The Mayfair Station

Kris was a kid who lived almost directly across the street from me. His family moved to the neighborhood sometime in the late 80s or 1990 at the latest. He was about a year younger than me, had short brown hair, and was on the somewhat chubbier side. He had a little sister named Elena, who was a couple years younger than my little sister. Kris and Elena were Macedonian, their parents having immigrated some years before. Kris’ grandparents also lived with them. Often we’d see Kris’ grandfather poking his head out of the upstairs window, surveying the block or calling out to the grandkids in his native tongue.  Kris was probably the first real friend I can recall from the neighborhood. We were different from each other, and had differing interests, but we found common interests and lots of opportunities to pass the time away. Kris was really into martial arts and took karate classes. I wasn’t at all, but I lent an ear when he wanted to tell me about his new belts he’d earned...

Early in my childhood, one infamous neighborhood figure stood out among the rest. An old man, perpetually haunting the early morning alley under overcast skies, slowly and purposefully pushing a rusty old shopping cart. In the cart were items he’d found rummaging through others’ trash. Though I cannot recall ever getting a really good look at him, I could tell he was a weathered old man. I imagined he looked like an older version of Robin Williams’ Popeye. As far as I was concerned, he was ancient.  His name was Axel. “Axel” became synonymous with clutter and junk in my house. If I came home with something like an old bicycle wheel or broken toy, my mom would call me Axel.  From the little research I did in anticipation of writing this, I found out that Axel was 32 years old and living in that house in 1940. This would have put him at about 80 years of age at the height of my familiarity with him.  Once, from the safety of my back porch, I saw my dad in the backya...

Nick was a neighborhood kid who lived in one of the apartments on Elston northwest of Winona. He was about my age, and he sometimes hung out with me and a few other boys from the block. Nick was one of those guys nobody really liked hanging out with, because he was a bully. He showed up and pretended to be cool with everyone until he decided he wanted to be a jerk. As he was bigger than most of us, we were a little intimidated. It didn’t help at all that he claimed to be gang affiliated. He would claim association when it helped his cause, which sometimes was as minor as a verbal argument or as serious as a physical confrontation.  Nick liked to brag about his “wealth”. Actually, that was a common theme back then – for some reason kids liked to talk about how their parents were “richer” than the others’, how they had the most recent Nintendo game or basketball shoe. Kids would dispute this in groups. It was back and forth like “Yeah, well my parents have a waterbed. Your ...

(This is sort of a continuation of my last entry here, so if you haven’t read “Auggie Doggy”, check that out first).  Dave and Liz were sort of like second parents to my sister Cheryl and I, and maybe to a lesser degree, a few other of the neighborhood kids who came to know them and Auggie through us. In particular, Dave was a really interesting guy.  It’s hard for me to guess how old Dave was back in the early 90s but I’d say late 30s. He had a bit of a Ben Franklin look to him – bald in the middle with longer reddish hair on the sides and in the back. He rarely ever wore pants, but instead opted to wear shorts, even in cooler weather. His gait and shoe condition suggested he walked flat-footed. He spoke with a weak yet distinct Chicago accent. He drove this huge older truck with over-sized wheels & tires – it was loud and smelled like diesel fuel when it chugged down the alley. The truck didn’t seem to match up with his soft-spoken and private nature.  Dave h...

These days, we have a dog named Cassius. We picked him up from a rescue in 2013 when he was about one year old. He is a scruffy black wire-haired pointing griffon mix. He’s simply the best dog we could ever ask for. I’d lie if I said that when searching for a dog, I wasn’t at all inspired by a previous black dog my family had, a beagle/lab mix named Katie. Katie was also a fantastic dog and companion – smart, energetic, and sophisticated. But before Katie, there was Auggie. Auggie Doggy.  Auggie was a silky black Labrador retriever who lived with her family in the house across the alley. Her owners were a couple named Dave and Liz. Dave and Liz had recently married and bought their first home – a brick bungalow with heavy steel back stairs. We didn’t know them until they got Auggie. After they got Auggie, we would know when she was outside in the backyard because she would always happily come to the tall wooden fence and gate and stick her nose between the narrow slats i...

I grew up in an old frame bungalow, one of countless that typified much of the city of Chicago. It was clad in pale yellow aluminum siding with a wall of fake pastel earth tone rocks in the front, and it was capped with a brown shingled roof. Nobody in their right mind would look twice at it, except my parents, when they decided to buy it in the mid 1970s (and subsequently, the next inhabitants when my mom moved us in 1996). Plain as it may have appeared, it was ground zero for my childhood, and I have mostly fond memories of living there.  Upstairs is where my three sisters and I slept. There was one long bedroom toward the front that spanned about two-thirds the length of the house, and a small bedroom in the back, separated by a small landing at the top of the stairs. In early years, my two older sisters, Anne and Patty, shared the big room, and the small room was actually set up to be mine after I was born. For reasons unknown, I must not have taken to it because I have n...

One of my earliest sets of memories revolves around a boy I called “Amigo”. Amigo was a young boy, probably about my age, who lived with his family in the brick condos on Elston and Winona. I think my friendship with him was in passing; for all I know I knew him for a few weeks or a few days. I barely recollect being in the condo once – I can sort of recall not being able to see above the kitchen counter tops (I couldn’t have been more than 6 or 7). What stands out the most was the unusual way our brief friendship ended.  Along the southeast side of the building, between his building and another brick building (and adjacent to the parking lot), there was a little area containing some utilities such as an air conditioner condenser. One day, we were playing in the parking lot, when somehow we discovered there were a lot of bees (or wasps) flying around between the two buildings. I watched Amigo run into the cloud of insects and start dancing around, as if to mock them. Within ...