Manny's

Ghost Dog

Atlantic City...

By GINNY VAN ALYEA

Last fall artist Tony Fitzpatrick shared he was working on another book. He shared excerpts with CGN as well as what led him to create this latest project, a familiar concoction of poetry and art.

"Back when I started drawing pictures in earnest, I couldn't afford paint," recalls Fitzpatrick, "But I had every kind of Prismacolor and graphite pencil known to man. I preferred drawing, something about that first mark's impact – it was immediate. I love drawing with brushes, pencils, etching needles, you name it. Anything that slakes that caveman's thirst for making a mark on something... I liked all manner of surfaces, from copper plates, slate Boards, really good art paper as well."

He said the experience was simple, and transformative, "It was me and my Pencils."

I rented a storefront for 75 bucks a month in Villa Park Illinois, on Villa Avenue, with the nuttiest address I've ever had: 125 1/2 S Villa-- I never understood the One-half designation -- but I accepted it. I found out very young-- don't fuck with the Post Office. I made sure we were pals.

One of the things I did was make art on blank postcards and mailed them to myself-- I made sure I got mail everyday at that weird address . I intend on starting this up again soon --except-- I'll actually mail them out to people I know-- depending on whose snail-mail I still have.

  One of the things I realised when I finally had my own space to go and draw everyday was it was a thorough kind of freedom -- It was my 300 square feet of the American dream and I could do whatever the fuck I wanted in it. It was a whole different kind of gravity-- I always had someplace to go. I could make the world I'd imagined there. 

  It wasn't without its humiliations. I'd gotten into a lot of trouble and was thought of as a weirdo and an outcast. I'd been in my share of Bar-fights and even though I was no longer drinking, I was still barred from a number of them... It was fine. There was a 7/11 down the street where I could get coffee and cigarettes and it was right across the street from the Post Office and a Bar called Brennan's where I would later get a Job. I set to drawing... 

  I drew what I remembered, I drew what I loved, I drew Birds, I drew naked Women, I drew characters from Cartoons and Sunday Comics,I drew a lot of Boxers--famous and unknown, I drew petty criminals that I knew...I drew sad stories, I drew many images from Coney Island which I'd visited in New York-- I drew whatever was in my heart...

 I started .  

I drew the world I would come to inhabit.

MOTOR GYPSY (Menlo, Iowa) for Charlie

* This piece and poem was written about a friend I went

through rehab with in 1983. He was the first person I ever

knew who died of AIDS. In fact, he died of it before they were

even calling it AIDS...

Charlie did an immense amount of good before passing away.

He guided a great many people into recovery and was a font

of hard-earned wisdom about addiction. I saw this old-time

rig suspended 25 feet above the ground in Menlo, Iowa and

immediately thought of Charlie: a long-haul trucker who'd

always wanted this kind of old-timey Mack truck with the

bulldog hood ornament.

In my book? The man was a Saint...

__

Truck.

Charlie hauled peaches from Georgia to San Diego,

Pears and apples from Yakima, Washington to

Lincoln, Nebraska and Rock Island, Illinois.

Perishables.

On a clock.

28 Hours.

46 hours.

Black crank sprinkled into

the endless river of Thermos black coffee.

Hands shaking off the nods.

He played Charlie Rich

and George Jones songs on his 8-track.

Under the pitch black Montana skies,

his eyes blurred and he saw

comet grease and meteor showers.

Under an arc of star lights,

he pulled over and slept.

He'd seen it all, man –

hunger, thirst, rest

and half the angels

in a skittering dervish on

the 3,365 miles between

Oregon and Boston;

every mile marker and weigh station from A1A to Pacific 1.

He tried not to think about

the truck stop blowjobs.

The ones he got,

the ones he gave,

and wondered if he'd ever stop shaking

or recognize the phantom in the mirror ever again.

He ground his teeth to nubs.

His clothes barely fit

and were damn near falling off.

The older over-the-road guys would say to him,

in a hush, "This is where you disappear brother.

This is how.”

Charlie found himself driving south on Pacific 1

toward Escondido and he noticed the ocean.

He was startled to realize he'd never stepped into it.

Never felt the warmth of the Pacific on his skin.

He pulled the 18-wheeler over.

He left his boots in the rig.

He walked through the warm sand

weeping a child's tears,

right into the surf

and the linen-like motion of the tide,

and for the first time in his life,

he sang.

Motor Gypsy.

Fly.

*

A STORY OF A CHICAGO PLACE...MANNY’S

You go through the cafeteria line at Manny’s and you marvel:

Brisket. Corned beef and pastrami sandwiches as big as your

head—and as garlicky as a Greek waiter. A heart attack on a

plate, accompanied by a huge, salty, dill pickle and a potato

latke. You yuck it up with the sandwich guy and he enhances

your pile of meat even more.

You can eat here. Meaty stuff. The kind of meal you want before they execute you. The kind of sandwich you eat with a friend, then take the other half home for dinner, and breakfast the next day...and maybe lunch as well.

Look around. There are City Hall creatures, cops, aldermen, Streets and San guys with yellow neon vests and meter maids shoveling down slices of pie. There are deals being cut. Bonds being haggled over. Ticket quotas pondered and the grimy business of the sidewalk being brokered. The preferred music? The ringing of the cash register.

The preferred currency: green cash money.

They frown a little when you hand them the debit card with the chip in it; it’s another pain-in-the-ass-thing the new century has grafted onto everyone. You also get the shit-eye if you are one of those who babbles on your cell phone in the middle of the cafeteria line, even at your table. People are trying to eat, Numb-Nuts. Nobody wants to hear your bullshit here. Take it outside, Schmuck-O, because here, people are eating or working—like it’s always been, since Moses.

I see a guy slide an envelope across the table with a wry smile. “Christmas card,” he says. The guy across from him wordlessly puts it in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie without so much as looking up or saying thank you.

There is a lady walking an Irish Wolfhound in front of the window. The dog is excited; he can smell the meaty goodness. I also notice he is wearing dog boots, and not happily. A guy comments, “Jesus Christ, she put shoes on the dog. Look! He's trying to kick ‘em off! He don’ want to look like a jag-off in front ‘a the other dogs.” They meander by, the hound alternately fighting with his goofy boots and sniffing at the meaty air he is enshrouded in.

He looks confused.

There is a valet there—a big burly guy in a neon yellow vest, quietly watching the street and reading the traffic for the slow- roll of an incoming parking task. They’ve remodeled the joint, but it hasn’t taken away any of the atmosphere in the least—and this place has atmosphere in spades.

If someone asked me to take them to ONE place which defines this city, I might take them here. Or to night court at 26th and California. Or Ricobene’s for a breaded steak sang’wich. Or Army and Lou’s, except...it’s gone now; and maybe the bounty of great Mexican joints in Pilsen. I’d also include the Maxwell Street Polish and hotdog joints—the one built in the middle of a used car lot at 56th and Western is among my favorites.

These places are adorned in the colors of urgency, of exigence: rich reds, yellows and sequential blinking lights. As a kid I thought these places were what a heaven was supposed to look like: a carnival of lights and color and food smells. There was this promise here, that you would never be hungry, and the world was not merely a well-lit nowhere, but a wondrous place full of lights and magic and hope. It was a mystery that you solved every time it got dark and those lights were on.

I can’t eat Manny’s fine sandwiches anymore; my cardiologists would blow a gasket. But I can watch as other people enjoy them. About the only thing I can eat there anymore is the Jell-O and the coleslaw, and who the fuck wants to eat that?

For me, the best thing to eat there was the pastrami. Damn, it is good—greasy, salty, garlicky and piled high on rye with a big slice of dill pickle and a latke. This might be the best thing I have ever eaten. I never could get through a whole sandwich, but my dog Chooch was very happy to share the second half with me a day later. We were smelling very special after a Manny’s binge—I always blamed the dog.

It is one of those places where one is happy for the lack of change. Sure, they remodeled it, but damn if they didn’t preserve the character of the place—inhabited by and for working people.

There are no conversations about beer programs, or sommeliers. This is belly to belly, elbow to elbow—a joint that caters to the elementally hungry. The kind of hungry you get if you operate a jackhammer or a cement mixer; or hoist dumpsters for Streets and San. There is nothing delicate here. Even the City Hall guys

are the worker bees—the ones who actually DO the work their bosses take credit for on the news. It is one of those eateries that grinds out the goods and tastes like the city we claim to be, hearty and good.

One of the best things to do here is to just overhear stuff—not eavesdrop—but overhear the great thoughts of people on break from work...airing out things they don’t say around their bosses.

Things like this:

“You can’t get it with too much peppers—you don’t want the sang’wich you’re eatin’...to be eatin’ YOU.”

“If I had a face like his...I’d paint my ass and walk on my hands.” “Oh yeah, he’s got a face for radio.”

I love hearing the curbside philosophies and stories, the hard- earned bits of knowledge that come from punching a clock and grinding it out forty hours at a time and wondering what the hell it is all for—the American horse sense of the people who built this city. This is the school nobody ever tells you about: the native intelligence that comes from being a citizen, the act of faith that working people carry out every day that keeps this city lurching along.

One time when I was there, years ago, I heard this gem: “My boss laid it out for me like I was a fuckin’ twelve-year-old. He says, ‘It don’t have a goddamn thing to do with luck, pal...it’s got everything to do with chance.'”

Which, for some reason, makes more sense to me every day that I live.