Grandfather preserves his bedtime stories in a memoir

Jack McGuire of Wheaton reveled in telling bedtime stories about his formative years during the Great Depression to his two sons and later to his three grandchildren.

“I like telling stories and I have great memories of the years I spent in the Grand Crossing neighborhood on the south side of Chicago so I wanted to write a book for my nephews and the rest of the family, as well as for the general public,” McGuire explained.

“My sons were always fascinated by how different their lives were from mine and I thought that others would also be interested in how much life has changed in Chicago since the 1930s,” he continued.

It took 10 years of research and writing, but McGuire recently published his book, “Grand Crossing: Coming of Age on Chicago's South Side during the Great Depression,' through Dog Ear Publishing of Indianapolis.

McGuire is best known these days as a successful travel writer who visited 83 countries, published more than 2,000 articles and was creator/host of Chicago radio's long-running Travel Briefs.

However, he launched his award-winning journalism/broadcast career as the radio/TV beat reporter for the Chicago bureau of Variety, the show biz journal. In addition, as a press agent, McGuire handled Rush Street nightclubs and entertainers including Elvis Presley, Jonathan Winters, Johnny Mathis and many others.

Later, his public relations firm represented clients such as ABC Radio, Brinks Inc. and 3M Company and he became president of the Publicity Club of Chicago. McGuire was also the founder of 20 North Productions and was the announcer/producer of Make Believe Bandstand, re-creating “live” remote radio broadcasts of his beloved 1940s Big Band music.

Interestingly, McGuire did not choose to write about his very successful career. Instead, he chose to write about his childhood and his relationships with a loving mother, patriarchal father, four siblings, the Catholic Church and his neighborhood chums. And he couched the “telling” as a story told to his fellow soldiers in England one Thanksgiving during World War II.

McGuire's colorful storytelling is written in the vernacular of the Depression and often dips into the prejudices of the 1930s. But, he pointed out, there is no way to accurately tell the story of inner-city Depression-era Chicago without inclusion of those prejudices and conflicts that shaped the time.

He charmingly recounts everyday life along the streets and back alleys of his childhood neighborhood as he struggles to find his way … and his voice … in the bustling McGuire household dominated by a hard-drinking, volatile Irish-American cop-dad, Chicago Police Detective Martin “Mugsy” McGuire.

Through the pages of his memoir, McGuire allows readers to tag along with young Jack and his cohorts through the mischievous misadventures that color their lives. Many of their exploits would bring police charges and minor jail time if committed today, McGuire admitted.

“Kids were different then and so was the world. My wife, Jill, who is also my editor, wouldn't even allow me to include all of my stories because she was afraid that people would think badly of me. But in those days, we made our own fun and got our spending money in some interesting ways. But we were never destructive,” he said.

For instance, he and his friends once climbed onto a moving train to swipe coal from the rail cars. They then sold it for a small profit to people in the neighborhood who needed it to heat their homes. Similarly, they climbed apple trees in a neighbor's yard, harvesting the apples and then selling them on the street corner until they were caught by a policeman who admonished them not to take work from unemployed men who needed to sell apples to feed their families.

“It was a terrible time, but we honestly didn't know that then. We were just kids and we didn't realize the pressures our parents were experiencing. My father, being a policeman, often didn't get paid. Instead, the city gave him 'chits' which we could exchange for groceries at the local store. The same was true of firemen and teachers,” McGuire recalled.

Living through the Depression had a big influence on his subsequent life, he acknowledged. “We barely made it through the week sometimes so I have always remembered those lessons. I am still frugal with my money.”

“Grand Crossing” also tells the story of McGuire's hard-drinking, pony-betting father who patronized loan sharks and hung out at the local saloon most evenings with his fellow Irish, German, Swedish and Italian immigrants, yet took Holy Communion on a daily basis.

“He thought that if he could convince me to become a priest, it would be his ticket to heaven. But I never did it and he finally reconciled himself to that,” McGuire stated.

And young Jack finally saw his father as more than a disciplinarian when his mentor/employer suggested that he look at the world through his father's eyes and his older brother shared stories of Detective McGuire's heroic actions during a gunbattle with a criminal.

McGuire, 89, revealed that he recently returned to his old neighborhood, seeing the house he grew up in and surveying the area he once knew so well.

“The church, grade school and police station had all been torn down. And everything looked so much smaller than I remembered. It is also one of Chicago's toughest, most crime-ridden neighborhoods,” he lamented.

“Looking back on those days of my early childhood, I know now that Grand Crossing was more than just a place. It was an impressionable young boy's rite of passage through the Depression years and beyond, leaving an indelible mark on the man he would become,” McGuire writes at the end of his book.

“How simple life was back then. How innocent. Or so it seemed. And how lasting the memories of the decent, neighborly world I once knew,” he concluded.

“Writing this book was really fun for me. I think that everyone should keep a journal and then write their story — even if they never publish it — so that their descendants years in the future can know them and their story,” McGuire stated.