Chicago

The stinging cold revives me as the door bursts open wide, To the blist’ry rustling wind of winter’s cold, As I leave the halls of Midway, I can take a humble pride, In this town’s unyielding grip and warming hold, But for strangers it is diff’rent, and the truth it must be told, For they only see the filthy and the gritty, And they miss the beauty that defines the city named Chicago, And the charm that’s come to form the Windy City. The smell of warm exhaust excites a fever in my soul, And the blast of car horns echoes though my heart, For the ling’ring haze of smog will fill my soul’s unquenching hole, For this town I can not stand to be apart, In this crossroads of our nation, where the trains all seem to start, And the politicians rule corrupt committees, I can not but help to marvel at this Paris on the Prarie, And the place I love that’s called the Windy City. The dark and seedy backdrop of the projects of the south side Make you wish you hadn’t traveled here alone, In a place where drugs and violence still instill a sense of pride, In a town that can romanticize Capone, But this grit can still be charming, and the fear of the unknown, In a place where gangsters show no ounce of pity, It’s just another aspect of the City of Big Shoulders, And the magic that has made the Windy City. The dark and dismal shadow of a steel mill that is closed, And the all familiar sight of windows boarded, Reflect the fate of many in this city decomposed, Though their agony is largely unrecorded, ‘Cause the decades here of honest work, their labor’s not rewarded, In this neighborhood that used to be so pretty, But grief will flow regardless down the Little Calumet, Through the misery that haunts the Windy City. But beauty always rests, in the eye of the beholder, And I know my city’s had a tearful past, But I see the fire of agony has started now to smolder, And these days of dreaded sorrow will not last, The potential for the future and the dream is unsurpassed, If you just look past the dirty and the gritty, For the place that Frank Sinatra sometimes called, “My Kind of Town,” In that Toddling Town I love, the Windy City.