Chicago is the Mother City of the Mother Road, known for commerce, culture – and of course crime. "Just passed through Chicago," wrote Cherokee humorist Will Rogers. "The snow was so deep the crooks could only hit a tall man. To try and diminish crime, they laid off six hundred cops."

I learn a city’s character by its authors. In James Farrell’s Studs Lonigan, the city’s longing for the West is written: "Someday I’m going to bust loose of this city, and when I do…."

In the works of Carl Sandburg, one hears echoes of the original Potawatomi settlers – who named it "checagou" after the smell of wild garlic. In his poem about the Tower of Babel, Sandburg writes:

From the four corners of the earth,
from corners and lashed in wind
and bitten with rain and fire,
from places where the winds begin
and fogs are born with mist children,
tall men from tall rocky slopes came
and sleepy men from sleepy valleys,
their women tall, their women sleepy,
with bundles and belongings,
with little ones babbling, "Where to now?
What next?"

As for diversity, Route 66 contains multitudes, as Walt Whitman wrote. We’re tall and short and in-between; a blue-eyes, brown-eyed, grey-eyed, green-eyed, red-eyed nation. We are driving antique Packards and new Hyundai. Some of us push around a Mack truck, and others a tray of doughnuts. We are young enough never to have heard of Madonna, and old enough to remember riding in horse-carts to market. We have seen a million TV programs and read a million books. We are the "vast, unwashed mass" that Thomas Jefferson both evoked and feared. We are the fashion capitals of Los Angeles and Chicago.