Taking a leisurely tour of the old neighborhood can be kind of spooky, especially when that neighborhood is routinely threatened with extinction whenever the legislature or Mayor Daley start jonesing for a third airport. Periodically the ax hangs heavy over the quiet little neighborhood on Chicago’s far southeast side known as Hegewisch. One of these days somebody may have their way and the place where I grew up will become runway 17A. So I recently took a look at the house where both I and my dad before me grew up, then toured up and down the blocks that I know well enough to walk in my sleep.
Oh the memories. Here the term “old haunts” took on new meaning. Ghosts of friends, long ago gone their separate ways, waved at me from their front porches. Across the street from our old house I can see my best friend Patty Ann sitting on the steps in front of her folks’ duplex. She’s wearing a brand new powder blue skort. We used to walk to school together and when I’d pick her up their house smelled of freshly made Lipton’s tea and cinnamon toast. Their toaster had a cover that said, “Hot toast makes the butter-fly,” and it had a picture of a butter pat-shaped butterfly on it. Her mom kept plastic on the living room furniture (so did my mom). Even so, when we’d watch American Bandstand after school we’d have to sit on the floor. I think that furniture is probably still in that house — in pristine condition.
There’s my buddy, Dorothy, who lived next door. There’s about a three-foot-wide gangway between the houses and we had bedroom windows that sort of faced each other – hers was a little higher and further back. And for a while we had a tin-can-and-string thing going on until we realized we could hear each other just as well without it.
As I continued my tour memorable events appeared before my mind’s eye like life sized dioramas.
There’s the Methodist Church under whose stairs (which are now enclosed) my friend Tommy and I shared our first kiss. We were ten. He lived down the street from us. My parents would often go to his house to play cards or for a backyard barbecue. While the grownups played cards Tommy and I would watch Saturday night monster movies. His mom grew up living next door to my dad. We still lived in the same house, a white frame four-flat where my dad lived ‘til he was 50. When Tommy’s mom got married she moved a whole half block away. Later Tommy’s family moved to a new house in Burnham.
There’s the building (now a real estate office) that once housed the neighborhood tavern. My grandmother and I used to walk down there on hot summer afternoons. While she was inside getting the bucket she brought from home filled with cold beer I’d wait on the front steps sipping an icy cold orange pop. She was my dad’s mom and lived in the apartment behind ours. We called her “Ma” because being called grandma made her feel old. I used to hang out with her when she’d do laundry in the basement. In the wintertime she’d hang the clothes on lines strung across the basement ceiling. In the summer, of course, she’d hang them outside.
Speaking of hanging out, there’s Rose’s house. She lived a couple houses north of us and was my mom’s age. She and my mom were friends but Rose was special to me because she’d let me hang out in her kitchen when she was cooking and baking for her family. Today I guess you’d call her a mentor because I felt like I could talk to her about things I never talked about with my mom. A gentle and patient woman she was as generous with her wisdom as she was with her homemade strudel. After I grew up I relied upon her wisdom in raising my own kids. Never did have the patience to make strudel though. Tried it once and when I was buttered up to my elbows I quit.
More random reminiscences flash before my eyes.
The alley where I dropped a gallon of milk, shattering the glass and ran home crying. Mann Park where we used to play in the fieldhouse (do they still call them that?). Henry Clay School where I went from kindergarten through second grade before I transferred to the Catholic school. There’s the spot where my dad would sometimes park his ’53 Studebaker when he’d pick me up after school. The IGA (now it’s called Food Club) that was the neighborhood’s first big time supermarket. And there’s the building that housed the tiny library — a big deal because for most of my elementary school years we had a traveling bookmobile. Today Hegewisch has a big, modern library building.
This was a good tour and I have Google to thank for it. They’ve set it up so I can quietly and anonymously tour my old neighborhood – seeing every angle of the buildings in very realistic 3-D-like quality — without the distraction of strange people, traffic and sounds. It’s like a pop-up book where the sight of these buildings releases bittersweet memories uncomplicated by current reality.
So, okay, there was one last stop I had to make before closing the browser on my computer. I looked up Tommy’s (I guess it’s probably Tom now) address and found out he currently lives only a couple miles from Hegewisch. I googled his house – just out of curiosity. I haven’t seen him since we were in our twenties. What’s funny is that even though my motives were only idle curiosity, I suddenly and surprisingly felt like a stalker. I quickly closed my browser and I’m still pondering just what Google has done with its 360-degree vistas of American cities. Can this kind of anonymous visiting – snooping? stalking? — be altogether healthy?-30-
© 2009, Donna M Chavez