Chicago [antikvár]

Did someone say second city? Surely they can't mean Chicago!Without Chicago, the city most Americans think of as "first" wouldn't have a skyline to brag about. It wouldn't have Dick Tracy to marvel at. Its citizens couldn't solve their problems by writing to "Dear Abby." They wouldn't have a Sears catalog to make their wishes come true. And where would they get the "New York cut" steaks?Where, indeed! The only thing that makes Chicago "second" is its size. But it hasn't stopped growing since the days when it was a stopping-off place on the way to China for adventurers seeking the Northwest Passage. And Chicago, remember, is still a youngster as the world's great cities go. It didn't officially become a city until 1837, the same year Victoria became England's Queen and certain cities on this side of the Atlantic were starting to talk about a thing called urban renewal.But Chicago is far from an afterthought among American cities. It was an important spot to the Indians who, for generations, used it as a portage point to get their canoes across from the Illinois River to Lake Michigan. They called it "Chicagou" because of the huge number of wild onions that perfumed the air there.A French Jesuit missionary, Pere Marquette, and a French Canadian explorer, Louis Jolliet, were the first white men to have found the spot. They arrived there in December, 1674, in the midst of a winter storm the like of which makes today's Chicagoans proud of their flair for survival. Jolliet, displaying either a gift of prophecy or a flair for the obvious, wrote in his report to the Quebec Government that "It would only be necessary to make a canal by cutting through but halfaleagueofprairie to pass from the foot of the lake of the Illinois to the River St. Louis which falls into the Mississippi. The bark, when there, would sail to the Gulf of Mexico".Work on the canal didn't begin until 1836, when Chicago was already a booming town with so many immigrants there wasn't room enough for all of them to find a place to sleep. But they didn't seem to care, the town had its own brewery and eight taverns. And with work to be done on the canal, there was plenty to keep them busy during the day. It kept them busy for twelve years.By the time the canal opened, Chicago had its first railroad, a ten-mile line called the Galena and Chicago Union. And a man named Cyrus Hall McCormick had already turned out 1,500 machines that took the hard work out of harvesting wheat.His factory gave work to hundreds and put Chicago on the map as a center for manufacturing. The new canal put the city ahead of New Orleans as the country's fastest-growing port. And the city fathers were predicting that 100,000 people would call Chicago home in 100 years. In spite of their enthusiasm they underestimated the growth rate by more than three-and-a-half million! And in the thirty-odd years since that century mark was passed, the population had doubled again.Nothing is too fantastic to be believed in Chicago. Even today if a farmer's pretty young daughter wanders in off the prairie and meets up with a slick young fellow who twirls his moustache and says "I can get you into show business", she'd do well to listen. Long before Chicago had a canal and a bright future, an auction house had been converted into a theater they called the Rialto, and at least one of the saloons had a fine hall that was good enough for P.T. Barnum when he took his musical company there in 1840.Dixieland jazz music would still be restricted to New Orleans cemeteries if it hadn't been taken up the river to be refined with a little Chicago style. In fact, every jazz style has found new ideas in Chicago and every jazz musician worthy of the name keeps the tradition alive