ENGLEWOOD Compiled by the Weekly Staff
PHOTO BY THOUGHTPOET
I
t was October 1981, and already Chicago-chilly, as my mom and I walked the four blocks to the 79th and Vincennes bus stop to ride to my grandparents' new home. The first bus rode up Vinncenes past McDonald’s and the famous Fred and Jack’s toward 75th, where we did a light jog to transfer to the 75th Street bus. The driver greeted us, said something about it getting cold out there, and waited for us to take our seats. It was a short ride to the corner of 74th and Halsted. We walked one block east of Halsted to arrive at 74th and Emerald. I spent most of the bus ride trying to understand why my grandparents had left what I called, “the palace.” Their huge, maybe 1,400-square-foot apartment with high ceilings on Michigan seemed majestic to me. The white walls seemed chalky white compared to the high-gloss paint used now. There were three bedrooms and one big white bathroom. It had a long hallway and a bathroom with two doors, one door leading to my grandmother’s bedroom near the front entrance and the other to what seemed like an unending hallway with entrances to two more bedrooms before you got to the back living room. In this living room, I could turn myself around without the fear of breaking any of Granny’s decorative items or framed family photos. I would turn and turn around until I was dizzy and in a pile on the floor. I only gained my composure to start all over again. In the palace, there was room for Friday night fish fries, card parties, and Sunday 40 SOUTH SIDE WEEKLY
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dinners with friends and family in the afternoon. But the best part was the front room. Built into the wall beneath a high ceiling and embedded in crown molding was a “built-in mirror.” To this day it is where I have given my best singing and acting performances. I gave an emotional rendition of Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” and recited lines from <i>The Wiz</i> and <i>Pearlie Victorious</i>, and sang “Papa don’t take no mess” as good as James Brown. This journey to the new home was a wonder and curiosity. How could my Granny and Grandaddy leave the palace for home “ownership?” I was eleven years old when I turned off 74th onto Emerald. As I walked down the street there were still kids out at 3pm on a Saturday, playing ball and sitting on the porch. Breaking up the sky, as if to frame the block, I could see a tall viaduct; I didn’t yet know it was a train route: beneath the viaduct there were four yellow-painted concrete posts so cars couldn’t pass through to 75th. On the street, no house or building was the same, but they also weren’t very different. They stood out because of the uniformity of the lawns. They were what adults would call “well-manicured” and the houses did not have fences in the front. Every porch seemed to welcome you to sit down; most had some type of foliage, or you could see huge pots where the flowers had withered as fall began its slow takeover. Even on this frigid day in October, Emerald was paved with concrete but the lawns accented the street like emerald green rugs.
