Making Do

I am, admittedly, a Goldilocks when it comes to cycling. Too hot, and I sweat buckets to the point of exhaustion. Too cold, and my asthma kicks in. Too windy, and I turn into Benny Hill (see Facebook). But come October, beggars can’t be choosers. Same goes for Goldilocks. This morning was sunny and cool. By the time I hit the 606, the temperature was flirting with sixty; good enough for me. I wore shorts and a jacket. I’d like to think I was making a fashion statement, though of what exactly I couldn’t say. Spring or summer, I’ll usually spend at least part of the time breaking down the latest White Sox game. Thankfully, none of that dreariness today what with a team incapable of reaching the postseason. I see Jose Abreu hit two homers for the Astros against the Twins yesterday. Good for him, but he wouldn’t have been doing that had he stayed with the Sox. The trail extends 2.7 miles, from Ridgeway on the west to Ashland on the east. These streets are memory bookends for me, so I do a lot of free association. If I pass over Kedzie (the trail is an old elevated rail spur), I think of Sixta’s Bakery, where both my sisters worked. Going past Albany, I can recall all those times I walked over to my grandmother’s after school whenever my mother went shopping downtown. At Central Park, I think of work and the wire warehouse, Coil City, I used to call it. My father got me the job between college and graduate school. I just couldn’t tell them I in fact had graduated college. My foreman probably doubted I’d gone to high school given the problems I had learning to drive a forklift. He had me practice in the alley behind the warehouse, and I stuck a blade in somebody’s garage door. My foreman took pity on me from time to time and had me get him a sandwich from a corner grocery. These stores used to be a Chicago institution. This one was spotless, with a display case for fresh baked goods and a news rack courtesy of the Daily News. The person behind the counter was my age, the owner’s son probably. I wonder if he wanted to run the business when the time came. Work was seven miles from home, as the crow flies, and I could never hitch a ride with one. There was just no easy way to get from the South Side to the mid Northwest Side. Sometimes, I’d take Sacramento Boulevard, passing through a viaduct without once thinking about the railroad tracks overhead. Those tracks are gone, replaced by a celebrated bike trail. The warehouse has been torn down and the store converted into a hipster restaurant I’ve gone to a couple of times. But nobody wants to hear stories about the old days, how a guy in his twenties trying to figure things out went to this very spot when it was a grocery, and brought his foreman a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. Like I said, there was no baseball for me to break down.