17. Basement Basketball
We move up in the world; I move downward (and inward)
This is an ongoing story, meant to be read in order. If you’re just arriving here for the first time, please start at the beginning by following the index.
My mom was growing tired of the Lakeview area and our dorm-like building.
She wanted a more lively scene out of the house, less lively in it. My parents had active social lives—they liked to party. And between the sedate and sleepy high-rises to the east on Sheridan Road and the dilapidated storefronts to the west on Broadway, my mom was stuck between a rock and a rough place. Boredom on one side, and no-mans-land on the other.
On the other hand, the neighbors in the building were becoming a bit too close. The open-door policy—kids and sometimes adults showing up at the back door, looking for a cup of sugar, milk, or whatever—was becoming unnerving.
She wanted less and more privacy.
So in the fall of 1969—after the moonwalk, after the Cubs’ collapse—we moved three miles south into a three-story, red-brick house on Astor Street. It was right in the middle of a hopping part of town, the so-called Gold Coast. Six blocks south was the Magnificent Mile, the Michigan Avenue retail strip with high-end shops, like Saks Fifth Avenue and Bonwit Teller. Just around the corner, along Division, State, and Rush, was the Rush Street area with its abundance of nightlife: clubs, bars, theaters, and restaurants. Plenty of action right near the house.
And a lot more privacy in it. Back at our Wellington Avenue place, my brother and I shared a small bedroom, as did my sisters. But at our new place, all four of us had our own rooms—my parents with the master suite, the girls on the second floor, and my brother and me on the third floor.
Somehow the boys ended up with the bigger rooms. I’m pretty sure it was all about elevation. The girls didn’t like the idea of trudging all the way up to the third floor. Even though our bedrooms were bigger, the third floor was tighter, more confined, a realm unto itself, stylistically unrelated to the rest of the house. Isolated. I liked it that way.
The piano moved with us, but like me, was now more isolated from the rest of the family. This time it was placed under the living room, in the finished part of the basement. It really didn’t fit with the living room’s modernist decor and artwork, which included two classic Mies van der Rohe chairs and a few Roger Brown paintings.
It didn’t matter. I liked the isolation of the basement, even if the sewer did back up at least once a year. In time, I found ways to make it even more secluded.
* * *
This neighborhood’s a little weird. There are no kids playing on Astor or the surrounding streets. My brother and I make halting attempts to play in front of the house. We play catch, dribble a basketball. Maybe, I think, the noise will attract the neighborhood kids . . . maybe they’ll come out from wherever they’re hiding.
There’s gotta be kids around here, right?
There’s no grass on Astor, just sidewalks and gated front yards. It’s a narrow, one-way street—no room for grass. It’s not really conducive to play.
The sound of the bouncing basketball reverberates awkwardly against the fancy brick homes and prewar, luxury, mid-rise apartment buildings. It’s a sound that yearns to be accompanied by screaming and laughing kids, mom’s yelling be careful or five minutes until dinner. Instead, it’s met with silence. A neighbor out walking her dog shakes her head at the temerity of little boys playing on Astor Street.
No kids come out. The neighborhood’s apparently too fancy for kids playing in front of their houses. Our playful exuberance clearly out of place, we slink back inside, play pseudo-basketball in the basement.
Appearances are deceiving, though. Not everything’s so luxury around here. Next door to us is an SRO rooming house, whose residents include a couple of drunks. One, an older man—tall, haggard, and skinny—teeters down the street in his undersized trench coat, alternately burping and farting all the way to his doorway. College kids rent the large corner house, make tons of noise, and trash the place. My dad has to call the police.
The other thing about there being no grass is that you really have to watch where you’re walking—there’s dog shit everywhere. There’re no civic ordinances about picking up your dog crap yet. So maybe playing in front of the house is not the best idea anyway.
But there’s a big playground half a block north on Astor. Maybe there’s some activity there. David and I investigate. There are several play areas, but the equipment is dilapidated—and the place is eerily deserted. Well, there’s one young mom and her kids playing in the opposite corner. The kids look at us hopefully, like they want to come over and play. But their mom eyes us suspiciously like we’re interlopers in their private playground. She takes them home.
And there’s even more dog shit here. It’s everywhere, a virtual shit storm. It’s like the Park District hasn’t been here in years.
We head back home.
* * *
There’s no corner drugstore. But there’s a lot more commercial activity a block away than there ever was on Broadway and Sheridan. Division and State, around the corner and west, are collectively the new Broadway of my existence. Grocery stores (an A&P), restaurants, three movie theaters within five blocks, tons of bars. Go west a few more blocks and there’s trouble. Lakeshore Drive two blocks east—the heart of the city’s facade along the lake—is my new Sheridan. Stately, luxury high-rises, both new and old, look out upon Lake Michigan with cool indifference to the goings-on less than a mile to the west. So again, it’s trouble and possibilities to the west, sleepiness to the east. And once again, I’ll be tempted by the trouble to the west.
But I can’t quite let go of the idea of the drugstore being the outside anchor of my world, so I settle for the Walgreens two blocks away on State Street. As a large chain, it’s definitely not a neighborhood corner drugstore. It’s too big, has too many aisles, too many employees whose faces always seem to be changing. Too many options. Again, more space and possibilities in exchange for a lost connection. Still, it will have to do.
Just for old-times sake, I steal the occasional candy bar. But it’s not the same. I’m solo now. It’s too easy, and too corporate. Boring.
We take the same 36 CTA bus to school, just in the opposite direction. West on Division, north on Clark. Sometimes we take the 153 along Lakeshore Drive and through the park. Either way works—it’s just a matter of getting to know the bus schedules so you can leave home as late as possible and still make it to school on time. I still travel with at least one of my older siblings. But one day, David, whose turn it is to chaperone me home from school, forgets to meet up with me, and I go myself. I make it home. David is scolded, but his forgetfulness has allowed me to prove my independence. From then on, I’m pretty much on my own.
* * *
In a couple of years, multiple cousins will start moving into the neighborhood. It will become our little upper-middle-class version of the shtetl. Later still, I will find new communities in the process of finding my music. But for now, I begin a mostly inward turning away from the world.
My parents have a built-in social life in the new neighborhood—but I have abruptly lost mine. None of my school friends live in the neighborhood. The feeling of being paid off for the loss of that community with all the extra personal space was palpable. I know they didn’t intend it that way, but a part of me feels it is so. And the truth is, a large part of me likes it.
The sense of isolation on Astor Street gives me an excuse to explore what is perhaps an inborn tendency—the desire to exile myself from the world. In that sense, the move marks an end to a part of my childhood. Moves, of course, through their sheer physical upheaval, tend to do that.
I was always inward, if not actually introverted. On Wellington that inwardness was counterbalanced by a built-in community of friends who forced me outside. In a sense, the isolation on Astor Street allows me to indulge in the inner world that would become the basis for my approach to making art.
It happens over time, and consequences for my life as a whole will be good and bad. Isolation is a double-edged sword. It will yield multiple artistic epiphanies, along with some unhealthy habits. The move to Astor precipitates it, but it was probably going to happen anyway.
* * *
It’s 1970. I’m sitting alone at the piano in the basement, playing Robert Schumann’s “The Happy Farmer.” It is, as the title suggests, an almost gratuitously happy and folksy tune.
I don’t really like it. The incessant major key perkiness wears on my moody nerves. But it’s the piece Mr. Metzler has assigned me to play for my summer recital. And with no clear musical identity at nine years old, who am I to question him? I do what I’m told, even if I’m beginning to hate the imaginary farmer the tune was composed for.
It’s not particularly difficult, but the melody initially is played in the left hand. There are awkward moments. My left hand always tightens up right near the climax, and I invariably screw up the ending. I want to get it right to please my teacher, but I also know this isn’t going to be my music. This is not what I’m supposed to be playing.
In frustration, I bang the keyboard with my fists and run upstairs. My dad is sitting in the living room, right above where I was playing, reading the paper, drinking a Campari and soda, nibbling on mixed nuts.
“Sounding good,” he glances up from the paper. The classical station, WFMT, plays quietly in the background.
“Mmph,” I half mumble. How can he tell when he’s listening to the radio?
I grab the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour from the family collection and run up to my room. I put on “I Am The Walrus,” wondering what Lennon means.
I am he as you are he as you are me
And we are all together
It doesn’t matter what it means. I listen to it five times in a row.
Next Chapter: 18. Fate v. Chance. My argument with my fictional alter-ego continues…