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school

Secret Place

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Elementary School was not an enjoyable experience for me. Besides the nuns meting out physical pain for infractions, there were the class bullies. And there were a few of them.

In the classroom there was no problem, but at recess they plied their trade of picking on anyone they thought would not stand up to them. I was one of the unfortunate victims of peer abuse.

One year in particular it was difficult to avoid confrontation. I was in fifth grade when the bully group decided it would play Civil War after reading about it in history class. Their idea was very simple. They would come up to you and ask if you were North or South. It didn’t matter which side you declared since they would automatically be on the opposing side, declare you the enemy and pummel you around a bit before confronting another unfortunate straggler.. It didn’t take long to realize you couldn’t win.

One day, when I saw them approaching, I ran off around the side of the school, past the rectory and into the alley in the hopes of eluding the enemy. As I rounded the corner into the alley, I saw the news cart used by one of the parishioners on Sunday to house and sell newspapers to people leaving the church.

It was up against the rear of the school and as I pulled it slightly away from the wall, opened the doors at the bottom where newspapers were stored, found that it was empty and would house a kid my size. I crawled inside and shut the door.

The cart was perhaps five feet long and five feet high and was on rollers. It had the storage area below and an upper part which the newspapers could be displayed and an awning above to keep our rain or sun. And it all folded up into a compact unit when closed. I declared it my secret place and retired there often during recess and lunch period in order to avoid the roving bands of Civil War enthusiasts in the playground (which was actually a parking lot and the street in front of the school).

When necessary (like getting back from lunch too early and wanting to avoid confrontation in the playground), I would sneak around to the back of the school and climb into my little fortress where I would munch some penny candy and read a comic book until I heard the warning buzzer sound for the resumption of classes.

This went on for several weeks, maybe a few months, until one day I arrived to find the doors padlocked. My secret place had been discovered, no doubt because I had left telltale candy wrappings and/or comic books within. It was okay, however, because the Civil War was winding down and things would be quiet until a different method of bullying was employed. I would just have to make sure that I didn’t return to school after lunch all too early.

Perhaps I could watch a little more of Lunchtime Little Theater or Uncle Johnny Coons and eat a bit slower from now on.

Hooky

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It was a dismal, overcast morning as I headed off to school. I had just started second grade. The rain had held back as I approached St Francis Church. It got very dark and suddenly started to rain again so I took shelter under the front doorway of the church. I did not have my raincoat or umbrella for some reason that morning. I guess mom thought the weather was clearing before I left the house. Another kid, a few years older than me also ran for cover in the doorway. We talked about getting wet and possibly being late for school.

The rain really started pouring down so we stayed under the doorway to wait until it let up. It was a bit chilly and I had a jacket but if I got wet I would have to remain in school with soggy (I thought) clothes. I stayed there until after the first and second bell rang. Classes had begun and I was outside still.

The rain finally let up and the sun began to shine through the parting clouds as I decided to leave and head for the school. The kid who was with me said we would get in trouble if we went in now so maybe it would be better if we just played hooky that day. He said his parents were at work so we could go back to his house and wait until school was over. It sounded like a good idea, after all, older was supposed to mean smarter, so we went back to his house.

The kid lived on the same street about half a block down from my place. I would sometimes run into him on the way to school and we would walk together (he once offered me a rotten walnut). I didn’t really know him well but felt comfortable that we would have a good time playing in his house. He had lots of toys and for a few hours, I was having a good time. It was getting a bit uncomfortable, however, because he was acting bossy and deciding what we would do and I had to go along with it.

After we had eaten lunch (mom would make me a sandwich and I would eat in school), I developed a sense of guilt and foreboding, and wanted to leave and go back to school…or maybe home and confess, after all, it was my first offense and I might get off easy. I announced to my friend I was going to leave.

We were sitting at the kitchen table and he got up and went into a counter drawer and pulled out a steak knife. He pointed it at me as told me I wasn’t going anyplace and to sit down. He sat across from me and proceeded to stick the knife through the plastic table cover announcing he would do the same to me if I tried to leave. He said I would have to wait until school let out and then I could go.

The next two hours were terror filled for me as he led me around holding the knife while we continued to play games he wanted to play. I forget what they were entirely. We went to his room, played and then went back to the kitchen where we played some board games at the table. He stuck the knife through the table cover a few more times just to impress me with his ability if I should try to leave.

Three o’clock could not have come fast enough as we went to the front room and peered out the window waiting for the first indication kids were on their way home. Finally, as the kids appeared he said I could leave. He opened the front door and looked left and right and then said, “Okay, now.”

I hurried out the door and headed home wondering if I should say anything at all (he had warned me not to), but I did not know the school had called my mom asking why I wasn’t in class that day. She confronted me when I got home.

To the best of my ability, I explained what happened and how I could not leave and was held prisoner for the day. I don’t think my mom believed me at first and I do not remember the specifics of our conversation although we waited until my father got home and he would decide the course of action and my punishment.

Upon hearing my story, dad decided we would go over after supper and pay a visit to the kid and his parents and settle the question of my defense. I don’t remember too much at all about the confrontation other than my folks repeated my story to the kid’s parents and they did not believe me. They asked the kid who, of course, denied everything (while giving me one of those, “I’ll get you for this” looks). My defense was kind of flimsy, my word against his, until I remembered the tablecloth. I went over to the drawer and pulled out the knife and told them he had run it through the tablecloth several times. They checked, and found the slits which were made. There was dead silence as his parents and mine looked at each other, at the kid, and back at each other in disbelief. I was exonerated.

We left and went home, my parents leaving it up to them what to do with the kid. I never heard anything more about the incident, nor did I ever see that kid around the neighborhood any more. We moved the following year and I never did find out what and if anything happened to that kid, or if my parents followed up at all. Soon, I had forgotten about the incident and my parents never mentioned it after that meeting. I do remember being told about the hazards of playing hooky and getting into trouble like that. I learned my lesson well. I never did it again. I do not remember being punished at home or at school the next day.

What remains until this day, is my aversion to knives. I am very uncomfortable with anything larger or sharper than a butter knife. For a time, I didn’t know why until the incident was recalled years later.

I hope that kid got help.

You Can’t Go Back

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A few years ago, on a lark, I decided to visit the old neighborhood where I spent the first eight years of my life. It turned out to be a bittersweet experience as places I remembered were no longer in existence and those that did remain had changed.

The old apartment building on the corner of Francisco and Diversey looked about the same although the old windows had long been replaced and there was an iron fence around it now. Many of the old buildings had survived and there were new ones (built after I had moved) dotting the street. The vacant lot where we used to gather and watch the fireworks now had a building and the big side yard by the alley where we used to play for hours on end was now a private parking lot for tenants and what remained of the back yard was fenced off so I could not see in.

I walked along the alleyway noticing the back yards where we played also were gone, replaced by garages. As I walked back up the alley to Francisco, I tried to peer between the wooden slats of the fence to see if the hole we began to dig back in 1950 to reach China was still there. It wasn’t.

Although the food store on the southeast corner was still there, it was no longer Edmund’s but changed to Logan Square Grocery. The tavern where my dad used to get his empty milk bottles filled with beer was still there but beer had now changed to cerveza.

Gone were the bakery, fish market, Johnny’s meat market and, sadly, Zappa’s Confectionery. Many of the businesses along my old childhood route were gone and the buildings rehabbed. Only the cleaners down the street and the grocery looked about the same.

I looked northward down Francisco and wondered if the path I took to school every weekday was still navigable. That street held both good and bad memories, like the time I bit into a rotten walnut, or my school chum who held me at knife point the day we played hookey. All stories I hope to eventually relate to you.

The path was blocked now by the Kennedy expressway so I had to turn down Richmond and head back to Diversey where I took it to Albany and headed north toward the steeple of the old church as a guide.

When I got to the church and school where I had graduated kindergarten and transferred out of the 3rd grade when we moved, I discovered that the old parish, St. Francis Xavier had, in 1991, combined with another and became known as Resurrection. The church itself was locked and I could not see in to determine if the interior was much like I had remembered, but on the outside it appeared the old stained glass windows were still there.

I walked down the side and behind the school, rectory and convent where I took a few months piano lessons, and into the playground. Indistinct shadows and voices surrounded me as the memories of the past became more vivid in my imagination. As I walked back down the street to my car, I noticed the building which housed the old penny candy store where I hoped to one day get a pink peppermint (another story), was still standing, looking the same except it was shuttered and boarded.

As I got into my car, a young Hispanic women exited the church rectory and, as she turned onto the sidewalk, she caught sight of me and smiled. I smiled back. It was her neighborhood now and I was merely the past, but I felt, in that instant, the generations had been bridged and it felt satisfying.

I headed back to Francisco for one more quick look hoping to gain entry to the rear of my old apartment building to see if the book of matches me and my buddy Johnnie hid under the porch stairs was still there. The gates were locked and the porch appeared repainted several times. The matches were well hidden, tucked between the risers and maybe one day they will be discovered and someone will wonder what the heck they were doing there. Or maybe Johnnie went back later and recovered them.

Come to think of it, I dont remember why we hid them in the first place (I was only six). But I do remember what they were used for. I had a toy steam shovel and we could stuff paper and twigs in the rear boiler section and watch the smoke come out as we pretended to excavate the dirt in the front of the building and maybe, if there was time, dig a hole to China.

The Dork Side

Back then, they weren’t geeks or nerds, they were known as dorks, and I was one of them. I became a dork at age eight when my parents moved the family to a new part of the city from a two bedroom apartment at Fransisco and Diversey to our new home near Austin and Belmont on Chicago’s northwest side. It was a new neighborhood, new kids and, most traumatic of all, a new school. “You’ll make new friends.” my parents said. But what they didn’t know is that I would make new tormentors: the school bullies. So I prepared for my first day, of a mid-3rd grade transfer, at St. Ferdinand Catholic School.

On a bright and sunny morning I stood in front of thirty boys and girls my age in a white shirt, blue clip-on tie and neatly pressed ribbed brown corduroy pants, the kind that make funny noises between your legs when you walk, as Sister Mary Humiliation announced to the class who I was by mispronouncing my last name. I was doomed, and would suffer from that error my entire grade school experience.

If you ever transferred to a new school, you get the idea what my problems were. Kids can be mean. I was an outcast and, in order to survive the daily harassment and push and shove dares from the school bullies, I learned how to use humor. If I could make them laugh, perhaps they wouldn’t beat me up so often.

I became, basically, the class humorist or clown. Always a joke or funny story outdoors and responsive funny faces and gestures in the classroom. I made few friends in that school and the few close friends I had lived on my block and attended a nearby public school.

Eventually, by eighth grade, I had gained recognition as a story teller and funny guy and was told by several of my departing classmates at graduation that I would be missed while giving me a final punch in the arm approval. The ordeal was over. I was graduating. I was relieved. I had survived.

The experience did lead me down a path of writing. By sixth grade I was writing short stories and poems based on my experiences. I wrote fictional accounts where I dealt with the frustrations and anger I could not express any other way. It was a great outlet for my feelings and still is. I don’t remember all the stories, or what ever happened to them, but realize they were amateurish and perhaps better they did not survive, but they were a start.

Although I had been selected by lottery as one of the lucky ones to attend the new and prestigious St Patrick’s High School, I turned it down an went to Steinmetz. I did not want to deal with what I considered sadistic teachers (Brothers they were called) who could slap and punish you, in an all-boy environment of repressed individuals and former class bullies. How I accomplished this without my parents finding out was a bit of maneuvering and dodging.

High school was on the horizon and I wondered what would be in store. Would I run into new bullies to deal with for four more years; would I hopefully meet new friends, and would there be intimidating and condescending teachers? I would soon find out. But I knew, whatever lied ahead, I would be prepared with an arsenal of jokes, humorous anecdotes and a good pair of running shoes.