Edgar's Crusade on Meigs Flies in the Face of Reason

hen we've had really big blizzards in Chicago, many people have developed a strange craving.

They want milk. They flock to the grocery to stock up on food, as if fearing that packs of wolves of will soon trap them in their homes.

And the food they want most is milk. People who haven't had a glass a day since childhood will load several cartons into their shopping carts.

The periodic milk craze comes to mind when I try to follow the most recent strange craving that has afflicted many Chicagoans.

It is the weird yearning for Meigs Field and the sight and sounds of those who wave signs and wail at the TV cameras: ''Saaave Meigs Field.''

It has become almost as heartfelt a crusade as Save the Whales or Save the Bald Eagle.

It has become almost as heartfelt a crusade as Save the Whales or Save the Bald Eagle.

So I ask, why has this passionate love for a second-rate little airstrip gripped Chicagoans, most of whom have never visited Meigs Field and about 99-plus percent of whom have never been on an airplane going in or out of Meigs.

I put that question to my friend Slats Grobnik, who is never at a loss for an original theory. He said:

''Richie Daley is for getting rid of Meigs. So people who don't like Richie are gonna say they are for keeping it. And there are people who just like having a cause. If enough talk-show blabberfaces started saying: 'Save the garbage,' you'd have goofs picketing garbage trucks and waving signs that say 'Save our garbage.'

''Then you got the governor, Flying Jim Edgar, acting like he is Chicago's big brother and saving us from a fate worse than death--not having a second-rate little airstrip downtown.

''He don't want to admit that him and the rest of those Springfield bureaucrats would rather fly in and out of Meigs than Midway when they come visit their Chicago offices.

''That's really what this is all about. Meigs is like Edgar's private airstrip, and he don't want to lose it.''

I do believe that Slats is right. There can't be any other reason for Edgar's wacky behavior regarding Meigs.

The issue is so simple: The land Meigs occupies belongs to the Chicago Park District, not to the State of Illinois.

Since Meigs was built about 50 years ago, the city plan has always been to shut it down when the airport lease was up--which it is--and turn it into a park.

That's what Daley and the Park District are doing, following up on what has always been the sensible long-range plan for that land.

But now we have Edgar making kind of a jackass of himself by carrying on about how important this puny airstrip is to Chicago and he must rescue it, at the same time the federal courts are telling him he is wrong: The City of Chicago has the right to turn the land into a park.

There has been more than enough research done on who uses Meigs and who doesn't to show how feeble, self-serving and political Edgar is on this phony issue.

Who uses Meigs the most? Edgar and other Springfield politicians and paper shufflers, with more than 1,000 flights a year.

There's nobody else--individuals, corporations, or conventioneers--who comes even close to the Springfield crowd.

Every commercial airline that tried operating out of Meigs has given up. There isn't enough business, and from day to day or hour to hour, they didn't know if the place would be usable or socked in by weather.

Fewer than one-fifth of 1 percent of all the city's convention visitors used Meigs. That's one grain of sand in a big sandbox.

Of the millions of people who visit Chicago on business each year, fewer than 1 percent ever used Meigs. That's one grain on a beach.

Only eight corporations out of the thousands in this area used Meigs more than once a week. And if they had wanted to use it more often, they really couldn't since the blustery and dangerous lakefront weather caused the place to shut down so frequently. Most private pilots never used Meigs for that reason and the availability of far better equipped airports.

Of course, there are a few downtown businessmen who are so wealthy that they have big homes in places such as Lake Geneva, Wis. And they find it more convenient to fly to Meigs every day, rather than ride a train or buck highway traffic. They don't take their kids to play in Chicago's parks, so they have little interest in seeing the park system expand and improve. Not if it intrudes on their airborne commuting habit.

Listening to Edgar and his bandwagon followers in Springfield yap about Meigs, you would think that they had already solved all of the state's lesser problems, such as how to find more money for schools, how to deal with the coming welfare changes and what to do about toll roads that take your money in exchange for massive traffic jams.

Somebody should explain to Edgar and his fellow Springfield commuters that it takes only about 15 minutes longer to drive from Midway to the Thompson Center in the Loop than it does from Meigs.

That should leave more than enough time in a day for Edgar to think up some other lofty crusade.

Maybe Save the Pigeons?