Calumet Fisheries hasn’t always been at the foot of the 95th Street bridge, although the little red-roofed shack that serves fried perch and catfish and home-smoked shrimp and salmon seems as integral to the scenery of Calumet Harbor as the drawbridges that lift for the passing ships or the tall cranes that unload steel coils from their holds. The take-out restaurant, which was founded early in the century, used to be next to the 92nd Street bridge. In 1928 the building was loaded onto a scow and moved three blocks down the Calumet River so the bridge could be widened.
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“That amazes a lot of people,” she says. Morales has worked in the restaurant for 30 years. “It amazes me to see them stand there with awe, because I see it every day. But they run out there with their food and say, ‘Oh, the bridge is up.’ You see a ship out on the water, you say, ‘Oh, that’s a ship on the water.’ When they’re docked, you can see how large they are.”
“There was a ship here a week ago from Sri Lanka,” she says. “They come in, sometimes they’ll buy fish. Their main interest is beer and cigarettes. Or they want a cab downtown. We’ll get them a cab and we’ll tell them the name of the [ship] terminal and say, ‘Give this to the cabdriver when you come back.’ If we were on their soil, we’d want someone to be friendly.”
“You see older people, they come down to the river, and it’s like they’re reminiscing,” she says. “They’re watching the ships unload the coils, and I want to say, ‘A penny for your thoughts.’”
The joint had another brush with fame in 1980. The bridge-jumping scene from The Blues Brothers was filmed on 95th Street, right in front of the restaurant. The street was closed for four blocks so the Bluesmobile could pick up enough speed to make the leap over the partially opened drawbridge. That meant few customers, so Morales had plenty of time to watch the stunt unfold.
Calumet Fisheries, 3259 E. 95th (773-933-9855), is open daily from 10 AM to 10 PM. –Ted Kleine
