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I first heard the story at one of the Duke's Halloween parties. That would make it when I was in college, in the late 'sixties.

The way the Duke told it, this guy he knew had been driving north on Milwaukee Avenue near Lawrence, by the Holiday Ballroom. Suddenly a young woman in a white dress jumped in front of the car. The guy screeched to a halt, the woman got in the car, and asked for a ride.

Now the driver figured he was getting lucky, so he agreed. The woman told him to head up Milwaukee toward Niles. Other than that, she didn't say much.

Getting into Niles, they passed the main entrance to St. Adalbert's Cemetery. "Stop the car!" the woman shouted. The driver stopped the car. When he turned to look at the woman, she had vanished.

Sound familiar? Substitute Archer Avenue, the Willow Brook Ballroom, and Resurrection Cemetery. Now you have Chicago's most famous ghost story, the tale of Resurrection Mary.

At the time I hadn't heard anything about Resurrection Mary. Neither had any of my friends. We only knew that this was a great story.

As the years went by, I became better acquainted with Chicago folklore. Then I realized that the Duke had picked up the Resurrection Mary story somewhere, and simply adapted it to his own purposes. That was a habit of his.

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The great Columbian Exposition was drawing to a close on October 28, 1893. The eyes of the world had been on Chicago, and the city was feeling proud. Then came the terrible news--Mayor Harrison had been killed by an assassin.

Carter Henry Harrison belonged to a distinguished family that had given the country two presidents. In 1855 he arrived at Chicago as a young lawyer. He was active in the Democratic Party and served two terms in Congress. In 1879 he was elected mayor of the city.

Harrison was a popular, accessible mayor. He often rode through the streets on a white horse, greeting his constituents. After serving four two-year terms, he retired. But when Chicago was chosen as the site for the Columbian world's fair, he ran for mayor once again, and was elected to a fifth term in 1893.

On this evening, Harrison had returned to his Ashland Boulevard home after a long day at the fair, and was napping in a back bedroom. Around 8 p.m. a man named Eugene Prendergast appeared at the front door, asking to see the mayor. The maid thought she recognized Prendergast and let him in.

A few minutes afterward the servants heard loud voices, then three shots. They rushed toward the sound and found Harrison lying wounded on the floor.

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We've been hearing much lately about greedy capitalists. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, one Chicago tycoon became a national symbol of greedy capitalists. His name was Samuel Insull.

Insull was born poor in London in 1859. As a young man he caught the eye of Thomas Edison, becoming the great inventor's private secretary. Electricity was the new technology of the 1890s, and Sam got in on the ground floor. It was like being the right-hand man of Steve Jobs a century later.

Insull helped build America's electrical industry, though his talent was financial, not scientific. After revamping the General Electric Company, he settled in Chicago. He merged, modernized, and expanded. By the 1920s his holdings included Commonwealth Edison, Peoples Gas, the Chicago Rapid Transit Company, and several interurban railroads.

He knew how to make money, and thousands of small investors bought into his companies. Insull was also a philanthropist. He built the Civic Opera House and footed much of the opera company's bill himself.

Then, in 1929, the Stock Market crashed.

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It was hard-ball politics, Chicago style.

On this October 24th in 1899, the City of Chicago took over the independent Town of Austin - and Austin didn't like it one bit.

The people of Austin had wanted to keep their community of 4,000 separate from the big, bad city. A referendum had been held, and a majority of Austin voters voted against joining Chicago. But now it was happening anyway. The whole thing was un-American!

The story begins in 1865, when the Austin subdivision was created in the open prairie along the Chicago & North Western railroad line, seven miles west on Lake Street from downtown Chicago. The area was part of Cicero Township. Besides Austin, the township included the settlements of Cicero, Berwyn, and Oak Park.

Austin grew fast. In 1870, the Cicero Township Hall was built in the community at Lake and Central. Everything remained peaceful until 1898, when the Lake Street Elevated Railroad arrived on the scene.

The 'L' company wanted to extend its line from Chicago west to Austin Boulevard.

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The war has been getting out of hand. So Don Corleone calls for a summit meeting. All the gang chiefs sit down together and hammer out a truce.

It's a famous scene from "The Godfather." But it really did happen--here in Chicago, on October 21, 1926.

Prohibition was the law of the land then, and the gangs of Chicago were supplying bootleg booze to thirsty citizens. In the fall of 1924, Warfare had erupted when the two biggest mobs began squabbling over territorial rights. This was another of those North Side vs. South Side conflicts--Dion's O'Banion's mostly-Irish Cub fans against Johnny Torrio's mostly-Italian Sox fans.

(Okay, I don't know which baseball teams the boys followed, but you get the idea.)

Anyway, the South Siders struck first, assassinating O'Banion in his florist shop. Naturally, the North Siders retaliated. Then, the South Siders re-retaliated. And so on, and so on.

By October 1926, Chicago had gotten a national reputation for gang mayhem. The South Side outfit was now being run by Al Capone. He realized all the outside attention could wreck business. The U.S.

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Once upon a time, Chicago was not the home of the President of the United States. And so, whenever a president arrived in the city, it was major news. On this October 19th in 1962, the presidential visit turned out to be a footnote in world history.

Mayor Richard J. Daley had played a big part in putting John F. Kennedy in the White House. Now the midterm elections were only a few weeks away, and the mayor asked the president to come to Chicago, to campaign for the state ticket. Kennedy was happy to oblige.

Air Force One touched down at O'Hare in late afternoon. As the president stepped off the plane, he was greeted by bagpipers and every Democrat officer-holder or candidate from hundred-mile radius. A bubble-top limo was waiting. Then the presidential motorcade moved out.

Crowds jammed the route along the Northwest Expressway--up to a half-million people, according to one estimate. Later that evening, Kennedy spoke at a $100-a-plate party fundraiser at McCormick Place. At the conclusion of his speech, a fireworks display lit up the sky over the lakefront. The highlight was a flaming profile portrait of the president.

His long day over, Kennedy settled into his suite at the Blackstone Hotel.

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In October 1943 Chicagoans took time off from World War II to enjoy a grand weekend celebration. After 40 years of talk, the city was opening its first subway.

Construction had taken five years. Though Chicago's transit lines were still privately-owned, the subway had been built by the city, with some help from the federal government. The price tag was $46 million--the equivalent of $720 million today.

On the new route, southbound trains left the "L" structure near Armitage and Sheffield. They then ran in the 4.9-mile-long tunnel under Clybourn, Division, and State, re-emerging at 15th and Wabash. Travel time through downtown was cut by a full 25 minutes.

Chicago had actually started building two subways, with another tunnel following Milwaukee-Lake-Dearborn. Then the war came, and construction materials became scarce. The second subway would not be completed until 1951.

But on this glorious Saturday morning--October 16, 1943--the city was ready for a party.

Starting at 9:15, ten special trains were dispatched from ten different outer terminals along the "L" system. They carried various dignitaries to a rendevouz in the subway at State and Madison.

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