Mr. Windex does windows. Inside and out, he washes the windshields of hundreds of taxicabs every day, joking and hollering, parading and performing as he squirts and wipes. In his brown trousers and dingy Chicago Bears T-shirt he walks confidently among the moving cabs–past them, between them, patting the hoods and yelling greetings to the multinational drivers.
Four sailors in white uniforms approach from the north. “Excuse me! Excuse me!” Mr. Windex calls out. “Is it true that sailors pee in the ocean?” He raises his eyebrows, puckers his lips, then breaks into a wide smile. “You’re all right, big guy,” he says to one of the amused young men. “And I’m sure your parents are glad they don’t have to feed you no more.”
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“I was on the street, bumming for change,” he says, sipping a Coke at Chequers grill, in the Balbo and Michigan corner of the Blackstone Hotel. “I used to beg over on Wabash. Every day the same cop would look for me, as soon as he started his shift. He told me he didn’t wanna see me standing around no more.”
He was given his moniker by a cop who observed him in action. Soon after he could be seen in T- shirts and jackets that say “Mr. Windex” in iron-on letters. “I go over to Woolworth’s on State Street,” he says. “They do my shirts for 35 cents a letter.”
Mr. Windex works all year round, in all kinds of weather. During rainstorms it’s not unusual to see him walking among the taxis with a bare umbrella frame open above his head, water pelting his face and, dripping down his chest.
A group of comely young ladies approaches. “Excuse me, ladies,” he yells. “Do you know that every time I see you it makes me happy?” The ladies giggle. One flashes big brown eyes at Mr. Windex. He dances in place, like a game-show contestant hearing his prizes described. “I’ll see you tonight, honey,” he says to the girl. “I’ll be right here.”
