I have had many sanctuaries in my life, but none more memorable than the one I had growing up in Brighton Park. When I lived at 3440 West Pershing Road, my sanctuary was in the backyard. What I loved about it the most was the green grass. Laying on it or playing on it, it was my place to escape and think. I am not sure if I was the only one in the neighborhood laying on the grass at night looking up at the stars, the moon, and clouds, but I didn't care really. Truly there may have been thousands of young eyes gazing at the night sky!
What did we try to escape from when we visited our sanctuary? Sometimes I would pretend that I was Mike Krukow from the Chicago Cubs pinching to one of the teams in the National League: Phillies, Reds or the Mets. Holding the Flyback rubber ball, looking for the sign from the catcher Joe Walis or Steve Swisher, and imagining the strike zone. I was only throwing the ball maybe 15 feet away, but you couldn't tell me that! Those were my no hitters in the land of pretend and fantasy!
Sometimes I would just sit on the concrete floor not doing much or thinking much. I wonder if our children have a moment to do that nowadays in our busy world of video games, endless amounts of homework, and school activities. My big decisions were based on whether or not I should walk over to Theresa's Grocery Store and buy a can of Country Time Lemonade or a bag of Munchos Potato Chips. Hell, that was a big decision between sweet and salt with 25 cents!
My favorite memory was laying on the grass and looking up at the night sky. Amazing the amount of stars (that's almost impossible now) I could see then and the occasional cloud that would float by. Sometimes, I swear I could feel the earth rotating under me. I felt it and believed I could hear it moving. A low hum, the earth spinning on it's axis slowly, and I was totally connected, plugged into the forces of nature.
Well, now I know it was the cloud really moving and the humming could have been a million things, but in my sanctuary, I was right, I knew, I felt the connection to the earth's atmosphere. For the moment, I had a relationship with the earth like no one else had through my sanctuary. For that moment, family quarrels, homework, unemployment, 70's gas prices, inflation, Watergate could not enter my cosmological place.
I have never ever experienced a feeling like that again. I did have other places, other sanctuaries like 'Jack-knife', Davis Playground, my workplace as an adult, sometimes the bathroom could be my sanctuary (stop laughing). But that true feeling of power and spirituality under the Brighton Park sky, never again.
Sometimes I think about going to ask the owners of 3440 West Pershing Road to see if they would let me come AT night. Come by to lay down in their backyard on grass and escape to my old sanctuary, and listen to the earth move, listen to it hum. To hear the earth speak to me again and welcome me back as I escape once again.
