Big Mike: The Kidney Stone Kids

I've been chewing my fingernails for the last hour and a half. Jeez, I'd better watch out or I'll draw blood. I'm tense, edgy. The guy driving the black BMW in front of me is going about 12 miles an hour, leaning over and checking addresses. I honk. He turns around and flips me the digit. I pull around him to pass and yell, "Get the hell outta my way!"

As I pass, I see him shouting a response. Most of the words begin with an F.

I'm back in Chicago.

The reason for all my nail-chewing and overall angst is the city's unbearable traffic. I've been in Louisville more than two years now and people down there consider five cars stopped at a red light to be a traffic jam. I don't know how I survived 50 years in Chicago with my sanity intact.

I'm heading over to Benny Jay's estate, hard by Lincoln Square, a hop, skip and a jump from Wrigley Field. How long has it been since I laid eyes on my literary colleague and business partner? It becomes obvious the first time we see each other as Benny answers the door. He shushes the dog and wrestles with the front door lock. My technologically challenged old pal. He's stuck - the lock has baffled him. He literally has to run out the back door, around the house via the gangway, and out to the front to greet me.

We seem to freeze for an almost imperceptible moment, assessing each other after we hug. There's a hell of a lot more gray on both our heads, some three or four more belt notches around my waist, and -believe it or not - a good decade of living separating this moment from the last time we saw each other.

"Honestly," Benny asks, "how long has it been?

I ponder a moment. Then it hits me. I remember that memorable early October evening when we watched the festivities on TV in the Irving Park Road bowling alley after Rod "The Shooter" Beck had snuffed out Dusty Baker's San Francisco Giants, vaulting the Sammy Sosa Cubs into the 1998 playoffs. As Sammy himself body-surfed over thousands of delirious bleacherites, some now-forgotten glamorous TV reporter shoved her microphone into the faces of blotto revelers and asked, "How do you feel?"

Some nameless bowling alley employee turned to Benny and me and shouted, as if it were he she was pumping for a sound bite, "Nice tits, bitch!"

Benny and I doubled over in laughter even though we we're both smart enough to be disgusted by his ridiculous, benighted, antediluvian outlook toward women. Why? Who knows? Maybe we were giddy over the Cubs' rare success. Maybe we felt we were suddenly 12 again, giggling over some classmate's use of dirty words.

Whatever. I'm sure we'd seen each other since then but that episode will do for now.

Benny shows me a recent picture of his daughters, who, if I recall correctly, had spaghetti sauce and jelly stains, respectively, on their T-shirts the last time I saw them. They are now grown women. Ouch! What does that make me? The living dead?

Milo calls. "Glab's here!" Benny shouts into the phone. "He's in town! He just dropped in!" And, like that, Milo hops into his car to join us.

Handshakes and hugs abound. Three old goats stand around staring at the ravages of time on each other in Benny's cramped office garret. Before we know it, we settle down to discuss the things that really matter to such venerable figures.

"My doctor says I'm doing good," Milo says. "Blood pressure's good. My weight's good." (At which point I think, The bastard.) "All in all, not bad for a geezer."

I congratulate him on his good fortune.

"But, he did say my kidneys are a little iffy," Milo adds.

Uh oh.

"Yeah, I had kidney stones and they left some scarring."

At this very moment, Benny lopes up the stairs. He'd been downstairs taking a phone call.

"Whaddya guys talkin' about?" he says with the air of a 12-year-old expecting to jump into a chat about the Cubs or the Bulls or the Monkees.

We ain't 12 anymore. Kidney stones, we inform him.

"Oh yeah, I had 'em," Benny crows, almost like a 12 year-old bragging that he's kissed a girl. "I never felt such pain! I remember, it was 2003. I was coaching my daughter's baseball team. It hurt so bad I was nauseated. After the game, I was walking home through River Park and I had to stop to throw up. One of the kids was passing by as I'm bent over and I'm thinking, 'Oh great! What's this kid gonna tell her parents?'"

Milo and I agree that the kid'll probably grow up to be an eminent blogger. One of her posts will be about the time she saw her drunken old baseball coach puking his guts up in the park after a game.

We laugh. Deep, basso, raspy laughs. Milo coughs a bit. I try to catch my breath. Benny says, smiling sagely, "Ah, these kids!"

It's good to be home.

Benny Jay: Track Talking

Oh, man, life is good. I wake to a bright, sunny day -- a little cool, but not too windy. Perfect weather for the opening of the outdoor high school track season.

Other folks welcome spring with the crack of a bat against a baseball. For me, it's the echo of a starter's pistol -- 'cause I just love track `n field.

I drag my bike out of storage -- haven't used it since November. Stop by the bike store to fill the tires with air, and bike down Lincoln Avenue to Ainslie Street and over to River Park for the Mather High School meet.

It's a big field filled with kids wearing uniforms in all shades of yellow, green, gold, blue and red. It's too warm for my wool cap, so I replace it with a baseball cap and raise my face to feel the rays of the sun.

Right away I'm looking for someone to talk to, 'cause for me half the fun of watching sports -- any sports -- is talking. I don't know if university researchers have done any type of sociological study on this topic, but for some reason track seems to draw the best talkers: Older guys, forty to sixty, standing on the sidelines, stopwatches in hands, talking politics, weather, the Bulls, things we should have done in our lives, girls we used to date, fights we won and/or lost, and, our all-time favorite: Why things were better back in the day.

I spot Alonzo -- pay dirt. In the pantheon of great guys to talk to while watching a track meet -- an illustrious list that includes Daddy Dee, Ray and Lavinia's Uncle John, just to name a few -- Alonzo is right at the top. It would be an interesting study to see who talks more -- him or me. I say me. But, then, I'm biased.

It's Alonzo's first meet of the year -- his daughter just finished basketball -- yet he's already in mid-season form. The truly great ones don't need a warm up. Within a few minutes, we're well into an intricate and passionate discussion about coaching strategies in a girls high school basketball game we saw about, oh, 15 months ago. I'm telling you, this is serious stuff.

While we're talking, the hurdlers take the track. I love the hurdle races at the Mather meet -- it's like a demolition derby. This being the first outdoor meet of the year, a lot of coaches are experimenting, just to see if they have anyone who can actually compete. I mean, some one's got to do it. A lot of these kids have probably never even seen a hurdle in their lives. Coach's fed them a line: "I think you'll be good at -- you got the body for it. Try it, you'll like it...."

The wide-eyed rookies take off with eager determination, running as fast as they can, and then -- wham -- they crash into that first hurdle, hit it hard, cause, let's face it, this is way harder than any coach will tell you. By the time they get to the final hurdle, they're practically limping, ankles and shins screaming in pain, and looking like they can't wait to quit. As in retire from sports, go home, have a cold one and watch it all on TV.

At last year's Mather meet, there was a boy -- I think he hailed from Roosevelt High School -- who crashed over the final hurdle, landed on his face and just crawled off the track. On the sidelines, the other old timers and I were yelling: "Finish the race, finish the race!" As in, back in the day we woulda never have walked off the field. The boy said: "Fuck this shit." Daddy Dee and I busted out laughing when he said that -- laughing so hard, we damn near fell over. "Fuck this shit." What more can you say?

It reminded me of the time I came in dead last in a high school cross country meet. As I came around the back stop, head down, wheezing in agony, for the final fifty or so yards, I saw David Simms, a kid from my freshman algebra class. He had his wry smile, almost a smirk, as he watched, like he was enjoying my misery. Within a week we were best of friends. Later he explained that he had thought I was stuck up 'cause I came from the richer side of town. But after he saw me running dead last, he figured I was no better than anyone else. So you see, there are some benefits to finishing last.

I'm all set to tell Alonzo the story. But we get sidetracked by a coach who wants Alonzo to give some avuncular advise to a great runner who's goofing off in class. The kid comes over and Alonzo -- a former track coach himself -- talks about how life is short and you have to make the most of it and if you have the gift of speed that you have -- well, son, you got to run your race! The whole race -- class work too.

It's a great speech. Has me fired up. Wish to hell I had someone like Alonzo pumping me up way back when.

By then the meet's over and the sun's going down an the wind picks up. Typical Chicago weather, changes on a dime. I replace my baseball cap with the knit one.

Alonzo and I walk over to my bike. We're still talking. His daughter, Ashley, stands off the side, patiently waiting. I can see she wants to go home. Just as I say, "I'll let you go," I remember that I never got around to telling him about running last in cross country. Oh, well, I can save it. We have another track meet in week. I'll get to tell him all about it then.