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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.