Planes, El Trains, and Ubers in Chicago

by Nancy Luana

In the South, where I come from, we are sweet — iced-tea sweet like my Aunt Mary used to make — one part tea, three parts sugar. And sometimes, oftentimes, that sweet is genuine. Other times it can leave a little bitter aftertaste, like maybe it wasn’t real sugar after all.

Not Chicago where I just visited for the first time. Y’all are something else, something I don’t quite have a name for because I’ve simply never experienced it before.

I was visiting just overnight to help the journal, Sport Literate, celebrate its 30th anniversary and to celebrate one of my essays being published in the same celebration issue. (You’ll want to read it, of course. “Forever Stamp.” Heck. Just go ahead and subscribe to the journal. It’s a pretty great journal boasting all kinds of awards and featuring the work of many more award-winning writers.)

My trip began at the O’Hare Airport where, when I went down the escalator to the platform where I was supposed to meet my hotel shuttle, the platform appeared to be above me. When I went up the escalator, the platform where I was supposed to be was below me? Well, anyway, a pilot who I am sure just wanted to go home observed my perplexed expression. Let me take you, he said. I have time.

Two hours later I attempted to take the CTA to my venue, Midwest Coast Brewing on West Walnut. I had studied my trains ahead of time. The green line and the blue line. It was the pink and purple and orange lines, as I recall, that got me in trouble — that combined with the fact that that I twice ignored the instructions given me by the good folks at Midwest Coast Brewing. I somehow reasoned that I, who had been in your town for two hours, knew more about how to navigate the CTA than folks who had lived in Chicago their whole lives.

It didn’t start out so bad. I got off the train the first time at the right stop but then couldn’t figure out how to get to the pink line. A woman mopping the platform who looked tired enough to drop and who probably would have rather been doing anything other than giving this poor tourist directions said, Come with me. I’ll show you.

There are two Damen stops, as I’m sure you know, one south, way south of where I was trying to go. Y’all do that to goof with first time tourist like myself, I figure, which seems sort of fair.  When I’d gone about as far south as I could go, some little voice said You have messed this up. Get off of this train. I did, and I explained to the lady in the plexiglass booth that I was on the verge of a panic attack. Because I was. I just need to get over there, I explained, pointing to the other side and almost seriously considering traversing the tracks. She began speaking to me in a voice not unlike the voice preschool teachers use to calm children who have missed both their nap and their snack. It’s easy, she said. See that sign? You just go up those stairs and get on the green line, and it will take you right to Damen. You can do it. 

It did. And I did.

And then West Walnut Street hid from me and from Google maps both. But it could not hide from the three separate total strangers all determined to get me to the Midwest Coast Brewing Company.  One by one, 10 minutes apart, they pointed. See the rail road overpass? Turn left there. Then turn left again. And when I goofed that up, there was some other Chicagoan, See the railroad overpass? Go under it. Go right . . .

I’d arrived hours early for my event, but before I’d finished my first beer, a group of people who’d just come from a fundraiser to raise money for an intergenerational housing project for gay persons joined me at the bar and bought me a beer and invited me to join them rather than be alone, and by the time they left an hour later I knew that I’d met people who were going to change the world and whose paths I would always be wanting to cross mine again in the future.

But what about the Sport Literate event, you ask? I’ll let the picture speak for itself.

Oh, God. How did this woman get back to her hotel, you want to know. Consistent with how I got to Midwest Coast Brewing. With great difficulty. And with Chicago help. Do you know that you have three Hyatts near the airport? I’ve been to them all. After my Uber driver delivered me to the first wrong Hyatt (not his fault), he turned off Uber and determined to get me to the correct Hyatt. When I tried to explain to him that he would not get paid if we did not use Uber because I had credit and debit cards only, his only reply was, “I want to help you” — something he said four times over the next 20 minutes –—  I want to help you. (Ultimately I did figure out that I could compensate him for all of the fares when I tipped him for the first fare.) When we arrived at the second incorrect Hyatt, the Uber driver said I’ll wait for you. The young man at the concierge desk, after being told how ridiculously lost I was, looked up my reservation and wrote the address down and then pushed the piece of paper calmly, slowly towards me and then in the same preschool teacher voice that the CTA worker had used, he said, You okay? You’re very close.

 When I arrived at my Hyatt Regency O’Hare, I bolted quickly from my Uber car, fatigue and emotions all getting an upper hand, but I did not bolt quickly enough to keep my Uber driver from reaching back towards me with a fist pump of sorts. You’re so kind, I said.

 I just want to help you, he said.

Back home and preparing to board my own transit system, a woman who I am guessing was from the Middle East was studying the ticket-dispensing machine, her finger poised just above the screen with too many selections. Her eyes when she looked at me were that kind of moist that eyes get when they are trying very hard not to cry. Can you help me? she asked.  As we purchased her ticket and got her on the right train, she alternated over and over again between, You are so kind and You are so helpful.

Yeah, I told her.  I just got back from Chicago.

I learned it there.

 

Nancy Luana grew up in Decatur, Georgia, where she lives today and where many of her essays, like this one, are set. She is a graduate of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky. Her writing has appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Appalachian Review. When she is not working or writing, she is actively planning her escape from the big city. She is studying sailing and hopes one day to be writing from her boat on the Georgia coast. Her cat, Charlie Wilkes, is reportedly not onboard with these plans.