a visit, and an ending

I was back in Chicago over Thanksgiving.  Although I was staying in Lincoln Park (where my dad now lives), I was anxious to revisit Hyde Park, to drink in the memories.  My last attempt a few years ago was cut short when I tripped in front of Kimbark Plaza and tore my Achilles tendon.  This time I would do it right.  This time I had a car to cover more ground… and I had my lady friend with me (hereafter referred to as “she” or “her”, because I don’t think I’ll be using the feminine pronoun for anyone else).

We cruised south on Lake Shore Drive.  I pointed out the sights: the fountain in Grant Park, the cluster of Field Museum/Planetarium/Shedd Aquarium/Soldier Field, McCormick Place, the bike path I would ride along the lake.  All this was merely prelude to the big event, however: my old stomping grounds.

We got off LSD and I pointed out Regents Park, the twin residential towers where I briefly lived as a child before moving across the street to our first stop: 5100 South Hyde Park Boulevard.  I paused here for a moment.  I looked at the steps I climbed so many times, the door I unlocked over and over again.  I felt an unexpected emptiness, in front of this building where I spent my formative years.  It was to be a recurring theme on this journey.  We didn’t even get out of the car… I pulled back into traffic and drove on.

On the left is Harold Washington Park, where the bright green South American Monk Parakeets used to roost every year.  Apparently they don’t come there anymore.  Everything changes.  We could have gotten out of the car and walked around, she wouldn’t have minded.  But at this point I was already feeling apprehensive about this whole thing, and it was cold out.  I turned on to 53rd, not even bothering to point out where Harold Washington had lived.  What would it mean to her?  What, really, did it mean to me?

A right turn to visit the stretch of Cornell that I had previously written about.  Vague stirrings of familiarity, but no nostalgic pull.  On the 53rd end, the bakery and the Chinese restaurant are gone, the vacant lot now occupied.  On the 51st end, we turned left and I took her to school: Kenwood Academy.

I spent six years (including junior high) here, my father taught here.  It should have been a flood of memories.  Instead, I just felt silly taking her there.  I haven’t been inside in 25 years.  What does this school have to do with who I am now?  How interesting could this possibly be for her, a spectator to someone’s else nostalgia?  We were both amused, however, to see that the stretch of Blackstone Ave in front of the school had been renamed “Chaka Khan Way”, in honor of the famous alum.

South on Lake Park.  Past the public library, which is somehow not as small as I thought it was.  A beautiful structure, too.  But we were hungry and I had little interest in seeing the inside (probably all different, anyway) so it was back to 53rd, a right turn, and a perfect parking spot in front of Valois.  Why did I pick Valois?  It didn’t have special significance to me.  What restaurants really did, though?  Medici was too hip, we’d had Giordano’s a couple nights earlier, the Pancake House was gone.  So Valois… I’d eaten there a few times, there was the “Obama factor”, and it was a local institution.

She ordered steak and eggs, I ordered a steak omelet.  The cashier made some pleasant chat, but somehow I expected more… character.  In my mind, Valois was a place where you’d strike up a conversation with some colorful person at the next table.  None of that was going on.  It was just breakfast, and honestly not a especially memorable one.  I felt now that I was boring her to tears.  She assured me that I wasn’t, bless her heart.

We got back into the car after the uneventful meal.  The Hyde Park Theater is now the Harper Theater.  Hyde Park Computers, where I had my first job, is boarded up and empty.  Harper Square is undergoing massive renovations, it looks completely different.  Everything was wrong.  We zigzagged through familiar streets… 53rd to 51st, Kimbark, Kenwood, Dorchester.  One thing hasn’t changed in the old neighborhood: those spectacular old apartment buildings still stand.  I love those buildings, classic brick and stone, balconies and bay windows.  You can picture the rickety elevators and musty staircases inside.  For a moment, I felt that she and I were both enjoying ourselves, admiring the architecture.

We cruised further out, to 55th.  The little park where I once smoked oregano that I’d been told was weed (“grass”, I called it, to my companion’s amusement… apparently there are generational differences over a 6-year difference).  The old Coop shopping center, now taken over by Treasure Island.  The end of another era, but what did I feel except the nagging sense that this was all just killing time?  Along the way I pointed out where different friends had lived.  So what?  Friends she never knew, friends she’ll never see… and for that matter, I probably won’t see them again either.

57th Street.  We stopped at a small store to buy some beverages.  I was hoping to find those old Canfield’s favorites: Mickey Melon and Diet Chocolate Fudge.  No dice (I did later find the chocolate drink at a supermarket in Lincoln Park, and it’s still yummy).  We drove up to the University.  Along the way I showed her the Unitarian church where I’d gone a few times, and where certain social functions sometimes occurred.  It’s an impressive church, actually.

We weaved around the university grounds.  Rockefeller Chapel, Regenstein Library, Ida Noyes Hall, the Midway, Robie House.  Even though I was never a student here, I always liked this campus… I went to the MacWillie’s day camp there, and it was the university that seemed to give Hyde Park a special personality.  We tried to find the “When Harry Met Sally” dorm, but neither of us could quite remember what it looked like.  I’m pretty sure we went by it, though.

I’m boring myself all over again just retelling this jagged, aimless trip.  We went to 57th Street Books and spent some time browsing.  I’m quite fond of this bookstore, which you have to descend below street level to enter.  The space is oddly divided into rooms full of little nooks and unexpected turns.  As we looked over the poetry shelves, I imagined that one day her works would sit there.  We killed a good half hour there at least, but left without making any purchases.

At this point, I was feeling so self-conscious about boring her that I wanted to skip the Museum of Science and Industry entirely and head back to Lincoln Park.  But she encouraged me, perhaps knowing that it meant something to me… or perhaps secretly hoping to salvage something more interesting out of this whole thing.

The first thing that’s changed about the Museum is money.  It used to be free admission.  Now you pay — and quite dearly — to get in, and to park.  Maybe you always had to pay to park, but I remember a free parking lot in front.  I’ve never gone there by car, I always just walked there from my house, a straight shot down Hyde Park Boulevard.  A walk I made many times.  In my recollection, at least, there were summers where almost every day would include a trip to the museum.

But it feels almost entirely alien to me now.  The cavernous entrance (is it even the same entrance way? I’m not sure) is filled with the ticketing area, making sure everyone pays their money to get in.  The annual Christmas Trees Around the World exhibit was up, and perhaps that was pretty much the same.  Little else felt familiar.  Is that where the coal mine entrance always was?  Where’s the energy ride?  Where’s the room full of computers?  Of course… it’s a science museum.  You can’t have old, outdated stuff in a science museum.

The trains are still there, and the “Mold-a-Rama” machine.  And Yesterday’s Main Street, where we watched a silent Xmas movie and enjoyed (after waiting in quite a long line) some ice cream at Finnegan’s Parlor.  When desperate for entertainment, I often turn to food.  It keeps the mouth busy so I don’t have to flail around in my mind for something interesting to say.

We didn’t even go to the upstairs portion of the museum.  She and I had both had quite enough after fiddling with some knobs in a new (or new to me) exhibit about kinetic energy.  It was basically a bust.  You truly can’t go home again.  Hyde Park has changed, but more importantly, I’ve changed.  I’m too far removed from this place, no matter how much it once meant to me.  I have a new home now.

So I am ending this blog, after four posts and very few hits.  Most of what I wanted to remember about Hyde Park is in this post, albeit in abbreviated form.  Thank you for reading.

two houses

As I wander through the streets of Hyde Park in my memory, one location I keep returning to is the area of 53rd and Kimbark, and the Kimbark Plaza.  Just behind the plaza is a cluster of 8 townhouses, arranged in a cozy L shape around a sunken courtyard.  One of my first homes was the house closest to Kimbark Avenue.

But this house doesn’t linger in my recollection for that reason.  I lived there from infancy until about four years old, but I have no particular memories of residing at that address, except those implanted there by old photographs.  But another family bought the house after us (and we briefly lived in another townhouse in the complex, or so my mother tells me… I have no memory of this either) and I became fast friends with their eldest son.  For the sake of this blog post, I will call him Peter, for a reason that I cannot divulge without revealing his surname.

Peter swears — or he used to swear — that he remembers our meeting, with he and I each clutching our blankets.  I have always had my doubts that he actually remembers this and it wasn’t just a figment of his active imagination.  But perhaps he really does… he is a year older than me and would have had a more developed sense of memory.  At any rate, except for a brief time when I lived out of state, it seems that Peter was ever-present throughout my childhood.

We were in grade school together.  We were in Boy Scouts together (I actually joined because he had joined, but I didn’t last long… camping was not, and probably never will be, my bag).  We played with Star Wars figures together, and went to the lake together, and later excitedly rented Faces of Death together from a video store that didn’t bother to check our ages (what a disappointment that turned out to be).  We did things together that he’d probably prefer I not discuss, alias or no alias.

And much of these things we did in that townhouse on Kimbark.  I remember it as well as my own place.  The entryway, the living room, the downstairs bathroom and kitchen.  The kitchen where Peter, having at one time developed an addiction to the stuff, would fry up entire packages of bacon.  The door to the backyard.  The carpeted steps to the second floor and the laundry chute… both fun to throw things down.  Four bedrooms, including the one Peter shared with one of his brothers.  I remember sitting there playing Stratego, Connect Four, The Mad Magazine Game (poorly designed as a game, uneffective as comedy).

And the basement, where the siblings fought for dominance of the TV.  And the computer, which would now be considered a laughable relic but back then it was perfectly fine for a game of “The Ancient Art of War”.  The laundry machines were down here, too.  These came in quite handy the day I managed to bump into a ladder and drench my clothing in white paint.  I almost walked home in that state but Peter’s mother thankfully put a stop to that.  I sat in that basement in my underwear, wrapped in a blanket that did little to shield me from embarrassment in front of Peter’s sister, who was my age and in my class.

In the parking lot serving the complex were mulberry trees.  Sometimes so bountiful that you had to be careful walking through there or the bottoms of your shoes would get tainted purple.  But they were tasty little treats, and you could always grab a quick snack on your way to or from Peter’s house.

Peter and I eventually drifted apart… he went to a different high school and we saw each other less and less.  But he was a good and loyal friend and we still stay in touch, in that vague Facebooky way where old friends are kept, liking photos and posting pithy status updates.  It’s a Reader’s Digest version of friendship, but that’s the way it goes.

Running adjacent to the townhouse complex is an alley, threading behind the gas station and McDonald’s, between Kimbark and Kenwood.  At the end of this alleyway is another house.  I never set foot in this house, or even in the yard, but I passed it often.  I made a point of passing it.

Because in that house lived a girl who was the object of my first big crush.  Looking back now it was nothing more than a fleeting puppy love, a young boy’s hormones just starting to awaken.  I was riveted by her gentle features and rosy cheeks, and especially her long, silken, golden hair.  She was the portrait of femininity to me at a time when I was just beginning to recognize what that was.  She was also one of the best and brightest students in my class, making her even more unattainable to an underachiever like myself… never mind that we were 12 years old and too young to comprehend dating or romance.

Of course that didn’t stop me from sending a “secret admirer” letter.  Heaven only knows what mortifying things I wrote in that letter.  What is the point of a secret admirer letter anyway?  You will never know if they have the same feelings.  At best you’re probably just creeping them out.  Is it just the need to get those desires on paper, to express yourself, like the need that drives me to record these personal memories now?  I’m not even writing about Hyde Park at this point, this is all just about me.

I walked by that house every time it was feasible, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.  I never did.  I didn’t have any plan if I had happened to bump into her there either.  What plan could I possibly have?  “Oh hi!  I’m just lurking around your house, want to go grab a McDLT with me?” doesn’t seem like a gateway to young romance.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I finally revealed — through Facebook, that keeper of otherwise dormant associations — my identity as the author of this letter.  Perhaps out of some perverse need to confess, but more just wondering if she ever knew it was me.  She didn’t.  Now she does, thanks to my big mouth, and that makes me feel a bit vulnerable even though our lives couldn’t be more separate.  What is this compulsion to spill my secrets, share my memories, expose myself this way?  This urge to shed the protective blanket, to let myself be judged on the harshest possible terms?  Come peck at this bare flesh, crows!  Give me your worst!

lake

I’ve been in the ocean. Bobbing in the surf, seaweed grasping at my toes. Or snorkeling off the coast of Tulum, Mexico, spotting schools of exotic fish and steering clear of the odd jellyfish. But for me, the mysteries of the sea don’t match the simple pleasures of a freshwater lake. The accidental mouthful of water won’t leave you gasping, you can open your ungoggled eyes without stinging repercussions.

In Chicago, of course, there is Lake Michigan. A big big lake. You can’t see any other side of it, so it might as well be an ocean. And in Hyde Park, I lived so close to it that I could walk there in five minutes. A journey I took too many times to count. Late in my adolescence, when I finally got a bicycle, my daily exercise was to bike to the lake and ride the coastline, from 51st up to near the convention center, back to Promontory Point and then home through the park. As with the roller skates, music kept me company, but by this time it was a Discman instead of a Walkman. When the batteries died, it didn’t gradually slow down. It just stopped.

The Point — a man-made area where the shore abruptly juts out, intruding into the indifferent volume of the lake — was a popular hangout. Although there was no defined beach, you could just swim off the rocks with no danger. Diving in this area, however, was a risky endeavor, as the signs suggested. Picnics and gatherings are frequent here. There was a feeling that it was one of Hyde Park’s special meeting spots. It was Our Own.

Further down the coast is 57th Street Beach, a proper beach with sand and lifeguards. Just across Lake Shore Drive from the Museum of Science and Industry, it had a more touristy vibe to it… though most tourists would rather flock to the classier Oak Street Beach on the north side of town. Who comes to Chicago for the beaches anyway? On a bad day, the sand of the 57th would be littered with dead fish, a powerful but somehow not entirely unpleasant stench. On a good day, it would be packed with families, tanning or sleeping or swimming in the mild, forgiving waves. If I swam out to the buoys, I felt so far away from land that I might never see home again. I reveled in the danger for a moment, the brief exhilaration of taking a not-very-risky risk, before panic took over and I returned to shore.

But my favorite spot was up the coast, a bouldery area somewhere around 49th. Few people ever swam here, I could have it to myself, or just my friends and I. Here one had to be more mindful of the jagged rocks and wooden pylons that lurked just below the surface. But it was a peaceful place. You could just float in that serene water for hours, the hum of the expressway forming a white noise soundtrack.

It was here where I took a late night swim with a girl from high school. It was the end of the summer, in a few days I would be leaving for college. This girl was a year behind me (though because I’d skipped a grade many many years earlier, we were the same age) and I didn’t know her particularly well. But we were friends in a way. And I liked her. She was a short, cute, quiet redhead.

I don’t remember who proposed that we hang out that evening, or who proposed that we take a swim. Those things should be significant enough to recall, but they are gone. I can still feel the slightly erotic excitement of being in the water with her, the possibility of romance hovering around us. Did she feel it too? Could I have kissed her in that moment, or would she have pulled away? Perhaps in the afterlife we get to find out all the times we could have kissed someone, all the times they were waiting to be kissed. I don’t know if that would be Heaven or Hell.

Somehow we ended up outside her house, swaying on swings and talking about the future. Again, it’s possible that this could have turned into A Moment. I didn’t have the guts to act on the impulses I was feeling. Summer was over, I was going away, and most likely she was only interested in me as a friend. I think that was the last time I swam in Lake Michigan off the coast of Hyde Park.

roller skates

I never had a bicycle as a kid. I suppose I could have asked for one. I don’t think it ever occurred to me. Maybe I thought it would be too difficult. I wonder how different my life would be today if I’d had a bike. Would I be thinner? Would I be more confident in my physical abilities? Would I have strong ankles, the kind that don’t snap an Achilles tendon when you trip on your way to Harold’s Chicken Shack? Perhaps the lonely bicycle that now languishes in my garage would get more use. At least I only spent $50 on it.

But what I did have were roller skates. At least two or three pairs over the years, but the ones that stick with me were bright blue with yellow stripes. They looked like regular shoes that someone had bolted wheels on, with a polyurethane stopper on the toe that I never learned how to use properly. I just coasted until I was slow enough to grab on to something, or gently bump into a wall. Bump. Skating time over.

I go out the back door to our apartment, down the stairs with peeling green paint, in my socks. On the final step, I sit and put on my skates. I clip my Walkman to my jeans. What cassette will I skate to today? Def Leppard’s Pyromania? The Rolling Stones’ Aftermath? Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here? There’s that part right before the title song starts where the music suddenly sounds like it’s coming from a radio in another room. For a long time I thought it was a defect in the tape.

Through the winding concrete behind the condos, the concrete cracked and broken in spots I had memorized as obstacles. Out onto Cornell Avenue. Up and down Cornell, between 51st and 53rd. Up and down, back and forth. Music in my ears. Energy I don’t have any longer. At 51st, if you look left there’s the viaduct with the florist and in the deep murk of the tunnel is the entrance to the El station.

Heading back towards 53rd. There’s the apartment of a friend. He had a wonderful, fat, smiling Mexican mother whose kitchen smelled like mysterious meats and spices. When we waited for the school bus in the bitter Chicago winter, she would stomp her feet and tell us that’s the way to stay warm. It works, for a while anyway.

There’s the house of a friend who stopped being a friend. He just decided to mock me one day, in front of his other friends. Those childhood stings of ostracization. That still hurts, dude. And then I remember I did the same kind of thing to the kid downstairs, and that hurts more.

On the east side of the street is a big apartment building. I never went inside, but our TV could pick up the closed circuit camera in the entrance. It was a 24-hour show we called “Lobby.” Had the camera been angled differently, someone might have seen me skating by, in black and white.

Here is Akiba-Schechter, the Jewish school where I went to kindergarten for half a year. Much vaguer memories here. Nap time on the floor. A picture of me wearing a yarmulke, something I would never do again. A girl I thought was cute. Even back then I thought girls were cute. A teacher with a beehive hairdo, another one with glasses. One had a funny name, like Hasselrose or something. Rosenhassel? No, that’s way off. It’ll come to me as I’m drifting off to sleep one night, and I’ll be satisfied for a moment.

Just past the school (or is it before the school? I thought my memory of the layout was so much clearer) is another friend’s apartment. One day I dumped his little sister’s toys down an open manhole. For no reason at all, just to watch them fall into the black water below. She cried and their mother came out and yelled at me. What a little douchebag I was! The building had one of those rickety outside wooden stairways, held together by rusty nails and nostalgia.

And there’s a field of long weeds and grass, strewn with trash treasures. Old lighters, beer cans, shoes. Dreams of finding an envelope stuffed with hundred dollar bills. Once I flung lit matches into the grass, to see it burn. Not just a douchebag, a pyromaniac douchebag.

Across the street is an alleyway behind the Chinese restaurant where a scene from The Package was shot. I never saw the movie and I never ate there. But if you knocked on on the back door, one of the dishwashers would give you a little carton of milk, the kind you’d get with your lunch at school. Sometimes he’d give you chocolate milk.

Up and down, back and forth. The whirr-click of the wheels on the pavement, the rhythm of the breaks in the sidewalk. Whirr, click, whirr, click. The Walkman’s batteries are dying. I can’t tell right away. I gradually realize the music sounds a little slower than it should. One more circuit, 51st to 53rd and back. The sky gets dark. It’s dinner time, and I have to homework to do, which I probably won’t do.