Saturday, December 19, 2009

Home repair and individual healing

Saturday morning. I should be headed to Home Depot instead I choose to sit here to write in this neglected blog. I would feel guilty if allowed myself to feel such things.

I am laying tile down-after replacing the water damaged floor in one of my bathrooms. Not a fun job!

Everyone is anxiously awaiting my progress so that this bathroom can be put back into use.

I wonder how people survived with only one bathroom in the home?

When I grew up I did not know how to properly use a hammer. I grew up without a dad to teach me to use tools. We always rented, so we never had home repairs to perform. I knew how to paint, but that was my extent of my knowledge of home improvement.

There is a great amount of pride that I feel by having taught myself how to repair things around the home. Little by little, tool by tool I learned. Now even big jobs do not intimidate me.

Home repair. It is part of owning a home. We are like homes in the sense that we need a repair every now and then. Like home repair, personal repair requires skilled guidance, knowledge, and the proper tools. It helps when one has no fear of the task at hand. Big jobs should not intimidate us. We must trust the process.

One should never stop growing. Life is about progress. One could always progress in life. No matter what damage one has suffered as a child, there comes a time in life when they cannot explain away the deficits of their life with the abuses of their childhood. There comes a time in life when we must become responsible for our actions and learn to accept the consequences for our actions.

This is not to say that the scars of the damage will not persist in one's life. There could always be evidence in one's behavior that is the result of traumatic experiences of one's childhood. One does not have to live life with old, open self-debilitating wounds. Life can be a healing process if we choose not to be intimidated by the process of healing and the paradoxical pain that comes with healing.

Back in the late 70s, I hit a man in the face with the side of a hammer because he refused to give me a dollar. I used to consider that person who used a hammer as a weapon as a completely different, separate person from who I presently am today. It is easy to remove our horrors from our reality. I am very different from that person.

Writing in this obscure blog has helped me open up and consolidate those realities with my present realities of today. Writing in this blog has helped me to absolve my guilt and assured me that I was not a monster but a badly damaged child reacting normally to a severely damaged existence.

I am the same person. I learned, little by little, tool by tool, how to repair myself.

I do need to go to Home Depot. It is good to repair things as they need repairing. It is a good rule to follow throughout life.

Friday, December 11, 2009

A poem for no one

I saw you sitting next to me
at my empty table
in the coffee house
the ghost of lovers' past

the sky
has lost your smile
and the sun
spins cold shadows
on my footsteps.

yet, I saw you
as I sat alone
in the coffee house.

I felt your fading warmth
or maybe I just thought I did
as I embraced
[only in my mind]
the fading traces
of the new colors
of your clothes
as they now dance
in newer circles
pouring different dreams.

Peter Coyotl

July 7, 2009








St. Vitus in the background. Early 70s.

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

1972 Peter Cooper UGC Yearbook

I graduated from Peter Cooper Upper Grade Center in 1970. My brother graduated in 1973. Yet, my mother had a yearbook for the graduating class of 1972. I recently found it in her belongings. It is decaying quickly, so I decided to scan it to save it for history's sake. Life being as surprising as it is; I intersected with a woman via the cyber world who graduated from this class. She asked if I could scan two pages for her.

Since I was planning on scanning it to save it, I decided to also post it in the hopes that others from this class who no longer have their 8th grade yearbook could look at it once again.Here is one page. I will have the rest up soon. Click on the photo and open it with your photo software.



Friday, November 13, 2009

Miss Fitzgerald-The World's Best Teacher

After two years of torture at St. Vitus, my mother transferred us to public school. It most likely was an economic decision because I do not see how she was able to pay tuition for us at a Catholic school. So we made the move one block south to Peter Cooper Elementary. The school was built in 1883, and it probably will still be standing 100 years from now. It is an impressive brick building.

It was fourth grade. I did not recognize many kids other than the ones who lived on the same street. Our teacher was a very large woman named Miss Fitzgerald. She was a jovial woman who never displayed a negative attitude in class.

The following is a comment about Miss Fitzgerald from the Chicago Public School alumni site:

Ms Fitzgerald was the best 5th grade teacher because she had time for all the subjects in a school day that started at 9 and ended at 315 (with a one hour lunch, 2 recesses and milk and cookie time). She was amazing.

The songs were American culture, but she even had one or two international songs.

She taught us to square dance.

We had teams in the class that competed against each other for a monthly prize.

Without a doubt, the best.

She taught all of my older brothers and sisters.

That was the impact this teacher had on her students.

I no longer had to sit in the back of the class because I was Mexican. Every month Miss Fitzgerald changed the seating arrangements so every student sat in a different spot every month and shared a row with different students.

She rewarded students for positive behavior and punished us for negative behaviors as well. Her reward was marked with one star written on the blackboard. Each individual star would count towards the total of the row. So if everyone in row one did their homework, they would each earn one star for their row. If someone from row two would chew gum in class. then a star would be erased from the grand total from that row.

Miss Fitzgerald would award prizes for each student who sat in the row that earned the most stars in the month. We all competed to be good and productive.

Well, almost everyone. I had a problem talking during the class and I had many of our stars erased. One month I remember a girl asking Miss Fitzgerald not to put her in the same row as me. But I earned many stars for my work in class. I was one of the smarter kids in class, especially in math.

Miss Fitzgerald was fair to everyone.

We sang songs every afternoon. Miss Fitzgerald would pass out song books, play the piano, and loudly sing in a loud joyous voice. All the classic songs of Americana that I know, I learned in her class. The son of a migrant farm worker learning Stephen Foster and the rest of Americana music.

Oh, Susana...she'll be coming around the mountain...with a banjo on my knee.

She also had fun art projects for us to engage us in. She put us in touch with our creative side. 

She had us striving to learn and to behave. She also taught us to get along with each other. She also gave us roles of leadership.

Every month she would reassign different positions of authority to every student. One month one could be a line monitor, the next month they would be the chalk board cleaner, and the next month they would be the coat room monitor.

The coat room monitor's job was to ensure that students behaved while the grabbed their coats in the coatroom The coatroom was a long narrow closet-like room where we hung our coats every morning.

Miss Fitzgerald named me the coatroom monitor one month. I lasted one day on the job. A fellow student failed to listen to my request not to talk in the coatroom. After asking them a few times to be quiet I punched the student in the face.

Role-modeling

My duties were taken away from me that day.

I probably lost a few stars for my row as well. I deserved my punishment.

Miss Fitzgerald was fair.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Old Pics of Chicago from Life Magazine Archives

Google has old photos from Life magazine. There are many photos of Chicago included in this collection. I love history. I love Chicago. I can spend hours looking at the photos in this collection. I take myself back in time, wondering about the mindset of the era and what my place in life would have been back then. My father was picking crops in Michigan in 1944.

 The randomness of thought bounce through my mind...a thousand thoughts and words.

I wonder what church is in the background?

There are no buildings or porches like this where I now live in Utah. I, like millions of others from Chicago, have many childhood memories of playing on these type of porches.

The above is a photo from 1944, taken by Gordon Coster. It is described as "Vacant lots and tenement buildings in the slums of Chicago."

I was born in the Halstead-Roosevelt area. I wonder where these houses were and if they survived the destruction of the neighborhood in the early 60s.

The one thing I immediately noticed was that someone was growing crops in these open lots. Cities are going back to urban gardening and here, 60 years ago, someone had an impressive urban garden going on. I wonder if it was the work of one family-the owner of the lots?- or if it was the work of the community.

I also like the make-shift fencing that one would never see today in the city. It would rightfully be considered an eyesore and it would be against zoning laws. Back then it worked. It served the purpose. It kept kids and animals from trampling on the seedlings.


Heck, I think that the black iron wrought fences that are now prevalent in Pilsen are tremendous gaudy eye sores. They protect no seedlings from suffering from the trampling of the neighborhood kids and pets.

(Poor dog in Pilsen is gated AND chained. In Salt Lake City, it would be against the law to chain a dog up like this for the day. Not much of a life for this dog.)





The above is also from 1944 and also shot by Coster. I wonder if the boy was actually playing ball or if he was only posing for the photographer. I think he was posing.

The building looks so beaten by time and neglect. If it exists today, I could not afford to buy it.

A woman, taking pride, is walking with a broom to rearrange the dirt and the dust from her stairs out to the sidewalk.

When I was a teen in Pilsen, we had concrete stairs like in the photo. It was a popular hang out. We called them "The Stairs."

The spacing between the buildings, or lack of, is something one does not see here in Utah. When I talk to people about the buildings in older Chicago they usually are amazed by how close the buildings are in these older neighborhoods.

These kids in the pic would be in their late 70s or early 80s, if they are still alive.

My grandparents rented a flat in an old wooden house around the corner from the old Goodrich School. They actually had a small front yard. A cherry tree grew there. Kids would climb their front stairs to reach the cherries. Free treats on Peoria Street.

There is now a UIC parking lot, next to a ball field, where the cherry tree once grew.


View Larger Map
My grandfather would throw pieces of fish at the horde of alley cats who would gather for his offerings. I can remember the skeletal remains of the fish in the back yard and the alley.

The alley was where the slow-walking, tough-looking cats and the dirty-looking drunks could be found.

Some people actually lived under sidewalks or slept in old abandoned sheds with the rats. I would run fast the other way whenever I would see them.

I remember a live chicken running around in my grandparents' kitchen. I most likely ate her that night, or the next day, with a home-made flour tortilla.

My grandparents gave me a jalapeno to eat when I was 5. They laughed when I cried. I laugh at the memory. I see nothing abusive about what they did; today, children protective services would investigate it.


The above photo is from 1954-Chicago. It was taken by Fritz Goro.

I am old enough to remember when everyone would dry clothes on a clothes line.

I would play with my mother's clothes pins.

I still wear the scar on my foot when a bunch of kids, siblings included, ran me over while I played at the top of the stairs of an old wooden porch. I remember laying on my back at the bottom of the stairs, blood on my foot.

It was one of the few times I ever ate ice cream as a kid. Ice cream is the best medicine for kids. I still use it for medicinal purposes.
Urban garden in the Taylor Street area, 1953. My grandmother is on the far right.


Goodrich School. Demolished in 1963 to make room for the Circle Campus, now known as UIC. The school was on Taylor and Sangamon. The famed Mexican-American writer and poet, Ana Castillo, was a student at Goodrich when it was destroyed. I was a 1st grader for its last year. My mother attended k-8 at Goodrich.




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Friday, July 31, 2009

A Monster Lurks Amongst us

We would run as fast as we could with a genuine fear that there was a real monster coming after us. He looked monstrous to us. The real monster was ignorance and the fear that is spawned by ignorance.




Sometimes some of the greatest lessons one learns in life are not apparent for many years. There are moments in life when it takes maturity and added knowledge of life to be able to reflect and appreciate the experiences we had when the opportunities to learn and to grow were presented to us.

There was a gray-haired woman who lived on the 1700 hundred block of 21st Street. She regularly walked through the alley corridors of the neighborhood with her son, perhaps to minimize interaction with those who did not understand what cerebral palsy was back in 1964. She would walk down the corridor of the "L" train with her son walking distorted and twisted. Sometimes he would have saliva dripping from his mouth.

"Run, run, here comes the monster" we would yell.

"El monstruo."

We would run as fast as we could with a genuine fear that there was a real monster coming after us. He looked monstrous to us. The real monster was ignorance and the fear that is spawned by ignorance.

One day we were playing behind the home of the grey-haired woman when she and her son came out unexpectedly from behind their tall wooden gated fence. It caught us by surprise. My friends had a late start running from the monster. I stood there frozen as the mother asked me gently and kindly to stay.

Something made me smitten with curiosity as I fearfully held my ground. The mother asked me to come over and touch her son. She assured me that he was not a monster. I can remember her soft, patient tone of kindness and gentleness-one I was unaccustomed to hearing. She was believable. I trusted her and approached him. I touched him and he spoke to me although I had no idea what he was saying. He was still scary but I was not afraid.

The mother explained to me that God made him this way but he was just like me and her.

She easily could have returned our ignorance with ignorance of her own. She could have been like many of the adults in this still predominately white neighborhood and called us little spics. She, instead, responded to my youthful ignorance and fear with love, gentleness, and kindness. She built a bridge for her son and I with these traits. She invited me to reach out and erase my ignorance and fear I had of her son and it changed me a bit that day although I did not know it at the time. I think I am just becoming aware of her positive impact on me as I recovered this long, lost memory today and started to think about writing about it.

Kindness and gentleness.

I would stop by their front stairs and talk whenever I saw them outside. I still do not know who was happier of the three of us for this bridging of fear and ignorance. I was only about 9 but I felt brave, special, and loved when I was with them. These were not things I felt for most of my childhood.

I soon helped other kids on the block lose their fear of this man whose name I no longer remember. I think it was Edwin but I am not 100% certain of it. It was 43 years ago.

Sometimes there would be a few kids on her stairs as we sat and talked to her and her son. We no longer ran from the monster. The monster disappeared thanks to the love and kindness of a special woman who taught me the power of gentle kindness and love.

I am sure she was doing it for her son but I think I received more out of it then anyone else. I felt special for perhaps the first time in my life when I was with them. Maybe, subconsciously, I was searching for approval and love as much as the gray-haired woman was searching for the same thing for her son.

Who would have guessed,as I sat on the stairs with them, that someday I would have hit a man in the face with a hammer, knocked out a knife-wielding foe with a plank of wood, smashed several heads against concrete walls, and brutally beat to near-death a man for sexually abusing the aunt of a friend.

A river flows in its natural course. Severe child abuse set its course for me.

Yet, there is no doubt in my mind that the influence from the gray-haired woman are among the reasons I am not dead or rotting away in prison, and why I was able to reconnect with my lost sense of humanity.

I now have moments when I too can be gentle and kind.

We impact every child we interact with.

Inspirational article that spurred my memory

Link to the inspiration story







Sunday, July 26, 2009

I Have Never Been to the Top of the Sears Tower

FILE - In this June 24, 2009, file photo Anna Kane, 5, of Alton, Ill. looks down from "The Ledge," at the Sears Tower in Chicago. The glass balcony suspended 1,353 feet (412 meters) in the air and jut out 4 feet (1.22 meters) from the Sears Tower's 103rd floor Skydeck, is one of the changes this year for the tallest building in the United State which will officially be renamed to Willis Tower, for the London-based Willis Group Holdings, on July 16, 2009. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)


I have never had the urge to go to the top of the Sears Tower. It always seemed like a "touristy" thing to do. But when I visited New York on a whim as an 18-year-old, the first thing I did was visit the Statue of Liberty. I guess living beneath the shadows of the giant building that seemed to me like a giant middle finger pointing to Pilsen took away any intrigue of what was then the world's tallest building.

Many enjoy going to the top and enjoying the view. More power to them. Just because I do not want to do something does not mean there is no value to it.


I would rather view nature than urban landscape. There is a unique beauty to viewing the tall structures off Lake Shore Drive but I really become mesmerized by sites like the one at Dead Horse Point near Moab, Utah.



I always felt as if I was a country boy lost in the city. I am madly in love with the mountain forests of Utah, yet I commit adultery on these forests with an equal passion for the deserts of southern Utah. There is a solitude and silence that one can actually hear. It is a deep spiritual experience for me.

Many who I have known from my late teen years in Pilsen have died from violence. Many have been imprisoned. I feel greatly blessed to have had escaped, and to have connected with the beauty of the land.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Ape Man

I loved this song from the first time I ever heard it back when I was a teen growing up in Pilsen.



I think I'm sophisticated
cos I'm living my life like a good homosapien
But all around me everybody's multiplying
Till they're walking round like flies man
So I'm no better than the animals sitting in their cages
In the zoo man
cos compared to the flowers and the birds and the trees
I am an ape man
I think I'm so educated and I'm so civilized
cos I'm a strict vegetarian
But with the over-population and inflation and starvation
And the crazy politicians
I don't feel safe in this world no more
I don't want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an ape man
I'm an ape man, I'm an ape ape man
I'm an ape man I'm a king kong man I'm ape ape man
I'm an ape man
cos compared to the sun that sits in the sky
Compared to the clouds as they roll by
Compared to the bugs and the spiders and flies
I am an ape man
In mans evolution he has created the cities and
The motor traffic rumble, but give me half a chance
And I'd be taking off my clothes and living in the jungle
cos the only time that I feel at ease
Is swinging up and down in a coconut tree
Oh what a life of luxury to be like an ape man
I'm an ape, Im an ape ape man, Im an ape man
I'm a king kong man, I'm a voo-doo man
I'm an ape man
I look out my window, but I cant see the sky
cos the air pollution is fogging up my eyes
I want to get out of this city alive
And make like an ape man
Come and love me, be my ape man girl
And we will be so happy in my ape man world
I'm an ape man, Im an ape ape man, Im an ape man
I'm a king kong man, I'm a voo-doo man
I'm an ape man
Ill be your tarzan, you'll be my jane
Ill keep you warm and you'll keep me sane
And well sit in the trees and eat bananas all day
Just like an ape man
I'm an ape man, I'm an ape ape man, Im an ape man
I'm a king kong man, I'm a voo-doo man
I'm an ape man.
I don't feel safe in this world no more
I don't want to die in a nuclear war
I want to sail away to a distant shore
And make like an ape man.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Drinking 8 bottles of Pepsi in the same night



There was a period when our family lived in dire poverty. Food was a luxury. I remember sometimes we had a cup of coffee for dinner. I put a few spoons of sugar in it and enjoyed every small sip as I convinced my baby brain that this was a culinary delight.

We never could afford to buy ice cream from the ice cream truck. When the other kids would run to the music of the Good Humor man, we stayed in the back yard humorless and ice cream-less. We rarely had soda-which is not a bad thing. But I was a kid and I desired the sweet tasting caffeinated drink. I remember promising myself that when I grew up and had my own place that I would buy an eight pack of Pepsi 16 ounce bottles-that is how they were sold back in the old days. Then I would drink them all, one after the other. In time I forgot the promise.

In the fall of 1977 I was turning my life around. I enrolled at Northeastern Illinois on the north side of Chicago. I also found a full-time job as a clerk with the United States Post Office. It paid well. I moved out and rented my own flat on 18th Place and Paulina, right next to where there is now a thrift store.

I bought an old chair and a used 13-inch black and white tv. On my fist night I sat alone in my apartment watching a 13-inch tv which rested on the floor. For some strange reason I remembered the promise of that little boy who could not afford to buy a pop. I went next door to the store and purchased an 8 pack of Pepsi bottles. I kept my promise and drank one after the other.

I fulfilled a childhood dream. I also went to bed ill that night from drinking 128 ounces of Pepsi.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

McCartney Playing Get Back on the roof top 2009 and 1969

The Beatles were my favorite group while I was growing up in Pilsen.


Paul plays Get back and back in the USSR


The Day the Black Men Made it Rain Sandwiches

photo from freefoto



1964. Second grade. Two bedroom basement flat at 1750 west 21st street. Five kids. Single mom. Arroz con leche or nothing were the usual dinner choices. To this day I refuse to eat rice pudding, not because I do not like it, but because I surpassed my personal quota for how many times one can eat it without having to be involuntarily committed.

My mother belonged to an agency called West Side Organization. They were a civil rights group located on the west side of Chicago. She met Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he came to Chicago to march in 1966. She played billiards with him. I remember her coming home and telling us about it.

I was exposed to social justice at an early age. It has always been a passion of mine. I was also exposed to hunger. Whenever we had sugar, butter, and cinnamon at the same time I thought that we were rich. I put them all on a piece of toast and slowly enjoyed every bite.

One day my mother returned from a meeting followed by a group of Black men. They had a couple of boxes with them. One was filled with sandwiches. The other had books. The men were extremely friendly. They had joy in bringing food to this poor family. That memory attached to my mind. There is joy in service.

After the men left we emptied the contents of the box on the table It rained sandwiches. They tasted better than anything else in the world that I could have been offered. It was not rice pudding.

We had sandwiches for days. We were the richest kids in America.

The books lasted a lifetime. There was a used children encyclopedia set that I made best friends with. They were called The Golden Book Encyclopedias. I read every word in those books and lost myself in the short, brief stories. I discovered Hawaii with captain Cook (Eurocentric set of books) and traveled east with Marco Polo. I escaped into these books. They spurred my curiosity about life and fed me with trivial knowledge.

I look for copies of that specific encyclopedia whenever I frequent thrift stores throughout America. I have a five-year-old with the same curiosity of life like his dad had. I want to feed it well.

While the sandwiches were a welcomed relief from arroz con leche, the real feast were the books that the good men brought to us that day.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Memorializing my friends

When I started to write my other blog I realized that no one was reading it. It took a while to find a few dedicated readers. After all, there are millions of blogs out there. But when I realized this I thought it was a good thing. I could just write about anything that inspired me. I feel the same way about this blog now. It feels great.

One thing this blog allows me to do is to memorialize the people and the places of Pilsen from my childhood. One could Google Dan Miholtz or Mike Smith and find them in my blog.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Song, poem, and a pic

Every Sunday I include a song, a poem, and a pic in my other blog. I find it enhances my appreciation of life to offer pleasure to all my senses. Thus, I try to listen to sounds that soothe and please me. I soothe my savage beast with the rhythm of poetry. I please my sight by looking at art.

This is the first time I am doing this on this blog.

I remember school dances and other events during the 60s at the the demolished synagogue on Cullerton and Ashland. Anyone who was around remembers this jam and most likely slow danced to it. I remember Chicky, the younger brother of Puerto Rican Willie, singing lead for this song at a school dance. He was 12 and still had the voice that was able to hit the high notes.



Listen to the original





Te amo,
te amo de una manera inexplicable,
de una forma inconfesable,
de un modo contradictorio.

Te amo
con mis estados de ánimo que son muchos,
y cambian de humor continuamente.
por lo que ya sabes,
el tiempo, la vida, la muerte.

Te amo...
con el mundo que no entiendo,
con la gente que no comprende,
con la ambivalencia de mi alma,
con la incoherencia de mis actos,
con la fatalidad del destino,
con la conspiración del deseo,
con la ambigüedad de los hechos.

Aún cuando te digo que no te amo, te amo,
hasta cuando te engaño, no te engaño,
en el fondo, llevo a cabo un plan,
para amarte mejor.

Te amo...
sin reflexionar, inconscientemente,
irresponsablemente, espontáneamente,
involuntariamente, por instinto,
por impulso, irracionalmente.

En efecto no tengo argumentos lógicos,
ni siquiera improvisados
para fundamentar este amor que siento por ti,
que surgió misteriosamente de la nada,
que no ha resuelto mágicamente nada,
y que milagrosamente, de a poco, con poco y nada
ha mejorado lo peor de mí.

Te amo,
te amo con un cuerpo que no piensa,
con un corazón que no razona,
con una cabeza que no coordina.

Te amo
incomprensiblemente,
sin preguntarme por qué te amo,
sin importarme por qué te amo,
sin cuestionarme por qué te amo.

Te amo
sencillamente porque te amo,
yo mismo no sé por qué te amo.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Spirit World




Sometimes I walk and a poem will come to me. Sometimes I come to a poem. They are more real when they come to me. This one came to me.

Spirit World

I fish for echo
of the sun
as it swims
through early morning crevice
of primitive canyon
spawning
on red rock walls
where I hear
faded whispers
of petroglyph
not knowing what was being said
but without spoken word
I feel the depth
of its meaning
as I reel in the silence.

Peter (June 1997)

Chicago has great energy but I am better suited for the spirituality of early mornings in the peacefulness of the remote primitive canyons.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Why We Moved to Pilsen



Urban renewal was played out in the early 60s in the area near Roosevelt and Halstead. One by one, buildings were beat down by the giant, swinging metal ball of progress.

Progress for those who wanted to build a city campus of the University of Illinois near downtown. It was not progress for the many who were uprooted and forced to scatter to other areas, causing a chain reaction of outward movement towards the outer city and the suburbs.

This neighborhood was one of the few integrated neighborhoods in a very segregated and racist Chicago of 1963. The Blacks had few options as they were permitted to live in only a few locations in Chicago at this time. The Mexicans headed south into the Pilsen community, a community that had been a port of entry for European immigrants. Now it was about to see the face of change and it had a dark color to it.


First Holy Communion, May, 1963 at St. Francis of Assisi Church. The church is still there on Roosevelt Road. We lived across the street at 1123 South Peoria.I am in the front row far left.


Our presence in Pilsen started the process of White Flight down the Archer Avenue corridor and into the White suburbs.



Looking west in 1910 from Halstead on what became Rooselvelt Road. I lived here as a child 50 years after this photo was taken.


There were Mexicans in Pilsen before the destruction of the area where UIC now occupies. But the destruction sent many more, all at the same time, to a neighborhood where they were not welcomed by many of the current Eastern European-Americans and Eastern European immigrants.

Yet, in time, the Mexican and Polish kids were for the most part civil and friendly with each other while maintaining strong cultural pride. Racism between the groups, at least to my experience, remained behind closed doors. We would tease each other but it was not from hatred.

We moved to Pilsen in 1963. We being seven children and a single mother, whose husband stretched his wandering wings and flew to Mexico for the winter only to find a new nest with a newer, younger song.


Pic of the urban renewal of my birth neighborhood. Most of the homes are demolished. Hull House was still remaining. It was one of the last structures to be demolished. This was one of the few integrated neighborhoods in Chicago in the early 60's.There were Italians, Mexicans, and African-Americans in this neighborhood sacrificed for the Circle Campus.



We were one of the last families to move. The building where the ice supplier operated was now flattened rubble. Goodrich School was reduced to memories to be forgotten in a generation. Open lots and a few winos were all that remained. We lived half block off Roosevelt on Peoria. There is a parking lot now where we used to live.

I watched most of the buildings destroyed. A little six year-old child standing front row in the arena of urban renewal watching the huge metal machines hurl metal balls against walls; bricks exploding,dust swirling, walls falling. It was quite a sight for a 6 year-old.

I remember the area well.

Maxwell Street was a few blocks away. I was intrigued by the energy. I was captivated by the crowds. I remember the old Black men playing electric guitar. Blues is still my favorite music to this day. Chicago Blues.





The vibrancy of the African-American Bluesmen of the open-markets across the road that decadently danced non-stop are now quiet monotone hums of gentrified blandness. Instead of guitar players jamming, grown men now play slow-pitch, underhand softball on baseball diamonds south of the old Maxwell Street.



When I grew up in Pilsen we never played softball with a mitt. We used the 16 inch hard clincher. We used mitts to play hard-ball.



Slow pitch, under hand softball?

Wearing gloves?

Que?

Things do change. Just like the Polish shook their heads at the differences of the cultural habits of the Mexicans, I shake my head at the new softball playing culture of the area.



real man in 1908 playing softball without a mitt.
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There was an embedded toughness in Chicagoans when I grew up. One had to be tough to endure the bitter winters, the corrupt politicians, and the local cops who would stop you in the hopes of getting lunch money. That was life in the 60s.

August of 1963 was when we arrived in the Eastern European neighborhood of Pilsen. My mother rented a third floor apartment on Cermak and Paulina. I would live in that general area for the next 16 years.

There were no Black faces anymore. The Brown faces were fewer as well. Even the Italians were missing.

The first school I attended in Pilsen was St. Vitus. My experience at that school was rough with many racist encounters. The kids I can dismiss since they learned their racism at home; it was the nuns, supposed women of God, that I have trouble reconciling. Maybe the racist nuns were products of their time when racism was not something to shed as a personal and ugly fault.




(1917) Mexican immigrants cutting weeds outside Chicago. Daily News Archive.


1958 pic of 3rd graders in Peter Cooper. There is one African-American child and there is already an Hispanic presence in the school. In about ten years there would be a majority of Mexican children in any school picture at Cooper. From my conversations with some who lived in Pilsen during the time this picture was taken, there was already a fear that the neighborhood was changing and some families were moving away. In less than ten years, the White Flight to the newer nests was almost complete.