Getting back to my “streets of Chicago” themed blogs, I look at the cross street of my grammar school. It was located on the corner of Cermak and Wolcott; already talked a little about Wolcott, now some Cermak. Man, where do I start… How about this? Drove down there the other day, past my old school, which is now a high school, but if you look up at the face of the building on Cermak, there is still the name of the school engraved in stone: St Stephen School. Nice!
Yes, walking down Cermak to school every day was a thing. If you went east of my school, there were other memories that trigger. There used to be a lumberyard, Harvey’s I think, that was a couple blocks east of there; I used to go with my dad when he had to pick up some stuff… never really inherited his knack of do-it-yourself stuff. Anyways, a little further down, just east of Halsted, was where we would take our recycling when I was a kid. I remember having to step on/smash all the pop/beer cans before loading up the car. Back then, we recycled newspaper too. We stuffed newspapers into those brown paper grocery bags, and stacked them up in the back of the station wagon. We made these trips to the recycling place quite often; didn’t get rich off it, but it was a nice little chunk of change… in one pocket, out the other. If we really want to go east down Cermak, you can… all the way to McCormick Place, which is where the Cermak bus will drop you off, if you wanted to take the bus to the Bears game let’s say. We did that for one preseason game.
It was Bears Cardinals; we had gathered at a bar, just south of Cermak… our neighborhood bar; Martin’s Corner was the name. It’s still there. We actually lived on Cermak at the time; this was where my first apartment was located. So yeah, we were doing some pregaming, then finally decided to load up on the bus to head to the game; see how smart we were? No drinking and driving here, well, at least not this time? I believe there were 10 of us on that bus; the ride there wasn’t too bad. The ride back? Well, I think when a few of us decided to light up some cigarettes on the bus is when the driver drew the line; we all escaped out the back door, on to Cermak, walking the last little bit home. Ah yes, Cermak…
In fact, I think there are so many memories on Cermak, we’re going to have to do a part deux; that’s two for those of you who don’t speak high school French like I do. You see, going west on Cermak is where a lot more action took place “back in the day”. Let’s take a trip west down Cermak next.
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