Story #1: January 1998.

DIARY

I didn't jump into exploring Chicago nearly as quickly as I've started on New York. My first couple quarters quickly overwhelmed me, and I only left Hyde Park/Woodlawn once between the end of Orientation and Thanksgiving of that year. I started to get restless however, so on one night at the end of January, when the temperature soared into the thirties, Wanderlust took over.

I started by crossing the melting snow of the midway, already guaranteeing that my feet would get wet, that my socks would steep in water. Then I crossed through campus, gray and bustling with scarved-and-hatted people coming and going from the evening's events. I passed through the Reynolds club, walked east a block on 57th, just as packed with students and seminarians. Then I turned left, passed the First Unitarian Church and all the big brick houses on Woodlawn. I crossed 55th and passed the grimy tenements leading up to 53rd. This was familiar territory. This was where UT parties were held, where I met with my cast for Thanksgiving dinner; where I tasted gin for the first time.

Then, I crossed the plaza at 53rd, and passed the modest, tidier tenements to the north, and crossed Hyde Park Boulevard into Kenwood. I'd seen the big mansions up here once or twice, but this day was the first time I got a closer look. They were beautiful, but of course, the gardens were tangled messes, and I could chase from my mind the thought that one of these houses was where Leopold and Loeb had happened. I passed Louis Farrakhan's house, and just imagined what Hell I'd raise if anyone asked me to cross the street, as some paranoid student had warned me.

I crossed 47th street, and entered North Kenwood. The houses almost immediately were more run down, less conspicuously kept, but some had clearly been maintained for decades, and I'd read about the gentrification that was already transforming this area. My experience was so limited that I could only access things in comparison to Flint and Flushing. That is, these brick houses, though elegant with cut limestone. But they seemed skinny, standing tall and alone with vacant lots on either side: lonely. I thought about how I was taking this walk alone, how I was alone myself, and how the various girls who'd mesmerized me since I'd arrived in Chicago seemed somewhere between oblivious and underwhelmed by my presence.

In South Kenwood, the yards had all been empty, but up here, people were out on the sidewalk and in their front yards, taking advantage of the warm day. Walking or jogging, and fiddling aroudn their houses. Several said "hi." It seemed more special to them that they might exchange a greeting with someone walking down a sidewalk on an unusually warm day.

I crossed 43rd street, and the neighborhood changed again. Now I was in a tenement district essentially out of reach of rehabilitation and without Kenwood's glamorous lecacy. Race-consciousness kicked up a notch. That is, I felt self-conscious, and feeling conscious of being self-conscious, guilty and exposed, which made me more self-conscious. Woodlawn had merged with Lake Park. I passed tenements, and there were kids sitting on the porches and a group of men and women congregating in front of a supermarket with brightly-colored verticle panels. Nobody noticed me as I walked past.

I passed the tenements and into the range of the soon-to-be-demolished Ida B. Wells homes. Just blocks away, the homes huddled close together, low towers with half their windows slapped with sheets of plywood, while nearby loomed twelve story ranges of concrete and window flat concrete expanses empty between them. At Pershing road, the high-rises were brick and traingular.

I was out of familiar territory, and the sun was starting to go down, so when I saw a middle-aged woman in a heavy coat, elegant but casual, I decided to ask her how to get to the lake. She told me to turn right on Pershing and follow it over the tracks and Lake Shore drive. I thanked her. Somehow we got into a conversation and she explained that she lived in the triangle-shaped tower and was part of the tower council. I still don't know how the tower related to the Wells projects, because it's still standing today, even though the rest have been demolished.

I crossed the bridges, and for the first time discovered the concrete twists and whorls that define Burnham Park between Promontory Point and the McCormick Place. I hadn't realized such bursts of creativity had been brought in such rudimentary materials to this thin strip of grass and trees between the lake and the drive. I walked along the bedrock walls set back from the lake for several blocks, and switched to the concrete path when the rocks ran out. I walked back south. To my right, the sun began sinking behind first the Ida homes, and then the brownstones and brick homes of Kenwood. There were joggers on the path, and a man squealing around a parking lot in a black Cadillac. I found a wallet discarded in the snow.

When I reached the crossover at Hyde Park Boulevard, I crossed over, and made my way between the big residential towers, their windows angled squares of gold in the swelling sun, and turned left onto Cornell. This was a part of Hyde Park completely new to me, cold and professional, dense and tall, and it made up for its lack of intimacy with the energy of traffic jams and brisk pedestrian traffic. I passed by the Amoco on Cornell and marveled at the number of people clustered there, and the variety of tasks that brought them there. I admired the umber brick apartments with their neat windows and arcing branches twisting wet and elegant under their windows.

Quite different from the familial warmth of the University, of Woodlawn and Kimbark south of 55th.

I walked south on Cornell, keeping the 1700 E. 56th Street in my site ahead and to the left, wondering were it stood. I'd not noticed it before. Now I counted its forty-odd floors, and realized it was twice as tall as the tallest building in Flint. I reached 55th, and looked right and left at the Morrey's Deli and the Thai restaurants. Even though I'd been here before, I'd been wrapped in conversation. I didn't realize how many Thai restaurants there had been. How the buildings here, in my neighborhood, in Hyde Park, pulsed with a wakefulness and congestion just as student-dominated, but more bass than caffeine related. I would live over here in a few years.

Still not totally familiar with my bearings, I continued south on Cornell to 56th, turned and past the Brett Harte school. I remembered reading his writing in 11th grade. I turned onto Stony Island and walked down to 59th Street. The whole way, kids in their teens were crowding on and along the sidewalk, laughing and talking in loud voices. I was alone among them, aloof. I turned right onto 59th street, crossed under the Metra tracks, and was firmly in familiar territory. I walked past the Lab Schools and the stoic University buildings, cooling now that the sun had set and twilight was coming on, and empty now that the last classes had let out.

I crossed the Midway again, and was back in the dining hall. I ate dinner and played a game of foosball with Armand and Ben. Then I got online and looked up the phone number of the person in the wallet I had found. I called him and explained that I had found his wallet in Burnham park. He told me to bring it to him. I explained that the distance was too far and I didn't have time, but if he liked, I'd leave it at the front desk with a note. He said that was fine. I gave him the address, wrote a note for the desk attendant, and dropped off the wallet. I don't think it was ever picked up.

END OF POST.