Best of Breslin: The Last Boss Goes Into the Ground - By Jimmy Breslin

[DonViejo]

The legendary reporter covers the end of an era in city politics.

CHICAGO — The mourning did not stop. At night the priest insisted we follow him from the street, into the rectory, and through a passageway that brought us out onto the altar of the Nativity of Our Lord Catholic Church.

Here, in the lights, was the body of Mayor Richard J. Daley. His people, crimson from the freezing air, filed past. The priest led us off the altar and into a front pew on the side of the church. Right away the family complained. One of Daley’s sons came over and spoke softly to the priest. They wanted us out. “I told you,” I whispered to the priest. At the end, in their trouble, the family had no room for strangers inspecting grief.

We got up and went out into the night. Heaters had been placed along the street to warm the people on line. There was a good contingent from the plumbers’ union. The boys had arrived by bus and had waited for some time on line, but now they looked with disdain on the orange flames licking from the tops of the heaters. The plumbers needed something warmer. A group of them broke from the line and went down the block to Dan Sheehan’s, a saloon on the corner behind the church.

The plumbers sat at a table surrounded by stacks of beer cases. On the wall was a color poster for the Super Bowl football game. The plumbers did not bother to take off their quilted zipper jackets while they drank whisky and beer chasers. It was late in the evening and none of them had eaten and they kept roaring over to the bartender that they wanted more whisky. One of the plumbers, a man with a gray crew cut who had hands big enough to connect sewer pipe, got mad at a guy in a blue ski jacket across the table from him. The guy in the ski jacket was slouched in the chair. When he stood up, he was much bigger than he was supposed to be. The two plumbers went into each other like billy goats. The sound of one of them slamming against a refrigerator brought the owner, Dan Sheehan, out from behind the bar. Sheehan, out of Boilermakers Union No. 1, knew exactly what to do.

He hit them with power, a strong hand on each chest, and also with sharpest reasoning.

“The language!” Sheehan said. “I got a priest from Ireland at the bar. How can you do this on a night like this?”

Yesterday morning, with the wake over and the funeral about to begin, the people of Chicago were gone and the ones called dignitaries came out of their limousines and up the steps of the church. Jimmy Carter, with the stinging breeze lifting his razor-cut hair. Nelson Rockefeller, showing the stains of age. George McGovern, unnoticed, and Edward Kennedy.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/23/best-of-breslin-the-last-boss-goes-into-the-ground.html

[Smarmie Doofus]

1. His stuff was always good. n/t