Lakefront Ghosts

Sometimes, I joke that the secret of life is to keep the memories in check until old age can start spiriting them away, one at a time.  But I don’t always practice what I preach.

Yesterday, I rode along the Chicago lakefront on a bicycle that was a combination high school graduation/18^th birthday gift.  I rode by the 57^th Street Beach, where my sister Betty took me a couple of times after we’d visited the Museum of Science and Industry, before it required a loan to purchase admission.  Later I made my way through the crowds going to Navy Pier, where my sister Barb attended school back when the pier was a two-year campus for the U of I.  The pier was also a great cheap date once upon a time.  I took Michele in the late ’70s; there was a catwalk atop the two freight sheds that once occupied much of the pier.  What a view.  But we never did go to the fish shack that used to be in front of the pier.

North Avenue Beach reminds me of Rainbow Beach, off of 75^th Street.  That was our beach, the steel mills to the south, a big concession stand to the north, by the bus turnaround.  My mother and I would often take the bus, or, if I was good—or my parents made them—my sisters would let me tag along with them.  Then white people wouldn’t share with black people, and things got ugly; by the time I was twelve, we stopped going.  The one time my sisters took me to North Avenue Beach they put a dent in the family Chevrolet while parking.  I can’t quite remember what excuse they used to get out of trouble.  It was just as likely my father let it go.  He could be that way on occasion.

I passed Lincoln Park and thought of both my parents; the park would be a special Sunday drive for us from the South Side.  We’d go to the zoo and the rookery and get back home in time for Ed Sullivan on the TV.  Or we’d take Lake Shore Drive all the way up into the North Shore.  I do the same now on the bike, left knee permitting.

One or two times in college, I rode my bike from home to DePaul University in Lincoln Park.  All along Archer Avenue, I pretended to be a truck, which gave me the element of surprise, until I reached downtown and switched to the lake path.  I remember the waves actually brushing up to the bike tires.  Now, I keep a healthy distance.

On the way back, at 51^st Street, I remembered being four or five and walking along the breakwater there; it was a way to beat the summer heat in that time before air conditioning.  But I don’t remember my parents being with me.  The forgetting must have started.