chicago punch one and two
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About the Book
1965, a time of racial strife, fear and hatred in Chicago, all summed up in one word: Blockbusting. Real estate speculators (predators) would panic an all white residential block, spreading the rumor that the block had been broken, the blacks would be moving in overnight and their property would be worthless. In panic the whites, long-term tenants, would sell out cheap and get out fast.
Since the need for housing amongst the blacks was greater than the supply, the speculators could flip over the properties the next day at a high profit. Merciless, ruthless, greedy; victimizing both blacks and whites...They won.
Except Back of the Yards. The toughest most hard to break neighborhood in Chicago. Here Irish, Polish, Hillbilly stockyard workers earned their money in a workplace of violence. Men who fought back against harsh, hard work for cheap wages. ... Not easy to panic.
What if into this time and place the spirits of Jesus and Mary descended into one man and one woman, each in a torment beyond mortal or divine repair?
UGLY MARY is a young woman whose face was badly burned in a slum fire. Her scars are twisted deep beyond medical repair. It happened in one of her father’s buildings which she suspects he burned for the fire insurance. Now she manages a slum rooming house he owns for a free apartment and a small wage. She is in love with a strange man she has rescued from the streets.
CRAZY JESUS is a former Episcopalian priest, Arkansas small town, who pursued his principles of equality for all and any to enter his church, symbolized by his removing all locks from the door. Enraged, the local racists burned it to the ground with all his parishioners, wife and daughter locked inside. Bloody and burned, they drove to Chicago and as a joke tied him to the stockyard gate where UGLY MARY found and rescued him.
He is obsessed with the Book of Revelation and like Saint John believes he has witnessed Armageddon: the Pearl Harborization of Heaven and the triumph of hell. He is compelled to preach and teach the world his vision and warning. Only this firm belief allows him to cloud fact into denial.
His unending torment is his memory and guilt.
Her unending torment is her ugly face.
SILK-ON JOHN PARADISI is the largest landlord of the Chicago slums. He is using this building as a “Breaker” to break the block and then the entire neighborhood. He implores her cooperation. She agrees but warns him they won’t go down without a fight.
But BUTCHER KONICEK, one of the tenants, overhears their plans and tries to inform his brother TOYS, his helper BILLY and their father COLD POPS of the coming trouble. SILK-ON JOHN, tricked by BUTCHER into discovering that his daughter is living with a man, loses his temper and reveals to all that is “Breaking the Block.”
Because of this TOYS agrees to have a Scrap Iron party and seek revenge. Scrap Iron is a powerful drink that induces ferocious behavior and violent hallucinations. Under the influence each man reveals his torment, the very center of his life and they become united in their “plan” for revenge. All drink except BILLY who has his own plan for revenge against TOYS.
The party begins. They capture UGLY MARY, her father and CRAZY JESUS handcuff them to vertical bed frames in a scene resembling a modern crucifixion, then prepare to burn down the building. But the effect of the Scrap Iron destroys their physical strength as they also succumb to become victims of impending doom. In a final twist BILLY who has plotted against the now helpless TOYS, steals his roll of cash, his truck and all their possessions inside and drives away.
CRAZY JESUS in one act of painful mime, acce
About the Author
Robert Lesser is…several Robert Lessers. First, a playwright of twelve plays who believes in the insertion of dramatic poetry back into drama. The great Greek and Elizabethan dramatists used it. Why not now, again in hard, pulpy street language written to make the hair on the back of you neck stand up? Second, a humorist having written three novels of political and social satire who believes that the two feet comedy stands on are invention and exaggeration. Invented, funny and the original characters you’ve never met and never will (Dickens and Waugh) exaggerate to the point of absurdity…then laughter. Third, caught and tangled up tight in the spider web of collecting: the author of two popular books on Popular Culture and numerous articles. His collections have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Life? Very fast! Teenager into the Air force into the University of Chicago B.A., M.A. worked in their Institute for Nuclear Studies into the business world, made money, out of the business world, retired, writing full time… Along the way many lovely women were very kind to him. His life motto in Latin: NILS DESPERANDUM…NEVER DESPAIR.