Artwork by Michael DiMilo
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, follows the keeper as he recalls his days with the Chicago Tribune when Highland Park was one of the many locations he roamed for column writing material; and where relatives now live in the nearby community of Fox Lake; all of which is apropos of nothing except to make the point that nobody knows when or where gun craziness will erupt; and, given the country’s prevailing inane, frontier mind-set toward guns, nothing can be done about it.
In writing a long-ago summer Trib column, the keeper recalled the “bullet lady” of his youth who, at a country fair sideshow, caught a bullet in her teeth. That column, which is part of the keeper’s book—”The River is Us,” included the following:
“The bullet lady was in a big canvas tent, next to the twisted little man who sat in a small enclosure full of snakes. She wore a long, slinky dress that was missing a few sequins, and she stood behind a podium with a small piece of glass in front of her……….The explosion of the gun filled the tent like a storm, the glass shattered, and the lady in the slinky dress made a face and spit a bullet into a round metal pie plate which was then passed in front of the audience as proof of the feat.”
The awful gun absurdity prevails: the American culture IS the phony “bullet lady,” standing forever in a pool of real blood to flim-flam grieving survivors.
She was in Highland Park yesterday; tomorrow, who knows where!
