When I first entertained the idea of becoming  an academic (or rather it was foisted upon me) I also entered the beginning of the electronic text page. Don Mabry, Professor Emeritus of Mississippi State University, began by  establishing the Historical Text Archive   (HTA), was almost simultaneously followed by a group of historians who began H-HST and then followed by Lynn H Nelson, professor of emeritus at the University of Kansas who began MALIN. This was when the biggest challenge was  getting people to understand this new technical language that seemed to pour out anew each day: 'Telnet? What's a telly net?"   This was followed quickly by those poo-pooing the idea that no one would read a text they could not hold in their hands. No Siree, books were safe and newspapers irrevocably bound to their concreteness. These nodes of technical scholars, if you will,  of historians were at the forefront of finding and preserving pieces of history that often disappear.  And as interesting as this is to me and to some of the others here, you can read about it at the Historical Text Archive.  It was with a sense of honor and deep privilege that I was among the first to have her dissertation printed online as an E-book.  Try and get your tenure committee to get their heads around that!

 For the purposes of  this piece in Open Salon, however,  I'd like to share with you the wonderful stories of growing up in South Side Chicago written by history professor, Dr. Lynn H (Harry) Nelson.  I have so enjoyed the stories writers on Open Salon share that I thought it would be a shame if the OS community didn't know about this valuable asset and an amazing story teller, Lynn Nelson. I hope he knows how much reading his stories as they filtered over this very new technology sustained me during those long and hard years in Grad School.

  Part of what I love about OS is the stories people write about their families and hope this newer technology is even a better way to preserve them.   I thank Don Mabry who himself is an amazing historian and supporter of young/new scholars  for persmission to print the opening paragraph of the story: Chcago: Tobacco but you'll have to go out to the HTA  website to read all of it as well as other stories by Lynn. He is a gracious man who's kindness to a very new kid on the block meant more than he probably realized.

Enjoy!

http://historicaltextarchive.com/print.php?action=section&artid=729

Chicago Stories: Tobacco

The doors of John Fiske Elementary School, 61st and Ingleside, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois were four in number, forming two pairs of heavy oak slabs, blackened as were most other doors in a city heated and run mainly by coal and for which the term "natural gas" had a vaguely risque ring to it, being supposed by many to refer a disordered digestion. Each day at exactly 8:00, these doors were swung open and somehow or another locked in place by two large men who were popularly believed by the entire neighborhood to have obtained their door-opening sinecure through some vague relationship with a much-admired Chicago businessman named Mr. Capone. This supposition was based upon the fact that they were white and were not seen around the school after their morning task. Moreover, since it was well-known that Mr. Capone and his associates were involved in the welfare of every establishment in South Chicago, there seemed no reason to believe that John Fiske Elementary School was somehow exempt. Even now I am not sure that this was not in fact the case.

I understand that the reputation of Mr. Capone has come under something of cloud recently, but in the place and time of which I speak, one would have had to look far, perhaps as far as Lawndale Cemetery, where so many good Democratic voters resided, or the Calumet City Sanitation Canal, to have found someone who did not have a good word to say for him. Indeed, my friends and I were great admirers, being, in a fashion and quite irregularly, on the Capone payroll.

At the corner of 63rd and Cottage Grove Avenue was a cigar store, a kind of establishment that, to the best of my experience, no longer exists. Along one long wall was a polished glass and teak counter, and, behind it, floor to high ceiling teak shelves with hundred of boxes of cigars from all over the world kept safe behind polished glass sliding doors. At the front of the aisle, near the cashier's chair, there were forty-two porcelain jars (I counted them many times and memorized their names) of various kinds of tobacco that were blended in the shop to each customer's special taste. Well-dressed gentlemen would frequently come in and say softly to the cashier, "Two hundred to my home," and leave. I eventually discovered that these gentlemen were placing orders for cigarettes to be made up for them and delivered. The store never admitted to selling cigarettes. Whoever it was that owned the establishment felt that cigarettes were unsightly, evil-smelling, and effeminate, so the cashier said, but believed that one served one's clients, no matter how depraved their tastes.