Cermak was where my childhood friend lived, right next to the park we would frequent. Barrett Park was the name; it’s still there. Man, did we have some fun in that park. Playing on the little basketball court, where you can get a long rebound, turn around, and chuck it up. Or how about fast pitch against the wall? Yeah, home runs onto Cermak were dicey sometimes hitting those cars passing by. Or maybe football is your thing? Yeah, played it there too; came home nice and dirty. Hockey? Yes, one time, a memorable time, they froze over the park… haha. We all got out there with our gym shoes on, and played hockey on this frozen park; fun, fun times.
This childhood friend, we stay in touch, had his first apartment down the street, right next to the gas station that was on Cermak and Damen; he moved out before I did. He lived there with my other buddy. This was the site where our card playing really took off. We did do some in his family’s basement when the price of poker was nickel, dime, quarter, but in that apartment… it got a bit more serious. We’d watch a lot of football there too. It was the hang out spot, especially after our long nights working in the Italian Restaurant just a bit south of Cermak. We had good times in that place, so good, that I decided to move into an apartment right off Cermak and Hoyne, about a block west on Cermak… on the same block as Barrett Park. Yep, “the apartment”, well, let’s just say I can write a book about just the things that occurred in that place… haha. But, keeping with the theme, let’s talk about the Cinco de Mayo parade that would proceed down 22nd st aka Cermak. Yeah, we’d be out there with our Coronas and/or Vodka/Lemonades. I remember one particular where Fernando Vargas, an old fighter, appeared; that was pretty cool. Yeah, we’d be hanging out, watching the parade go by, maybe talking to some girls…
The next block on Cermak was pretty memorable too. It had Farm Foods, which was a grocery store, the one which I memorably crashed the shopping cart into the pickles in glass jars; clean up aisle 8! It was the sight of Woolworths, where my buddy tried to convince me to steal some baseball cards; I didn’t… he did. He got in trouble for that. How about Wagner’s Bakery where we would get the jelly donuts each Tuesday before Ash Wednesday? All of these places are no longer there. Classic Videos was also on Cermak, just west of Western; renting VHS movies on the weekend was the thing back in the day. The taco spot is still there, where someone got shot in the head once upon a time. It wasn’t all fun times on Cermak. Heading WAY west down Cermak took us to one of our childhood malls… North Riverside; that’s a little out of range for this convo, but that’s where the train left us off, to catch the bus, to make that final connection to the mall. We took that trip a bunch of times. It dropped us off right by this newsstand, where we tried to get the gall up to purchase some nudie mags… haha.
I guess I could go on here, but enough reminiscing. What day are we on?
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