A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck is a heart-warming story set during the Great Depression about Joe “Joey” Dowdel and his little sister Mary Alice Dowdel’s annual week-long journey to their Grandma Dowdel’s house in a small mid-Illinois country town. Joey narrates the story from the perspective of a city boy in a country town that is “A Long Way From Chicago”, as the title suggests. Grandma’s town is indeed a far cry from the steel jungle of Chicago in many ways, as Joey and Mary Alice quickly learn from their first visit at 9 and 7. In each of their summer visits, Grandma concocts an elaborate scheme, pulling her grandkids into her quests to return justice to her hometown through many clever and unorthodox adventures. Richard Peck, through Grandma’s plans in A Long Way From Chicago, is trying to convey the message that justice can be restored and good deeds achieved in surprising and even hilarious ways. The next three paragraphs will demonstrate with examples from the book itself how justice can be served and good deeds performed in unexpected circumstances and from unexpected people.
Firstly, in the story of “The Mouse in the Milk”, set in 1930 when Joey and Mary Alice were 10 and 8, Grandma gives out several helpings of justice to the Cowgill boys, the antagonists during this particular visit. The story begins with Grandma and Joey sitting in the front room while Mary Alice sulked around the house after being called in from jump roping outside. Then, an explosion went off, “a flash of light (that) filled the bay window...an explosion shook the house and made my puzzle jump” (19). Joey, Mary Alice, and Grandma investigate outside and find her mailbox blown to smithereens. Grandma immediately knows who did it, saying “Cowgills”, proving that they have been terrorizing the town for quite a while (19). The next morning over breakfast, the threesome finds Mrs. Effie Wilcox’s privy has been “wrenched up…by the posts and flung…all over the yard” (21). The day after, Mary Alice and Joey finds Grandma has initiated her plan since “(n)ext to a box of shells, Grandpa Dowdel’s old double-barreled Winchester Model 21 was on the kitchen table along with a greasy rag…somebody besides Grandma was in the kitchen, over by the door…His gaze kept flitting to the shotgun”(21-22). The person eyeing the shotgun is introduced as Ernie Cowgill, who delivers the milk. Grandma also tells Ernie that she found a mouse in her milk in the last batch, which Joey confirms is a “whopper” (22). However, this is just the first of the lies Grandma feeds Ernie. She then proceeds to say “I’ll be gone tonight and all day tomorrow…I’m taking my grandkids tan a visit to my cousin Leota Shrewsbury.”, to which Joey thinks “Another whopper, and a huge one”(22). Grandma is very mysterious about her plans. When Joey asked “Grandma, what was the shotgun for?” Grandma simply replies “Bait”(23-24). Later that day, Grandma takes a half-decapitated mouse and drops it into that day’s batch of milk. Then, after supper, Grandma has Mary Alice and Joey turn off all the lights and bolt the front door. The three sit quietly, “only outlines in the dark parlor” (27). Then, after a while of waiting, they hear the four Cowgill brothers sawing at Grandma’s screen door. As the Cowgill break in, presumably to steal Grandpa Dowdel’s shotgun, Grandma rolls a lit cherry bomb into the kitchen, which created “and almighty explosion like the crack of doom”(28). Then, after Joey turns on the lights, Grandma has the boys pinned down with “both barrels of the gun they’d come to steal” (29). After Joey fetches the Cowgills from church, Mr. Cowgill “convinces” Grandma to lower the gun after she makes him promise to pay for a new screen door and mailbox. She lets the boys leave, but keeps Mr. Cowgill and blackmails him with the mouse in the milk that she made earlier. Mr. Cowgill is confused at what Grandma wants, and Grandma replies “Justice” (34). They have a moment of understanding and Mr. Cowgill takes Grandpa Dowel’s leather “strop” and “whaled the tar out of every one of (the boys)”(34). So, in the end, Grandma returned law and order to the town by lying on numerous occasions, blackmailing the Cowgills, and blowing up her own kitchen. Next, more evidence will be revealed of justice being served and kind actions performed through strange methods.
Second, in the story of “A One-Woman Crime Wave”, set in 1931 when Joey and Mary Alice were 11 and 9, Grandma sets the uppity Sheriff O. B. Dickerson down a notch, feeds an old lady, and feeds the poor and hungry through her unlawful and creative ways again. The story starts with Joey contemplating the Great Depression and how he noted that Grandma’s house was practically the same in spite of it. The first inklings of another plan comes up when Mary Alice discovers something in the cobhouse that “smelled bad enough to gas a cat” and Grandma, being as vague as ever, simply replies “It’s cheese” and “It’s not for you” (38). The next day, Grandma gets up and puts on a ridiculous amount of clothes, so much that “(s)he looked like a moving mountain”, and tells the kids that they are going fishing in the country(39). The trio head out with the cheese and illegally goes to Salt Creek, which is private property of the Rod and Gun Club. Grandma then proceeds to “borrow” Sheriff O. B. Dickerson’s boat and uses the cheese in illegal fish traps. When Joey, Mary Alice, and Grandma are rowing back, they catch a glimpse of “the porch sagged with singers—grown men in their underwear, still partying from last night. Old guys in real droopy underwear…They were waving bottles and trying to dance. ‘(It was) O. B. Dickerson, the sheriff,’ (Grandma) said, ‘and them drunk skunks with him is the entire business community of the town.’ ” (48). While Joey is thinking that “it was time to head upstream as fast as Grandma could row”, as they were on their private property and in O. B. Dickerson’s boat full of illegally trapped fish, Grandma started rowing down the bend(48). When they came in sight of the Rod and Gun club members, “Grandma saw them, as if for the first time. She seemed to lose control of the oars, and her mouth fell open in shock. Mary Alice was already shocked and didn’t have to pretend…you never saw anybody as scandalized as Grandma was at these old birds in their union suits and less”(49). After this, Grandma goes to her old employer, Aunt Puss Chapman and feeds her and supplies her with enough food for the next week. Afterward, she goes back home and has her grandkids help with making a dinner and dragging the card table all the way up to the railroad. The three set up the outside banquet until “the platters of fish and potatoes overlapped on the table, and the opened beer bottles stood in a row beside the tracks” (55). Then, “(a)s the drifters came along, being hounded out of town, Grandma gave them a good feed and a beer to wet their whistles…Then…(u)p trooped O. B. Dickerson, dressed now with his badge on and his belt full of bullets riding low under his belly”(55-56). When the sheriff asks questions about keeping the drifters in town, using illegal fish traps, and stealing his boat, Grandma coolly dodges each question, rebutting with the fact that they were in the county now and “point(ing) her spatula at the sheriffs feet”, remarking that the town stopped there. She argued back, accusing O. B. of illegally running fish traps as well. When the sheriff used his stolen boat, a last resort, Grandma blackmails the sheriff with Mary Alice and Joey, claiming that “they’d already seen what no child should—the sheriff and his deputies, blind drunk and naked as jaybirds” and that “it’s like to have marked this girl for life…I don’t want her to develop one of them complexes you hear about” (58). The sheriff and his deputies leave and once again, Grandma, hauling with her Joey and Mary Alice, has managed to spread good around her town with the help of trespassing on private property, stealing the sheriff’s boat, illegally trapping fish, brewing beer during Prohibition, and blackmailing the sheriff. The final evidence of kindness spread and lawfulness reinstated through perhaps not-so-lawful methods will be imparted in the next paragraph.
Finally, in the main story line of “Things With Wings”, set in 1934 when Joey and Mary Alice were 14 and 12, Grandma gets Effie Wilcox’s house back and Joey and Mary Alice each 2 dollars, which would be the equivalent of getting 35 dollars today. The story starts with Grandma sending Effie off on the very train that Joey and Mary Alice came off. Joey and Mary Alice learn that Effie’s house has been foreclosed upon. Some of the story passes in a somber mood. Joey visits the Veech’s Gas and Oil and is reminded that driving lessons from his semi-friend Ray Veech are a full 2 dollars and instantly falls in love with a new “showroom fresh Terraplane 8 from the Hudson Motor Car Company”(104). The threesome watches a horror movie, Dracula. After the movie, however, Grandma seems back to her old self, and immediately begins plotting and setting it into action. She has Joey and Mary Alice look in the attic for “(a)ny old rummage for the church sale”, and Joey gets suspicious, as “Grandma…didn’t take part in community activities” (108). They spent “all morning to go through everything”, and in the end, all Grandma took was an old preacher’s stovepipe hat and a frayed quilt pieced by her Aunt Josie Smull (111). That afternoon, they go to the church rummage sale. Joey can tell that “she was biding her time” (112). Finally, what Grandma has been waiting for finally happens. “A flurry began at the other end of a table…Grandma sat on, at her ease…the strict lady in charge, who was Mrs. Earl T. Askew, came through the crowds, heading for us…Bending to Grandma, she spoke in low, urgent tones”, informing Grandma that Mrs. Weidenbach, the banker’s wife, presented 15 dollars (worth 260 dollars today) for Grandma’s old stovepipe hat (112). Grandma “accidently” lets slip that “it was in with some other old stuff Effie Wilcox threw away” (113). Joey sees “Mrs. L. J. Weidenbach was over at the cashier, peeling off five-dollar bills as fast as she could dig them out of her pocketbook” and wonders what Grandma has done this time(113). Suddenly, Mrs. Askew rushes back, clutching Aunt Josie Smull’s quilt, stuttering and stumbling about Grandma asking if she really wants to part with the quilt. While a crowd gathers, Grandma smoothes out the blanket to reveal that “initials had magically appeared on the fraying hem: M▪T▪L” (113). Mrs. Weidenbach soon exclaims, “Oh my stars and garters! M.T.L. Mary Todd Lincoln! And I’ve got Abe Lincoln’s own stovepipe hat. His name’s lettered in on the sweatband!”(114). The morning after, Grandma gets a visit from Otis, the bank teller, requesting her to meet with Mr. Weidenbach, the banker. When Grandma shows up, Mr. Weidenbach goes right to the point, saying, “‘Certain items supposedly from the estate of President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln have surfaced in a house that the bank is forced to foreclose on. Do you grasp what this could mean, Mrs. Dowdel?’…‘I expect the state will take that land and restore the house as a museum’” (115). Mr. Weidenbach expresses to Grandma his distress, as the bank is too deep into a deal with Deere and Company that would build an implement shed across the entire property of Effie Wilcox and the old brickyard. They go back and forth until Mr. Weidenbach accuses Grandma of falsifying the “so-called Lincoln items” (116). Mr. Weidenbach falls right into Grandma’s trap as he threatens to throw her in jail. She then pulls out a Grandma Dowdel classic: blackmail. “That’s right”, Grandma says, staring behind Mr. Weidenbach, “The banker throws the poor old widder in the pokey. That’ll look real good for your business” (116). The banker now knows he’s been trapped. He sits, deflated, and begs with Grandma to help him out of this situation. Grandma slyly offers a solution, telling him to build a shorter implement shed and “leave Effie Wilcox’s house be” (116). Mr. Weidenbach gives Effie’s house back “free and clear” in exchange for Grandma confessing that the “Lincoln items” were falsified (117). Grandma waves that off and creates a rumor then and there about Effie meaning that the stovepipe hat was the kind that Lincoln wore and Mrs. Wilcox’s cousin Maude Teeter Lingenbloom. Then, as an afterthought, she adds on two dollars for each of her grandkids. Joey finally gets his driving lessons. And so again, Grandma returns integrity to Piatt County by falsifying items of President Lincoln, lying to numerous people, and, once more, blackmailing the banker. After these examples, the evidence is irrefutable that justice being served and good deeds being done in crazy and funny ways is the theme in A Long Way From Chicago.
Of course, there are many other examples in the book showing kind deeds and justices being served through questionable and hilarious means, but these three are the most prominent. These antics of Grandma’s make us laugh, but also has meaning too, teaching us about the importance of helping the less fortunate. Lessons like these show us to expect the unexpected in life, and maybe have a laugh about them too. By using humor, Richard Peck ensures that these lessons and Grandma Dowdel herself will stick in our brains for a long time, even after we’ve finished their story. Kind deeds will be performed in life, just maybe not the way you expected. In the end, though, justice will be served…maybe even Grandma Dowdel style.
