Lake Effect News

By LORRAINE SWANSON

Editor

Ollie Latiker. owner of the legendary Ollie's Lounge in Edgewater, is also a licensed notary and can notarize your documents.

It’s karaoke night and the illuminated Schlitz sign hanging out front of Ollie’s Lounge beckons. The local canaries stroll in and help themselves to the free food.

Ollie Latiker greets the American Idols wearing plastic gloves on her hands. She plops some hot dogs into a crock pot, straightens the paper plates and napkins. Someone brings in an aluminum pan of chicken and rice.

For more than 30 years, “Miss Ollie” as she is known to her loyal regulars and the neighborhood kids and dogs, has ruled her cozy lounge ensconced on the ground floor of an Edgewater apartment building at 1064 W. Berwyn with sweetness and iron. If your pants are hanging off your butt she will ask you to leave. The sign on the wall says so.

Until recently, her efforts to run a respectable business and live life with honor have gone mostly unnoticed except by Edgewater’s melting pot of residents that gravitate toward Ollie’s friendly environs,. Last week, Miss Ollie was named an “Unsung Heroine” by the Cook County Commission on Women’s Issues recognizing women throughout the county who have quietly made a difference in their communities.

“I’m grateful,” Ollie says. “I got a letter from Bridget Gainer. I didn’t even know I was nominated.”

On a typical night at Ollie’s you can strike up a friendly game of pool, get your documents notarized, order a blue motherfucker and catch the never ending neighborhood drama. Like this night, when a kid runs into the bar crying and shoeless.

The Schlitz sign beckons at Ollie's Lounge at 1064 W. Berwyn.

A customer who is a nurse walks the girl around the bar. The girl looks like she’s in shock. Ollie goes to calm her down. She wraps her arm around the girl’s waist, who looks to be about 14 and is a full head taller than Miss Ollie.

Was she mugged?

“She won’t talk,” Ollie says, excusing herself to call 911.

Born on an 80-acre farm in Koscicsko, Mississippi, Ollie was the second oldest of nine children. Most of her siblings are gone now, except for a sister and two brothers who live in Chicago.

“We raised everything we ate,” Ollie says. “We grew everything, cotton, corn, and slaughtered and smoked our own meat. The best part about smoking pigs was the smell. You could smell it five blocks away.”

The best years of her life were her grammar school years, she says, when the whole family was together.

“We had our own community. There were 35 or 40 kids and we all ran in and out of each other’s houses. I went to Sunday School every Sunday,” she recalled, “and afterward everyone came to her our house. I had a very good childhood and loving family.”

After high school, Ollie rode a Greyhound bus with borrowed bus fare on the wave of black migration from the Mississippi Delta to Chicago in 1952. She would never again live in Mississippi.

“Everybody wanted to leave,” she says. “I got tired of getting up early to milk cows. It was a better life for me here.”

Karaoke night at Ollie's Lounge. Anyone is welcome to get up and sing, but if your pants are hanging below your butt you will be asked to leave.

Her first job was as a desk clerk at the Triangle Motel at 1570 N. Clybourn. The man who owned it also owns the Edgewater apartment building where Ollie has lived for the past 34 years. Eventually, her boss sold the motel and Ollie followed him to Edgewater where he opened the bar that is now Ollie’s.

When the bar, then called the Urge, opened the neighborhood around Berwyn was known as “Little Mexico.” Ollie had never bartended before and didn’t know scotch from bourbon because her parents did not allow alcohol in the house when she was growing up. 

“The first summer I came here was 1975. Five guys got killed in the neighborhood,” she says. “The neighborhood has changed a lot. You don’t see as many gang members hanging out on the street anymore.”

The décor inside of Ollie’s is early-1960s basement, sort of like your uncle’s wood-paneled bar, with a dance floor where your parents danced the Watusi on New Year’s Eve, or where you were going to hide out from the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The chotchkes scattered about the lounge don’t relate to theme of  musical notes stenciled on the wall but that isn’t the point.  The bar attracts an older baby-boomer clientele of blacks and whites, and Goth college students, who come on Friday and Saturday nights when a DJ spins old Motown and the R&B hit parade.

The decor at Ollie's is early-1960's rec room. The lounge is a favorite spot of Edgewater residents for hosting parties.

A group of women belt out the Supremes’ “Come See About Me.” An elderly woman gets up in the middle of the dance floor and starts doing the Jerk.

Soon, the 20^th District police arrive to talk to the kid, attended to by Ollie and the nurse, who both hold a bag of ice on the girl’s leg.

“Do you want to sing?” a woman asks the cops.

Ollie goes up to talk to the police who are talking to the girl. Somebody whacked her on the leg with a stick.

“This is very sad,” Ollie says. “I’ve seen it all. I had another kid run in here after he was hit by a belt. Kids tell me their problems. That means a lot that they have faith in me.”

The police take the girl home, and the sadness of it all seems to suck the air of karaoke night out of the bar.

“Stop being so sad,” one of the wanna-be Supremes blares into the microphone. “Let’s get this shit crackin’ and have some fun. Oh, did I say the ‘S’ word, I am so sorry.”

One of the many decorative touches at Ollie's Lounge.

In the last 20 years, Ollie has missed only two neighborhood CAPS meetings, according to the biography compiled by 10^thDistrict Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer’s office.  She’s an active participant in the Edgewater Beach Neighbors Association block club, and most Sunday mornings, you’ll find her greeting visitors at Epworth Methodist Church.

“I’ve led a very good life. I enjoy the things that I do,” Ollie says. “If you’re nice to someone, they’ll be nice to you. That’s the way I want it to be.”

Ollie downplays all the accolades she has received since being named an “Unsung Heroine” of Cook County. She was unable to attend the March 25 reception to receive her award because of some pre-scheduled minor surgery. She’s just happy to be making a living while so many are out of work and dispensing relationship advice to the customers that come to the lounge.

“I’m a people person,” Ollie says. “This is my dream. If I’m lucky enough to retire, I want to be a volunteer in the park. I would like to donate my time working with kids because so many of them are sent up there unsupervised.”