To get ready for the Hustle Up the Hancock, which is this Sunday, I went downtown yesterday, and climbed a 54-story office building with a friend -- once all the way up, once up to 42. Altogether, I did 96 floors in about 25 minutes. It took him about 18 minutes (yeah, well, he's younger).
The metal fire stairs boomed with each step. There was nothing to do but math: calculate floors per second, the percentage of the journey completed, the percentage yet to be done; counting the stairs ...
On the ground floor, you hear the elevator mechanicals and the people's heels clacking on the lobby's marble floor. The middle floors are quiet. As you get within about six stories of the top, the ominous whine of the mechanical systems becomes a hysterical shriek.
On Sunday, I had done six repetitions of the 15-story building where my sister Martha lives, which is also the building I lived in during high school (and where my parents spend their summers). That was much more interesting, because every floor was a different cell in a honeycomb of lives. The building has two spacious apartments per floor and is right next to the University of Chicago campus. So during my high school years, it was teeming with Nobel laureates: Saul Bellow, S. Chandrasekhar (who was a discoverer of black holes), George Stigler and Milton Friedman all lived there at about the same time.
And this, in turn, reminded me of the greatest act of protest and defiance in which I ever participated. I confess, here, for the record, that, on a warm Spring night, with no prospects for female companionship at hand and trouble on our minds, a friend and I blew dope smoke under Milton Friedman's door.
That memory alone was worth 96 floors.
--T.A.
Are you sure this post belongs in "health"??
Posted by: amba | February 22, 2005 at 08:16 PM
Should I clarify and add "Mental Health" to the categories??
Posted by: david | February 22, 2005 at 08:58 PM
I just got winded walking from my refrigerator to my computer, I am beyond impressed that you are sprinting up the John Hancock--impressed and DEpressed since we are exactly the same age.
Love the Milton Friedman story. Quite a building! Did you go trick-or-treating in Saul Bellow's apartment?
You and your sister keep mentioning new siblings on your blogs--how many of you are there? What are you, the Jewish King Family?
Posted by: Danny | February 22, 2005 at 10:56 PM
I remember 6 siblings. Am I right?
Posted by: Tamar | February 23, 2005 at 06:17 AM
Danny: Sprinting, this ain't. It's sort of a trudge. Think of Burl Ives singing "Sixteen Tons" and you've got about the right pace. My goal (and a way to distract myself from the agony of having, say, 87 floors left) is to go for 10 floors every two minutes (slightly different from 5 floors a minute...?!). I'm really not looking forward to this.
Posted by: David | February 23, 2005 at 01:45 PM
I did wonder why suddenly Milton Friedman no longer lived there.
After a flooded basement in that same building, I moved our locker from the ground floor upward to the next level. It was unlocked, but there were a few papers belonging to Saul Bellow's son.
Sometime later I told Mr. Bellow that there was a box of his in my locker. He replied that he was pretty sure he had a locker.
We still have that locker, and like Friedman, Bellow no longer lives there.
Posted by: Ancient Mariner | February 23, 2005 at 02:59 PM