“People often ask me how much of my short stories are true and I usually answer ‘About 75 percent.’ Now I’ve written a non-fiction book and people ask me how much of it is true and I answer ‘About 75 percent.’” Pam Houston (paraphrased)
One of the few parts of writing that I consider to be a tenet is that occasionally you have to bend the truth in order to make a better story. Maybe it’s a writer thing, maybe it’s an Irish thing, but I never let something as pedestrian as the truth get in the way of something interesting. As I told a girl from Australia once (who wondered what stories I was going to tell my friends about her) “I’ll tell the truth. It’s just sometimes there are alternate pasts.” I bring this up because for the over two and a half years that I’ve been keeping this blog I’ve technically been lying.
I’m not actually from Chicago.
By that I mean that I have never had my home address in the city itself. I worked in the city, had an office phone with a 312 area code, I even had a home phone with that before they hoisted the 708 on us and then I moved saddling me with a 630. But I’ve never been a true Chicagoan. I grew up in Berwyn, about six miles from the city limits, close enough that I could hop on the El from my town as well as see the Sears Tower from my bedroom window. Basically, I didn’t live in the city but it was as close as it can be.
This is important because there are very few famous things to come out of Berwyn. We had the dude who founded The Ides of March and Survivor, who I think my dad knew when he was just a baby. We have the Son of Svengoolie, who technically wasn’t from Berwyn but made fun of the town a lot. There’s me of course, though I’m not as famous as I could be. And then there is the Spindle. The glorious, glorious Spindle.
You know it from Wayne’s World. You probably thought it was just some movie prop. No, it’s real. Standing tall in a strip mall parking lot maybe three miles from my house were, well, a bunch of cars impaled on a spike. There never was much of an explanation for it, or even a meaning. Across from a bunch of stores that always seemed a little sketchier than you would like was this huge structure exploding out of the parking lot for no apparent reason. Actually, the reason was that the owner of the strip mall had a very strange taste in art and this essentially replaced the garbage structure. That one was this huge, twenty feet tall amalgamation of garbage and concrete that looked either like the United States, a pork chop or a pile of garbage depending on how inebriated you were at the time. Why this would inspire anyone to shop at Walgreen’s or Coconuts records is beyond me.
Thus I was shocked to read online a week or two ago that they might be taking down the Spindle. Apparently they are renovating the strip mall, which is good because it has been decrepit since I was at least ten years old, and they are going to move a Walgreens to where the Spindle currently stands. Given the size of the structure it might be too expensive to move so they are thinking about tearing it down. This has led to at least a mild case of uproar.
Look, I’m not entirely proud of the fact that the only thing that I can say about my hometown is “Remember those cars on the spike in Wayne’s World? That’s my hometown.” But, I’ve had dinner with people from every continent and have been able to use that reference and had people nodding their heads in understanding. It’s not the best example in the world but it works. And tackiness aside, maybe that means something. It’s what made the town unique. Every time I go back home I end up driving past it. I can’t say I look at it with civic pride but I accept it. That’s the way I grew up. We see a parking lot and decide to put a bunch of cars on a spike and call it art. It’s blue collar and quirky and inane but persistent and impressive as well.
Like I said, I’m not from Chicago exactly. But I’m not from one of the fancy suburbs either. I really hope they find a way to keep the Spindle. It might be art, it might not be. It certainly isn’t good art. Sometimes you just need to be memorable and when you look at that thing you go, “I sure won’t forget it.”
One of the few parts of writing that I consider to be a tenet is that occasionally you have to bend the truth in order to make a better story. Maybe it’s a writer thing, maybe it’s an Irish thing, but I never let something as pedestrian as the truth get in the way of something interesting. As I told a girl from Australia once (who wondered what stories I was going to tell my friends about her) “I’ll tell the truth. It’s just sometimes there are alternate pasts.” I bring this up because for the over two and a half years that I’ve been keeping this blog I’ve technically been lying.
I’m not actually from Chicago.
By that I mean that I have never had my home address in the city itself. I worked in the city, had an office phone with a 312 area code, I even had a home phone with that before they hoisted the 708 on us and then I moved saddling me with a 630. But I’ve never been a true Chicagoan. I grew up in Berwyn, about six miles from the city limits, close enough that I could hop on the El from my town as well as see the Sears Tower from my bedroom window. Basically, I didn’t live in the city but it was as close as it can be.
This is important because there are very few famous things to come out of Berwyn. We had the dude who founded The Ides of March and Survivor, who I think my dad knew when he was just a baby. We have the Son of Svengoolie, who technically wasn’t from Berwyn but made fun of the town a lot. There’s me of course, though I’m not as famous as I could be. And then there is the Spindle. The glorious, glorious Spindle.
You know it from Wayne’s World. You probably thought it was just some movie prop. No, it’s real. Standing tall in a strip mall parking lot maybe three miles from my house were, well, a bunch of cars impaled on a spike. There never was much of an explanation for it, or even a meaning. Across from a bunch of stores that always seemed a little sketchier than you would like was this huge structure exploding out of the parking lot for no apparent reason. Actually, the reason was that the owner of the strip mall had a very strange taste in art and this essentially replaced the garbage structure. That one was this huge, twenty feet tall amalgamation of garbage and concrete that looked either like the United States, a pork chop or a pile of garbage depending on how inebriated you were at the time. Why this would inspire anyone to shop at Walgreen’s or Coconuts records is beyond me.
Thus I was shocked to read online a week or two ago that they might be taking down the Spindle. Apparently they are renovating the strip mall, which is good because it has been decrepit since I was at least ten years old, and they are going to move a Walgreens to where the Spindle currently stands. Given the size of the structure it might be too expensive to move so they are thinking about tearing it down. This has led to at least a mild case of uproar.
Look, I’m not entirely proud of the fact that the only thing that I can say about my hometown is “Remember those cars on the spike in Wayne’s World? That’s my hometown.” But, I’ve had dinner with people from every continent and have been able to use that reference and had people nodding their heads in understanding. It’s not the best example in the world but it works. And tackiness aside, maybe that means something. It’s what made the town unique. Every time I go back home I end up driving past it. I can’t say I look at it with civic pride but I accept it. That’s the way I grew up. We see a parking lot and decide to put a bunch of cars on a spike and call it art. It’s blue collar and quirky and inane but persistent and impressive as well.
Like I said, I’m not from Chicago exactly. But I’m not from one of the fancy suburbs either. I really hope they find a way to keep the Spindle. It might be art, it might not be. It certainly isn’t good art. Sometimes you just need to be memorable and when you look at that thing you go, “I sure won’t forget it.”
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