It was a schlep to take the Kimball Avenue bus from Peterson to Lawrence and then the “L” to the Loop and back on what may have been the slowest route in the system, but the round-trip fare was less than a dollar and we had nothing but time.

It was a schlep to take the Kimball Avenue bus from Peterson to Lawrence and then the “L” to the Loop and back on what may have been the slowest route in the system, but the round-trip fare was less than a dollar and we had nothing but time.
I’ve always associated the city with a single body of water, the lake; these two books reminded me a river runs through it.
The title of this blogpost includes the words Albany Park because, apparently, there were, at one time, two Purity Restaurants in Chicago. There was the one on Lawrence Avenue, pictured above and, you may not have known, there was a second restaurant with the same name at Van Buren and Halsted streets.
“Bagels have never been the same since. Mr. Kaufman created a new kind of bagel, one without the bullet-proof skin, one that you could bite into with ease yet still had that satisfying al dente feel.”
North of Peterson, south of Peterson, was it so different ?
The story follows two Von Steuben freshmen who are in and out of love with each other for fifty years. Although the characters leave Albany Park and venture into the world, Albany Park never leaves them.
He attended Haugen Elementary School and graduated from Roosevelt High School; he had been a fountain boy at S&L and a regular at Purity Delicatessen; he got kishke to go from Harvey’s Deli and sold shoes at Maling’s, and he still has his Funny Fellows club jacket.
We welcome a guest post from Dr. Earl Jann, who grew up at Troy and Lawrence.
The Top Hats were a Roosevelt High School Club.
I hoped seeing the pictures would jog my memory, but so far no soap. What they did do was remind me of what we looked like in the sixties, hanging out on the corner with attitude most of the time, but pretty conservative in the important moments.