A Different Kind Of Spooky for Halloween Weekend

Got a late start on the blog today, but for good reason.  My wife's brother was flying across country on the redeye from San Francisco to Boston, and had a three hour layover in Chicago.  That's close enough for us to come down and steal a rare visit with him, so at 3:00 this morning, we all piled into the car and drove the 80 miles or so to O'Hare, arriving there at 5:00 AM.

There is something almost reverent about being on the road at that hour of the morning, flying down a nearly deserted four-lane highway in the dark through the third largest city in the country.  The other traffic was almost entirely big rigs carting clothes, toys, vegetables, household appliances, and all the other things we simply assume just appear on the well-stocked shelves of all the stores we go into every day.  Most of the vast population of the city sleeps at that hour; driving through it without the usual gridlock feels like you are tiptoeing quietly past a sleeping lion, able to appreciate its silent fierce beauty.

Chicago O'Hare Hilton at Sunrise

We successfully met up with the brother, had a splendid visit, and saw him off to the correct security checkpoint in the right terminal at O'Hare.  Then we walked out into the breaking dawn, and were met with another sight of mixed beauty and suggested fierceness – the O'Hare Hilton.  (See picture at left).

Did that seem a little dramatic?  The O'Hare Hilton always will strike me that way, ever since it gained notoriety as the place O.J. Simpson flew to immediately after leaving Los Angeles the night his wife was brutally murdered.  It means something more once you've lived in Los Angeles for any length of time, and seen the changes that took place in the Brentwood neighborhood after that tragedy, and the rapt, panting attention the nation paid to the legal proceedings which followed.  When I see the curving roof of the hotel against a Chicago sky filled with approaching planes, I always wonder what it must have been like for O.J. to sit on that four-hour flight, landing in so different a place than Los Angeles, perhaps knowing what had come so recently before.  And then of course, to be detained by law enforcement officials, put right back on a plane, and flying four-hours back to Los Angeles.

Can't help it.  That's just what the O'Hare Hilton will always trigger in me.

The rest of the day was gorgeous, a day of rest spent with my family having a great time on a beautiful, sunny Fall day, unable to imagine my life without them.  Life is something, isn't it?  Have a terrific Halloween weekend!  Read something today that scares the pants off of you!    Thanks for reading.  -Jon