Today’s Creature from the Desk is again, technically speaking, from above my desk. It’s a plastic insert map of the Green Line from the Chicago Transit Authority’s rapid transit system. It actually snaps into a curved, backlit marquee above the door of each car and is a reference for the riders as to which stop is next, where to transfer, etc.
I’d like to say I was cool enough to have stolen it from an actual train, but I’m not—I would surely have gotten caught. Overriding that, however, was my preordained guilt over the poor woman who, in a panic, gets off the train at the wrong stop in the bad part of town—erroneous in her judgment because she has no map to reference—and is beset upon by railroad marauders who steal her purse and throw her from the platform to her death. Unable to bear such a thing, I bought the sign from the CTA online store a few years back, the $10 cost being far less a burden than my conscience.
When I look at it, I recall fondly walking to the Harlem/Lake stop from my house in Oak Park. I’d make up imaginary stories about the people on the train until I got to Clinton where I got off and hoofed it—or trudged or splashed, as the weather dictated—to the office where I worked; Magnani & Associates Advertising in the old cold storage building at 345 N. Canal—across the river from the bridge that’s always up.
Somedays I'm just a loquacious ramble.
