Let’s do a word association test. I’ll say a word, then you say the first thing that pops into your head, OK?
Now don’t hold back.
Here goes: CICERO.
So what was your response-Al Capone? Gangsters? Betty Loren-Maltese? Corruption? Factories? Smokestacks? Intolerance? Bars that never close? Racetracks and gambling? B-girls and hookers and gangs-oh, my!
You get my point. Few of us have an open mind about the cousin community on our southeast border.
Almost from the beginning, Oak Park distanced itself from Cicero. In the early days when we were a temperance-oriented village of New England-born WASPS, Cicero was a Catholic immigrant industrial boomtown with a saloon on every corner. Its mere proximity drove our pious, founding “DOOPers” crazy.
From the get-go, Cicero suffered from an image problem, though perhaps some of its notoriety was well earned. But the community’s hard-working, frugal, family-oriented residents long struggled to live down its reputation as a criminal, race-hating town. The media never missed an opportunity to take cheap shots at the industrial-based town, portraying Ciceronians as backward, prejudiced, and corrupt.
When my editor at Arcadia Publications approached me about doing a photo history book on Cicero, I had misgivings. I’ve enjoyed covering three other towns for Arcadia’s “Images of America” series, but I had doubts about Cicero. I was certain it could be a fascinating project, yet the mere idea of spending several months over there digging around and interviewing residents made me hesitate. Clearly, I too had been brainwashed by all the bad press and years of negativity. Cicero made me cautious.
Joined at the township
Let’s back up a bit. Until the dawn of the 20th century, Oak Park was actually part of Cicero Township. Oak Parkers don’t usually wax nostalgic about this remote chapter of local history. But there are still banners along some thoroughfares over there that celebrate Cicero as “The Birthplace of Ernest Hemingway.” (Technically they’re correct, but Ernie never lived in the town, just the township.) The banners were the brainstorm of a stand-up comedian who also worked as Cicero’s PR spokesman under the infamous, aforementioned Betty Loren-Maltese.
Historically, there was never anything pretentious or trendy about Cicero. Its working-class residents tended to plant themselves and their growing families, often staying for generations. No other Chicago suburb was as heavily Roman Catholic or as solidly populated with immigrants. With the town’s early emphasis on manufacturing, it was easy for adjacent, more affluent communities like Oak Park to look down their noses at Cicero. Even Berwyn quickly identified itself as the “City of Homes,” distancing itself from its heavily industrial next-door neighbor.
But I was bitten by the challenge. I told my editor yes, I’ll do the book. I knew upfront it would be impossible for one slim volume to capture such a multi-faceted town. Yet I signed the contract, stressing that this would not be just another sentimental journey. I wanted to tell the story of Cicero without sidestepping its historical “warts.” After all, I always say, an accurate documentation of the past can illuminate our future.
The one rub was that I had less than three months-only about 80 days-to complete the project.
Almost immediately the Cicero Life newspaper ran a front-page feature on me and the project. Though it could have been an unwise decision, I told them to include my phone number and e-mail address in the piece, so anyone who had good stories to share, historical materials or old photos to loan, could easily get in touch with me.
The next few weeks my phone never stopped ringing. I was constantly going out on “house calls” to visit old-time Ciceronians, and to meet many of the newcomers, too. It was incredible. People seemed to come out of the woodwork, and, to a person, everyone was candid and co-operative. This project has been a most uplifting and gratifying experience. I discovered a whole new world so close to home yet initially quite alien to me. There I met scores of funny, generous folks who went out of their way to share and reflect. Maybe it was my blue-collar roots showing through, but almost as soon as I met them, I’d feel like I’d known these people for a long time.
Don’t badmouth Betty
Yet everyone had a warning: “Don’t you say anything bad about our girl,” lots of old-timers would say, shaking an index finger in my direction. I knew to whom they referred. In many of the homes and apartments, there were framed, signed photos of former town president Betty Loren-Maltese, prominently displayed on top of their TV sets. Several people showed me letters and cards they’d gotten from Betty in the “Big House.”
“If you have to trash someone,” one lady suggested, “go after [Chicago TV reporter] Carol Marin. She was so mean to Betty.”
“Betty Loren-Maltese did a lot of good things for Cicero,” another senior insisted later that same morning. “She just got in with the wrong crowd.”
Got in with the wrong crowd? They made it sound like she was an eighth grader who’d been caught smoking in the lavatory. Betty went to federal prison as a result of her corruption and racketeering convictions. It’s not like she swiped a stapler and a pack of Post-Its from the office. She was convicted of embezzling $12 million.
Many of my interviews with Cicero residents were delightfully wacky and usually enlightening. The town is now predominantly Latino, so the old white ethnics who remain are either highly adaptable, or they’ve resolved to be happy in their role as part of the minority.
“The Mexicans are warm and friendly people, and they don’t bother me none,” one 80-something woman told me as we sat in her kitchen looking through old photo albums. “They work hard and have strong families. Some of my friends gripe they don’t hear English spoken in the stores any more, but they forget it was like that here when we were kids-only with people speaking Bohemian and Polish. The Mexicans aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. So you might as well get along.”
The older people I visited in Cicero were charming but tough and outspoken, too. I loved it when they’d mock their tendency to “live in the basement,” doing everything from cooking to playing pinochle there. The “front room” upstairs tended to be a dust-free museum of unused brocade furniture protected by plastic slipcovers. Nobody I visited was ever sure just what event they were saving the room for.
Eight zones, solid Republican
Those ex-Ciceronians who’ve left town but return periodically to see family refer to these visits as “going back to the Old Country.” Cicero always had its own ways, frugal and hard working, yet wary of change and strangers.
“People sometimes think it’s funny that so many of us worked in factories yet the town was always solidly Republican,” a man who’d put in over 40 years at Western Electric told me. “See, every election the politicians would come around and warn us we’d better vote Republican ‘or the niggers will get in.’ People were so scared of racial change. Look at the West Side. The whites ran like hell because they were scared. Cicero knew that could happen here.”
Primarily as a result of the simultaneous arrival of so many different European ethnic groups, the town had developed as a patchwork quilt of distinct districts. Cicero was made up of eight zones, each with its own identity: Boulevard Manor, Clyde, Drexel, Grant Works, Hawthorne, Morton Park, Parkholme, and Warren Park. These separate neighborhoods began as virtual villages-self-contained ethnic enclaves-with their own churches and business districts. A narrow wooden sidewalk led across the prairie from “town” to “town.” Before widespread automobile ownership, residents in these autonomous sections were largely confined to interacting with one another.
Though the community was long chock full of foreign-born residents, Cicero was never a “melting pot” of ethnic integration. A life-long Cicero senior in his 80s recalled: “A ‘mixed couple’ when I was coming up was when a Polish girl from Hawthorne might be dating an Italian boy from Grant Works. Yes, they were both Roman Catholics, but they came from different worlds. There’d be hell to pay for the both of them. That’s just the way it was.”
From its earliest settlement, Cicero was a unique place. Located just seven miles from downtown Chicago, the suburb nearest to the Loop will celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2007.
