When I was a kid in the sixties, every April people would gather on the shoreline all along Lake Michigan. We could see the smelt fishermen, guys who would proudly march home with pails brimming with the silvery fish, keeping warm in the light of dozens of scrap fires in fifty-five-gallon drums. Just about all the smelt have vanished from the lake, victims of environmental factors, just as we all are fated to be. Memento mori. (David Hammond)
Best of Chicago 2018
