the trip back to Gage Park

 See I thought opening day was a big deal.  I remember some friends moving from the wise and civilized Land of Lincoln to the bushwhacking land of Missouri and one day one of their neighbors or co-workers would by way of small talk say something like, "Are you ready for opening day?"  They would be thinking it's almost time for the world series, but it would turn out that what they were talking about was hunting season.  Hunting season?  Am I among savages?

Well I have made my peace with killing Bambi.  If I salivate at the thought of the next Italian beef, I have nothing to feel superior about over a guy who kills a deer and feeds off it for the winter.  And of course my ilk have no plan to wrest old Betsy from his grasp.  Probably he should still have to marry his gay dog.

Sixteen days though seems kind of short.  I thought there were way to many deer as it is, why only sixteen days?

I used to go back to the old hood though every year.  55th and Kedzie, the center of my teen years, smoking cigs and trying to look tough and watching all the cars go by.  Talman's, St Gall's. the drugstore where the seven Ellis brothers worked the counter one after another as they came of age, and the Colonial where you could get a drink if you were old enough, which we weren't.  All gone now except the House of The Lord.

And down 55th Street with its little bars, the dairy queen, that oddball restaurant with the goofy windows, that little grocery store with the pop machine where the bottles were all in icy water and you had to fish them all out with your icy hand.  So cool.  The Broadway of the hood.  

And the old bungalow, sitting there amid row after row of them, hardly changed since Mom left it. the whole hood looking not all that different from when I used to ride my trike on the shadow dappled sidewalks.  

Down Homan to Enrico Tonti school, three blocks that I walked twice every school day for nine years.  Enrico Tonti, still standing in its 1920 style only with a big standalone addition to serve the newly arrived immigrants and their mad mobs of kids.  

Up 59th Street to The Colony, where we watched so many epics and cartoons in air conditioned comfort in the sweaty summers of the fifties.  

Didn't get back there the last couple years, but plan on going back there this Wednesday.