Take Me Back To Chicago

Although I’ve lived in Raleigh, N.C, longer than anywhere else (30 years this fall!), I consider myself a native Chicagoan.

My years in South Bend, Bloomington and Fort Wayne, Indiana were essential; I made some of my most enduring friendships in the Hoosier state, and it was there I met the man who is now my husband.

But if I’m pricked by the blade of nostalgia, Chicago is the blood that spills.

Case in point: After a workout, a locker-room acquaintance and I chatted about the possibility of a forecast “wintry mix.” In Raleigh, this means low temperatures at or below 30 and the chance of a rain/snow/sleet mixture, even with no accumulation.

We laughed as we contrasted the concern with our experiences of winter where we came from.

I will admit I’ve never seen a single snowstorm as massive as the 20-inch-plus storm we got in Raleigh in January 2000. That, however, truly was once in a lifetime, and it didn’t last long.

Contrast that with the snows of winter 1978-79 that ushered Jane Byrne into the mayor’s seat in Chicago. That snow stayed on the ground for weeks, even months. And most of that time, we were expected to go to school – the plows moved, the buses ran, and it was our job to head to class. I was a high school sophomore then.

Now, as a high school counselor, I laugh when students and colleagues alike in Raleigh muse whether we’ll get a snow day at the hint of flurries.

Here are a half-dozen other ways the Windy City sticks with me:

The Food

Not just the pizza, although I do love it.

But the Chicago pizza I love is the cracker-thin, tavern-style version I grew up with, not the world-renowned deep-dish that became more of a thing when I was in college.

Other must-haves: Chicago hot dogs (on the northwest side, we loved midway between Wolfy’s and Superdawg, so we’d alternate our dining experiences). Thin, crispy chocolate chip cookies from Heinemann’s bakeries (I was inconsolable when I heard they’d gone out of business). Italian-beef sandwiches. Kolaczki (delicious Polish jam-filled cookies) from a Milwaukee Avenue bakery.

Ann Sather’s cinnamon rolls (truly, Cinnabon is no competition). And, to cap things off, either Fannie May’s peppermint ice or the Frango mints you could always get at Carson Pirie Scott. (You can still get them, but it sounds New York, and thus wrong, to say “at Macy’s.”)

The Cubs

I grew up on the North Side; my South Side friends would substitute The White Sox.

Going to Wrigley Field was always fun, even for a non-sports fan like me.

I learned from the Cubs not just to appreciate baseball more than any other sport, but also to learn how to be patient. One of my great joys in life was knowing the Cubs won the World Series a few years before my dad’s passing.

The Music

For me, not so much the artists who came from the city –but the amazing stations that played their music.

Acts like the Buckinghams, the Chi-Lites and Southern expat Tyrone Davis, in addition to the band named for it.

Whether you listened to soul on WVON or WJPC, country on WJJD or WMAQ, easy listening on WIND, news radio on WBBM or Top 40 on WLS or WCFL, you could find a place to call home on AM radio in the early to mid-‘70s.

Even when I was in Pennsylvania visiting family during the summer, I’d tune in my portable AM/FM radio at night and feel ready to fall asleep once I heard the night shift on WLS.

The Homegrown TV Shows

It’s not the networks’ mainstays that I’d pay to stream if I could, but the Chicago-specific oddities, most of which aired on WGN in the years before it became a cable superstation.

The morning show of Ray Rayner (which introduced me to the Irish Rovers’ “Unicorn” via visits from the Lincoln Park Zoo staff). The afternoon kiddie programming of “B.J. and the Dirty Dragon” (which admittedly sounds risqué today but was nothing of the sort). “Creature Features” (reruns of old monster movies) on Friday nights, with the theme music (Henry Mancini’s “Experiment in Terror”) still able to scare me.

And, of course, the lunchtime “Bozo’s Circus.”

It took years to get tickets to be in the “Bozo” studio audience. We made it a couple of times, and my sister got a picture with Bozo himself.

My brother and I had to settle for Ringmaster Ned and a couple of secondary clowns.

The expressways: My mom loves to tell how she knew I could read:

At least once a month, she and my dad would do the weekend drive from Gary, Indiana, where she grew up and her parents and foster-parents (all of whom we knew as our grandparents) lived.

At age four, I knew the exits in order from the Broadway exit in Gary to the Western Avenue exit in downtown Chicago. My dad figured maybe I’d memorized them. It was when I asked my mom what a “corporatio” was and pointed to a building with a burned-out “N” in its title that my dad had to acknowledge the truth.

Even today, as long as I have a great soundtrack going, I enjoy driving even in traffic on the Dan Ryan, the Edens, the Kennedy or Lake Shore Drive (not quite an expressway, but a great trip and – in the voices of Aliotta, Haynes and Jeremiah – a great song).

The architecture: Whether it’s going on a Wendella boat ride to see the classic downtown skyline, walking the streets of Oak Park to take in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, or using a summer day to enjoy the Art Institute, Buckingham Fountain and the Taste of Chicago at Grant Park, it’s impossible to separate architecture from adventure.

As a kid, I loved the annual Grant Park Kite Fly, sponsored – of course – by radio station WIND. What a way to see the city and have fun!

Several years ago, my husband and I took a vacation to visit some old friends up north. I noticed he’d grown quiet on the drive back to our hotel. I asked him what he was thinking. He asked me whether I missed Chicago enough to want to move back.

Without a blink, I said, “No way. Where I am, with you, is where I want to be.”

I love Chicago and always will.

But there’s a difference between enjoying a look at the past and loving my life today.

Still, when I get a chance to listen to a Larry Lujack aircheck, pop a Frango mint in my mouth or see a Facebook post from a friend of five decades:

I get the best of both worlds.

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