firery furnaces and easy wooden chairs

 One of my jobs as a janitor at Herrin Hospital was collecting the bags of trash from each floor and hauling them out to the incinerator and tossing them into its flaming gaping maw.  There was some kind of rope or chain that you pulled down on which would lift a metal plate and the flames greedily licked out at you as you quickly shoved bag after bag into its hungry mouth and then you would lower the plate back in place feeling lucky because you still had both arms and all of your fingers.  It was not fun like the wire basket in the alley of my childhood home.

But it did get you out of the building which was always desirable (In the winter I prayed for snow so that I could go outside and shovel it.), and to express my joy I would roar out one of the poems I had been forced to memorize in college.  Turning and turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer, was a big favorite of mine.

The other janitors noticed and sought out an orderly who was a friend of mine and asked, What's with that guy?  And he would reply. Well, he's from Chicago, and they would nod their heads, and say Ohhhh, and that would take care of that.

That chair is not only a nice place to plunk your butt, it is also a work of fine craftsmanship. I look forward to hearing if it is also a pretty good ride.  Looks like it might be, but then it might be like that electric train that you finally get for Christmas after bugging your folks all year and then on the first day realizing that all it does is go around and around in an oval.  Is the motion soothing or does it become annoying after a little while?

My dad had a big wooden swivel chair in the back room by the desk which held our important papers whatever they were.  When I returned to my childhood home after going broke in Texas it was still there and I was thinking that it would be a nice thing to have in my apartment after my folks were gone.  It wasn't a big deal, but it was in my thoughts.  After my dad died and my mother gave up the house to live in that retirement home on Ashland Avenue on the north side, I was on one of my trips to the old hood, and there it was in the alley behind our house, just feet away from where I once burned the paper garbage in the wire basket.  

It looked so sad awaiting the garbage truck, and maybe I could rescue it, take it back to my apartment and give it a place of honor.  But I was a couple miles from the el station, and how would I get it into the train, and then it would be another mile after the train.  I left it in the alley.