2921 North Keating Avenue, Chicago, IL

My parents lived at this address for several years before we moved to Mount Prospect. I had not been there, ever, since that time, though I had always wanted to drive there and see the place. This past weekend I did.

After leaving my daughter's new apartment on the southeast edge of the Logan Square neighborhood, just off California between Fullerton and Armitage, knowing that the expressway out of town was jammed, driving stop-and-go for who-knows-how-long, I travelled north on California until I came to Milwaukee, then turned left.

Very interesting driving down Milwaukee - lot of shops, mostly open, though with far too many stores shuttered and empty. Lots of signs in Spanish. Traffic was light and driving was pleasant, with the temperature in the mid-80's; it seemed a requirement to open the windows and drive with my arm resting in the sun.

The signs would soon start to be posted in English, Spanish and Polish ("Mowimy po polsku" - "we speak Polish") when I cam upon a sight nobody ever wants to see. A motorcycle lay on its side in the middle of an intersection, with police cars and a couple of ambulances parked around it.

Traffic was being routed slowly through the intersection; by the time I was close enough to see anything the unfortunate rider was hoisted up onto a gurney and rushed to the back of one of the ambulances. "Meat wagons" we used to call them, jokingly. Faced with the absolute certainty that this poor rider was hurt badly, that term didn't seem to fit - humor didn't enter into the picture.

I proceeded past the accident, on down to Belmont Ave., 3200 north on the imaginary grid that Chicago is placed on. Since Keating is a one-way street southbound, I had to pass the 2900 block and circle back. Thoughts of the accident had melted away as I'd continued my drive, and Belmont came up quickly. I turned left onto Belmont, heading west, and started looking for Keating.

This was a part of the city where all of the street names started with the same letter - "K". I passed Karlov and Keeler; Kearsarge and Kildare; Lowell - who goofed this up?; Kostner, Kenneth, Kilbourne, Kolmar, Knox and Kilpatrick, and turned left onto Keating.

Parked cars lined the street on both sides, leaving only a narrow passage for my little Honda Fit. How in the world did cars of the 50's, 60's and early 70's fit down this street, I wondered. Perhaps they simply bumped along, knocking into cars on one side, then another, like a pinball. Maybe they weren't as big as I imagined, or perhaps you could only park on one side of the street in the old days.

Traveling slowly - not used to driving with sentry-lines of cars on either side - I pulled over into a specially-reserved handicapped parking space to let an anxious driver go past. I have to tell you, I had feelings welling up inside of me that I don't really understand, driving down this street to our old apartment.

As I approached the building at 2921 I noted that the only parking space open on the entire block was open right in front of that building. Timing is everything, they say, or perhaps that spot was reserved specially for me being there that day. Who knows? (Something else to ask God when I die.)

I took the time to make sure my phone was off and my iPod was off and hidden in the glove compartment before I opened the door and stepped out of the car. I stood in the sunlight, looking at that building and searched for - what? Something . . . some connection to the past. Perhaps it was not something I should have expected, as I was not even three when we moved, but I have heard so many things about living there, over the years, and have seen the pictures of us living there . . . I thought I should feel . . . something, some connection.

An old man - far older than my 54 years, but perhaps not even my father's age - sat just inside the door of the building, smoking a cigarette. He looked like he had had a hard life. Grizzled. Un-shaven. Stooped-over while sitting on the chair, he had looked at me suspiciously when I pulled up. I wanted to stop and talk to him; I wanted to yell out, "I used to live here!"; I wanted to tell somebody, for some reason I still don't understand.

Un-willing to simply get back in my car and leave, I walked down the block to the corner, crossed the street, and started back up the block on the other side. Some people were talking next to a car parked on the street. They seemed not to notice me; I didn't stop to talk to them. When I got to the point directly across the street from our old building, I crossed over to the other side, past my car, to the sidewalk. The old man looked right at me. "Good afternoon. How are you?" I said. He simply looked at me.

I turned and walked to the other end of the block, still feeling the need to say something, but found nobody to talk with. I looked at the buildings on the rest of the block. While none of the seemed to be in tremendous dis-repair, and some seemed quite nicely maintained, the evidence that this was a neighborhood on, perhaps, a downward spiral seemed evident.

Almost all of the blinds hanging in each picture window were torn. Where there were shades, each seemed also to hang at the wrong angle, or to be old and worn. Where the builders had placed stonework to hold planter boxes (these building were built in the early-to-middle 1910's, I understand), few flowers were even planted in the ground, and no planters were seen.

Yet, life was there. A young Hispanic mother passed by me, pushing an infant in a stroller. A nicely-dressed teenage girl left her home a couple of doors ahead of me, walking over to a car where a young man waited for her. An older woman and her younger companion walked past me and nodded - a smattering of Spanish would have helped me, here. And the grass was green. Many of the parkway trees had been re-planted, and the other, older trees formed a cooling canopy over much of the sidewalk.

As I approached the old man, he asked me a question in Polish (or at least what I thought was Polish). I walked to the bottom of the stairs. He repeated his question, but I answered, "I'm sorry. I don't speak Polish."

He looked down at me sadly. "I used to live here," I said. "Back when I was two, over fifty years ago."

I smiled at him, walked over to my car, looked one more time at that building and drove . . . home.

And Now, on Wid'a Da Show

Thank you Lawrence Welk.

It has been too long since I wrote a blog post, and I'd like to say that I'll do better, but can only really say that I'll try to do better.

So much has happened in the past few months that I suppose I can't really even remember it all. That's what this blog was for - to help me remember when I get older and grayer. (Should I have said "older and more gray"? Seems to me it sounds better the first way.)

In any case, the next "real" post is coming . . . hang tight.