Different Slants

Chicago Bob Gets His Gun by Robert M. Katzman © July 24, 2021

In 1967, when I was 17 and working at my wooden newspaper shack in Hyde Park seven days a week and late into the night, a number of cops I’d befriended over the first two years I was there expressed concern for me.

My relationship with the police developed in a gradual way. First when I arrived at the corner and was 15, they were amused that a kid who appeared reasonably well educated would ever consider doing such miserable work, because of the terrible weather conditions in Chicago, seasonally. Also because of extreme amount of crime in Hyde Park that happened after sunset, like ferocious wolves coming out to prowl, that even the University of Chicago’s private police force and Chicago’s 21^stDistrict Police Department could just barely keep under control. 

(Read on …)

By Robert M. Katzman © August 10, 2014

Galesburg, Illinois antique store

Rickety shop by a ripening cornfield

Dirty windows, cracked glass

Door with a spring that slammed against my ass

As I edged inside

Gloomy, long wooden tables 

Seemed to me even the shadows had shadows

***

By Robert M. Katzman © July I, 2021

No, you haven’t heard this one:

A Lapsed Methodist, A Mongolian Buddhist and a Reconstructionist Jew Walked into a Chicago Kosher Bakery.

There was a petite dark-haired, dark-eyed woman behind the counter with a strong accent. When we asked for kosher brownies for our 99-year-old-friend waiting in the car, she replied, 

“Oh sorry! But the synagogue just bought ALL of them!

I noticed her accent, asked if she was from Europe and she looked at me and said,