The House on Chase Street

When I was a boy, the most important things in my life were my toys... and television. It was the early 1960's, when television was in black and white, and the only channels were: Two, five, seven, and nine. The black and white programs one watches now as reruns, were then, state of the art, first run testimonies as to what American life was supposed to be like.

In 1963 airliners had propellers and doctors still made house calls. Ronald Reagan and Fred Flintstone, among others, did cigarette commercials. The 44 story Prudential building was the tallest building in Chicago, and NIKE missile bases stood on the lake-front at Motrose and 63rd Street beach. Most people remember this as the year Dr. Martin Luther King gave his "I have a dream" speech, others remember it as the year Valium was invented. One of my earliest personal memories is of a Friday afternoon, the day they cut into an episode of Bozo's Circus. I was five years old, and the television was my window to the world.

I grew up in a house on Chase Avenue in Chicago's quiet West Rogers Park neighborhood. I drove by there recently, and that evoked more than a few childhood memories. The neighborhood was pretty much the same, the houses at least, mostly single family Georgian and Ranch style homes. Ginkgo trees now line the street, where when I was a child, there were elms. I remember when they cut down all the elm trees, "Dutch Elm Disease," that's what they said it was. Every September the trees would shed their leaves and all the children on the street would help to rake them up, only so we could put them in a pile to jump upon before they were dragged to the curb and burned. The little bonfires burned into the night, well past our bedtimes, but we all loved the glow of the fire, and the sweet perfume of burning leaves which filled the air. We loved the smell of the little fires, next to the lilac bushes which bloomed in the spring, and Mrs. Kaplan's house when she was baking cookie's, that was the best smell that there was.

It was late November, and as I sat in the car, for some reason, I was brought back to my childhood. Back to the year 1963. That was the year when the elm trees still stood tall and Mr. Carson hid my bicycle (because I had left it out side and he wanted me to think it was stolen). In that year: My dog Buttons bit Mikey Kilroy, Michael Gordon cut himself running out in the street to the knife sharpeners cart with his mothers knives,

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