Walked around the old neighborhood today, North Ashland Ave., Chicago, the land of Our Lady Of Mispent Youth. Parked the wagon across from Chase Park after dropping off two hogs to Acre Restaurant on North Clark just a few blocks away. http://acrerestaurant.com/
It was a dark and gloomy day...really it was, and rainy too. I walked south past our old gradeschool, (now a training center for LPN's and lab techs) then past the the old convent (now some kind of hippy joint ? Half-way house ? Soup Kitchen ?) and then past our old apartment building. Which is still an apartment building.And then I wondered, how can a neighborhood smell exactly the same as it did 47 years ago ?
Overcooked cabbage wafting through an open window followed by stale cigar smoke. Oil and gasoline fumes from the traffic motoring on behind me. Coal dust and Noxema mixed in with Brylcream hair treatment and marshmellow eggs. All of it was right there. I felt pulled towards the courtyard where my sister Mary and I would ride our red tricycles I wanted to jump up on the narrow metal railing circling said courtyard. I could hear Sister Mary Gerard yelling at me from the school, "Miss O'Shaughnessy, you forgot your homework." But best of all I heard my father whistle. The two fingers in his mouth REALLY LOUD kind of whistle that meant, "Come here now!" And we would.
So new blog design #3. Comments ?
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I have to make the first comment. This background is horrible. Exactly like the wallpaper I bought in 1971 to redo my room.
ReplyDeleteI still have a shirt with that pattern! Whistling is a lost art. Now we just text our kids! Hope all the South Porkerarians are having a wonderful lead up to New Years!
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