Pinners, kick the can, softball, fast pitch, hide and go-seek, Santa Fe railroad tracks, snowball fights, hop scotch, tag, red light-green light, go karts, bike riding, catching grasshoppers, catching fireflies, playing catch, listening to the radio, hanging out on the stoop, laying in the grass, walking, talking to your neighbor, playing war, building a snow man or woman, washing your families car in front of the house, playing with the garden hose, water balloons, looking for coins under the sofa for candy, swapping baseball cards, visiting family two blocks away, building forts in your back yard, chasing the ice cream truck, playing in the fire hydrant, running home from school on the last day, blowing the seeds off the dandelions, cutting your neighbor's grass, climbing a tree, jumping rope, hopping fences, playing marbles, Big Wheels, pinwheels, picking crabapples, planting flowers, selling lemonade, ring-a-leevio, walking in the grass barefoot, listening to the birds-blue jays, cardinals, robins, backyard pools, breaking in baseball gloves, jacks, AM radio, cardboard airplanes, kites, hula-hoops, blowing bubbles, colored chalk, and so on…
How far from home were you?
Where was your local baseball field? Your secret hideout? Who was the fastest kid on your block? Who was the bully? When did you remove the seat from your Big Wheel? Who had the Billy Williams baseball card? Or Jorge Orta? Who had the Schwinn Sting Ray on your block? Who was your best friend in the neighborhood? Jays, Lays or Vitners?
Close your eyes for a moment and remember your Brighton Park from back then-40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's…00's? 10's?
What a simple process talking is. What a simple thing to have a conversation with family or a group of friends is. As children or teenagers, talking on our stoop, on the corner of some street, or sitting on the hood of someone's car back when cars were made of steel, not aluminum, talking and laughing.
What exactly were we doing? An anthropologist would say we were storytelling. Conveying a story about something that happened yesterday, this morning, or a hundred years ago about someone you knew, or a character, ten feet tall, that ate whole cows for breakfast. The stories sometimes had second hand embellishments but sometimes they were as real as could be, especially if the storyteller was one of the oldest kids on the block. The neighborhood clown, maybe? Or maybe it was a "guest" storyteller from around the block or from a far off location like east side of Kedzie?
Storytelling has been around for centuries; we may also know it as the oral tradition. Many of what we know about our families is based on storytelling.
For my brothers and I, we gathered around Gary. Gary lived two doors down from us; he was older and cooler than anyone living on 39th Street. I really don't know if 38th Street, 39th Place or for that matter, anywhere else in Brighton Park had a cooler dude then Gary. His walk, the way he dressed was straight out of the 70's. He wore glasses, too, but no one dared call him four eyes, though he wasn't known as a tough guy. He was just "The Guy." He was our storyteller between Homan and St. Louis.
3446 W. Pershing Road: Gary's home before the fence and bay window. This was the stoop where we laughed and talked for hours because he was "The Guy."
Did you ever notice how when you were listening to your own storyteller, you were generally for the most part gathered in a circle? Circles are interesting because they provide comfort and a sense of belonging. It has been around for centuries, the circle process. It provides, most importantly, a sense of community. Block by block, we were a community, small or large, in Brighton Park. Our communities were multiple not singular. And in each community we had a storyteller, a mentor, a leader, someone we looked up to.
Who was it for you over by 45th and Richmond? 38th Street and Washtenaw? 41st and Albany? In front of Jim and Anne's? In front of Kelly High School? In front of Club Roma? In front of Galaxy?
Gary was our guy. He played an instrument, he owned a science kit that had a microscope, he was the first guy on our block with a job as a teenager; he hit the softball further than anyone on 39th St. Hell, he even ran cool! And honestly, Gary was no angel, but he was our storyteller and our guy on the block. We all looked up to him for his problem solving, for his funny laugh, for the guy that was going to give us something to do on a summer day or night. Yeah, he was our after school coordinator alright.
No matter what, though, he was going to describe a situation in his fashion, tell a story about something we did, he did, and that he saw. Who opened the fire hydrant and got caught. Who let the pigeons out of the cage from the corner home on 39th and St. Louis. What happened when you go on the train tracks at night. What do you find when you dissect an alley rat.
All of those stories were funny, scary, tempting, and for the most part safe...for the most part. We did do some daring things, but didn't we all? And no one got hurt. Sure, some adults in the neighborhood knew it was always Gary, but there was no great harm done, no property damage, no police call. We worked things out; parents talked, parents resolved the issues, and the kids continued on. There were conversations between us in the neighborhood, on our little one block community. And there was usually kids and parents from west of St. Louis or south of 39th St. around, too. No borders, no turf.
I think of this so much now because we don't talk much anymore, or do we? Do you still sit in circles? Who is your storyteller now? Does it bring back memories of Brighton Park on a cool April spring day, the week of Easter or Clean Up Week? Where will you gather?
Conversations and storytelling went a long way. It was a lesson on how to or how not to. It could be one-sided, but it could also be a true demonstration of a democracy. Conversations can motivate, conversations can help you explore; conversations can bring resolve to ambivalence, help facilitate change. Conversations don't cost us a thing, but their value as a positive, learning experience has guided us to where we are today, all through birth, through adolescence with our grandparents, parents and friends. It has brought us here to this point safely.
