Ike was in the White House, and Lucy was on TV. The kids were dancing to Elvis, and the soldiers were, thankfully, not busy. It was a time of peace and prosperity.
In Chicago, the construction of Marina City was just getting under way, jazz greats Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane were making an LP at Universal Recording Studio and the White Sox were facing the Dodgers in the World Series.
You may know of, or even remember, the sirens that heralded the team’s clinching the pennant, but here are some sterner tests of what’s still rattling around in your brain about 1959.
1. What was the tallest building in Chicago in 1959?
(a) The Civic Center (now the Richard J. Daley Center)
More Top Picks Visual Schedules How They Help Autistic Kids Cope
(b) Lake Point Tower
(c) The Prudential Building
(d) The Chicago Board of Trade
2. Which of today’s Chicago expressways opened in August 1959? (Extra credit: What was its original name?)
3. A new computer to be built at the University of Chicago and housed in its own building was described in one 1959 newspaper account as:
(a) A big machine
(b) A big electronic brain
(c) A huge apparatus
(d) A super-brain
4. True or false: When the White Sox clinched the 1959 American League pennant on the road, they were greeted by 25,000 fans at O’Hare when their airplane landed in Chicago?
5. Which crime syndicate figures were not in a box behind first base for the opening game of the 1959 series?
(a) Rocco de Stefano
(b) Lucky Luciano
(c) Sam Giancana
(d) Gus Liebe
(e) Joey Lombardo
(f) Manny Scar
(g) Phil Katz
6. Which one of the following performers was not born in 1959?
(a) Bono
(b) Flava Flav
(c) Ira Glass
(d) Magic Johnson
(e) Val Kilmer
(f) Marie Osmond
(g) Kevin Spacey
(h) Emma Thompson
(i) Suzanne Vega
(j) “Weird Al” Yankovic
7. Which royal personage visited Mayor Daley on Oct. 24, 1959, during the World Series?
(a) Queen Elizabeth of England
(b) King Umberto II of Italy
(c) Princess Isabel of Brazil
(d) Duke Ellington
(e) Crown Prince Marid Azatch Asfawassen of Ethiopia
(f) Princess Clementine of Belgium
(g) Nat “King” Cole
8. What American fad was taking Europe by storm in 1959 but was banned in Iran and criticized by the Communist newspaper in Indonesia?
9. What Chicago institution was founded in 1959?
(a) Second City
(b) Lincoln Park Zoo
(c) The Lyric Opera
More Top Picks Best Flameless Candle Sets
(d) The Chicago Marathon
10. Which of the following news events did not take place in 1959?
(a) Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and the Big Bopper die in a plane crash during an Iowa snowstorm.
(b) The Dalai Lama leaves Tibet.
(c) Alaska and Hawaii are admitted as the 49th and 50th States.
(d) Ford discontinues the Edsel.
(e) Game-show contestant Charles Van Doren admits to Congress that he had been fed answers in advance.
(f) Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev hold their “kitchen debate.”
(g) Pan-Am inaugurates trans-Atlantic Boeing 707 jet service between New York and Paris.
(h) Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba.
(i) The Barbie doll goes on sale.
(j) Explorer VI transmits the first picture of Earth from space.
– – –
Answers to the Sox quiz
1. (d) Chicago Board of Trade, which reigned as the tallest from 1930 to 1965. Although many Chicagoans in 1959 thought the Prudential Building held the crown (possibly because of its popular skydeck), the Board of Trade is 4 feet taller, and has three more floors, according to the Encyclopedia of Chicago.
2. The Eisenhower Expressway was opened between the Loop and Laramie Avenue on Aug. 10. At the time, it was called the Congress Street Expressway.
3. All of the above.
4. False. The plane landed at Midway, which was the airport used regularly by the team and handled approximately 75 percent of the city’s commercial traffic at the time.
5. (b), (c) and (e). Reportedly, several politicians, including Adlai Stevenson, were in much poorer seats and that the mobsters had paid up to $165 per ticket — serious money at the time.
6. (a) Bono was born in 1960.
7. (e) Crown Prince Marid Azatch Asfawassen of Ethiopia, who as far as we can tell did not attend one of the World Series games.
8. (a) Hula-Hoop.
9. (a) The troupe that gave the world Belushi, Aykroyd and so many others began entertaining that year.
10. Pan-Am’s inaugural trans-Atlantic jet flight took place in 1958.
– – –
Sox O’Hara was loyal to his team to bitter end
On Oct. 5, 1959, during the White Sox pursuit of the World Series title, Tribune reporter Robert Wiedrich (the name as published has been corrected here and in a subsequent reference in this text) came upon a South Sider typical of many living in the Irish neighborhoods there. Wiedrich would go on to become an influential and sometimes controversial writer about Chicago crime and politics, but here he speaks from an era when the Daleys lived in Bridgeport and the Sox rocked in Comiskey Park.
———-
There is no joy in South Halsted Street. Sox O’Hara is dead.
Sox had two loves in life — his namesake the White Sox, and good Irish whiskey. The two made life worth living and the White Sox winning of a pennant made life sublime.
For three years, Sox roamed the Irish laden Back of the Yards neighborhood that embroiders the west end of Comiskey Park, home of his baseball heroes.
Much of the time, Sox wandered between the business establishments of his best friends, the brothers Sheehan, John’s saloon at 3707 S. Halsted St. and Daniel’s Tavern at 38th Street and Union Avenue. Along the way he would play with the children of the Melaniphys and the Mulcahys, the Doyles and the Dohertys.
Sometimes he would stop in to see Capt. John L. Sullivan at the Deering Street police station then take a turn around the ballpark. If there was a game on, Sox would trot past the ushers [they all knew him] and watch an inning or two.
Then back to one of the Sheehan saloons he would go to take an occasional nip and listen to the talk about the ballplayers, the Klyszewskis and the Aparicios, the Riveras and the Smiths, all the pride of the 11th Ward Irish.
Sox was exuberant last Thursday when the White Sox flattened the Dodgers, 11 to 0, in the opener of the World Series. He barked all the way home.
Friday was different. The White Sox lost. Sox O’Hara brooded. He was listless. He whined. At 11:30 p.m., he walked out of Dan Sheehan’s saloon at 38th Street and walked in front of a speeding car in 38th Street.
Some say he committed suicide.
Sunday, in John Sheehan’s emporium on Halsted Street, Sox O’Hara’s friends gathered. In the corner where Sox, a 9-year-old Collie, used to rest, there stood a cardboard coffin surrounded by roses.
His friends said some nice things about Sox; and Mike, a Doberman pinscher, stood silently at the bier.