6 february 2019 | rd.com
Reader’s Digest
from top: kamil krzaczynski/epa/shutterstock (chicago). mike mcgregorDEAR READER
B
y the time I first visited Chicago,
at 18, I already knew I would
love it.
I was raised in Northern California,
which, despite all the Olympic swim-
mers it bred, was not exactly a place
of broad shoulders. Chicago’s tough
counterimage lured me right in.
A favorite song was Lou Rawls’s nov-
elistic “Dead End Street.” “They call it
the Windy City,” Rawls recounted, a
blues bass dramatizing his memories
of winter. “Because of the Hawk ... the
almighty Hawk, Mr. Wind.”
By fate, my best friend at college
was a Chicagoan, so I began visiting
often. That Hawk was something, all
right. I can still recall the knife-edged
terror as John and I braved 20-below
windchill before ducking into one of
the city’s warm bars.
Then I fell for a beautiful girl,
and she was from Chicago too.
On our eventual wedding day—
held in February, the Hawk’s big
month—snow blew so hard we
barely survived the celebratory
buggy ride to our hotel.
So ask me why Chicago
is called the Windy City,
and my answer is as
deep in my bones as theBruce Kelley,
editor-in-chiefBlown Away!
infernal shriek under the windowsill
of our daughter’s apartment. (Yes,
she ended up in Chicago too.) It’s the
howling wind, dummy. Except it isn’t.
Sharing little-known facts is very
much at the heart of RD, but I have to
say our cover story, “Fact or Fiction?”
takes that mandate to new levels. It’s
irrefutable that Christ was born on
Christmas, Eskimos have the most
words for snow, and ostriches bury
their heads in the sand. But not ac-
cording to our crack fact finders.
Enjoy the shocks, starting on
page 58. And console me as I break
it to those I love most that we’ve
had the wrong idea about the city
that brought us together.
Talk about you don’t know what
you don’t know.Write to me at
[email protected].