Black Parakeets Only Hatch In December A BLACK MAN’S EXPLORATION OF LIFE, LOVE AND NORTHWEST INDIANA
By Chad R. Hunter
“A title we held with distinction” and “Ghosts and Rats”
“Why is it called East Chicago?” I always got that question thrown my way like I was the official rep of the city.
That’s one of the two ways you could tell
someone wasn’t from around the way. They were bewildered by the concept that my town had the legendary big Windy City in its name but was not in Illinois.
The other tell-tale sign that
someone was not a local was the obliviousness to the difference between the Harbor and East Chicago. Same city but different places, sharing the same zip code didn’t mean a thing. East Chicago was the overall city’s name but to us Harbor kids it was also the dissimilar place over the bridge.
It looked
different, felt different and, much like Oz, was where the palaces where. City Hall, the big restaurants and the biggest high school were in East Chicago. The Harbor had Guthrie, the skeleton of Main Street and the hospital. The harbor was for function. East Chicago was for exhibit. Weekdays as a Harbor Rat (a title we held with distinction) usually meant being in-doors and doing homework. Growing up in the 80’s we saw the spreading fears of kidnapping children 73
shadow over playing until the streetlights snapped on. Of course, growing up across from a park made a lot of afternoons fun and on many occasions gave my mouth a taste of playground sand. Sand crystals crunched between baby teeth. Columbus Drive, Indianapolis Boulevard and Chicago Avenue were the big streets. Every other road begged to reach their regal status but never did. None of us spoke with reverence about Alder or Cardinal, Huish or Evergreen. They were kiddie streets yearning to stand next to their older and bigger siblings. Columbus Drive was a good street to learn how to drive and a better street to learn how to cross. It was the joining link between the Harbor and East Chicago. It was the link between us and the cops’ kids and the politicians’ alleged homes. Growing up, we rarely saw the politicians living in our neighborhoods. Columbus had the Walgreens for us Rats and the ever-changing video store that became a check-cashing place and a tax joint. The drive’s main jewel was the Zel’s on the corner of Euclid. Amazing roast beef sandwiches made any East Chicogoan’s mouth water. Chicago Avenue was a strange strip. You never really walked down its short sidewalks near the water tower or the numerous auto spots. It wasn’t a street where you really grew up on or lived. It was a local business throat and we saw it when our parents drove for new tires or headed for other towns. The avenue was the smallest of the three and the least appreciated.
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Indianapolis Boulevard was the big brother street. It didn’t run from point A to point B like most avenues. It lie (or lay) on my city with a immense regality that dared any to cross it, master it or deny what it was: the main valve to my town. The street actually ran from Chicago, through East Chicago, Hammond, Munster, Highland, Schererville and so on. It was a spine, miles of cement, street stripes and stop lights.
I had
friends that lived on the behemoth rather than in neighborhoods. Businesses perched themselves on its edges; Garibaldi’s served comida all day and all night. Our only KFC successfully battled any little food shop that popped up next to it and the bigger McDonald’s shined golden arches at the outskirts of town. Then there was Cline Avenue. It was the mother of all roads. For those of us who called Northwest Indiana home, Cline was the big league driving. The high-speed street allowed us to say we had driven the expressway while still quaking in the presence of 80/94 and Chicago’s monstrous arteries. The avenue even had its own phantom, the Lady of Cline. Chicago had its Resurrection Mary and every city with bathroom mirrors had Bloody Mary. But the Lady was ours. Every one of us knew the story but the details always changed. She was a woman in white, a ghostly traveler, who appeared every Halloween. At night, she would wait for a lover that never came. Instead she settled for some wayward traveler heading into the Harbor’s embrace. There was even talk that she would
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simply appear in your backseat, staring into the rearview mirror with dead eyes and an accompanying wolf or white dog. In the junior high school next to Cline’s ramp, there were stories by the older kids of a teacher who died after her first day. Rumors ran that she shook chains and danced in apparition’s sheets in her old class, a room that supposedly was locked and never used. That was my city, full of ghosts and Rats. Franklin Elementary was a cocoon where we grew in hurried rushes, elongating class periods and seemingly nonexistent recesses. The school was an aging castle of red bricks, my older siblings had all three held court there in their youth. The only school for us Harbor Rats was Franklin unless you were a deep Harbor Rat. If you ran evening games near Elm Street and tried to chase the moon on Main Street, your school was most likely Field. Kindergarten was the beginning of my bookish years. Depending on who you ask, I either never had those years or I never outgrew them. Mrs. Brown was an aged white woman who seemed to get older right before our eyes. Her class was never enjoyable and it was even worse on snow days. When white flakes fell from the sky, my mom placed me in a snow suit that required her, several NASA engineers and sixteen power tools to get into. Somehow always a bit late, I would run from the car to the building in my all-purpose-environmental-Hazmat-snowsuit. However, with my brother’s scarf usually adorning my neck, I 76
would find that even my Down-feathered-hobbling would allow the scarf to snag a Franklin El doorknob. I almost hung myself several times each winter with my horizontal bungee jump. Next to Franklin was the little library with its brown-brick rectangle of a body and white roof top trim. Its parking lot was either always full or desert empty.
It was there in the East
Chicago Public Library where we would walk from our grade school and sit for our annual Halloween reading. They told us tales of spooks, specters and those haunting from the other world. They filled the Harbor with ghosts. The librarians would even dress up and wait for us. As we walked through the darkened aisles of books, some witch or warlock, mummy or monster would leap out and reach for us. At some peak of a story’s tale, some librarian in costume would jump out of nowhere. They screamed and so did we in response. At our age, in the oily shadows, such moments bled raw terror. It was there that I fell in love with the holiday and its terrorizing trappings. It was also there that I fell in love with reading. That act alone, running my astigmatic eyes over pages and pages, cut me differently from the other kids. Somewhere it was decreed that minorities weren’t interested in education. Somewhere, minorities proved this to be true. Our mom was a GRITS (Girl Raised in The South) longer than I knew what a grit was. I always thought it was a form of soupy rice. But I learned it was much more. She taught us about courtesy and faith, manners and beliefs. While the other kids would say “I ain’t” and “ain’t gonna’,” we were raised to speak 77
as our education had taught us. We used g’s on our verbs and worked hard on pronunciation.
Even with my early years’
stuttering, I still spoke the King’s English. However, proper diction, in the ‘hood, was a guilty sentence-a sentence of “talkin’ white.” “Talkin’ white” was a precursor to “actin’ white” and that led to “sell-out,” “Oreo” and every other statement that said you were ashamed of who you “really” were. It meant you wanted to be something else. In reality, all we wanted to be were just kids. Happy ones and, in making our mom proud, well-educated, well-mannered wellspoken ones.
By third grade my family dynamic had changed. The divorce was almost final and we were preparing to move. That was a dark time. Franklin was already becoming a memory soon to be replaced by Washington Elementary. It was a new school and new things for a 4th grader are viewed as clawing hands and hissing faces. I even had to leave my adolescent crushes behind: “KD” with her caramel skin and thin face was quite the angel…well, a fallen one. She was my kindergarten bully and left a scar on my wrist where she dug her nails. But I thought she was cute. There was also Sonia who was my intellectual equal if not better. I was drawn to that plus she had a little cleft in her chin. I moved and left to an advanced academics class. Even worse, I left Franklin and its students. But even better, I left Mrs. Yuks and her gossip. Rumors of my family’s woes hung fat from her 78
thin lips and even more skeletal body. The witch cackled secrets about us even as I lined up on the last day. Perhaps the move was for the best. We moved across town, jumping from Butternut Street to a little house on Hemlock. That house was a Godsend as it was the best mom could find. Better yet, it was the best we could afford. I first saw the house on an October night with fall winds whipping and howling around the car. My family (minus my father of course) was painting the front of this new place. Its windows seemed bigger, much larger than the glass on our old house. But this one was shrouded, not helped at all by the fall night and the whirlwind leaves. The side of the house begged for some type of lighting but did not receive it. A dark side led to an even darker backyard. Old country laundry lines ran like spider webs. October’s dying trees gushed sap and steel posts leaned in decrepit cemented blocks. Inside, the house was full of new rooms, dark rooms. The basement was unfinished and ended with a coal room and little doors in the walls. I was nine and all those horror movies were tumblers in my mind unlocking hyperactive imaginings. However, the new house did have more shadows than I’d ever seen. Each one promised terror but never delivered. Yet that’s the worst (or best) exercise of horror: anticipation. This place had become home. For three years, we had the same teacher at Washington El. In the Advanced Academics (the “AA” class) we studied and read
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more than other children our age. Those years were formative. However, not all forms are good ones. It seemed each of us was just a bit…off. Maybe the price for being “gifted” or maybe just products of our environment. Every day, in the morning and afternoon, we were regular kids. We played and marked the light on Euclid and 142nd as end-zones or safety marks for games of tag. We talked about the previous day’s episode of Transformers and Thurdercats, My Little Pony and Jem and the Holograms. We also wondered what went on in the GATX warehouse that rose up where 142nd ended. But when the bell chimed, we went to class. The AA kids separated from the others and went to the room that was different. We sat with 5th and 6th graders, we read SRAs for higher learning and we watched movies like “Gandhi” and debated socioeconomics. Somewhere in all that educational atom-smashing, girls were chased and boys were allowed to pursue. We waited for Fall and jumped in leaves that gathered on the school’s lawn.
Dead
foliage crunched under our bodies, safety patrols yelled at our mess. Washington Park was across the street, kitty-corner and it told us that the year’s days were fleeting as we could see walkers in the park. They went from short sleeves to long sleeves, from jackets to coats. Time seemed to crawl and run at the same time. I guess we did the same.
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Once we had outgrown the crumbling gray and yellow striped parking lot of Washington Elementary, it was on to Block Junior High. As I grew and moved through the city’s educational ladder, it always seemed a balanced blend of colors. There were black kids-
I knew this because I was one of them.
There were
Hispanic kids; they instructed me early on their culture, their differences and our similarities. There were even white kids, descendants of the older Polish generation that carved East Chicago from steel mills and industry. Although at times, it seemed as if the city had been carved from out of them. It was the adults who saw we were different, the black, the white and the brown. We saw each other as just other kids, other students, other likers of Optimus Prime and Trapper-Keepers, New Edition and “We Are the World.” More often than not, in my town, you weren’t a color first, you were from East Chicago before anything else. It wasn’t Utopia, we had our issues but first and foremost, to me, we were all Region Rats. Every kid was a little black, a little brown and a little white.
He or she had feasted on fried chicken from
someone’s mama, tacos from someone’s tia and perogies from some one’s babcia. In the shadow of Washington High School, I would grab a ride over to Block. It was the reunion of so many from Franklin that I thought I knew. We had all grown up a bit and grown apart a lot. It was the way of things.
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As a Block Charger, my portly pubescent body and Lot-like acne did little to make me “one of the crowd.” I believe it was there that my love for reading was hammered, forged and sharpened. Books didn’t poke, pick or persecute. The East Chicago kids, those that lived on the other side of the two lane bridge that every driver made four, went to Westside junior high. It seemed newer, better, brighter than Block. Our junior high seemed dark, bleak and covered in dying yellow and decaying green. It felt like they had more. Had better. They had bigger and newer schools. They had the shops and stores of the boulevard. They had city hall and were closer to the mall. We had the track that separated us from Franklin’s lawns and the eerie back lot that, at night, covered over in ebony and showed you nothing. The rear of the school led right up to Cline Avenue. Right up to the Lady in White. Through my two years, Block would exhibit the best of teachers hand-in-hand with showing me the worst. Mr. Smithson was the best History teacher ever.
A self-proclaimed “Big
Swede,” he wrapped the world’s past inside his southern twang and made it new. It was as if Founding Fathers fought for the first time and Great depressions were falling now rather than ninety years ago. Mrs. Sulpher was our reading teacher and Mrs Kenna taught us speech. Mr. Gorgos punched Algebra into us even when our brains refused. He was nice in one-on-one. In class though, he was by the book, no-joke and even had a little Captain Kirk hair 82
poof. Occasionally, he’d screw up my name and call me “Todd” or “Chet.” The worst was our gym teacher, Coach Mantle. He was a short man who snarled not only with every word but with every step. He felt a responsibility to break us. To make us submissive through laps around the track. He barked at us to line up and one day, while I strained to run laps, he bawled me out.
Why?
Because he could. He and I locked horns. That was as lippy as I had ever gotten. I talked back to a teacher and it brought mom out to the school. For a young male, your mother coming out to school was the last thing you wanted. If you were in the wrong, you were going to die. You were going to perish during a violent beating. The last thing you’d see would be rollers (or curlers), some halfbuttoned winter coat and your mother’s snarling face. If it was a Big Momma, you would die on the spot, right there in front of your classmates. Probably death from a house shoe. If you were in the right, you wanted to die. Your mother coming out to fight your battles gave you days and days of ridicule. Every boy had it happen, he was the prey. Every boy saw it happen, he was the predator. The roles switched but we all took turns being the wolf or the lamb. Mom came out to the school and, suited up with armour and mace, went to war with the vice-principal and Coach Mantle. Mantle was a bully to we the husky and heavy-set. But to Mom, he was a tin tyrant and that day tin did rust.
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Mom had her war in the school office. I was defended and I was vindicated. But it was nice waiting for my exoneration.
While the
appointment on the battlefield with Mom and the school approached, I had missed gym for several days after my conflict. I found Heaven in Block.
No poking, no picking and no
persecution. Then the situation was resolved. And I went back to physical educational Hell. But Coach Mantle never bothered me again. After we Harbor Rats wore our green and gold robes, we prepared for East Chicago Central High School. Washington High and its competition Roosevelt had long been closed, condemned and demolished. This would be the forced integration of both the East Chicago kids and us Harbor Rats. Thus we repeated the cycle one last time, going from kings and queens to serfs and servants. We had heard the term “freshman” but never knew exactly what it entailed. Both Harbor Rat and EC kid shook at the thought. Sometime later, I like to think Chicago had adopted me a little. I’ve spent enough time combing its catacomb streets and mazelike alleys. I’ve even found myself comfortably cruising the Presidential highways, the Kennedy and the Eisenhower. I’ve thrown myself into the neighboring giant’s arteries. But even still, whether I live in Indiana, Illinois or on the moon, I’ll know where to get the best roast beef sandwich in town. I’ll
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run tag to the streetlight on Euclid and 142nd. I’ll greet with “mucho gusto” and dance polka. And there will always be the Lady of Cline, all ghost and all Rat.
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About the Author
Chad
Hunter grew up in Northwest
Indiana and is a 1993 graduate of East Chicago Central High School.
He
received his Associates and Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Programming and Networking from Purdue University Calumet by December of 1997. In the application of his degrees, he has specialized in computer technology for the Department of Justice since 1997.
He has been a guest
lecturer for his alma mater, Purdue University Calumet as well as for IvyTech College, in the Computer Information Services department for a combined fifteen years. Hunter has been published with credits in Black Petals and Poetry.com.
The piece Good Girls Finish Their Plates
resided on the literary website, www.horrrorfind.com. He has ranked on Poetry.com and was placed in Who’s Who of American Poets for the Millennium. He has also been a freelance writer for AskMen.com, Complex Magazine, Baton
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Rouge Parenting, Tae Kwon Do Magazine and the Chicago Sun Times. Hunter chaired the Selection Committee for the Highland (Indiana) Borders Writers’ Group publication. He credits his background with journalism and layout with his education in the East Chicago public school system. In addition, Hunter states that his membership in the Highland Borders Writers’ Group for almost seven years has been an incalculable credit to learning his craft. Black Parakeets Only Hatch in December marks another entry into the world of publishing and professional writing. It is the stories and characters in these reflections that have shown the author that life is truly a masterpiece and a delicacy. Hunter is the youngest of four incredible siblings, uncle to one pretty cool nephew and second son to a very wise and Christian mother. Hunter is married to a beautiful and brilliant woman whom he met in February 2005. He is also the father to one very energetic baby boy.
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Black Parakeets Only Hatch in December A BLACK MAN’S EXPLORATION OF LIFE, LOVE AND NORTHWEST INDIANA
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