JFK Expressway and our neighborhood

October 26th 2010

BACKSTREETS by Thomas E. Terlikowski segments of Chapters 3,4,5. Check out some of the other stories in the earlier archives.. http://backstreetsthomas.blogspot.com


Comparing City Life to the Road Trip
Returning to Chicago, I began to see my neighborhood with new eyes. We’re a working class neighborhood filled with people and businesses that grew out of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The folks were filled with determination, spirit, vision, and enthusiasm to rebuild their part of the city from ashes. They were the same as those who headed out to the wide open spaces of the unsettled West to create a new life from fresh ground.
There were two and three story apartment buildings; some were wood frame with clapboard siding, some had composite shingle siding. The choices of two shades of green or red must have been a big seller in the 1940’s and 50’s. Running through the gangways while playing “hide and go seek” and bumping into those shingles guaranteed a bloody scrape or a torn shirt. The kids out West would probably get the same kind of scrapes running between boulders. Another combination structure was the wood frame added onto brick; all of them were built as the city retrofitted for utilities like sewage, gas, and water lines. That also meant what used to be a first floor apartment was now below street level. Any place with a basement became a sub-basement.
Many of the family-owned businesses had the convenience of their owners not having to drive to work since they lived upstairs over their store. At ten hundred north, on Milwaukee Avenue, the people were a mix of mostly Polish Americans and some Louisiana French. Slowly moving in were a few hillbilly families and Puerto Ricans. Another ten hundred blocks north, only ten blocks directly east of the Chicago River, Augusta Boulevard is called Oak Street. The Chicago River bordered the eastside of their back streets. Oak Street Beach, where Lake Shore Drive and Oak Street come together, and where Lake Michigan laps the shore, with all its wealth and big spenders, mansions and luxury, high-rise apartments overlooked “The Lake.” They might as well have been ten thousand miles away. Even though, at this near west side of the Chicago River, the street name is Augusta Boulevard, there was nothing Boulevardier about their old neighborhood. Milwaukee Avenue was a street of commerce and hard lessons in life.
At the south end of our block were the Northwest Meat Packing Company, a wallpaper and paint store, and the music store where Uncle Al and Mom worked long hours. Next door to us was “Anna's Pet Chop”. That's what I called it and clued my friends to what really went on in that pet store. On the other side of our music store were a mirror manufacturer, a linoleum store, a pierogi factory, dry cleaner, jewelry store, florist, and then a drug store to end the block at Noble Street. Every shopkeeper and store owner knew all those who lived and traded with those folks in the area.
The florist? My brain flashes the name Rose Buck. She had a mean Doberman Pinscher that would, as you entered the store, bare his teeth as he parted the cream and burgundy floral drape on the doorway behind the counter. The chill of that store always went beyond the coolers where the flowers were kept. It smelled like the funeral parlor and the cold greeting you received upon entry always gave a sinister feel to the place.
Across the street was Jimmy Jarosz, the butcher. He knew what cuts of meat Mom wanted me or Danny to bring home. His place, although colder than the florist, was always warm and comforting inside. He had a shiny head of close-cropped gray hair. His broad smiling face was topped off with one of those folded paper hats. I used to try to spell my last name in the sawdust on the floor with the tip of my shoe while I was waiting my turn to be called. However, having an eleven lettered, Polish last name, I always ran out of sawdust before I ever got to the S- K- I ending. I knew in many of those small towns that we drove through on vacation, it must be the same kind of life, just fewer people. I always found myself comparing my city life with the lives of the people we encountered during that Highway 66 vacation.

Cotton Top on a Blessing Spree
The sub-title to this little episode should be - “May the Lord Bless this kitchen, the dining room, the hallway, the bedroom, the other bedroom, this house, the carpet, the doorknob, newspaper, dog, radio, towel, shoe…”
Later that year after the Highway 66 trip, Mom planned an Easter dinner get together for both sides of the family. The first thing that needed to be done was paint the apartment. Paint rollers were not invented yet and neither was water-based paint. Dad had friends that lent him a canvas tarp, a scaffold, and ladders. The walls and ceilings of the six rooms previously had been painted white. Covering white with white was a real pain in the ass. Doing so with a four-inch wide brush was an alcoholic’s nightmare. Dad did about 85% of the work with Mom or Dan helping. Dad finished on Saturday before Palm Sunday.
The next day Cotton Top came home from church with her Palms and a quart jar of Holy Water. That water is kept in an oak cask that is never really cleaned out. The janitor fills it with a garden hose once a year and there the water sits until it is almost empty. A priest comes by, makes the sign of the cross, and says the Latin version of “yubby jubby jubby, prang! You now be holy water.” The water looks clean until you put it next to really clean water. Then one can see the oak resins that make it look like weak tea.
Cotton Top walked through the apartment and blessed the house by dipping the palms into the mason jar of the holier than thou water and splashing it on every wall in every room and anything else she felt needed blessing, including our dog, Shorty. Cotton Top’s splashing streaked all the newly painted walls. When Dad awakened and reviewed his handiwork, he could not believe what he was seeing. He said many things in Polish and English, all of which I recognized from the backstreets. He looked as though he was going to cry. First, Dad went to the pantry to talk with “John Barleycorn”. Later, I saw him with a bucket of soapy water trying to minimize the streaking that Cotton Top had created on the walls. That was the first time I heard him use the expression, “That senile son of a bitch! I hope to piss on her grave.” I wanted to say out loud what the old man’s voice in my head was saying to me. “Hey Ed, are you a little pissed at the old broad? That Cotton Top sure knows how to yank your wanger.” But I realized the voice was just joking with me.



Street Vendors: Rag Man, Ice Man, Produce Man, Knife Sharpener, and the Hot Dog Guy
Some of the best times Dan and I had, separately and together, were dealing with the street vendors. They changed the atmosphere of the block as soon as the horse and buckboard entered. Since we almost always played in the streets and alleys it was no big thing if we had to stop or move over to make room for a car. It was a quick, easy inconvenience. However, for a horse-drawn service, it colored the street with an attitude of excitement. For many of the kids it was about as close to a farm animal as any would see. Each vendor carried with him a virtual store.
The junk man, or rag man, would holler out “Raggzzinoliren”. His voice was strong and raspy and all the words ran together so they were indistinguishable to my ears. It was like a mantra from the depths of the planet where slave labor must happen. I was in my twenties when I heard Oscar Brown, Jr. explain the words slowly and clearly in an introduction to a song about the rag man. (“Rags and Old Iron” is what was being called out.)
The ice man was always a treat for us kids in the summer. We would sneak up and steal the chips before they melted. The easiest pickings came when he had to walk up to a third floor apartment. Those blocks of ice that he carried with two, big, black iron tongs were heavy. He was an old guy, too, and was slowly being put out of business because of the refrigerator. He wore a huge, leather apron that fit across his shoulder. His aura was more like that of a gunslinger the way he walked and carried those tongs. His horse was definitely spryer than the rag man's horse. Of course, the ice man started out with a full, heavy load and by day’s end, the buckboard was empty. It was just the opposite for the rag man. At the end of his day, if it was a successful one, he would be heavily laden with aluminum, lead pipe, and coils of copper tube or wire, along with rags and bundles of paper. The rag man's horse looked and moved like the word “schlep” sounds. The sound of those steel-covered, wooden wheels over the cobblestones was a powerful grinding sound, punctuated by a very heavy, tired clop…clop…clop of the shod hooves striking the pavement. Kids learned quickly to turn their faces away from those wagon wheels for fear of a shard of glass or stone being squeezed out from under a wheel, like a watermelon seed that was pinched between your fingers. Playing in the alley was most natural for us but taught us quickly to be very attentive and cautious. The alleys, as well as empty lots, were not very forgiving playgrounds.
The all-time favorite sound was hearing the old, Italian produce vendor. He could holler out "WATERMAYLONE!" with such beauty and force, it made you feel like you should give him a standing ovation. There was just one problem -- the drool. We were like Pavlovian dogs; holler "watermaylone!" and we would drool. We wanted some right then and there. He would cut you a slice for a nickel or dime. His buckboard was converted to an enclosed wagon with a door at the back and two steps that extended out affixed to steel strapping. The steps also served as somewhat of a counter. A scale hung from three, small, linked chains and a metal scoop that could hold dry garbanzos, peas, and string beans. He even had a straw hat for his horse, Mona. He also had a pail of water for Mona that hung from the side of his wagon next to a feed bag. Moms would come out and make their purchases when they heard his hawking. Onions, potatoes, cukes, and the smell of fresh dill was always a treat. It would always remind me of visits to our aunt and uncle who lived in Powers Lake, Wisconsin who dried out the dill on their porch near the kitchen. Some mom would call out, "Ten cents worth of soup greens please!" A parsnip, carrot, two sticks of celery, and a few sprigs of parsley were tied with a piece of string and the order was completed. That was when the store would come to you.
There was one other street vendor who walked with his grinding wheel around the back streets, as well as the businesses of the avenue. He sharpened hunting knives, kitchen knives, scissors, linoleum knives, chisels, and planes. His way of attracting business was by way of two bells with very distinctive, separate tones. There was the beautiful, long sustained ding of the first bell followed by the stifled DUNK! of the second bell. He had a water can that looked like an oversized funnel to keep the grinding wheel wet. He sat on his strange looking, but simple device and peddled the two boards that would spin the large stone grinding wheel. We always enjoyed seeing the few sparks that would show up from time to time. It was also always fun to see who owned some hunting knife that we would love to have. We never stayed around too long because he had a pretty bad case of B.O., which also gave us a hunting lesson about standing downwind of your prey.
The hot dog vendor also walked and always had the best flavored hot dogs. That could have been because we played so hard and anything we tasted was absolutely delicious when we were that hungry. Twenty-five cents would be all that you needed for that delight, ten cents for the Coke, or Pepsi, and an extra nickel for a bag of chips. Mom was upset when she found out we bought food from him. “Where does he go potty? And how does he wash his hands afterwards?”
We were amazed that she did not know the answer. “Mom, in the tavern, of course, like all the other vendors.”
Mom was not aware of life on the backstreets. She wasn’t allowed to play there. She was very obedient and well-insulated by her eight older siblings and directed to be an “A” student. That didn’t leave any time for her to explore the neighborhood just one block behind the music store. She studied hard and was involved only with school activities.
Dan and I were one hundred eighty degrees the other way. We loved being on the street. We couldn’t wait to be out of the house and away from craziness we could not control.



Chapter 5
1956


President Eisenhower and Congress passed the Federal Highway Act that was designed to join all major cities via interstate highways. To most of us kids, it didn’t mean anything. Besides, who cared about an old, bald-headed guy who was always playing golf? He bored us kids to death with those long speeches. However, he changed our lives completely over the next four years. Our neighborhood was to live only in our memories from that day forward.


Flash Gordon, Come In
Bob and I were out front of his Busha’s (grandma’s) grocery store drinking a Birely’s orange pop. Birely’s had an oversized mouth to their bottles that meant the bottle cap was about twice the usual size. We used them as our standard hockey puck. As we guzzled our pop, Sherry, who lived in the basement apartment of Bob’s house, was screaming about something. “Come back here, Timmy! Timmy, come back! You bring those back to Mommy right now!”
Timmy was running faster than we had seen him run before. A six year-old can dodge, turn, and stop on a dime, but our money was on Mom’s long legs. Timmy was holding his hands up to the sides of his head while he ran. He had some foam “head phones” in his hands and was making beeping sounds (pretend short wave signal noises) like we heard from Flash Gordon or Tom Corbett Space Cadets. While Sherry, his mom, was chasing and hollering at him, Timmy ran between the parked cars, zigzagging, turning, running, and looping around. It was a comical event until Sherry finally caught up to her little Timmy and whacked him on the back of his head. She hit him hard enough that her falsies fell away from his ears and flew across the sidewalk almost in front of us. Bobby and I tried to look away but we were too fascinated with how they looked. Those two cones bounced and rolled with great enthusiasm. When Sherry finally picked up her runaway boobies, she turned to us in complete exasperation shouting,
“What are you looking at?”
We tried very hard to show that we were looking at anything but her. Her partially buttoned house dress indicated that she had thrown it on as an afterthought as Timmy ran outside, because she definitely was not wearing panties or bra. It was another early anatomy lesson. To a lot of us guys at that age, the female body was a complete mystery.

The Cold War – The Beginning of the End
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s mandate started hitting hard. The order was that every big city in the country needed expressways. The cold war was cooking and the country needed strategic systems to get in and out of the cities. They also needed to link every city across the nation to every other major city across the United States. Our part in this scenario was the construction of the 'Northwest Expressway' (which was changed to the John F. Kennedy Expressway after his assassination). In case you’ve never noticed, there is always a two mile straightway on your local Interstate Highways that can double as a landing strip. In a military emergency, the big C-130s can use that section of highway for a runway. At least that was the plan back then. It didn’t work for hurricane Katrina in the summer of 2005.
All of the lives, sounds, experiences, smells, businesses, and families slowly came to a grinding, angry halt like a pissed off two thousand car train. The entire city was going to be slashed. The wound would be four hundred feet wide and fifteen miles long. Neighborhoods that had been intact since the inception of the city were going to be ripped apart. We were already experiencing a major transitional change in lifestyle through the simple process of modernization. Things like air conditioning, television, and shopping centers were still new things. In cars, one-speed wiper blades, heaters, and slide-open air vents were standards, as were the crank windows and AM radios had the major market-share. There were no air conditioners, no power brakes, no power steering, and directional signals were an option. Using hand signals for turning was a chore in the zero temperatures, let alone in rain or snow. Tubeless tires were not invented yet; don't even think about steel belted radials. No computers, no cell phones. Telephone calls were a nickel and pay phones were all over the city. Men went to barber shops only. Very, very few men wore beards. Unless he was poor, no man had hair that would hang over his shirt collar. Filter tip cigarettes were new, frozen foods were new, and so were ballpoint pens, which sold for $10.00 each. Cuts and scratches were given a slathering of iodine, which really had a strong sting. Mercurochrome did not sting but carried other toxic problems and band-aids always stuck to the wounds. Pizza pie was a new phenomenon that was sweeping the country, as was rock and roll.
I have friends who still say, “Hey Tom, you want a beer? It’s in the icebox. Help yourself,” even though it’s a top-of-the-line refrigerator. Icebox was stuck in our vocabulary. The availability of automatic washers and dryers, refrigerators, air conditioners and automotive changes were becoming more affordable. They brought with them major changes in lifestyle. The necessity of change due to the cold war brought about the biggest heartbreak.
The governmental mandate of expressways was the beginning of the end for the old neighborhood. The Backstreets, as we knew them, were gone forever. It started slowly with announcements in the newspapers. They showed maps from time to time guessing and estimating at where the proposed expressway would run. Friends’ families or their landlords, if they lived in an apartment, began receiving offers from the government to buy their homes and buildings. It put everyone in the path of the highway on edge -- fifteen miles of antsy souls.
People watched the newspapers for updated maps. The real and final maps were like money in the bank for those with that insider information. The information about where entrances and exits were going to be constructed was like gold. Just imagine if you knew beforehand where to put a gas station, auto repair, restaurant, or convenience store. It was fun to see that the Catholic Parish Congressman Dan Rostenkowski belonged to was given a pardon. Although directly in the path of the expressway, there is a major turn in it that avoids St. Stanislaus Kostka Church completely. Maybe that showed his future talent for the Ways and Means Committee, on which he served many years later.
Rude, crude, and underhanded is what we kids learned about politics. Graft was just a way of life during those years. "Vote early, vote often." When you got stopped for a traffic violation and the officer asked for your license the old rule was just fold a ten or twenty under your drivers' license and call it even. That kind of feeling toward politicians and policemen became pervasive. Many of us grew up with little-to-zero trust for political figures, police, and others of authority. We also realized and respected that they had power and that someday you just might need them.
That style of thinking even gave us kids a spin on the air raid drills. They happened on the first Tuesday of the month at 10:30 a.m. The siren blared away. We marched out single file, knelt down in the corridor, hands behind our heads, and waited for the all clear. One of the janitor’s kids figured out that the drill wasn’t for our safety at all because if the bomb was dropped we would all be killed. The only reason we did that drill was because it would make for an easier clean up. I was very pleased to hear that one since it only added to my quiet panic. “Hmmm,” I thought, “so it was just to kiss our asses goodbye.”

Early Protesters
As a group of guys, we started to feel put upon by the powers that be -- the government, et al, local, state, and federal. They were all ganging up on our moms, dads, and our neighborhood. The most obvious form of authority in our minds was the enforcers, the police. We all acquired rotten fruit and vegetables from the garbage cans of the local grocery store and bricks were available in any empty lot. One day eight of us climbed two billboards that overlooked Milwaukee Avenue. A Paddy wagon drove by and we let fly all our ammo, hitting the roof and sides of the Paddy wagon. (We were not targeting the two cops in the front of the wagon.) It sounded like thunder against the empty wagon.
We were amazed at how fast that vehicle could move. We ran and scrambled to hide. None of us were caught. I ran through a gangway and knocked down another kid who was taking out the garbage. It turned out to be my friend, Charlie Braugham. I didn’t even bother to say sorry. I was running for my life. I found an empty coal shed and jumped in. I know I disturbed a family of rats. I could hear their toes scratching the wood and concrete as they resettled. The other attacks on the squadrons and squad cars were never as dramatic as that event. However, the police began to break up any gathering of more than three of us after that.


The Real Definition of Eminent Domain
The government bids that were made on the homes and buildings that were to be purchased for the clearing of the highway were "low-balled", to the point of humiliation of the property owners. It was another slap in the face by the politicians who hid behind the polite-sounding legal phrase of "Eminent Domain", which translated into our neighborhood parlance as “stick it in the citizens' ass.” Since this agonizing process took almost four years to happen, everyone continued their life as usual with the specter of doom hanging over their heads. The kids continued going to school and the parents continued going to work while everyone wondered where they would be living in a couple of years.
Many of the parents were hoping to let their children continue through school where they were and to keep the continuity of friends and classmates. Most of the parents were waiting for their kids to finish eighth grade or senior year of high school as an optimal cut off point to make their move out of the old neighborhood. The kids were also dealing with changes as fast as they came to us and being exposed to amazing underhandedness.

Concurrently
The ice man was the first vendor to go. There was no snatching of ice off the back of his wagon that summer or ever again. The folks who could not afford refrigerators were, in most cases, older citizens. Many of the poorer folks lived on upper floors. Their rent was cheaper because it was tiring to walk up to the third or fourth floor. Imagine unloading groceries or going to the Laundromat and having to carry all that up three or four flights of stairs. As they all died off, the need for the ice man’s business died, too.
The old Italian produce vendor went next. Even his voice couldn’t be heard over the wrecking balls. Tavern owners went quietly and quickly and got established in new neighborhoods on the fringe of the new wrecking and construction crews.
One of the major sociological changes that came from the mechanical/ environmental side of modernization was the air conditioner. The few folks who could afford a window unit air conditioner had given us a sign of what was to come nationwide -- retreating into our homes and becoming more self-centered. The folks who used to sit outside on their porches or front steps and wave or nod a hello were gone.
Walk past Peter's house and you knew they were having Polish sausage and sauerkraut. Now because of the air conditioner, the windows are closed. No food smells greeted you as you went by the houses. We don't hear any conversations nor did we hear John and Zosia having their usual Friday night argument about how much he’d been spending at the tavern. The air conditioner began turning us away from the "family-air." No more smells, sounds, or peeks into houses as curtains wafted out the open windows.
While all this was happening, the local powers were negotiating purchases of homes and closing buildings for the expressway. “Keep out” posters were popping up on houses like zits on a teenager’s forehead. As our lives continued, we hung out at our favorite spots that were left: the Allison Gym next to the Northwest Settlement House, Tina and Sandy’s house, or with the guys on Walton Street. As we walked to school, more and more homes were emptied out.
"Hey, did you see Kenny's house? It's empty."
"Somebody put out all the windows in Jimmy's house!"
Trailers and pickup trucks and sometimes, if the family had enough money for such a luxury, a moving van, became common place. Mostly it was a friend, or a friend of a friend who had a truck, helping each other move their families to another location.
It was the older folks who had the most trouble moving. Bob's Dziadzi built and owned a two-story brick building with a full basement (that was converted to apartments) and a full attic that could have been a comfortable apartment. The detached, brick, two-car garage had tall folding doors that opened in the middle. There were two enclosed back porches and open side porches on the first and second floor. The building was put together with much forethought and love by an old European craftsman with hopes of his son and his son's family living there with him, which did come to be. After Bob's Dziadzi passed on, Bob's dad would have had a solid income from the property and a place for another generation. The bid Dziadzi was offered for the purchase of his domain was an outrage, an insult to him and all of his workmanship, dreams, and efforts. About the same time, he received the results of his medical examination. The report suggested a possible amputation of his leg.
"I won't let them take away my home and chop me up."
A couple of weeks later, Bob came home from school and called out, "Dziadzi, Dziadzi, I'm home." He found his dear Dziadzi, his wrestling partner, and mentor, hanging in his kitchen with the chair kicked out from under him. The family was devastated.
Bob’s dad took the offer and moved away to Niles, to what Bob referred to as the rich kids' neighborhood. They were all Anglo kids with no accents of any kind and they all dressed differently than the inner city kids. Bob never fit in. Their alleys were cleaner than the old neighborhood streets and everything was new. Every house had a lawn and some even had a tree.
The kids played only in the new parks. We played mostly in the streets. You learned how to throw a straight pass in the city streets rather quickly. When you hit someone's car with a football, it leaves an oval smooch. That could earn you a kick in the ass or worse yet, you lost the ball until the guy decided to give it back to you.
All of the games we usually played began to fall away due to the lack of population. Kenny moved away. Alan moved. Jimmy was gone; so was Cletus and the Belcher family. The Lustro's, Vogt's, Stanek’s, Surowiak’s, Wisnowski's, Kopielski, Kosinski, Kukula, Kondal, Krzyzak, Braugham, Sidor, Pontarelli, Adams, Newman, Jozwick, Gajda, Glowacki, Zych, Czelusniak, Sponar, Zielinski, Bazan, Lipinski, Terlikowski, Meadow, Polkasek, Howe, Little, Denmark, Zaborowski, Olowski, Romz, Uliasz, Szukala, Krzyzanowski, Sokolowski families were all gone. Like a territorial cancer, the sweet-sounding monster, Eminent Domain, devoured one house or building at a time.
To speed up the process of moving people out of the neighborhood, fires were started in some of the empty homes or buildings next to stubborn homeowners. Of course, the government would never admit to it, but we street kids saw things. We watched the underhanded game that was played. Some hot shot guy in a new car would call one of the neighborhood winos over to his car. After a little conversation, the wino would walk away with a newspaper, a book of matches, and a pack of cigarettes. The wino would look at something small in his hand, probably a five or ten spot. The wino would enter the abandoned address he was given and the hot shot would drive away. A few minutes later, the wino would leave the building with bellows of smoke pouring out from behind him.
The stubborn folks who wanted to hold out for more money, actually fair compensation, were dealt with that way. The government has their own way of doing things that’s not much different than the mafia. The people in charge win through manipulation, power, and intimidation. “No problem. The project was just given a little push.” The people next door to the fire got the message and were frightened into cooperating. Others also became more cooperative and were soon living somewhere else.
Our family, which at the time consisted of Cotton Top, Mom, and me, moved all of two blocks north from 1017 to 1155 Milwaukee Avenue. We stayed on the street of commerce; Uncle Al still maintained the store and always lived in Logan Square. The sixty-three years of publishing sheet music, Polish playbooks, records, and other phases of grandfather’s business made for a very interesting and complex move.


New Understandings and Emotions, and a Bathtub Ride
A very curious thing happened to those of us who passed by our old houses. We felt compelled to go in and have a last look around, hoping that maybe this whole situation would heal itself and we could all go back to the way things were. Since Bob moved away before I did, his house was the first place where we experienced this weird phenomenon. We wanted to rip the place apart. As we walked up to 940 Willard Court, the door was open. We walked up the five outside porch steps, then the eighteen stairs to the second floor.
At first, we felt like visitors, strangers walking into a cadaver of memories. It was cold, lifeless, and dank. It had the smell of water damage and there was a faint hiss of a broken pipe somewhere in the building. The lath and plaster walls were wet. We could hear the echo of our footsteps and our conversations became stilted. We heard someone running down the back stairs as we walked through rooms of memories. I looked at the empty space where their white, enamel kitchen table used to be. In my imagination I could almost smell Mrs. Surowiak's meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, and green peas -- staples at Bob's house.
We heard the back door slam and a couple of people running down the first floor backstairs. Evidently, we interrupted some scavengers trying to get the big, old bathtub with the clawed feet. In today’s market, it’s a $3,000 item. The damn scavengers had already loosened the drain connections. The feeling of someone stealing something from you that is no longer yours is complex and real. Neither Bob nor I would have had any compunction about whacking those scavengers in the head for messing with that tub. Since they ran away, the point was moot.
Bob and I rocked the old tub loose and scooted it passed the bedroom and into the kitchen. We removed and saved the clawed feet and worked the pipe fittings completely loose except for the little stem at the drain. We worked the tub over to the stairwell where the top four steps make a turn. We now had a 530 pound bobsled. We climbed in and wiggled it until gravity took over and rode that sucker down the steps with great speed. We got about 3/4 of the way down and jumped out because the drain pipe hooked a step and this step did not give way. However, we did notice the back end of the bathtub did rise up a lot, almost turning upside down, which would have pinned us under it. It must have been Dziadzi’s spirit that saved us from one of our more stupid moves. We jumped out and climbed backwards with our hands and feet pressing against the stairwell walls.
“Hey Bob, your mom would sure be pissed at us for leaving fingerprints on these walls.”
We both laughed about that and continued climbing until we were behind the bathtub. We wiggled it and rocked it sideways and once the drain stem worked itself free of the step, it flew. It ripped the outside door off its hinges and flew down the last five outside steps. There was nothing but gouges in those prized stairs Bob’s mom had taken so much pride in cleaning. By then there wasn’t much left of the entire neighborhood. As we walked away from Bob's old home, he hurled a brick through the window.
We walked passed Tina and Sandy's house and stopped as if to talk to our past. The girls had recently relocated to Logan Square, which was a few notches up the ladder from our old neighborhood.
Bob and I stopped at my old house next. It was spookier than Bob's house. Fewer windows and less light created a more ominous feeling. I never liked the vibes in there from the day we moved in. However, it was a strong and sturdy place. When Bob and I got to the garage, the steel, roll-up door was up and someone had tried to start a fire in the building to no avail. The attempt left only scorched walls and ceiling. Our grandfather would be pleased to know the place was in fact as fireproof as he intended it to be.
Eventually the entire neighborhood was empty. The drone of diesel engines, the iron wrecking ball, dump trucks, and bulldozers, replaced the sounds of people. It was the equivalent of the sustained tone of an EKG monitor’s flat line. Building after building was bulldozed away. Watching the landmarks of one’s life destroyed in the name progress is very difficult. It gave us a sense of what it must be like to be in a war and have your town bombed. There was no undoing or going back. Our sense of dark humor began to grow. I recalled looking at some newly torn down structures and nudging Bob, saying enthusiastically, "Hey, look. They're building empty lots!"
We laughed and paused.
"Yeah."
They finally cleared away all the buildings and began digging down, creating a 400 feet wide canyon with sloping walls. Grading, rebar, concrete, lane separators, signage, and on-off ramps completed it all.

Now it takes just as long to get to where you need to be except now there are MORE of you.........TT