Chicago Stories: Tobacco
The doors of John Fiske Elementary School, 61st and Ingleside,
Chicago, Cook County, Illinois were four in number, forming two
pairs of heavy oak slabs, blackened as were most other doors in a
city heated and run mainly by coal and for which the term
"natural gas" had a vaguely risque ring to it, being supposed by
many to refer a disordered digestion. Each day at exactly 8:00,
these doors were swung open and somehow or another locked in
place by two large men who were popularly believed by the entire
neighborhood to have obtained their door-opening sinecure through
some vague relationship with a much-admired Chicago businessman
named Mr. Capone. This supposition was based upon the fact that
they were white and were not seen around the school after their
morning task. Moreover, since it was well-known that Mr. Capone
and his associates were involved in the welfare of every
establishment in South Chicago, there seemed no reason to believe
that John Fiske Elementary School was somehow exempt. Even now I
am not sure that this was not in fact the case.
I understand that the reputation of Mr. Capone has come under
something of cloud recently, but in the place and time of which I
speak, one would have had to look far, perhaps as far as Lawndale
Cemetery, where so many good Democratic voters resided, or the
Calumet City Sanitation Canal, to have found someone who did not
have a good word to say for him. Indeed, my friends and I were
great admirers, being, in a fashion and quite irregularly, on the
Capone payroll.
At the corner of 63rd and Cottage Grove Avenue was a cigar store,
a kind of establishment that, to the best of my experience, no
longer exists. Along one long wall was a polished glass and teak
counter, and, behind it, floor to high ceiling teak shelves with
hundred of boxes of cigars from all over the world kept safe
behind polished glass sliding doors. At the front of the aisle,
near the cashier's chair, there were forty-two porcelain jars (I
counted them many times and memorized their names) of various
kinds of tobacco that were blended in the shop to each customer's
special taste. Well-dressed gentlemen would frequently come in
and say softly to the cashier, "Two hundred to my home," and
leave. I eventually discovered that these gentlemen were placing
orders for cigarettes to be made up for them and delivered. The
store never admitted to selling cigarettes. Whoever it was that
owned the establishment felt that cigarettes were unsightly,
evil-smelling, and effeminate, so the cashier said, but believed
that one served one's clients, no matter how depraved their
tastes.
I was seven years old when I undertook to polish teak and mop the
white and black mosaic marble floors of the cigar store for an
hour each three afternoons a week. There was no question of
money; I simply loved the smell of the tobacco and the sheen of
the teak, and just walked in one day and said, "I wanna polish
d'wood." The cashier took an oiled cloth (it, too, had a
wonderful smell about it) from under the counter, tossed it to
me, and said, "So polish."
When he saw that I kept coming back, he undertook my education.
It was there I learned to make change, always using the
touchstone. It had not been too many years since gold coins had
been called in, and a number of businessmen still habitually used
a touchstone. A true gold coin drawn lightly across a touchstone
would leave a faint golden streak, but a gold-washed counterfeit
coin would leave only a smudge, if anything. True silver coins,
correctly tossed on the touchstone, would ring true,
counterfeits would yield a slight clang or thud and lie there as
if dead. The cashier tested me many times on this skill, and I
could still detect the greasy feel of a counterfeit half-dollar
if anyone ever made counterfeit half-dollars any more. Or if it
made any difference for a mere fifty cents.
I learned to make two and three ingredient blends, but was not
allowed to touch the ingenious little machine in a small back
room by which these blends were made up into cigarettes. The
cashier insisted that this would be bad for my nose. Considering
that in those ante-antibiotic days, kids normally had low-grade
infections of one sort or another and generally had runny noses,
this might have seemed undue solicitude on his part, but that was
not what he meant. "Smell your customers, boy!" he would say. A
customer would enter the store, the cashier would gaze intently
at him, his nostrils would flare slightly, and he would say,
"Corona Corona number five, sir?" and the customer would nod.
I learned only the rudiments of this craft, but did learn that
there were hidden depths to it. After a customer would leave, the
cashier would look at me with one eyebrow raised, and I would
venture, "Kentucky burley?" and the cashier would say, "Lacks
imagination, afraid to offend, will marry a nagging wife and
never rise in his trade." A customer entered once and the cashier
dealt with him in an unusually curt manner. When the man left,
the cashier turned to me, and I said, "I couldn't tell. The
latakia was too strong." The cashier leaned over and said
intently, "When you can smell the latakia, the man is a stubborn
and overbearing ass, without taste or consideration for himself
or others. He has corrupted his own tobacconist and cannot be
trusted." This was perhaps too sweeping a judgement, but I have
been told that Josef Stalin added too much latakia to his
Edgeworth.
One Friday, the collector came in, as he always did, and the
cashier took out the standard five dollars and the week's ledgers
for the store's other enterprises, which were multifarious and
far too complex for me to explain in this short essay. This
Friday, the collector looked at me and asked the cashier, "What's
the kid hanging around for?" The cashier answered, "He polishes
and carries ... things." "Oh, Okay. What do you pay him?
"Nothing. He likes to smell, and I teach him things." The
collector stood there and looked me up and down, which was not a
long trip. He finally asked, "What do you carry, kid?"
I answered, "Carry? What carry?" He turned to the cashier and
said, "Pay the kid," and walked out with the week's protection
money and the ledgers.
The cashier looked rather sad and said, "So, I have to pay you."
I was old enough to know what was bothering him. Apprentices
don't get paid, especially apprentices who have just turned
eight. I had gotten a soft blue denim bib apron from the
cashier, just like his own, for my birthday, and my future seemed
to be taking shape right under my nose, as it were. I said,
perhaps somewhat plaintively because I do remember that I felt
that things were changing, and not necessarily for the good, "I
don't want to get paid," and the cashier said, "You gotta get
paid. The man said so. How much do you want." I was almost in
tears, but apprentice tobacconists don't cry.
I suddenly had an idea and said, " I don't want no money, but you
could give me a cigar on Friday afternoon to give to my
grandfather on Saturday." Grandfather and everyone else went to a
tavern on Saturday night, and the aroma of a good cigar was
something everyone in the place could enjoy, or so I thought. The
cashier brightened up and said, "Sure, I could do that. It would
be like a present to your grandfather. What kind does your
grandfather smoke?" Blood is thicker than water, so I quickly
said, "Havana panatella, Supremo deluxe, number ones." The
cashier replied, just as quickly, "Done!" It was only then that
he began to frown. "Wait a minute," he said, "Havana panatella,
Supremo deluxe, number ones cost ..." "Sixty cents each," I
supplied.
At supper the next evening, I told my grandfather that I had a
present for him, and presented him with a cigar. He looked at it,
and then suspiciously at me. You see, weekly wages for grown men
at that time in the stockyards were twelve to thirteen dollars
for a forty-eight hour week. He was holding about two and a half
hours of hard work in his hand, something of which I had no idea
at the time. "Where did you get this?" he said rather ominously.
I was not paying too much attention at the time, being absorbed
in watching my mother prepare a cup of coffee for me, so I
answered somewhat off-handedly, "It's a present from Mr. Capone."
My grandfather started to say something, but my father
forestalled him by saying, "Don't ask, Harry. We probably don't
want to know." My mother handed me my coffee, and there was an
extra lump of sugar on the saucer.
Lynn Harry Nelson
Professor Emeritus of History
University of Kansas
042404
