I love how this photo captures the way seventh-grade teacher Mr. Wahle always was at the center of our attention.
Two for two
Back to School
In my memory, the walls were painted a pale institutional green and the lockers were milk chocolate brown. To a first grader, the hallways of Peterson Elementary School were like a cave, dark and endless with voices and footsteps echoing in the distance.
Grounds for Play
In the sixties and seventies, if little kids didn’t get hurt running around the gravel and asphalt playground at Peterson Elementary School, they had a good chance of banging up theirs knees or noses on the metal play equipment.
Signs of old times
Three old Hollywood Park businesses, each with deep connections to the neighborhood.
Chicago two-flats in all shapes and sizes
In January 1929 Chicago real estate developer Erick Nelson Linn put on the market 50 Hollywood Park duplex homes, more commonly known as two-flats. It must not have seemed like much of a risk. Linn had been putting up the same buildings in the area for nearly ten years.
They went to Peterson
A week ago I reviewed Hollywood Park, a novel that takes place in a Chicago neighborhood during the Depression. The author, Martin Marcus, and I grew up in that neighborhood during different times, so I asked Marty to share some of his memories. He gave me this recent photograph of his friends from Peterson Elementary […]
Hollywood Park: The Novel
Farrell’s South Side. Algren’s Near West Side. Bellow’s Hyde Park. And now the world can read about Martin Marcus’s Hollywood Park. It’s true. Hollywood Park, that far North Side neighborhood barely known outside its own vaguely defined borders, has joined the ranks of Chicago neighborhoods immortalized in fiction. Best of all, Marcus’s Hollywood Park is […]
A youth among the prairies of Hollywood Park
John Erickson, an Illinois physician who grew up in Hollywood Park during the 1930s and ’40s, provides a glimpse of my childhood neighborhood during the years when residents were keeping the wolf from the door and local businesses were more Swedish than Jewish.
Chicago book winner is …
Congrats to Neal Merle for winning a copy of this entertaining book. Due to a technicality, the first winner is unable to accept the prize, so the book goes to Merle, who was next in line. As I mentioned, I used a computer random number selection site to select the winner. Have fun exploring, Merle. […]
Another Chicago Book Giveaway
I’ve seen a lot of guides to Chicago restaurants but The Beat Cop’s Guide to Chicago Eats is so authentic, I can practically hear a flat, nasal accent grating in my ear as I read the words.