Welcome to another series of stories which missed their deadline by a lot. I had a few queued up well before the server took a dump. My plan was to eek them out as a new successor feature to the concluded Six Days of Christmas. Their timeliness was long gone but I still thought they were worth bringing up. I’m not going to put them in The Lost Tales, I am going to put them in the Whoops or Overlooked. They won’t be retrofitted in time neither. Expect the ones I really want to discuss to get pushed through before January concludes.
First up, the finale to my vacation in Chicago at Nelson’s house.
I double checked the stuff I covered then procrastinated too much regarding the third part before I flew home…Nelson and me visiting our alma mater Milwaukee/Marquette University. I think the trip was in jeopardy since Tammy couldn’t watch all four children at once, I don’t blame her and I was willing to have Nicolas tag along, hoping he wouldn’t be too bored. Some kind of compromise was achieved so it was just us two.
The drive was amazingly quick. Chicago traffic is usually dense even when it isn’t rush hour. Maybe the Internet lied to me? We arrived by lunch time. Damn it was cold, that part of Milwaukee never changed. Nelson came up from downtown as we cruised north on Wisconsin Avenue to take in Marquette’s main drag (to borrow an Austin-UT term).
Nelson parked the car near Schroeder Hall and we hoofed it in the freezing climate. How did I manage this 25 years ago? I guess I was made of sterner stuff after a Winter in North Dakota. I was prepared though. I dress in layers these days plus I had those new Chucks hybrids for the cold. Nothing can ever prevent the awful wind downtown Milwaukee generates. “It’s warmer by the lake,” is a myth and prank Milwaukeeans like to pull.
I tried to get a peek inside my college’s main building, Johnston. No luck, all locked up. I guess they knew I was coming. I was curious to see what innovations the university was making since print journalism is dying and broadcasting isn’t looking much better.
This is where the core hours of my degree were earned. I have my hat off in deference to the late Dr. Grams who passed on this Spring.
Nelson’s college building was next, Stratton. I spent a good chunk of 1990 and early 1991 in there. His department’s computer lab had easier access to Macintoshes! We checked out the Hegarty Art Museum to get out of the cold for a while. My first time in there, never bothered while attending. I didn’t appreciate the finer, high-brow things and was more obsessed over other crap.
Onward to our equivalent of the Quad. This big open space amongst the library and several departmental buildings, namely Lalumeire Hall, home to the foreign languages section and Jose’s part-time gig. Below is a mediocre attempt at a 360 VR picture I took with my iPhone. I’m somewhere near what I thought was the center. The speck in red is Nelson walking toward me.
Click on this to see a bigger version
Another bout of avoiding the cold by shopping in the Student Union, it was the only thing truly open at Marquette. No real hockey jerseys, mostly all the fuss over the basketball team and this sport is the school’s claim to fame. I got Jose a golf shirt to compensate for nothing at Christmas. A neutral T-shirt for me, I’m not very patriotic after taking a class with three douchebag “star” players.
A final leg in the elements to get pictures of the environment to show Somara and other Austinites. Prove I wasn’t making this up, there are landmarks to go with my anecdotes.
My estimate on where rooms 1020 and 1019 would be in red
Right outside the Student Union’s west end is McCorkmick Hall. A horrible place to live: community bathrooms (the shower deuce incident, ugh), bunk beds, no AC/often cold, little privacy…yet lifelong friendships and experiences were made. Room 1020 was where I lived after the first semester. Paul was next door in 1019. From both of those windows, we and our floormates launched numerous projectiles. I guess the experts were right. People do imitate what they see on TV, especially when it was David Letterman’s schtick! There were several pro Walker posters so I wanted to throw crap up at the windows for a change of pace. Nelson lived in the Y (now East Hall), he missed out.
I had a great view of Wells Avenue from this window
Across from the Student Union’s north side was my favorite apartment. The dude who owned the Ardmore ran this joint. I loved the place because I knew the odds of it being burglarized were extremely low. I should’ve discovered it long before I endured the nonsense I experienced with Strack and this filthy sublet I panicked into. The larger window I highlighted has a great story involving an ex-girlfriend you’ll have to ask me about, I don’t want to post it for the world to discover. That apartment provided great memories while I was underemployed, trying to keep my brain busy in early 1991. I hope the following residents enjoyed it as much as I did.
Our favorite after-bar restaurant, especially on cold nights
Nelson wanted to have lunch at Major Goolsby’s downtown but I had to check out Real Chili. Make sure it was mostly intact, take in the aroma and retrace the events of a painful evening 20 years earlier, another by-request story, the Marquette clique knows it very well and still laugh until they nearly suffocate. I have a thing for anniversaries. The food was always the main draw for all of us. Even Helen liked it and she was never big on the unhealthy fare Milwaukee is notorious for.
Here's the floor where Phil's fists of death failed, sorry, the floor where he remembered no jury would acquit him
Here's the hallway to the bathroom where I then drank a tallboy of whoop-ass while Phil was on the floor.
Now we were pretty darned hungry. We hopped into Nelson’s car only to have a ticket from Milwaukee’s finest on it. Leave it to MPD to fine us for being a little late while they failed to arrest Dahmer the one day he offered himself up on a silver platter. Downtown to Major Goolsby’s. Nelson is fond of the place. I thought it was decent due to it being next door to my former job in the SCLM, The Milwaukee Sentinel.
These were the doors I used to go through when I worked here
For those who’ve never been to Milwaukee, Major Goolsby’s isn’t a must-eat/see destination. The place is nice, the food is above average and it carries some items that are standard Milwaukee fare (bratwurst, aka brats but pronounced “BRAHTS”). I just wouldn’t hold my breath over Major G’s becoming a chain or some overhyped In-n-Out Burger unless it has a role in The Big Lebowski II. Having lived near Marquette for five years, I did know what to order. Ditto for Nelson.
Our waitress was awesome, namely for her ability to score a pair of politically incorrect Marquette shirts. I have no beef with the American Indians, they definitely got the shaft numerous times yet I don’t think nor feel having them as team mascots is insulting, it’s not the plan. When people act out moronic gestures to taunt the American Indians, as I’ve seen in North Dakota (whooping namely); extremely rude and uncool. However, a bunch of spineless pusses at Marquette capitulated on the name and mascot. With the latter, fine. The American Indians feel it’s demeaning, nevermind the Seminoles, Washington Redskins or the University of Northern Colorado. I suspect Father Wannamakeabuck couldn’t find the right people to write a check to. I have yet to hear the Irish complaining over this rather negative stereotype, other than my maternal grandmother; I think she would be too thrilled over the university’s number one BCS football standing to care.
Marquette caving in over the name is what rankles me. Warriors. It’s rather generic. It can sound belligerent in some contexts, not others: samurai warrior, a mediocre NBA franchise shares this, the Walter Hill movie, a hit song by Scandal, etc. I’m not married to it. Hell, I attended two Catholic high schools with more controversial names: Strake Jesuit Crusaders (in the Eighties no one cared, today it’s considered a Western jihadist); Chartard Trojans (given the Catholic Church’s stance on birth control, this is hilarious). My alma mater could’ve ditched the American Indian, got a new look, say a medieval knight, kept the name, moved on. Instead the powers that be picked a lame-o name which has no history amongst the generations of students, the Golden Eagles which it remains to this day after wasting another $500,000-plus over the Gold debacle in recent years.
Thus, the shirt below is a way of giving the Marquette administration a virtual, symbolic middle finger. I scored one for Helen.
Front of the shirt. No idea which nation this is. It resembles Iroquois but the Winnebago lived in Milwaukee before Western settlements.
Marquette never did tell me if they liked my suggestion for Inquisitors to honor Torquemada…ironically. Should've gone with McCarthyites.
Overjoyed with my shirt acquisitions, I accidentally stiffed our waitress on a tip. I had the receipt with her name and Goolsby’s address. I mailed the nice lady a check the following week and a photocopy of the receipt apologizing; she replied with a thank-you card!
Back to Chicago we a-went! We tried to have a brief roundezvous to see my gaming sensei Lester. No dice. Couldn’t get the schedules to align. Next time I promise.
The succinct trip down numerous memory lanes was nice, especially with 2011 being the 25th anniversary of arriving and 20th for moving away. Would I ever go back? I owe Somara a tour and it’s great to visit. I could never live there. Austin’s milder Winters are the key factor. After 1993, I vowed to never reside in a cold climate again. Visits are allowed.