Of course, there was the Loop. The Loop was magic, with Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum, Adler Planetarium, the Art Institute, Goodman Theater, Orchestra Hall, Soldier's Field, Grant Park, Buckingham Fountain, Navy Pier, and more kinds of stores, bookshops, restaurants, theaters, magazine stands, and of everything else than you could describe, name, count, or imagine. There were the great department stores of State Street, Carson's, Wiebolt's, Goldblatt's, the Fair, and, the queen of them all, Marshall Fields with its enchanted windows at Christmas time, porridge and cocoa in the Walnut Room, arching mosaic ceilings, and, of course, the clock under which all of Chicago arranged to meet for dinner, business, proposals and propositions, shopping, and all those other things that pertain to the humane life. My grandmother dreamed one night that God had told her to meet Him under the clock at Marshall Fields. No one to whom she told her dream considered the arrangement the least bit odd.

There were the dingy shops over on Wabash; the eternal going out of business sales of Maxwell Street; Capone country down past 12th; Hillman's heaped with oranges, lemons, grapefruit, kumquats, tangerines, pomegranates, and pineapples in the dead of winter, and stacked with fragrant mince pies; the wind driving sleet like bullets onto Michigan avenue; the great red carpet at the Sheridan Hotel; the smoke-filled rooms of the Blackstone, the intermittent screeches as the els made their four ninety-degree turns to clatter back to wherever it was they had come; and, towering over it all, the white Deco of the Wrigley building and the gray Gothic of Tribune Tower. The Loop was magic, especially at Christmas or Easter, or when it was raining or snowing, or at any other time you might think of, and I don't know of anyone who didn't love the Loop and everything in it.

The intersection of 63rd street and Cottage Grove avenue wasn't magic; it was real and it was home, and when I was a child I believed that 63rd street was the finest place in the world. One night, my mother listened to my prayers; after I had asked God to bless just about everyone, including our two vicious Chows, I added "and be nice to everyone in other places." I later heard mother proudly telling a neighbor that her son was so thoughtful that he prayed that God should bless the entire world, but she hadn't understood me. I was actually asking God to take pity on all of the people who didn't live around 63rd street.

Sixty-third street was a world of delight. It was a narrow street bordered by four-story buildings on either side, the ground floors occupied by stores, shops, taverns, restaurants, and enterprises of all manners and means. On the bay windows of the second floors, tastefully but clearly lettered in ebony blacks, shining golds, emerald greens, or ruby reds, were signs. Big letters that you could read from the sidewalk were surrounded by arabesques that lent the words an air of delicacy and elegance that made sign-painting a highly respected profession and the sign-painter an artist in his own right. The children of 63rd street learned to read even before they began school; kids who could would point out signs and read them to others. Sixty- third street was their primer, and a much better one than the color-coded residents of "Friendly Village" provided.

All ending with the legend, in smaller letters, "one flight up". And overhead, running straight east from Halstead past the decayed woodpile that had one been White City Amusement Park Fun For The Entire Family, was the el. Double tracks running level with the fourth floors and supported by open-work steel girders marching two by two down 63rd street to the Blackstone street station. I lived with the el; my bedroom looked out on the tracks, and all day and all night until 2:30 am, the trains would thunder and screech and clatter by with their lights. I would sometimes lie in my bed and wait for the els to pass and look at the people in the windows and pretend that I was moving and they were stationary, sitting and reading their Final Editions. Each morning I would wake up for a few blurry moments at 2:30 AM a bit disoriented by the silence, but I would quickly fall asleep again and the passage of the 4:30 el would only lull me into deeper slumber.

Beneath the el, four-fold trolley tracks ran down the center of the street, on which the bright red and gold street cars clattered up and down, occasionally showering bright blue sparks when their power poles momentarily lost contact with the electric wires overhead. On either side of the streetcar tracks, dark green enclosed wagons with bright red spokes and rubber wheels hauled ice, chocolate brown wagons with cream-colored wheels carried milk, rumbling open wagons carried the junk men, rag men, and all sorts of others going up and down tending their business. In the winter, the horses would have thick blankets on their backs, canvas feedbags covering their noses, and plaid scarves wrapped around their heads to protect their ears. They would stamp the snow into slush, snort great clouds of smoke, and were finer than the finest dragons in my picture books.

In the summertime, the sunlight shone down through the tracks in long ladders of light and shade that fell on the cars and horses and wagons and people moving up and down the street. Every few minutes, a train would rumble overhead and its shadow would raced down the street and slow with screeching brakes, finally stopping at the Blackstone Street station, where travellers could transfer to the Illinois Central Railway, and from there to anywhere in the world.

At about five in the morning people would start coming to the corner of Cottage Grove avenue and 63rd. They would eat a hot fresh doughnut from the cart where they were fried and hung up on broomsticks, and drink a mug of hot fresh coffee with sugar and cream. Some would then climb the stairs to the el station and others would board the street cars that would pull up in long lines. All day long, the street cars and els would rumble and screech up and down. By 6:00 in the evening, a cart with steaming coffee and thick slices of hot fennel bread and another with fresh hard rolls and hot kosher kielbasas had taken their places on the corner, and the neighborhood children had begun to gather to wait for their parents to come home. Bobby Roth and his whole family had gone down to Cottage Grove when his father had gotten on the streetcar and gone to Spain. And Richard Thomas's mother and father had escorted him all the way up the steps to the doors of the Maryland Street station when he took the el to join the Navy and be assigned to the USS Arizona.

Between morning and evening, people went up and down the sidewalks in steady streams of activity, and I never tired of watching them and listening to them. Of course, my friends and I were part of it all, pursuing our own money-making schemes, each with his or her own enterprise. The McCarthy twins, Georgie and Eddie, were particularly well-known for their promotions of the course of true love. They would prey upon young couples without wedding rings walking down the street. As a couple passed, Georgie would say to Eddie in a stage whisper, "Hey Eddie! Pipe duh babe! Ain't she a beaut? Wow!" Although, most of the time, the nose of the lady in question would simply rise a few points into the air, a nickel or dime from the young man would often enough sail through the air into the waiting hands of the McCarthy twins.

Where has it all gone? What has happened to them all? Where is Uncle Justus Carlsson, carrying a pail of beer home to have with supper? Where is Andy, pretending not to see that I had hooked a ride on the back fender of the Halstead streetcar? Where is Father, swinging off the trolley after a twelve-hour shift in the Yards, but still with the strength to carry me home on his shoulders? Where is Sonia, jingling her keys and whispering "two dollars, two dollars..."? Where are Offissakelly with his billyclub in one hand and doughnut in the other, George the candy-maker, Bracchia the vegetable cart man, Leon and his ferrets, Tony's monkey with his bright red hat and frightened eyes, Otto the philosophical streetsweeper, Stanley and his mechanical men, Resto the rag man, Belle the ice-wagon horse with her black velvet nose, Pietro the knife sharpener, Pete the blue-eyed drunk, and punch-drunk Sailor boxing the policeman's call-box? I suppose that Lao was right and that they've gone wherever it is that straw dogs go.

1991.