Scream for Me, Chicago!
“S’up, asshole, whatcha doing September 22nd?”
My brother, Steve, never calls me the Polish Hammer because he calls himself the Polish Hammer. He calls me “asshole” since that’s what our mother called me. It’s the same reason I always call Steve “asshole.” I’m certainly not going to call him the Polish Hammer, or our brother Pete who self identifies as the Polish Hammer as well. He, too, gets the “asshole” treatment. Now, our baby brother, Alex, he of the tattooed head and explosive skullet, has always been partial to the “Big Al” moniker. The Polish Hammer mantle holds no allure for him. Regardless, he gets called “asshole” no different than the rest of us.
“Let me consult my calendar. Says here September 22nd falls on a Tuesday which means I’m going to be working twelve hours for a bunch of damn ingrates. Same as the 21st, same as the 23rd.”
“That was a trick question, motherfucker. Don’t forget, we got those Iron Maiden tickets for that day.”
Oh shit! I had somehow forgotten. We bought those tickets a year ago, it seemed. Time stretches and contracts, and I can scarcely plan my life by it. Honestly, I thought I’d be unemployed by now. If not me, then certainly my son who works right beside me.
“We will be there,” I assured him.
It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve seen Iron Maiden live, when the chance arises to see these pioneers of British metal in concert, you make whatever sacrifices necessary to be there. In this case, in order for my son and I to get the two weekdays off to haul ass up to Chicago and back, and even though we toted two hundred and fifty hours of Paid Time Off between us, I had to promise the Hydra Hydraulics management our every Sunday until the end of the year. My son expressed his displeasure in my negotiation tactics, though he offered zero assistance. We agreed the promise of Upping the Irons with the three assholes of the Great Northern Koweski tribe proved too sensational to resist.
We left out the day of the concert, 1:00 am, driving a rented Equinox. I wanted a ’71 Cadillac El Dorado convertible, but the Enterprise dude explained real quick my only other alternative was a beige minivan.
Once on I65, a straight shot to The Region, my son leaned his passenger seat back and fell into the sort of deep sleep he usually reserved for his time on the clock at work. I put on my extended drive playlist, seventy-three of the greatest songs ever recorded, and I was off to the races, 110 mph until I hit Indianapolis. Most people, when they think of Indianapolis, envision the subpar professional football team, the Colts. Not me, man, my mind immediately turns to the horrors of endless road construction, motherfuckers wearing neon safety vests, leaning on shovels, watching me slowly dying behind a useless steering wheel, three hours stuck behind an immobile Audi while the Ass Ponys’ “Little Bastard” pleasantly sifts through the speakers.
Still, even after the extended visit in that godforsaken Cowtown, I made it to The Region in just under nine hours.
My son regained consciousness just in time to enjoy some Oreo crusted flapjacks at the Butter Maple House while I tucked into my usual plate of corned beef hash coupled with a glistening pile of upside down pineapple pancakes coated in cinnamon butter and drizzled with vanilla crème.
Thus fortified, we soldiered on to Alex’s house on the outskirts of Gary, Indiana. The Koweski assholes quickly arrived, and we began the festivities in true Polish fashion with the posing of the guns. My brothers keep an arsenal of weapons, and with a skinful of booze we’re prone to pulling the firearms out and posing for pictures, Polish Mafia style. This way, if any one of us perpetrates an especially heinous crime, the media will have plenty of photographic evidence we were rotten all along.
Gunplay devolved into pool playing. Alex has a bar and a pool table in his basement since it’s the best way to capture the tavern scene without having to endure the tavern patrons. My son displayed a remarkable ineptitude, failing to find a pocket for anything other than the cue ball. And I failed to astound him with my cross-table bank shots, knocking many balls incredibly close to the pockets I aimed for.
At some point, I considered taking a nap on account of road weariness, but it was not meant to be. Time slid forward slipshod, and soon it was time to leave. It was decided we’d take the Equinox to Tinley Park. This alarmed me since I opted out of spending extra credit card cash on insurance, figuring I lived a charmed life and wouldn’t have to worry about the worst-case scenario. Pete and Alex drove company trucks. Steve’s Crown Vic was notoriously skittish when driven within the vicinity of Chicago. Pete offered to drive, allowing me to nap on the way.
“Fuck it; let’s do it.” I was so fucking tired, I didn’t care whether I lived or died or crashed into insurmountable debt to the Enterprise franchise.
Equinoxes are the smallest goddam SUVs ever spat from the Chevrolet assembly line. Three Polish Hammers, one Big Al, and my number one son, assholes every one of us, couldn’t wedge our bodies inside. It was decided, since I’d spent the last four hours mewling about my utter lack of slumber, that I could lay in the spacious cargo hold and catch a few Zzz. Of course, the cargo hold of an Equinox is the smallest cargo hold ever designed by the community college educated engineers employed by Chevrolet. Fucking cargo hold would have been hard pressed to accommodate a soccer ball, much less a 6’3, 230lb sleep deprived Polack with a bad attitude. But I squeezed in there, I just couldn’t sleep on account of my head being forced to rest on my ankles.
By the time we got to Tinley Park, I was so vehicularly bent and deranged, I was ready to mock the first ten thousand geriatric metal heads who crossed my path. One of the things I find especially irksome about the whole heavy metal show is the proliferation of jean jackets bedazzled with the patches of bands they’ve seen in concert. It’s not the flex you think it is, I want to tell the guy with the Stryper, Saigon Kick, and Trixter logos embroidered on his denim. Slaughter sounds damn cool unless you’ve lived through the late eighties. The Koweski assholes unfortunately lost the fashion high ground when Steve decided to wear his Cosby Gang T-shirt with the words EITHER WE FUCKING OR I’M FUCKING printed neatly on the back. I wouldn’t even wear that shirt to attend classes at Cornell. But then, I’ve always been the sensible Koweski.
With every boo and hiss directed Steve’s way, he answered back with a “Trump 2028!” to give them something to think about.
Big Al also committed a fashion faux pas, thinking it was a good idea to wear flip flops to a venue that was, for our poverty-stricken asses, mostly comprised of a wet, grassy incline. Because he had to go with flip flops, he was only capable of drinking a third of every twenty-four ounce can of Michelob since every trip back from the beer stand, he’d lose his footing and go barrel rolling down the slope.
The third or fourth time this happened; it began striking people as odd. A metal head wearing black velvet britches even had the nerve to ask Alex after an especially spectacular tumble “dude, why you wearing flip flops to Tinley Park?”
It was a valid question, I thought, right up there with “why do you have a harpooned shark tattooed on the side of your head?” or “why are you wearing a La Bamba 2 Judgement Day shirt with Richie Valen’s half-brother, Bob Morales, posed like Schwarzenegger in T2 to an Iron Maiden concert?”
Alex couldn’t get past the black velvet britches. “man, those are some sexy pantaloons you got there.”
It was a sentiment Alex repeated throughout the night, and the fella never felt comfortable hearing it.
By the time Megadeth took the stage, I was beginning to regret my decision not to rent a chair. My son just sat in the muddy grass. “It’s not that bad,” he said, having drank so much booze he could have repeated the same phrase after sitting on a pile of broken glass.
“I’m starting to think I should have splurged on the ten dollars.” I muttered.
Only Pete possessed enough sense to rent a chair. Which I believed should have automatically disqualified him from the Polish Hammer title. He was always the least Polish amongst us.
Anyway, I’d never been to a Megadeth show. I kinda phased out of fandom around the Countdown to Extinction album. Their first three albums remain on heavy rotation on the old record player to this day. Back in the day, I always fell on the Mustaine side of the Metallica split when Hetfield and Lars bounced his ass out of the band for being a simpering alcoholic. I honestly avoided his concerts throughout the late eighties, early nineties for the same reason.
I will say this, as far as the 2026 iteration of Megadeth, Dave Mustaine was definitely sober, and his singing made me wish I wasn’t. His voice never attained more than a wispy mutter. And his hair looked like Michael McKean’s wig from This Is Spinal Tap. I mentioned this to my brother.
“The motherfucker’s sixty-five year’s old. He had cancer. What the fuck you want?” Steve huffed.
I looked at the stage, seven hundred and ninety yards away. Mustaine was way too far away to hear Steve’s words of encouragement.
“We know you’re giving it your best, Dave!”
“Saving your voice for the encore is a smart move, Dave!”
“Keep singing from your heart, Dave!”
Megadeth may have lasted all of thirty minutes. Mustaine acted put out that he was only allotted so much time, but I thought it was just right.
To be continued… in two weeks…!
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
