Angels of a Chicago Night
The author at Dark Angel Towing 1/24/24. (Portrait by Nick Kam.)
I’ve spent a lot of time on America’s highways.
There was a 1991 Chicago to Santa Monica, CA. trip on Route 66. There have been a few memorable jaunts from Chicago through Memphis and Natchez, MS. to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, including getting caught in a tornado near Kingsland, AR. The Mississippi River Road. I’ve put 68,000 miles on my 2015 Ford Transit camper van featuring excursions that I turned into a book. I’ve never had a roadside calamity.
Until now.
And where did it happen?
On the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago, eastbound near the Independence Boulevard exit. This is not the best place to have car trouble. Last week I was on my way to the release party for our Weeds book we did with former tavern owner and artist Sergio Mayora.
The early evening weather was rainy and misty. I was driving slowly as I was nearing the Sacramento exit that would take me to the gallery space of Trope Publishing where the event was held. I hit a pothole in the right lane. My front right tire became flat as a dead gnat within two or three minutes.
I turned on my flashers and called AAA. I was told there was an 85-minute wait. When I arrived at the party a few people told me that they heard on the news at least five cars had been disabled in this stretch of the Eisenhower. Indeed, I recalled passing at least three broken-down cars in the right lane.
My ex-wife called my cell phone. She was at the party wondering where I was. If anyone was used to my mysterious disappearances, it would be Wendy. She told some people and several friends offered to come rescue me. That was generous. I wasn’t so much concerned about being a crime victim on the expressway as I was about someone getting smacked by a passing car. Visibility was not the best and cars were still not slowing down. My friend-restauranteur- custodian of this website Nick Kam was at the party. He came to help out. He is a young man who enjoys weeknight adventures.
While I was sitting in the driver’s seat a middle-aged Black man approached the passenger side window. He leaned down and at first glance, it looked like he was smoking a cigar or vaping. If this was becoming a weird dream then Lou Rawls had showed up. I carefully rolled down the window. He explained that he had been driving up and down this stretch of the Eisenhower fixing flat tires in the rain. He said he was a car mechanic. This was his side hustle. He opened up his car trunk to show me a mobile mechanic’s garage. Okay. It turned out that the bright light emerging from his mouth was a small flashlight. He offered to fix my flat for $50 cash. Soon, Nick showed up.
The Expressway Tire Man jacked up my 2021 Kia Forte. The three of us walked to the trunk, which was still storeroom clean. The Expressway Tire Man unscrewed the trunk panel to retrieve the spare tire. And there was no spare tire. I have since learned that many new cars don’t carry spare tires. I also learned that Kia offers free roadside service for the first five years of car ownership. My dealer told me that was why I did not have a spare.
Some random pothole.
Here’s where the story gets greasy good:
Where were we going to find a tire at 7 p.m. on a rainy January weeknight? The Expressway Tire Man told us about a place called Dark Angel. Wow! That sounds like an energy drink Nick would like. Dark Angel is a 24-hour Towing and Recovery company at 1025 N. Pulaski Road in West Garfield Park. Nick and I went to Dark Angel with the flat tire while the Expressway Tire Man stayed with my car.
Dark Angel is also in a tough neighborhood. The towing company is in a brick fortress-like building that looked closed. Years ago it was a lumberyard. We called Dark Angel and the gentleman that answered the phone instructed us to pull up and honk our horn. We promptly gained entry where I saw the biggest red tow truck in the world.
Earlier this week I tracked down Wilfrano Garcia, owner of Dark Angel. He said he has two monster tow trucks: the 50-ton 2000 shiny red International Wrecker that amazed me and a 35-ton 2007 white Peterbilt Wrecker. “We tow cars, bicycles, motorcycles, airplanes, everything,” Garcia explained. “Sometimes they need us to move airplanes from one location to another location at O’Hare.”
Garcia opened Dark Angel about 15 years ago at Potomac and Western. He moved into the present location in 2012. “We’re not in a good area but we try to keep things organized the best we can,” he said. “We try to provide top service. We are 24-7. We never close.” Garcia said he employs 15 hardworking mechanics. While fact-checking this story, I noticed that within the last week, Dark Angel opened a new place in suburban Burr Ridge. That is not a rough neighborhood.
Dark Angel headquarters via Dark Angel FB.
It only took about 20 minutes for the Dark Angels to assess damage to the tire. It was beyond repair. The blowout created a hole in the sidewall. Dark Angel has a nice ATM so I withdrew $110 to pay for the slightly used tire that still had 90 percent tread life. That was better than me, who was about 40 percent there.
With the new tire in the trunk of Nick’s car we drove back to the Eisenhower. The transaction at Dark Angel took about 30, 40 minutes and the Expressway Tire Man was still there with my car. He put on our Dark Angel tire and we were finally good to go.
We made it to the Weeds book party but I was scrambled. I’m never good at these events anyway but I had just arrived from the grips of a classically gritty Chicago experience. The event wound down by 9 and I offered to buy Nick a beer at the Star Bar, 853 N. Western. My old friend Chris Fields from the Matchbox was tending bar. He heard about our woes and picked up our tab.
What is the moral of this story? Even in the worst of times, Chicago can be a glorious connective thread: The Expressway Tire Man, the immigrant workers at Dark Angel, friends who care, and the bartender who knows about people and their bumps in the road. You can travel up and down and east and west and one thing becomes clear. It is nice to call Chicago home.
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