Chicago’s Ron Norkus: The Road Goes on Forever
Ron Norkus at the Acapulco Mother Hubbard’s (Courtesy of the Norkus family.)
The wheels of life are driven by beautiful mysteries.
On the surface, Ron Norkus had a colorful and wild run on this earth. On the inside, he was driven by a generous heart and a wonderful sense of humor. Mr. Norkus was labeled as an esteemed “1970s Rush Street Hall of Famer” by his pals Jimmy Rittenberg and Johnny Blandino, one of the original general managers of the Palm Restaurant in Chicago.
Mr. Norkus died on Oct. 19 from complications of Parkinson’s Disease at his home in Dallas, Tx. He was 81 years old. He was surrounded by friends and family, but then he was always surrounded by friends and family.
Mr. Norkus was born and raised in Bridgeport where his parents Cass and Eleanor ran a bar at 35th and Halsted. He contracted scarlet fever as a child and neighbor Eleanor “Sis” Daley (wife of former Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley) took care of him while his parents ran the bar.
Mr. Norkus left St. Rita High School as a teenager to join the Air Force. He obtained his GED at age 42. He owned and operated Cypress Insurance Agency and Crystal Travel in Hickory Hills and Palos Hills.
Ron Norkus, U.S. Air Force, age 15. (Courtesy of Norkus family.)
He was the general contractor in 1973 when he built his four-bedroom home during the infancy of southwest suburban Burr Ridge. He paid $25,000 for the lot. Mr. Norkus’s brother Butch was recruited to hotwire a Caterpillar bulldozer to lift the moving truck out of the backyard mud.
At age 55 Mr. Norkus sold his businesses and moved to Acapulco, Mexico. He enjoyed counting all the stars in the warm sky. There was always a sense of wonder in the beyond.
In 1998 Mr. Norkus opened a Mexico version of Chicago’s Mother Hubbard’s bar with Rittenberg and retired Chicago cop Jim Hansen. Mr. Norkus eventually bought out his two partners. The Acapulco Mother Hubbard’s closed in 2018.
Ron and his first wife Leslee, circa 1980 at a luau in Maui. (Courtesy of Norkus family.)
In 2002 I visited Mother Hubbard’s in the Costa Azul neighborhood of Acapulco. Ex Sun-Times basketball writer Mark Vancil and former Sun-Times reporter Carlos Sadovi were along for the ride.
The restaurant was serving the same kind of hamburgers they served in Chicago (green peppers, onions, celery salt eggs). Mr. Norkus’s son Doug often smuggled 70 pounds of frozen Italian sausage in suitcases to the restaurant from Chicago because chorizo was only available in Mexico. Nearly two dozen ceiling fans stirred the air, whisking stories deep into the Mexican night.
I have spent much of my adult life being on the road, writing about the road, and dreaming of the road. Mr. Norkus was high beams on a fast car. He was known around Acapulco for his black Harley-Davidson and was a member of a motorcycle club of a half-dozen gentlemen called the Acapulco Coyotes. He owned a private pilot’s license. In a subsequent phone conversation away from the bar, Mr. Norkus told me the greatest road story I have heard.
Between 1995 and 2002 he drove between Acapulco and Chicago nine times.
Nonstop, 36 hours.
“I start with a cooler full of Coca-Cola, ham sandwiches, and a case of Corona,” he told me in 2002. “I leave Acapulco about 10 p.m. I prefer driving at night, especially since so many people think driving is dangerous and also because I can get through Mexico City and miss most traffic and corrupt police.
“After Mexico City, it is clear sailing to Matehuala (about 10 hours from Acapulco). There, I stop for a few minutes and look at the sky. It is the most beautiful sky on this planet, almost like being in outer space.”
Mr. Norkus drove a white pick-up truck on the Mexico-Chicago shuttle. He always arrived in Chicago between 9:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. the second morning out. “It sounds funny, but I can predict my arrival time within 15 minutes,” he said. Mr. Norkus did six of those nine trips solo. His wife Maria, and his daughter Lucy (who was 10 in 2002) twice joined the road trip. Another time Mr. Norkus brought along an illegal for companionship.
On Sunday, Lucy recalled, “He never wanted to stop. Sometimes my Mom would be, ‘Let me help,’ and he’d say, ‘No, I’m good.’ He just liked to drive. I remember listening to music. I was into Spanish pop music, like Paulina Rubio. He liked Frank Sinatra and the Bee Gees. He liked, the singer what is his name, Clarence Carter? He loved that (1986) song ‘Strokin’.” All the time. I’ve been listening to my Dad’s music and thinking about all the trips we did.”
Mr. Norkus had a few games he played to stay awake. While driving in Mexico he had one cold beer every 100 miles. “No more, no less,” he told me. “When I start to get tired, a cold Coke helps. The only stops I make are for gas when I also use the washrooms. All Mexican stations have attendants who pump the gas. They do anything to get people working.”
Acapulco summit at Ron’s Mexican wedding, from left: Jim Rittenberg, Steve Schussler (creator of Rainforest Cafe, T-Rex Cafe), Ron and Chicago’s Scott Darst getting his Hemingway on.
Mr. Norkus also enjoyed calculating the estimated time of arrival to the next city. He explained, “The border from Acapulco is 930 miles. All calculations are done in my head while driving. Generally, I cross into the U.S.A. about 1:30 in the afternoon (about 15 1/2 hours after he left Acapulco.) On the open roads in Mexico, you can run 80 to 100 miles an hour without problems. Once the border is crossed, you can run 80 through Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missouri. All those states have 70 MPH except Illinois (65 MPH). In Southern Illinois from the state line for about 50 miles, the police are thicker than cement.”
One time a young Illinois state trooper stopped Mr. Norkus as he crossed the state line. “He looked like a teenager,” Mr. Norkus recalled. “He stopped me for going 72, along with not having an insurance card and expired plates.”
Mr. Norkus gently explained that there were no insurance card laws in Mexico, but he produced his insurance policy. He was off the hook on that charge. “I then explained my plate renewal check was going to get lost in the poor Mexican mail and I was going to Illinois to renew them.” The second problem was taken care of.
“We had a nice line of communication open,” he said. “He was interested in my drive, and I said I worked for an agency of the U.S. government and that I was on loan to the Mexican Federal Police for four years. I could not tell him what agency I worked for. But I did say I was the one guy in the group, that when we busted drug dealers, inventories all the drugs and cash, kept it in my possession until it was secure, and then filed my reports with the U.S. government. He thanked me and let me continue on my way without any violations on my Mexican license.”
That was Mr. Norkus—a Chicago guy playing the Chicago way.
Mr. Norkus was the most interesting man in the world before the dude in the Dos Equis beer commercial.
His son Doug is a waiter at Steak 48, 615 N. Wabash Ave. “When Harley-Davidson had its 100th anniversary in Milwaukee (in 2002), he drove his motorcycle all the way there from Acapulco to sell it,” Doug Norkus said on Sunday evening. “The Texas border is only halfway.” Mr. Norkus was a spry 61 years old for that trip.
Ron and his family with the motorcycle in Acapulco after breakfast tacos. Circa 1999. (Courtesy of Norkus family.)
Doug has fond recollections of his father letting him fly his single-engine Cessna–when he was nine years old. The father and son took off from an airport in south suburban Crestwood. “First I’d get in and puke in the bag because I got motion sickness every time,” Doug said. “I’d sit in the passenger seat. You could switch the control to the passenger. He’d say, ‘Nothing can happen up here. It’s the safest place in the world.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, I’ll fly the plane for a while. Here we go.’
“I learned a lot from my Dad, good and bad. I learned you can’t break a golf club every time you miss a putt. My father wanted to control everything. You can’t control golf. My Dad didn’t start with much but built a lot out of nothing. Nothing ever got in his way.”
Ron (left), his daughter Leah and Doug at Leah’s wedding in Lemont, Il.
In 1995 Mr. Norkus secured a beachfront timeshare in Acapulco during the period when the city was still a tourist destination for Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. He soon met his future wife Maria, who was a waitress at Mimi’s along Paradise Beach. Mr. Norkus did not speak Spanish. Maria did not speak English. During the beginning of their courtship, a translator was often the third wheel. Mr. Norkus soon learned the native language.
Mr. Norkus became a Mexican (dual) citizen and made sure Maria and Lucy obtained their American citizenship.
Rittenberg said, “He put Lucy through LeCordon Bleu Culinary Arts School in Chicago. He was reluctant to leave her by herself, but we had her living not far from me and near the school. She did well.” Lucy later worked at Quartino Ristorante, 626 N. State and Mother Hubbard’s, 5 W. Hubbard in Chicago.
“He had the biggest heart but he didn’t like to show it,” Lucy said with her voice breaking. “Everything we needed, he made it happen. I will tell you this—I’m the reason who I am because of him. He gave me love. He gave me strength. He was always looking out for me no matter how old I was.”
Maria (L), Lucy, and Ron at Lucy’s Le Cordon Bleu 2013 graduation in Chicago. (Courtesy of the Norkus family.)
Rittenberg met Mr. Norkus in 1981 at Faces. Rittenberg was owner-manager of Faces and dating the sister of Mr. Norkus’s first wife. The two sisters occasionally visited the Rush Street disco. They informed Rittenberg that Mr. Norkus was coming to Rush Street. So he met them up the block at the Sweetwater tavern. A man sitting by himself at the end of the bar was Mr. Norkus.
“Remember, he was a south sider who never came downtown,” Rittenberg wrote over the weekend in an e-mail from Acapulco. “I am wearing a tuxedo (which I wore while on the floor at Faces.) I like the sister-in-law or I would have blown this off.
“But I walk over to him and say. ‘Are you going to sit here and stare or are you going to buy me a f—–g beer?’ Using my West Side dialect. He looks and says, ‘What are you drinking?’ That was it. We talked for a while. I invited him to Faces. I quit seeing the sister-in-law. He wound up getting a divorce a few years later.
“He and I began a friendship that lasted until the day he died. I liked his straightforwardness. He was very street smart. He and I had similar backgrounds. How many people in life can you trust completely? Ron and I had nothing to gain from our friendship except a good friend.”
Doug said, “The day before he died I told my Dad he had lived nine lives. My sister chimed in and said, ‘No, you lived 1,000 lives.’” Daughter Leah said, “He was a master diver. He did so much. We should all live a life that full.” In a separate conversation, daughter Lucy added, “He painted a very colorful life for us. He was my superhero. As my husband said, we didn’t live in a world that was bad.
“My world was always happy.”
Ron Norkus (1940-2021)
Mr. Norkus is survived by his wife Maria, daughters Leah Norkus Mulevy and Lucy, son Douglas; sister Barbara McHugh, two sons-in-law, a daughter-in-law, and five grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his first wife Leslee Rysko (Reed) and his brother Butch. Services were held in Dallas.
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