Voting, Polish sausage sandwiches, and my very American day

The melting pot of American cuisine in Chicago is a reminder that every American has an ancestor who was an immigrant.

|
Blue Kitchen
A Polish sausage and fries make the perfect American lunch from Jim's Original in Chicago.

Tuesday was the Illinois primary. Our polling place is in our neighborhood public school, which is predominantly Latino. School was starting as I cast my ballot, and over the PA system, two kindergartners from the bilingual program led the school in singing the national anthem. Then the assistant principal, Mrs. Trinidad Lopez, read the morning announcements. Friday is Pajama Day at this public school. Monday, the classroom with the best attendance for this week will be announced. I always feel very American when I vote. This time, I felt especially so.

I had another particularly American moment at lunch. The ad agency I work for is doing some projects for a pro bono client, the Maxwell Street Foundation, and before taking a walking tour of the Maxwell Street neighborhood, some of us grabbed lunch at Jim’s Original. Lunch for me was the Polish sausage, simply called a "Polish," and fries you see above. The Polish had a satisfying snap and the fries were deliciously salty and tender/crisp. Together, they set me back $4.50. The soda added another buck.

Jim’s Original is “the original Polish sausage stand from Maxwell Street.” It has a bank of walk-up windows and a long stainless steel counter along its exterior cinder block wall. There is no inside seating. My colleagues and I ate our lunch at the counter, facing the cinder block wall, with I-94 roaring behind us. It was sublime.

Jim’s Original began in 1939, in the heart of the then bustling Maxwell Street Market, when a Macedonian immigrant took over his aunt and uncle’s hot dog stand. The Maxwell Street neighborhood had already been a major gateway for immigrants for nearly a hundred years at that point, starting with the Irish who were brought to Chicago to build the railroads. Over the decades, Greeks, Bohemians, Russians, Germans, Italians, African-Americans and Mexicans followed.

Immigration has always been a hot button topic in America. And the rhetoric has only gotten hotter in the current election cycle. What too many of us seem to conveniently forget is that, unless you’re a native American, you are only here because you or some ancestor was an immigrant. For that matter, even native Americans originally came from somewhere else.

I’m not looking to start a big political discussion here. I’m just really glad this is the America I live in here in Chicago. Where you hear a host of languages on the subway. Where not everyone looks the same. Where my ballot this morning had Irish, Polish, Latino and African-American names. And where, 24/7, you can sink your teeth into possibly the best Polish anywhere.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Voting, Polish sausage sandwiches, and my very American day
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Food/Stir-It-Up/2016/0318/Voting-Polish-sausage-sandwiches-and-my-very-American-day
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe