You Can Take the Boy Out of Hollywood Park, But You Can’t Take Hollywood Park Out of the Boy

When Jerry Jacover was 11 years old, his parents did the unthinkable. Jerry fought it with everything he had, but it happened anyways. In 1956, the Jacover family moved from 5748 N. Christiana to Skokie.

More than sixty years ago he moved and Jerry still remembers Hollywood Park vividly, right down to his old phone number: JUniper 8-7911. He recalls playing miniature golf at Dwarf Golf (which was renamed the Bunny Hutch); buying baseball cards and his favorite candy, Snaps, at the Hollywood Bowl; getting after-school treats at the Bryn Mawr Bakery; borrowing books from the Chicago Public Library branch on Bryn Mawr for the summer reading required by his mother; breaking a basement window playing baseball in the street; getting injured playing football on the gravel at Peterson School; going to Shaare Tikvah four days a week; eating at Lerner’s Hot Dogs; and switching to the wrong L line on the way home from Wrigley Field.

Jerry’s family moved away from Hollywood Park seven years before my family moved in. The difference in years makes no difference; we remember the same things. Miss Reid was the kindergarten teacher at Peterson, and we both had Mr. Kaz (short for Kazmarek) for gym and Mrs. Geib for sixth grade. In the playground girls played hopscotch and jumped rope, boys played pinners, dodge ball and kickball and everybody played Red Rover.

Jerry lived for sports and was a good athlete. He played football and baseball and remembers the first question you’d ask a new kid in school was, Cubs or White Sox? If the kid said, “White Sox,” he was a traitor.

He remembers hitting a ball down the street and breaking a neighbor’s basement window. He did the right thing: he rang the doorbell and said he would fix it. The homeowner and Jerry measured the window, then Jerry headed over to the Bryn Mawr Hardware, which is the same hardware store I went to with my mother when I was young.

Store owner Maury Munson, or whoever was minding the store that day, taught 10-year-old Jerry how to replace a pane of glass and sold him the necessary supplies. He returned to the building and, for the first time, he fixed a broken window by himself.

Jerry also remembers playing football on the gravel playground at Peterson School. He was the quarterback, and the guys were in a huddle when someone told Jerry his mouth was bleeding. Jerry had bit through his tongue and the tip was falling off. The boys walked Jerry across Bryn Mawr to Plotkin’s Pharmacy. Of course, Mr. Plotkin knew who Jerry’s mother was and called her to pick him up. Somehow, his mother borrowed a car and took him to the doctor’s office, where the doctor stitched together Jerry’s tongue. The next day, Jerry was back in school.

In 2008 Jerry wrote a novel, Merkle’s Curse: Why the Chicago Cubs Have Not Won a World Series Since 1908. Although the subtitle is outdated, the book is not. Tracing the curse to its Old Testament origins, the book follows two die-hard Cubs fans who hope to solve the mystery so their team can at last win the World Series.

Jerry’s memories of Hollywood Park inspired several scenes in the book. Here’s how the young boys picked sides:

“One threw a bat in the air, which the second boy caught one-handed with the nub of the bat facing up. The captains alternated putting a hand, then a finger, up the bat handle until the second boy called ‘crow’s feet.’ He then gripped the handle nub, talon-like, with the tips of his fingers. When his counterpart failed to kick the bat out of the second boy’s hand, the second boy had first pick in selecting his team.”

I remember countless times I stood in the gym or on the playground, waiting “to be picked.” Here, Jerry calls the Hollywood Bowl “Plotkin’s candy store,” borrowing the name of the real pharmacist who had helped out when Jerry bit off his tongue:

“Then he went to ‘Plotkin’s’ candy store and bought a ‘six-pack’ of baseball cards. He placed a nickel on Mr. Plotkin’s glass counter. ‘Hope you get a Hank Sauer,’ Plotkin said with a distinctly European accent as he reached for the coin.”

Thanks to Jerry Jacover for bringing our old neighborhood back to life through his memories and his novel. And, a shout-out to Jerry’s friend, Dr. Kotler, for remembering my father, Dr. O’Cherony.