For some
reason, I have lights on my mind this morning.
Lighting has changed quite a bit since the
Winnie the Pooh night-light that sat on my childhood dresser, keeping the fog
monster away at night. Back then, every living room seemed to have one of those
tall floor lamps with an ashtray built into it. The fancier models had
cigarette lighters added on. Nobody had to leave the recliner or interrupt
Walter Cronkite to fire up another Winston.
Years later, we all wanted the Italian leg
lamp that arrived in the enormous wooden crate marked FRAGILE.
It was ridiculous, gaudy and magnificent.
But these are not the lights I am
thinking about this morning.
I am thinking about streetlights and
headlights. The lights that guide us through the darkness. The lights that once
illuminated the road without trying to put on a goddamn Las Vegas show.
Chicago used to announce itself before you
ever saw the skyline at night.
On a cloudy winter night, the sky would turn
orange miles before the buildings appeared. You could be driving north on I-57
from Kankakee or crawling along the Dan Ryan or looking east from some western
suburb, and that soft orange glow told you the city was waiting.
You didn’t need a GPS to tell you that you
were getting close and Chicago was just ahead.
The orange sky was not beautiful in the
traditional sense. It wasn’t a sunrise over Lake Michigan or Christmas lights
along Michigan Avenue. It came from sodium streetlamps, busy factories, parking
lots, alleys, warehouses, and expressways.
It was probably wasteful and it certainly
hid the stars, but it was ours.
The old lights cast a dull amber glow over
everything beneath them. Snow falling through an alley light looked like
something from an old movie. Wet pavement shimmering beneath the “L.” Parking
lots glowed like campfires. Even the worst streets had a warmth to them. The
city looked tired, dirty and alive just like the intro on Hill Street Blues.
Today, much of that orange has been
replaced by the clean white glare of LED lighting. The new lights use less
electricity and they last longer. They need less maintenance and save the city
a shit ton of money.
All of that is good. Progress is progress,
and there is no point pretending the old way was always better simply because
it was old, but efficiency and beauty are not the same thing.
The new lights may illuminate more pavement,
but they do not provide the same comfort. Chicago changed colors while we were
busy growing older. The orange haze disappeared so gradually that most of us
never noticed until somebody showed us the before-and-after pictures from
Elon’s satellite.
Then it hit us. The city of our youth no
longer looked the same from the heavens.
I notice another change while driving at
night. Modern headlights seem brighter and more piercing to my older eyes.
Maybe my eyes are part of the problem. They have been staring into the dark for
sixty years, but it is not just age.
When I was a kid, my Oldman once received a ticket
because one of his headlights was off-kilter and pointing slightly upward. The
police considered it dangerous because the beam might shine into the eyes of an
oncoming driver.
Today, nearly every new car seems to throw
its lights directly through your windshield and into the back of your skull. We
have traded two simple round headlights for a full disco of LEDs wrapped around
bug-shaped automobiles.
The lights today squint, they wink or they
shimmer. They stretch across the front grille and crawl around the rear
fenders. Some of them flash when the driver turns the wheel, unlocks the doors
or thinks about changing lanes.
Headlights no longer merely light the
road. They make a flamboyant statement about the personality of the automobile.
Every new car looks pissed off.
Bring back the tailfins, steel bumpers and
round headlights that illuminated the pavement without trying to invoke road
rage. Cars once looked like cars. Their headlights helped you see where you
were going, and their taillights let the fellow behind you know when you were
stopping. They had style and told you if it was an Oldsmobile or a Plymouth
coming down the street. They didn’t try to perform a halftime show in your
rearview mirror.
I understand that we cannot go backward.
The sodium streetlights are not coming back. Neither are the steel bumpers,
cigarette-lighter floor lamps or the Winnie the Pooh night-light that guarded
my childhood bedroom.
That is how life works.
The practical things are replaced by more
practical things. The familiar is discarded for efficiency. One day, you look
around and realize the world has been modernized without asking whether you
were finished with the old one.
Maybe that is what I miss when I think about the
orange Chicago sky of my youth. I don’t just miss the color. I miss the people
who lived beneath it.
I miss my Oldman behind the wheel, even if
one headlight was pointing toward the moon. I miss the cars that had weight,
chrome and scars. I miss snow falling beneath the streetlamp on the corner and
the orange halo telling me I was almost home.
Okay Chalkheads, the streetlights are
popping on earlier and earlier this month. Have a glorious Humpday…
