Sweet Home Chicago

Robert Frost wrote: "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." My home is Chicago, Illinois, and I love my home.

I've bounced around this country a bit, but Chicago has always called me back . I've been from Liberty Island to Alcatraz, east to west. My wanders have led me from Detroit's Ambassador Bridge, on our north, to the Rio Grand on our southern border. I was always happy to return home to Chicago, but never so elated as when I returned from Clearwater, Florida. If I were the type of person to wish ill fortune on another human being, I would wish them Florida. If I were to be asked to describe what my definition of hell would be, I would describe Florida. My animosities, I must admit are of a personal nature, but a comparison between my home town, Chicago, and the city of Clearwater Florida, might better illustrate, if not justify, the contempt I feel for this peninsula of pathos.

I feel a sense of pity towards the poor misguided souls, such as I was, when I first moved to this jutting extension of America's groin. One dreams of basking on the sandy white beaches, and sipping pina coladas with a bikini clad woman. The thought of moving down here and spending the entire year, without so much as the thought of shoveling snow, overshadows the fact that you love the change of the seasons. The brilliant shades of autumns leaves, glistening under a harvest moon, are forgotten. The iron mountains of your city skyline, and winter walks along Lake Michigan, just memories. The realities of who you are and where your from, betrayed by the palm tree and pelican fantasy of a Floridian ruse. The slide whistle song of the cardinal,drowned out by the shrieks of egrets and herons, as they feast on the torso of what very well might have been your better judgment, tossed to the side for the price of a moments enchantment. Florida is a lie, a siren; a temptress,and a vixen; Florida is a whore!

Past the palm trees, away from the beach, and out of sunsets eye shot, the real Florida lay. With her makeup off, her golden wig in curlers, and her teeth in a jar, we see the truth. We see the white trash trailer parks built on sugar sand sink holes, inhabited by the local ambassadors of the tourist trade. Hustlers, dealers, pimps, and whores, working the night shift under the watchful eye of the local constabulary, who are making sure they get their share. In Florida they pick oranges in the day;

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