Guns in the Sky

In the early morning hours after Independence Day or just after the dawn of a new year, some Chicagoans empty their guns in the sky.  

If you’ve lived here long enough, it’s the basis for the rest of us, I.e. those who have not imported arms filed of their serial numbers or legal dynamite from Krazy Kaplans in Indiana, to play a game safely in our houses called “fireworks or gunshots”. 

If you are optimistic, you always tell yourself, that it’s probably fireworks.  

On January 1, 1902, however, at the corner of Madison and Halsted streets, the answer was gunshots.