BLOG-GAMES
As suggested by Meridith Halsey.
I love my apartment.
I love my neighborhood of McKinley Park.
It’s right next to bustling, brawling, Bridgeport, all Irish and Italian and Mexican and Chinese. Bridgeport with shuttered Halstead storefronts that frown east and west with a stiff upper lip, saying, “What, what of it?” Bridgeport with its swaggering politicians, its green lawns and shady alleys (and shady actions in the back of shady blind alleys). Bridgeport with its 11th ward Democratic Headquarters, its Schaller’s Pump, its “The Bridgeport.”
McKinley Park is more discrete.
It’s clearly a relation to Bridgeport, probably a brother, possibly even the younger brother (whereas Canaryville would be the younger half-sister, and Back of the Yards, the saucy, sauntering mother).
Bridgeport smells like smoke and saltpetre (Canaryville pork, Back of the Yards, heavy steam). McKinley Park smells like cookies baking.
Despite the rattiness of the laundromat, the tiredness of the old men in leather pants, the women wearing babushkas, they all smile wearily if I look at them.
The New Archview always refills my cup, almost as if I’m back in Flint. Huck Finns, the younger, the edgier, the vaguely aspiring hipsterish, is much less friendly, more filled with frowns. But they still refill my cup.
My second night in McKinley Park, a cat got run over out on Archview. It made a noise that for one fraction of a second, sounded like a ragged, fleshy siren, sounding a bombing over downtown. It rang out and wound down in one motion, and was over before I knew what it was.
I knew as soon as I looked out the window. I averted my eyes as I crossed the street the next morning. By the time I returned in the evening, a day’s worth of traffic had carried away the broken bits of skull and flesh, and only a small gray patch remained.
I’m across the street from an Orange Line El stop. And all night long, I hear the coming and going of semis and trailers, of buses and trains, and the El, which intones loudly: “This is 35th and Archer. Doors open on the left at 35th and Archer. Doors closing.”
Walking along Archer, if I looked to the sides I see houses and gas stations, and the condos built east of Damen now in an attempt to gentrify the area. The El runs behind these, and reveals a different sight: to the south, piles and rows of rusted, ruined cars, in one… no, two… wait, three. Three or four scrap yards.
And if I look out of the El windows to the north, we pass houses, schools, and a park. Hoyne Park. The park is half cared for. The lawn is mowed. There are scraps of plastic stuck in the tree branches. The pitcher’s mound on the sandlot is torn up. When the rain falls, the grass irradiates green green glow. But the houses cluster close, side by side, across the lane-and-a-half wide Hoyne avenue, bounded on the north by the lane-and-a-half wide 34th street. On 34th street, a garage intrudes on the park, but that’s all right; it’s empty, and nobody uses it anymore. The park is rendered triangular on the south by the El tracks from which I watch.
Boys play basketball in this park in the evening.
In the morning, I see women pushing strollers along the sidewalk.
It is a very private public space, and is possibly my favorite part of McKinley Park.
In the springtime, when I can sit outside without seeing my breath, I’ll take my thermos of coffee to Hoyne park, and sit and write as the sun goes down, making me blind, and painting McKinley Park shades of gold usually reserved for loftier neighborhoods.
~ Connor