the trip back to the bungalow

Well shit, I am a creature of habit you know.  I like to pretty much do the same thing at the same time on any given day, and after my yogurt and before my newspaper, I like to write my blog post.  Especially on a Monday.  Coming out of my weekend into the humdrum orderly week, I like to start it all by writing my post, and well, it just brings me to a complete stop when nothing has come over the transom on the weekend.

It makes it easier to write the post when I have something to work with, you know just something to start with, something to get my fingers ranging about the keys and that leads to this and this to that, and eventually I feel pretty good about writing what I think is a good post, it gives me something to shove myself off into the week with.

So I was born in Chicago in 1945 (borrowing from Paul Butterfield).  Somewhere on the west side, near Harrison and Pulaski.  I was not even walking when the family moved to Chattanooga.  I don't remember much about Chattanooga, I think one time we found a turtle under our house. I guess it was a big deal, because I remember it, or at any rate I think I remember.

I think I remember seeing a mountain from the train when we rode back to Chicago in 1949, and moved into the house at 5607 S Homan. 

There was a woman, Hettie Green, sometimes called the witch of Wall Street who owned a big plot of Chicago land west of western and south of 55th which she held on until her death and then her children sold it and some big developer moved in around 1920 and built block after block of bungalows, twenty-five to a block.  I thought that was the way the world was, just block after block of bungalows, and was maybe a bit disappointed when I learned it wasn't.  Tonti School was three blocks to the south and after that Gage Park was about a mile and a half to the east. 

I came back the first couple summers after college, hung around with my old buddies, but then the lure of sleepy summer in Champaign became too great, and aside from Christmas and Thanksgiving visits I never lived there again.  Well until I went broke in Texas in 1987.

But that is a story for later.  This whole story was to be a prelude to my annual trip back to the old manse, but the sky is grey and yahoo predicts rain all day, and likely I won't be making that trip today.  Maybe tomorrow.

I have a sense of duty towards The Institute, that Monday through Friday I write a post just about this length, and now I have done that and I'll see you dawgs tomorrow.