation, we saw each other only infrequently, since she was at Duke and I was at Davidson. But each time we did see each other, it was always really enjoyable. Then came the Army and my move to Chicago, and even less contact. So it was with apprehension and a certain curiosity that I waited to see what my feelings- and hers- would be eight years on. It seemed as if we had both changed a great deal after 1964. For my part, I thought I was a much different person now than I was when I graduated high school, and so I assumed that anyone who knew me from back then would note the change. Jenny seemed to me to be the same great person I had known in high school. A few years older and more knowledgeable, with the experience of years of work towards a career, but still the same wonderful person I'd known eight years earlier. Whether it was the effect of the places I had been or the things I had seen and done, I do not know, but while I enjoyed her visit a great deal, but I knew almost immediately that things were a long way from what they had been. Looking back, I recall feeling that there had been changes I couldn't put my finger on. Jenny seemed to be little changed, although four years in the workaday world had given her a professionalism that probably none of us had in high school or college. I enjoyed her company for these few days in Chicago, and I hope that she did, too. In some ways, it seemed as if we were back in high school, but in other ways things were entirely different. I am not sure what I'd expected from the visit, and I have no idea if Jenny had any expectations other than to see me again and see Chicago.
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If you've already been through the subsequent years in this album (particularly the late 70s and early 80s), then you know why I felt the way I recorded in the thoughts above. I'd always thought I was like a jigsaw puzzle with a piece or two missing. But that really had never been true. I had all the pieces I was supposed to have; the puzzle could really be completed. To stretch the analogy, though, the pieces of my particular puzzle gave, when assembled the right way, an entirely different picture than the one on the box.
You can use the links below to continue to another photo album page.
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December 1, 1972: Winter Arrives in Chicago |
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September 16-20, 1972: A Trip to North Carolina |
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Return to Index for 1972 |
