At Duke’s Drive-In, a hut in a block-long parking lot at 81st and Harlem in Bridgeview, the regulars know that a “beef sweet, dry and fry” is a sandwich with sweet peppers, a little gravy, and a side of fries. A “beef hot and juicy” is the opposite. This is common to all Italian beef stands, says Bill Humphrey, a Chicago firefighter who manages the place for his mother-in-law (his father-in-law, Duke Ziegler, ran the place for 28 years before he died of a heart attack in 2003). But to John McNally, who began eating there as a child, the lingo of the beef stand was always a source of fascination. He devoted a chapter of his first novel, The Book of Ralph, to Duke’s, and returns on Saturday, May 28, to sign the just-released paperback. “It may be the first book signing at a place that sells Italian beef,” McNally says.
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McNally was a regular at Duke’s until he left for Illinois State University in 1983. Now 39, he teaches English at Wake Forest University, but as a high school student he wished he could work at the beef stand. “There was always this sense of envy that I had of the people who worked there,” he says. Yet he never applied for the job. “I felt like you had to have an in or something.” Humphrey doesn’t dispute that: “It’s almost all friends and family that are working here,” he says.
“Growing up around here, it’s impossible not to like that book,” Humphrey says. “I mean, the Sheridan Drive-In used to be right here at the corner, Haunted Trails is right next door to it, everything is so right here in this area. You almost feel like you know the kids in the book, ’cause everybody knows the dirtball they went to school with.” Hank and Ralph’s main drag is Harlem Avenue around 79th Street, where McNally grew up in a succession of apartments (“It seemed like we moved every year”) with his older brother; his father, a roofer; and his mother, a factory worker until health problems put her on disability.
As a result of all this activity, “we were on the cover of J.C. Whitney’s auto parts magazine, we were on the cover of Hot Rod and Car Craft,” he says. McNally, a decade younger than Humphrey and his pals, watched the scene with amazement. “It was great,” he says. “They took up the entire parking lot, and up and down some of the streets.” The closest he came to having a hot rod of his own was a ’69 Chevelle that started out blue but ended up a two-toned blue and red after an accident. “It would have been a cool car, except it was a four door,” he says. “The cool car was the two door.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Marty Perez, Lissa Gotwals.
