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cents. Their First Ward Balls were described by the Illinois Crime Survey as the "annual underworld orgy." Hinky Dink didn't care. "Chicago." he said, "ain't no sissy town."
    But at the time Uncle Louis was being impressed by the balls of the First Ward, my father was long gone. In 1893, during the Columbian Exhibition- Chicago's first world's fair- business at Anna Heller's had boomed, and extra girls were taken on, and Anna's iron hand had taken its toll: on the girls and on my father. The syphilis was probably starting to eat Anna's brain and possibly explained her erratic behavior. When my father exploded at her, his silent contempt finally erupting after his aunt slapped a young woman senseless, she came at him with a kitchen knife. The scar on his shoulder was five inches long. Pa stayed around long enough for the doctor Anna had on call to come sew up the wound, then hopped a freight south.
    He got thrown off the train near 115th Street. The Pullman plant nearby was where he ended up working; a year later he found himself in the midst of a strike, and was one of the militant strikers who got laid off when the strike finally ended.
    And so began Pa's union work: with the Hebrew Worker's Congress on the near West Side; with the Wobblies on the near North Side; as a union organizer; a worker at various plants, and involved with union actions and strikes…
    Uncle Louis took a different path. By now he was a trust officer with
the
major Chicago bank, Central Trust Company of Illinois, the famous "Dawes Bank," founded by General Charles Gates Dawes, who went on to be Calvin Coolidge's vice-president. Aunt Anna died in an insane asylum the year Louis graduated from Northwestern, so he was able to start out with a degree- and an inheritance, which is to say the money off the sale of the brothel and its hookers- and leave his sordid past behind him.
    So the occasional meetings thereafter between my father and uncle were strained, to say the least- a polished young financier on his way up. and a radical worker into union organizing- and usually ended with my father shouting slogans and my uncle remaining quiet, expressing his contempt by not condescending to reply, which is funny because that was my
father's
favorite tactic. My father, despite his union activities, was not a man prone to losing his temper; Iris rage he swallowed, like an unchewable piece of meat that couldn't be spit out because times were too hard. But at my uncle, he would shout; at my uncle, he would vent his rage. So by century's turn, the two men weren't speaking; it made for no awkward moments: they didn't exactly travel in the same circles.
    Also, by century's turn, my father was in love. Having been denied the education Louis got, he'd taken to reading, even before his union interests led him into books on history and economy. Perhaps that was where my father's capacity for smugness and contempt came from: he had the insecurity-based arrogance of all self-educated men. At any rate, it was at a cultural study program at Newberry Library that he met another (if less arrogant) self-educated soul: Jeanette Nolan, a beautiful redheaded young woman who was a bit on the frail, sickly side. In fact, it was repeated bouts of illness keeping her out of school that led her into reading and self-study (I never found out exactly what her health problems were, though I've come to think it may have been her heart). But this only made her all the more appealing to Pa. After all, his two favorite authors were Dumas and Dickens (although he once admitted to me his disappointment when he discovered that the same Dumas wasn't responsible for both
Camille
and
The Three Musketeers;
he had gone through many a year wondering at the versatility of the author Alexandre
    Dumas, till he found out that
pere
and
fils
were different people).
    Not long after she and my father started to court, Pa landed in court, then in jail: his work with unions was repeatedly bringing him into