Brighton Park-Now: 2014

Friday, October 10, 2014

Sanctuary!

No! This is not about Quasimodo. This is about that one place when you were growing up that you could escape to when you needed time to think or not think at all. That one place that you could be alone or with a group of friends looking for the answers to questions that scared you, worried you, and interested you. A place you could walk to or run to. A place to hide in or a place to cry.

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.

Monday, September 1, 2014

Pizza with the "Devil"

When I first joined Facebook, one of the first people that I accepted as a friend was "Vet". Vet and I go back thirty-two years or so; I met him at my brother's arcade business in 1982 on Washtenaw and 38th Street. I worked there on weekends, mostly in the evenings. I would say that most of the people that came to play the video games were friends from Burroughs, Kelly, SJSA, St. Agnes, De La Salle, and a few from Curie, too; they were young people from the neighborhood.

Brighton Park Elementary School: New building where Duckie's once stood.

Vet lived down the block from my brother's business, Duckie's Arcade (I still have no clue why my brother called his business Duckie's!) Regardless of the name, the youth from the neighborhood came by the bucket loads to spend their quarters. First day was a hit because it opened on a Friday, and the weekend of that first week was a great success. However, during the week, business would get a little slow. And that's when Vet first appeared. He strolled in with a couple of quarters, wearing a green army coat, and walked over to the machine, put his quarter in, and he stayed there for some time playing. The name of the arcade game- "Frontline". Within a short time, Vet became a pro at that game. At one point he held the high score on "Frontline" until Duckie's was no more.

Interestingly enough, that's how Vet and I met. Since I worked at Duckie's part time, I occasionally would play a game or two. Everyone would crowd around to see how players advanced to another level, what tricks they used, and if it was worth it to play against them on the next turn; I would do the same and observe the guy with the green army coat playing "Frontline". I don't know how or why, but eventually we struck up a conversation about military history; I was an avid World War II student, and Vet was an avid student of the Vietnam War.

The corner of 38th Street and Washtenaw.

I remember one of my first comments about the Vietnam War was that the U.S. really didn't lose the war. Vet's comment was an absolute, "No, we lost the war." Because of conversations we had on occasion about military history, I was motivated to read about the Vietnam War from the perspective of oral history. I read, "Nam" by Mark Baker for the first time that year, one of the best books on the experience of Vietnam through the eyes of the veterans who fought in the battles.

Vet and I stayed in touch on and off for some time even after Duckie's closed. I occasionally saw him on the Archer Avenue bus, riding home from Curie High School (I would catch the same bus heading home from Brother Rice High School). We always talked and had a few laughs, until we both graduated from high school in the mid-80's.

Fast forward to 2002 when I was being interviewed by WGN for a piece on employment opportunities for people with disabilities. When I returned to my office for the non-for-proift I worked for, I found an email from a very familiar person: it was Vet.

A wonderful surprise! A blast from the 80's past! We exchanged some emails a couple of times. I was going through a difficult time in my life at the time and eventually lost contact with him. But good friendships last through years, distances, and experiences, and our friendship stood the test of time!

So on to Facebook in 2008. While searching for old friends from the neighborhood and school, either I found Vet or he found me. It was great to add him to my new Facebook account. Of course, sharing this experience with my wife and daughters was it's own experience. When my oldest daughter saw a picture of Vet, she stated that he looked like the devil!!!

Thus when he and I got to together to have pizza at Falco's last week Tuesday, I was having pizza with the devil. He's no devil, he's a friend from my teenage years in Brighton Park. A friend that has his own views in the form of absolutes, but someone who is always willing to listen to someone else's opinion (sometimes). Someone that loves the Beatles not Led Zeppelin, reads about the Vietnam War experience not the World War II experience, and someone who follows the sport of running more passionately than any other sport I know.

It's not unique to Brighton Park or unique to me, but friendships like that never fade and last through any chasm that our society can create.

Monday, July 21, 2014

The War Around Us...

Living in Brighton Park in my early years, the late 1960's and early 1970's, the Vietnam War was winding down. I do not recall anything at all about the Vietnam War; I really don't. Out in the corner of my world on Pershing Road, I had no idea men were dying by the thousands, thousands of miles away in a foreign land. I had no idea we were losing the war. And I had no idea we were losing because of so many complicated factors: misguided foreign policy, the loss of public support here in the US and globally, and a bad military strategy.

Yes, war was foreign to me and I assume to most of my neighborhood friends. We were young and we were preoccupied more with Tastee Freez, bike riding, and who was leading off for the Cubs or White Sox. Yet, what seemed to be close were the memories of World War II.

It was during the early afternoon on Saturdays or maybe Sundays that I recall watching World at War and Victory at Sea. I was fascinated by the black and white film, the D-Day footage, German and Russian offensives, the African Campaign, submarine warfare, the sinking of the Bismarck. I enjoyed watching the episodes weekly. Less than thirty years had passed since the war ended, but somehow it seemed like such an ancient set of events to me.

My friend and neighbor, Gary, his father had served in World War II. I am not sure what theater, but he had his M-1 Garand mounted on the wall in the basement over his work bench. He even had the bayonet fixed at the end. It looked like the size of a bazooka, but I was only a little kid, so that is how I remember it.

I didn't know many WWII vets. A couple of Korean War vets that served in the Navy and Army, but not many. When I attended SJSA I remember going to mass and seeing the vets that served as ushers sometimes wearing their caps with the VFW logo. Once, my 3rd grade teacher took us to see the memorial to WWII vets that died in service on the side of the building of SJSA, right there on California Avenue facing west. That was a solemn moment as my 3rd grade teacher's father was one of the men killed in action and his name was engraved on the memorial.

The World War II Memorial on SJSA Elementary School Building.

Again, this was from World War II. The Vietnam War wasn't even on my mental radar unlike the rest of the city and country. At least, that's what I thought. Yet, the country was so divided and in such turmoil. Sure I was throwing up the peace sign and making fun of Nixon, too, but I had no clue why.

So I wonder if Brighton Park and other communities are currently isolated from war in Iraq and Afghanistan. If they are, what then does WWII, Korea, and Vietnam mean to them?

I, like many, have veterans in my family. My brother served in the Army as a medic. He shared with me the experience of East and West Berlin, watching the Russian tanks rush the gate, then abruptly turn and head back east. Of course, my nephew, his son, a medic as well, and now part of the 82nd Airborne. When he left to Iraq, war became close to home. War was real, not a black and white film, not a memorial, not a paragraph in a history book. It was 13 months of worry! I wonder how my brother would have felt if he were alive while his only son was serving in the Iraq War?

I wonder, what was Brighton Park like in the midst of WWII, Korea, and even the early years of Vietnam? How do we remember those days, the people that died, and the changes that came with it - the Red Scare, the fear of Communism, rationing, the suburban flight, the evident of super powers, protests, a new kind of music, civil rights, industry, unity, the Cuban Missile Crisis and even death? Did we feel safer then?

Ultimately, military history moved me enough to complete a Master's Degree in History, but the books can't and won't tell the full story. That belongs to the veterans: neighbors, uncles, brothers, cousins, and fathers...maybe you, too.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Communities within a community

Is Brighton Park unique in its geography? Or is Brighton Park's uniqueness due to its geography?

Since I left Brighton Park in the mid-90's, I think about where I lived for those 27 years. I lived at 3440 W. Pershing Road, 3026 W. Pershing Road, and 4145 S. Albany Ave. All three locations are in Brighton Park, but they were extremely different back then and even now.

If you think about each corner of Brighton Park, it was uniquely connected to a particular parish or school as they are now. Roughly, those four corners are 49th and Central Park, on the south, and about 31st and Central Park on the north side. On the other side, 49th and Western Avenue make one corner, and about 31st and Artesian the other one. We have some pretty interesting landmarks and border markers: I-55, Western Avenue, and the old "fire road." It seems that a lot of Brighton Park was surrounded or blocked in by manufacturing, transportation, railways and other businesses.

Community Number 58: Brighton Park

When I look at each section or quarter of Brighton Park, wow, were they ever different worlds!!!

My claim to my family, friends, coworkers, and others has always been that I owned the neighborhood. I don't mean that I ruled it, conquered it, drew its borders, made enemies, and established boundaries. What I really mean is that I could walk from one side of the neighborhood to the other and know someone or recognize something. But reflecting back, there were invisible boundaries present and even today, walking through the streets, I can actually say there is a block or an area that I have not been through once, or twice, or ever. It's odd, but so true.

So this weekend I set out to walk and see each corner of Brighton Park and finish in the middle. Well, as close to the middle as possible, all the while thinking back how often did I wander with friends, with family or on my own in these four corners of Brighton Park.

31st and Western: Northeast corner of Brighton Park

My first walk was to the northeast corner of BP, right by the Illinois Michigan Canal. The memory that comes to mind from this view is "jackknife." "Jackknife" is a bridge where, as teenagers, we would walk to mainly at night. This is close to Burroughs Elementary School, close to the old bus barns, to what was once St. Agnes Parish, St. Joseph and St. Anne Parish, and the Campbell Soup Company. Of course, as teenagers we really didn't know how dangerous it was to be in this area. As you walked over the bridge, you were above the canal and trains moved through there pretty regularly. We were also fairly close to the highway, I-55. We would walk under the overpass, come up in the middle of the inbound/outbound traffic. Sometimes one of the guys would get crazy and run from one side of the four lanes to the other.

View of the Orange Line: 48th and Western, the southeast corner of Brighton Park.

I braved the crazy traffic on Western Avenue to the southeast side conner of Brighton Park. It is not 49th and Western anymore; now it's the Orange Line, close to the new Shields Middle School. This corner of Brighton Park borders the New City community, better known as Back of the Yards. This area is close to Kelly High School, but as most of the Brighton Park community, it's bordered by another railroad track. This is one of those areas I seldom visited. It's not until now that I travel between New City and Brighton Park on 47th Street at least once a week.

Behind the new Shields Middle School - railroad tracks and a water tank.

Next, I went across 47th Street to the southwest side of BP. In the distance, the Orange Line again. Talk about walking through a desolate area! I had no clue these warehouses existed in Brighton Park, or what their purpose was. I was about two or three blocks from the border of Archer Heights and Brighton Park. The most notable landmark: the railroad overpass on 47th Street and Archer Avenue, close to the Polish Highlanders Banquet Hall and the used car dealership that seems to change management quite frequently.

Smith Brothers: 48th Street and Drake

Not too far from the warehouses, going North between Drake and Kedzie, is a residential area. It was my dream to live in this area at one point in my life because it always seemed to be insulated from the rest of Brighton Park, insulated from the schools, busy streets, and older home construction. My uncle lived on 44th and Sawyer, and I loved to go visit him. He basically lived behind the old Kedzie Bowling Alley.

As close as I could get to the northwest end of Brighton Park.

Finally I arrived to the northwest corner; well, close to it. This picture is taken from St. Louis, but I needed to walk another two blocks to get to Central Park if I really wanted to be at the northwest edge of BP. It wasn't happening as everything appears to be closed off. I was picked up by the police as a very young kid near here for allegedly opening up a fire hydrant. My friends and I actually didn't open the fire hydrant, we were merely playing in the water. I guess the police officer felt he needed to teach us a lesson; he left us sitting in the squad car for about one hour.

I remember this area well since I had many friends in this area from elementary school. It was two blocks from my home on Pershing Road, and close to "the fire road." I'm not sure why it was called the "fire road," but we could walk or ride our bikes to Venture down "fire road." My mom and aunt worked close by as well; they worked at Clark Foam Products which was on 38th Street. In the mid-70's, I remember a small prop Cessna crashing into a warehouse nearby. Imagine how incredible that must have been for a young kid to see! Then I think of all of my friends that lived even closer to that area: what was going through their heads when this happened?

And now I'm in the middle: Archer Avenue Big Store, Standard Federal Savings, Chicago Firehouse (home to Truck 52 and Ambulance 88), Watra (back then Wolf Furniture), and around the corner, Pants Box (it's still there!) and Brighton Park Theatre. That's all gone now, but some of the buildings are still there with different names. The center of Brighton Park, not a surprise when you think about it. It was the busiest part of Brighton Park then. It still looks pretty busy now, doesn't it?

Would you say you roamed all of Brighton Park as well? Or was it limited to a parish, school or another type of landmark? We were all neighbors though, all Brighton Park residents. We all went to Kroozin' Music, ordered our pizza from Falco's, ate Huck Finn Donuts, shopped at Archer Avenue Big Store, and most of us had a library card from the Brighton Park Library.

It was our neighborhood despite the distance between each Brighton Park corner. Despite the different schools, churches, banks; despite our backgrounds, most of the time, Brighton Park was ours and mine!

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Friday, April 25, 2014

417 Steps-Part 2

The can that was kicked!

Really more like 24 steps to the street…

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?

Low cost-no cost fun, right?

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Thursday, April 17, 2014

Let's Talk

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.

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Monday, March 17, 2014

417 Steps: Part 1

How many steps did it take you to get to the sidewalk in front of your home? How many steps did it take you to get to the curb or the street?

Maybe I should ask you how many steps were you willing to take and still feel safe and secure back when you were growing up? The sidewalks and streets were our playgrounds back in the day; back in the day of growing up in Brighton Park. No membership, no photo ID, and no fee!

I remember Pershing Road (39th Street) was this immense street. I thought planes flying into Midway could have landed there. Now I drive down Pershing Road and think how do two cars fit in this small thoroughfare? Lots happened on Pershing Road. When I was 5 years old, right after completing Kindergarten at SJSA, I was struck by a car driven by a Santa Fe Railroad police officer. Four broken ribs, a broken leg, and a concussion was the result of me versus car! I also learned to play hockey right in front of my home with my neighbors and brother. My older brother is a huge hockey fan. Or the Fourth of July, I could literally look east down Pershing Road or west down Pershing Road, and see fireworks in front of every single home; Francis Scott Key would have been proud. He may have added a guitar solo somewhere, but in the end the illumination from all of Pershing Road was incredible to witness. We didn't go to a suburb, to the lakefront. We walked outside of our homes and participated in the safety of our Brighton Park streets.

Let's not forget the alleys. How many things did we do in the alleys behind our homes? We played hockey there, too. I would cross the alleyway and visit friends or look for my brothers in their friends' backyards. It was a meeting point, an exit or escape route, and sometimes it was a milestone, a milestone to verify how safe and secure we felt from the doorstep of our homes. I would ride my bike around the block a hundred times: east down Pershing to St. Louis, down north to the alley, then a right turn. Now west towards Homan Avenue; another right turn, south to Pershing Road and around again. If I was brave I would start by going west!

How far was that from my home?

No GPS, no MapQuest…I was simply able to navigate around the block. I was free, safe and secure. Did I really think of those things? Did my parents think about my safety and security? Of course they did. I am sure I did, too, because that was a part of my development – safe environment that includes safety in psycho-emotional terms as well.

Take a moment to think back when you last saw a toddler wander away from his mother or father, how he or she reaches along a table or furniture: confident, but always looking back to check to see if mom and dad are still around, always looking for that security blanket or secure attachment.

I was eight years old when I went on my first 'away from home' errand: down the street to Theresa's Grocery Store back when neighborhoods had their two or three little Ma and Pa shops. We had Bogie's, Theresa's and Stanley's on 38th Street. These little shops had what we needed for smaller families, for couples, and for those special dinner dishes that needed an ingredient that our parents may have forgotten to buy.

Theresa's Grocery Store was 417 steps from my home.

How far would you go back then? Now, think, how far would we let our children or grandchildren go? Is there new fears or old ones? New barriers? Is it too far? Or is it unnecessary now?

Interestingly enough, I really didn’t think about it last week when I retraced my ancient, fossilized footprints. I was not restricted then nor when I was eight in 1975. Hmmmmmm...

Theresa's Grocery Store: the business is still in the family, second generation currently. My first visit to the store was about 1975. I probably visited with my older brothers a couple of years before then.