Crazy Crap Item #167: The part where I discuss local Chicago ancestry

Last summer, our little neighborhood of 1500 W. Norwood suffered a lost. Long-time resident Bernadine passed away.

Bernadine was a beloved fixture on the block. When I think Bernadine, I think "dame." The kind of stylish, 1950's-style urbanite who might be seen just upstage of Katherine Hepburn in The Desk Set. When the ladies and I would gather at the benches during the summer, Bernadine would make frequent, brief appearances, always dressed to the nines in matching pantsuit ensembles with coordinating scarves tied with a tidy knot at the neck. Her hair and makeup were always impeccable.

Bernadine was feisty. She knew her own mind, and didn't sugarcoat a thing. "No, there's nothing afterwards," she'd say, with certainty, of death. Tart, I would call her. Wry.

She loved the kids on the block, calling them sweetheart and darling. She was an especial favorite of Sam, son of Ruth and Kevin, and the O'Connor triplets (now incomprehensibly fled to Milwaukee).

She was also the sworn enemy of Delores. None of us ever learned the source of this enduring enmity -- perhaps some borrowed folding chairs, never returned, or one too many requests for a cup of sugar. Me, I suspect there was no single trigger; rather, a deep and abiding difference in style, temperament, and philosophy of life. Like Bonaparte and Wellington, they were.

What I always respected about Bernadine was her absolute commitment to living as she liked. She was regularly teased about her "boyfriend," a local fellow who would squire her out to dinner, after which she would rib him about eyeing the waitresses. She was always ready to share an opinion about restaurants she'd recently visited, and, if not dining out, had a regular report of what she'd planned for her evening meal.

She occasionally spoke of her husband, who died of leukemia years before. He went into the hospital, she said, and never came out.

When she passed away, after several months of illness and hospital stays, she was deeply mourned. Her memorial had a large turn-out, with many Norwood families in attendance. Ruth gave a heartfelt eulogy, in which she recalled how Bernadine had taught Sam the pleasure of "drinking the little half-and-half containers" at the restaurants they visited on their regular dinners out.

Bernadine's memorial was an eye-opener. Her family had laid out tons and tons of family photos on tables. There was Bernadine, in the fashionable '50s, coifed and cutting-edge. She was a model, we learned, and it made all the sense in the world.

I found myself thinking of Bernadine this morning, as I was perusing my copy of City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America. After Bernadine's passing, her family held an estate sale. We were all invited to look in. I did, not expecting to actually buy anything. As is well known, I'm tight with the purse.

But, as it turns out, Bernadine had amassed a fascinating collection of books about Chicago. I snapped them all up, including City of the Century. I recalled that Bernadine's son-in-law, when he got up to speak at her memorial, described her great pride in her family's old-school Chicago roots. He mentioned her maiden name, Beaubien, and noted that her family stretched back to some of the city's first founders.

So it was this morning that Bernadine came back into my life. I cracked open City of the Century, and some 50 pages in lit upon Mark and Jean Baptiste Beaubien. Mark is described as "a devil-may-care Creole from the Detroit area." With the help of Jean Baptiste, he opened a tavern called "The Sauganash." To quote City of the Century:

"Visitors from the more civilized parts were shocked to see Indian braves spinning the white wives of fort officers around the dance floor of the Sauganash to the frenzied fiddling and toe tapping of Mark Beaubien, or Indian and white women drinking home-distilled liquor straight from the bottle..."

Sounds remarkably like a 1500 Norwood block party. No wonder Bernadine loved living here.