Love And Lard: The Lou Mangione Story

Growing up on the most famous cul-de-sac in Rosemont, Illinois (of course I’m talking about Krowka Lane), the neighborhood kids used to make fun of me. I was born with a world-record seven kidneys, giving me a slight bulge around my midsection (which in my adult years has often required an undergarment for support). It hurt to set picks in basketball, and so I was always chosen last. But it also left me with a mean temper and an abnormal capacity to digest massive amounts of protein and sodium. While all those kids were eating baby carrots and drinking Sunny D, I began my love affair with the Peking duck (though I often treated my first love like I was Ike Turner on a hunger strike).

I didn’t have real friends until I went to summer camp in Kenosha, Wisconsin. At first I had a little bit of culture shock, being on the other side of the globe and all, but things got better quickly. Carl, Larry and Rohrschach (we nicknamed him Rory) came from a similar upbringing and understood me. We used to have some wild times, sneaking out after dark, hog-tying Carl to the tetherball post, flicking sweat at each other in the sauna, etc. Our camp’s motto was “Lose ten pounds this week and maybe we’ll put away the ball-and-chain” but we sort of adopted our own mantra: “friends for life.”

That all took place before 1985, the sweetest four digits to any Bears fan.

We remained close throughout high school. Then Larry went on to watch a lot of football for eight and a half years at Carbondale Tech. Carl was thrown out of Meigs Field Flight Academy when his lieutenant found him smoking sport peppers in the cockpit of an F-14. Rory got a scholarship to Dartmouth, started reading a little too much Tolstoy, and lost his mind. Me? I majored in American History at Lake Zurich Community College but dropped out in protest, after refusing to accept the wild allegations made by Upton Sinclair in “The Jungle.” He said some really hurtful things about the meatpacking industry.

Next came the big road trip to find Da Coach, Mike Ditka, and offer belated congratulations for a terrific 1985 season. We piled into Larry’s Gremlin, extracted from a scrapyard in Dundee, and set our GPS for Berwyn. As it turns out, the whole thing takes only about 45 minutes (mainly on the Northwest Tollway) and thus was not much of a road trip…but we did it a bunch of times and covered over 18,000 miles. We never found Coach Ditka, though we did have many memorable meals, usually at the same place–Byron’s Hot Dog Haus on Irving Park on the north side of Chicago.

That ate up some years. I spent 1999-2001 drinking from Lake Michigan, and 2002-2005 in Cook County Hospital trying to recover from my resulting pancreatic failure. I’ve been with the Ditka Foundation for over a year now. Our latest project in New York has us undoing the work of a massive campaign of deceit and propaganda directed at the Chicago Hot Dog. I spend most of my free time with my three sons Todd, Irv, and Louis Jr. (Though I never talk to wife, because her maiden name is Lambeau.) We long for the life we left behind in Chicago, but also enjoy the rich culture that only a two-football-team city like New York can offer. Next summer I will turn forty, and to celebrate, the whole family will take a zeppelin ride from the Adler Planetarium to its adjacent parking lot…though I hear Bears fans don’t tailgate there in August anymore.

So, Rosemont youth of the late 1970s, what do you have to say for yourselves? Where are you now?!?! I’ll tell you where you’re not–in the doctor’s office, bragging about your career-high levels of cholesterol. No. Instead you’re working your boring jobs as actuaries and customer service reps, building a nest egg for the next four decades, to ensure you can support your pathetic long lives in retirement. And I’ll be in a decrepit state of near death like my hero , laughing at all of you through my feeding tube. I’m not even paying for my own tombstone. My conscience forbids it; instead I’ve chosen to support a family of unprivileged ravens who will be picking at the substantial growth of e.coli caked onto my internal organs.

Word to the wise, whiz kids of Krowka Lane: it doesn’t pay to lead a healthy life. It costs.

Go f@#$cking Bears.

Louis G. Mangione