Why I Didn’t Want to Mention Meeting Ed Burke After My Felony Charge: The Chicago Way® Podcast:
By John Kass
November 9, 2023
When I was a stupid kid, I did a stupid thing and shamed my family, and especially my father.
I broke his heart.
I broke the law.
It might mean nothing to you, now. But it meant something to me. Americans scoff at suggestions that honor and shame are important. The modern American culture laughs at honor and shame.
But I was raised in a culture where honor and shame were critically important. These were what you lived by.
Oak Lawn police searched the car I was riding in to find boxes of whiskey and a quarter pound of pot. That was a felony beef, a charge of felony drug possession.
I mentioned it years later in a column for the paper I loved. I was by then a grown man with sons of my own. A few teen-age girls got into some minor trouble involving a girls-gone-wild controversy in Northbrook, rich kids, rich parents.
The column about the pot bust ran in 2003, titled “Teen stupidity brings a lesson never forgotten” I tried to find it online, but Google doesn’t have it. I did keep a copy, though.
It was about my father and the broken glass.
I didn’t want to mention it back then in 2003. But my father had passed, and by then. I was the City Hall writer for “the paper.” City Hall was all about conflict of interest and leverage and what I didn’t like was anyone having leverage on me.
So, I told the story. How about the cop smacking me in the face with a backhand–My parents didn’t mind that. And later, the officers sat me down, and told me something about government that I’ve never forgotten.
They said that a few phone calls to the IRS could make things difficult for my father. I was a kid and didn’t understand what they were talking about. I didn’t even know anything about shakedowns then. I played dumb because I was dumb.
I don’t think I mentioned the attempted shakedown while talking about Burke with Jeff Carlin on the Chicago Way Podcast.
And I don’t think I mentioned why I wrote that column in 2003. With my family begging me not to write it.
City Hall was a place of leverage. Every move meant possible attack from the shadows. That’s how it worked, for everyone, politicians, businessmen, even writers, especially if you came up in Chicago and knew people.
The first thing that I learned about Chicago politics was about leverage. Nobody threatened, or even hinted at such a thing. Burke certainly never did. He knew. I knew.
But I just couldn’t stand anyone holding even the slightest bit of leverage over me. Sunshine, as Justice Brandeis said, is the best disinfectant. Wisdom.
And so, I chose sunshine.
Perhaps I’ll find that old column and post it on some Father’s Day, assuming the Paper allows me “the rights” to my own story and my own name. We’ll see.
And what will happen to Ed Burke?
The story unfolds. Like I said in Wednesday’s column, he’s not a man who believes in fairy tales.
-30-
Comments 8
John Kass
‘Teen stupidity brings a lesson never forgotten
mer of the broken glass. We were
in a car behind the White Castle on 95th Street, across from a liquor store, fingering fake IDs.
Remember those warm evenings, when you were in high school and party-bound, a boy thinking you were a man, anticipating everything, the smell of a girl’s hair at the back of her neck, the buzz from the beer to come?
A buddy joined me to get the booze. The others waited in the car The pot was in the car too.
The liquor store geezer at the counter-he must have been almost 30 gave me a look, but I set down the vodka, beer and a bottle or two of wine that wasn’t merlot.
“Where’s your license?” he asked.
I pulled the fake one from my wallet, paid and walked out cocky, invincible, with the stuff in boxes, toward the car.
“Man, this is great,” said my buddy. Led Zeppelin’s “Misty Mountain Hop” was on the car radio. Man, I said, putting the stuff in the trunk. Man, let’s go party.
Two Oak Lawn police officers were be. hind us. Hours later, the parents showed up to bail us out at the police station. My dad showed up last, after working on his
FRIDAY
MAY 16, 2003
feet for 12 hours, breaking down cattle in
Then you talk to me. OK?”
the butcher shop, exhausted, only to be
He walked off.
shamed by his son.
The next day he came back to the patio
“Let’s go,” he said. That’s all he’d say to table, where I was sitting, tired, dull. I me, for weeks.
didn’t see him at first, but I remember his
One of the other boys had a family with connections. They knew a lawyer, young
heavy butcher’s hand touching my hair, my cheek.
Ald. Edward Burke (14th). He represented
Then we talked. Finally, we talked about
three of us boys in court. On court day, a line of lawyers waited to file their cases,
deceit, about consequence, obligation and shame. About drugs and alcohol, and how
but Burke cut in front of them all. They
they rob you of control.
didn’t complain, and I figured, even then, that he was somebody.
We sat there talking, and then there was another silence. But it wasn’t that terrible
“Hiya, Eddie!” chirped the judge. “How silence of before. are ya, Eddie, my boy?”
Burke waved hello. “Hiya, Judge.”
“I love you, boy,” he said.
I know, I said. I love you, Dad.
The two girls in the car had another law-
But I also knew that the glass had been
yer: But all of us, girls and boys, received a broken, and the only way to put it together lecture from the judge and court supervi was slowly, piece by piece, not by talking, sion on a misdemeanor charge.
but by doing. We did that, eventually, and
Outside the courtroom, other parents
I’m thankful for the lesson he taught about
gave lectures, including my mom. She was trust, about consequences. crying, as were the other moms. Burke got I bring this up because there has been into his Cadillac and drove off.
an awful lot said about the international
My father didn’t say a word.
In the weeks after the arrest, he’d pass
girls-gone-wild story_-the awful hazing
me in the hall or on the stairs, at the store
ritual involving Glenbrook North High
or in the kitchen, and say nothing.
School students, girls and boys. Some people talk as though they were never teenag.
I wanted him to belt me one across the ers themselves. mouth. He wouldn’t. I was there, but dis-appeared. There were no words or angry
But there was beer, and beatings, pig and fish guts and feces spread on some
looks in him for me. There was nothing.
kids, and videotape of it all has been
Finally he was sitting alone at the patio played on TV stations around the world. table out back, with a glass of ice water;
The school has suspended the hazers.
smoking. Talk to me, I said. Please, Dad, talk to me.
But some parents are filing lawsuits to overturn the suspensions. Now the princi-
He drank his water down, crushed some pal says he has heard rumors about an al-ice in his teeth, tossing the remaining ice into the grass.
ternative, unsanctioned prom, so the haz-
“You bought whiskey. You had pot. You
ers can dress up and party.
I don’t think the kids should be jailed for
want to talk?”
what they’ve done. And I’m sure that there
Yes, I said.
“OK,” he said. “First, do something for
are parents who aren’t whining about ju-risdiction, but are talking to their chil-
me.”
dren about shame.
What?
Yet I wonder what the other parents, the
“Take this glass.”
whining parents, are teaching their kids
I took it.
“Now, smash it in pieces. Then put it
by fighting the school, by allowing them to
back together; all the pieces together; so it
have a good time at the alternative prom.
Perhaps they don’t care if the glass was
looks brand-new, so it was never broken.
broken. Perhaps there is no glass.
My dad said to us (six kids over 15 years) that he would never bail us out of jail. I was probably in fifth grade but I believed him. I have always been a rule obeyer, assuming if I did anything illegal I would be caught. Catholic school effect I thought. But I went to a 60 plus year 8th grade reunion and heard what some of the boys did! One, a retired judge, told how they would take cars out of the local car dealership (they left keys in the cars!) and drive them around. They weren’t ever caught.
Excellent column.
I especially liked the connection to the Northbrook girls and the parents pushing privilege thus avoiding consequences and life lessons.
This was difficult to get through but worth the effort. The idea of shame is not widely accepted in today’s culture when it is sorely needed. Personal responsibility is also unpopular.
How true. Most kids/teenagers do something dumb in their youthfulness. The good parents/families make a learning moment out of it for their children, to raise & develop them to be successful in both their own lives and as part of the greater community.
Be thankful for being raised by good parents and in strong communities. I am.
We’ve all done things in our youth that we regret. Our parents telling us of their disappointment was worse than corporal punishment. My late mother was all about not bringing shame on the family. Even when my older sisters dabbed in things I was too young to understand, we were told not to let anyone outside our household know.
Now social media makes everything known to everyone. Either it’s used to mercilessly bully awkward teens, or it’s used to make thug behavior cool. There are no safe harbors for those needing one, and there is no family shame for those whose actions have gone far beyond silly things.
I miss the old days.
Great column as always, and I remember breaking my Dad’s heart a few times, but he still loved me, as I’m sure your Dad did. “Unconditional love” is like that.
I’ve always believed that sometimes the best lessons we get are from the most personally painful circumstances that we bring on ourselves. It’s been that way for me, anyway.
This is a profound and brave column, John. I was so stressed about not getting in trouble that the worst thing I did in high school was set my watch back from 9:10 to 9 pm, the time I was to get home from ice skating at Fox Park in Oak Park. My mother was NOT pleased. I often wonder what experiences I missed by being so frightened about breaking rules. I expect my college friends who did had more fun.