Tag: Mt. Greenwood

Ghosts of Halloweens Past

It snowed a bit on Saturday (October 17th). I was out for a long walk in the morning and it started to spit some big, fluffy, white stuff for a few minutes. It was pretty, and no big deal, especially since it was five days later than last year’s first snow, which came on October 12th. Then we had some more flurries on Monday. On Tuesday, I woke up to a winter weather advisory and the expectation of several inches of snow. I guess the most alarming part about this prediction was the phrase which our local newspaper meteorologist used at the end of this forecast: “this snow will probably melt.” In other words, he was saying he can’t promise anything, but he’s hopeful that this particular snow won’t still be on the ground in late March, or whenever the thaw comes. When we went out to vote on Tuesday, the snow had started. I had left my driver’s license in my running clothes, so we had to go back home to get it. Then we were stopped for a TV interview on the way out of city hall. (I think they were intrigued by the fact that I wore a Chicago Cubs facemask, while Kathleen wore her St. Louis Cardinals mask.) The upshot of all of this is, that by the time we were winding our way back home, the snow was several inches thick and getting deeper; the streets were so slick that we couldn’t make it up the hill to our home. Luckily, Ben and his family lived right there, at the bottom of the hill. I borrowed a shovel and cleared two tire tracks up the steep, 150-yard hill, so we were able to get home. We received 8 or 9 inches of snow officially before it stopped, the biggest October snow since the “Halloween Surprise” of 1991.

Still, I’m not scared. Hell, I’m a Wisconsinite now, with one mild winter under my belt, so a little snow can’t frighten me. When I was a child, though, I feared many things. As Halloween approaches in this, the strangest of years, I thought back to those early days in Chicago and some of the things that scared me.

Growing up across the street from a cemetery, I suppose it was inevitable that ghosts would figure prominently in my childhood fears. In fact, my neighborhood of Mount Greenwood was surrounded by cemeteries. Even our local gang called themselves “The Graveyard Gents.” There is a reason for all of the cemeteries. Back in the 1800s, city officials determined that it was a health concern to have disease-ridden corpses buried within city limits. At the time, my neighborhood was outside the city, and at least ten cemeteries existed within about three miles of our house. Later, when those health concerns subsided, Mt. Greenwood was annexed by the large metropolis and became a Chicago neighborhood ringed by graveyards containing tall trees, green grass, and, to my young mind, ghost-infested graves.

Many of Chicago’s best stories about haunted places and ghostly spirits originated in this area and probably stem from the presence of so many cemeteries. People still talk about the ghostly parade of monks that supposedly visited St. Rita Catholic Church in 1961. The Batchelors Grove Cemetery in the nearby forest preserves has produced stories of mysterious lights, phantom cars, and ethereal apparitions. The most famous tale, though, is that of “Resurrection Mary,” a spectral woman dressed in white who was spurned by her boyfriend at a nearby dancehall in the 1920s and has been seen hitch-hiking along Archer Avenue late at night for nearly a century. We knew all of those stories while growing up, and even engaged in a graveyard challenge that was designed to test our fortitude. Al Capone was originally buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery, directly across the street from our house. Later, his body was moved to the suburbs, but a family plot and a large marker remains in Mt. Olivet. The game consisted of climbing under the fence and entering the cemetery, alone and after dark, going in several hundred yards and touching Al’s grave, then running like hell back to our secret entrance without getting caught by ghosts or the Mt. Olivet night watchman. I believe that my later prowess as a runner developed in those stress-filled excursions into the graveyard. (The picture above is from my brother’s Christmas greeting from a few years ago. That is the Capone family gravestone in the center)

My house proved to be no haven from such terrors. When I was about 7 or 8, I had a nightmare involving some Halloween novelties that we owned. My siblings and I had these scary-looking, life-size, plastic heads on sticks that we would carry while trick-or-treating. One was a white skeleton skull, and the other was a red devil’s head, complete with sinister horns. In my dream, I was down in our basement—which was dark and scary under the best of circumstances—when these two heads suddenly became animated and began bouncing in the air and chasing me. I woke up screaming, with cold sweats, and I never again felt safe going down to the basement alone. Of course, soon after that terrifying nightmare, my parents built a bedroom for my brother and I down in the very place that produced such uneasiness. On many nights, I slept with my eyes open, ever alert for dancing skulls and devils.

Like many children of my generation, we also had a “witch” living on our block. It should be noted that, as in the Middle Ages, any older woman living alone was suspected of being a witch. Ours was a widow named Nellie Shevlin and she lived in a big, imposing home built on the corner in the early part of the 20th Century. The rest of our houses on Sacramento Avenue were new,1200-square-feet, tract homes, all indistinguishable from the others. We tormented poor Mrs. Shevlin by calling her nasty names or running through her yard to avoid capture. Chicago folksinger Michael Smith had his own neighborhood witch, as he explained in his song, Crazy Mary:

“Crazy Mary from Londonderry, lived next door to the cemetery;

How many lovers have you buried?” we would shout

As we ran along the green and golden path

That took us home away from Crazy Mary.

Out of curiosity, I looked up Mrs. Shevlin while writing this article. She died in 1984, at age 95, and was buried across the street from her huge house, in Mt. Olivet Cemetery.

The centerpiece of any Halloween for most kids was the wonderful ritual of trick-or-treating. You knock on a stranger’s door, yell some nonsensical phrase, and they give you candy. Great stuff. One year in particular stands out in my memory. In 1964, I was ten years old, and Halloween fell on a Saturday. As soon as my brother Dan and I realized that we would have a longer time than usual for trick-or treating, we planned our attack as if it were a military operation. We had maps, charts, timetables, and contingency plans. We carried pillow cases, assuming our puny paper Halloween sacks would prove unequal to the task of carrying multiple loads of heavy candy. We had to plan carefully so that each time we ventured out, we ended our route just as our bag was filled and ready to empty. We started before noon and continued, with only a short break for dinner, until nine o’clock at night. Each time we circled back to our house, the mountain of candy in our basement bedroom grew larger.

As time has passed, the legendary nature of that eventful Halloween has been aggrandized in the hyperbolic recesses of my memory. I seem to recall other kids in the neighborhood lining the streets and cheering our efforts as we trudged out, time after time, with a dogged determination to fill our bags yet again. I could even swear that at one point General George S. Patton himself stood on the side of the road, his be-medaled chest swelling with pride as he said, “Never before in the history of trick-or-treating have two kids engaged in a major conflict before dinner, emptied their bags at home, and marched right out to do battle again in the evening. By God, I’m proud of those boys!” Then, as the theme music swelled, he fell into step with us and marched along by our sides, just to share in our glory. At least I’m pretty sure it happened that way.

This year, like everything else, the annual cycle of holidays, events, and rituals will be disrupted by the Covid crisis. We have decided that it would not be safe to open the door repeatedly to dozens of kids while Wisconsin Covid cases are spiking dramatically. So no trick-or-treaters this year. Abigail and Lucas are busy building a haunted house, so we will probably just visit with them and give them way too much candy.

That is, unless their haunted house is in the basement. I’m not going down there alone.

The Call of the Wild

Growing up in a city, nature has always held a certain fascination for me. I realized this fact again on Sunday night and Monday morning when we had some serious rainstorms roll through the area. I didn’t realize how severe they had been until I ventured out for a walk right after the lightning stopped on Monday. There are four parks or fields where I go to hit golf balls on a rotating basis; three of them were under several feet of water, while the other looked like the Brad Pitt film, A River Runs Through It. The deepest one was in a grassy bowl officially known as the “Greenwood Detention Basin,” as if that’s where all recalcitrant waters have to go if they misbehave in school. The water  in there was at least ten feet deep with more gushing in every second. (I guess I’ll never find those golf balls I lost). It turns out that River Falls received 7.25 inches of rain in about 12 hours, while neighboring towns had over 9 inches. After lunch, Kathleen and I went down to check out the Kinnickinnic River where it runs through the center of our town. It was eerie. We walked out on the downtown bridge and the water was only a few feet from the highest point of the arched overpass. The fluid was positively roiling just beneath our feet as it rushed by. It was moving so fast that we became a bit dizzy looking over the edge at the murky brown liquid. At the Swinging Bridge a few blocks away, the scene was equally impressive. The normally calm observation point was thunderous with noise as water cascaded down the South Fork of the river before colliding violently with the main river artery as it poured over the Junction Dam, spraying mist high into the air. I think we need this sort of unexpected weather outburst on occasion to remind us what a powerful force nature can be.

I’ve never been much of a nature lover. In Chicago, the cemetery across the street from my boyhood home offered the only substantial swatches of green in our neighborhood. Between my house and the cemetery was a narrow street and a 30-feet-wide, flat area of grass that gradually rose to an embankment for the Grand Trunk RR tracks. This strip of grass, rocks, and cinders provided fields for all sports. In the spring and summer, we played baseball or softball (Chicago style, with a 16-inch ball, of course) on an elongated diamond custom-tailored to the narrow shape of the field. In the fall, we played football there. The only problem was that most of the punts changed directions in unexpected ways after hitting the power lines above us. In January, it was usually cold enough for hockey, and the fireman on our block accommodated us by rigging a firehose to the hydrant and flooding the slightly recessed field for us. By blocking off the ends of our field with dirt and waiting for it to freeze, we created a reasonable facsimile of an ice rink.

Aside from that, we also played on the rapidly disappearing vacant lots scattered around Mt. Greenwood. Kathleen is always amused by the way my family refers to those postage-stamp lots as “prairies,” a word that, for her, conjured up images of pioneers, wagon trains, and vast expanses of tall grass. Even when developers starting building homes on those lots, we saw an opportunity for childhood games. Being less than two decades removed from WWII, “playing army” was always a favorite pastime. A dirt-hill that resulted from the digging of a foundation and basement could be converted quickly by our imaginations into a Japanese stronghold somewhere in the South Pacific. The newspaper clipping above is from 1964, when an Allied victory over such an entrenchment was memorialized by an intrepid, battlefield photographer. (I want it noted for the record that I was described as “virile,” despite the fact that I later got yelled at by my mom because I was still wearing my pajama top late in the afternoon.)

None of those places, however, offered much of an opportunity to encounter wildlife. My only clear recollection of meeting dangerous animals of any sort occurred when I was about seven years old. My best friend, Johnnie Rock (also depicted above) and I were coming home from school for lunch, and we cut through someone’s backyard. While running through the yard, Johnnie tripped over a chain, that unfortunately was attached to a large German Shepherd. The dog attacked and bit off part of Johnnie’s ear, an incident that traumatized me for life. Since that day, I’ve never been a person who likes to commune with nature in any significant way.

I do, however, enjoy running or hiking on trails in the woods. In Nashville, I learned to enjoy the beauty and solitude that trail-running afforded. Running on dirt or rock trails is great fun as you use the momentum of a downhill section to carry you up the next hill, or careen around downhill curves with reckless abandon.  The Warner Parks in Nashville provided miles of isolated trails in the middle of the city. Fairly often, I would cross paths with a deer, and I once saw a timber rattler sunning itself on a trail, but I found few other animals in my sojourns through the park. River Falls, of course, is much smaller in size, but I have explored every state park trail within a ten-mile radius. Having been running or hiking on these trails through autumn, winter, spring, and now summer, I have been able to witness the dramatic changes of the seasons. Suddenly, I gained a new appreciation for the hundreds of paintings Claude Monet made of haystacks, cathedrals, or lily ponds. He would paint the same scene multiple times, at different times of the day or the year, to study the effect the altered angle of the sun had on the particular image. The paths on which I run every week or so at “The Mound,” a steep ridge near our home, have gone from leaf covered, to icy and slick, to muddy. The last time I was there, the summer foliage had grown so thick that many of the trails have narrowed from several feet across to a few inches. Running in the morning involves breaking through the many gossamer cobwebs that have been erected overnight.

Another thing I have discovered in recent months is that, in Northern Wisconsin, if you are in the woods, you stand a good chance of running into wild animals. As an addendum to that statement, I would add that, regardless of where you are, you are never far from the woods. Therefore wildlife often has the run of the place. While running, I have been startled by huge wild turkeys, I nearly stepped on a sizable snake of indeterminate species, and a few weeks ago, a deer nearly took me out as it bounded across my trail. I am currently reading a novel set in the UP (Upper Peninsula of Michigan, across the northern border of Wisconsin), and a cougar figures prominently in that story. I have discovered that, while bobcats are frequently seen in the area, their larger and more dangerous cousins, the cougar, are pretty rare. Still, there have been sightings of these predatory creatures along the Willow River near here, and some authorities believe there may be a breeding population in the state for the first time in over a century. I have become fascinated with these wildcats, and I am ever-vigilant on my hikes, hoping to catch a glimpse of one—albeit from a great distance.

A more realistic expectation of a dramatic encounter would involve black bears. The only bears I’ve ever known have been Chicago’s professional football team and the cute “Honeybear” mascot of Harpeth Hall School, where I taught for many years. According to the Department of Natural Resources, however, “Wisconsin is home to a thriving black bear population estimated at more than 24,000 bears.” I believe this is true, because one of the critters has apparently decided to call our neighborhood home. In recent days, there have been half-a-dozen sightings of a black bear on our street and elongated cul-de-sac, one just two doors down from us. There are woods and steep hills just behind our home and all around the horse-shoe-shaped cul-de-sac. This big guy has appeared from those woods in search of food and found the many bird-feeders in the area to his liking. On my last trip to “The Mound,” just a few blocks from here, I made as much noise as I could as I hiked through the thick foliage, hoping to scare away any lions, tigers, or bears that might be around. Every time a squirrel scurried through the underbrush, I pictured a bear the size of a Buick or a tawny cat that outweighed me by 20 pounds launching itself at my throat.

So if you happen to be walking through any woodsy paths around River Falls, and you hear a lot of coughing and throat-clearing, or perhaps someone rattling their car keys like Jacob Marley’s chains, don’t be alarmed. It’s just me trying to avoid a close encounter of the natural kind.

Standing Up

I would never want to be a policeman. From my viewpoint, it is a dangerous job for which they are terribly underpaid. More often than not, they deal with the dregs of society, and their view of the world is colored by seeing nothing but the dark underbelly of a particular jurisdiction. A simple traffic stop can suddenly turn deadly, and the stress of the job must be incredible. My friend and college roommate, Bruce, was Chief of Police in our hometown of Burbank, Illinois for years. I always remember him telling me about his “ride-along” with the police during his internship. He said they were called to check out a domestic disturbance, and he was told to grab a flashlight before they went to the door of the house. This was one of those long, metal flashlights with a line of heavy, “D” batteries in the handle. As Bruce hefted the weighty item in his hand, he asked what he was supposed to do with it. He was told something like, “It’s not for reading maps, kid. If this goes bad, it can be a weapon.” This story illustrates how even a seemingly innocuous situation can be fraught with danger. On top of the obvious hazards of the job, police often find themselves in situations for which they are ill-prepared. In particular, they are put on the front-lines in dealing with psychotic or mentally ill people. Most of the intelligent calls for police reform do not call for actual “defunding” or the abolition of police forces, but for dividing responsibilities so that fully trained persons are able to deal with specific situations. I say all of this as a reminder of what a difficult occupation being a police officer can be.

Still, the situation that erupted in the US over the past few weeks points out that something has to change. In 1964, segregation and racial discrimination legally ended with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. A year later, voting restrictions based on race officially came to an end. Yet these problems are still very much with us today. The truth is, it is much easier to pass legislation than it is to change the hearts and minds of people; the government cannot create economic opportunities, open doors to equal education, or end systemic racism with a stroke of the pen. These issues are much more complicated, and we are still wrestling with them almost sixty years after those landmark laws were passed.

No one is born thinking they are better or worse than those of another skin color. Racism is an attitude that is taught by parents, friends, authority figures, and a particular society. I was raised in a racist household that, in both subtle and overt ways, taught me that black people were to be feared and distrusted. I remember my dad putting a Confederate-flag sticker on our front door, even though he had never been south of 127th Street. Our neighborhood of Mt. Greenwood was tucked into the southwest corner of Chicago. My neighbors were predominantly policemen, firemen, and other city workers who had to live within the city limits to keep their jobs. Mt. Greenwood was as far from the inner city as you could get while still officially living in Chicago. It was also a bastion of segregation, with a buffer zone of railroad tracks and cemeteries protecting its denizens from the encroachment of African Americans. In a neighborhood of Irish-Catholics of modest economic means, my family of Scottish-Catholics was the closest thing we had to a minority. That was my world growing up, and I never crossed paths with people of any color other than white. Until I was thirteen.

I went to a pretty good grammar school (K-through-8) of 1500 white students. That school fed into a good high school called Morgan Park. In 1967, the Board of Education in Chicago announced that they would integrate my school with eight black students so that those kids could get the opportunity to attend a better HS, and, hopefully, increase their chances of getting into college. On the first day of classes, my school was surrounded by 3,000 angry white people, reporters, and other interested onlookers. I watched as a station wagon dropped off those eight terrified kids, who then had to walk from the curb to the front door, a 100-foot gauntlet of people screaming, spitting, and calling them the worst names you can imagine. I recognized many of my friends, neighbors, and role models in that fuming mob. (See picture above)

Within a few days, though, things calmed down, and the school year settled into a familiar routine. Thanks to the institutional regimentation of the Chicago Public School System, I got to know one of the new students. Omar Hester and John Henderson were next to each other alphabetically, therefore, we were assigned neighboring seats in every class. With my upbringing, I’m sure I was leery and standoffish toward this new boy, but the artificial cultural barriers between us soon dissolved. I learned that he was smarter than I was, he worked harder, and he was funnier than me. I also admired his determination to withstand prejudice and verbal abuse in order to fight for what he believed was his right to a good education. It wasn’t as if we became close friends, and we never hung out together outside of school, but he taught me that I had nothing to fear and much to learn from people who were different than me. The summer after that school year, we moved a couple of miles away to Burbank, and I never saw Omar again. Even at that time, though, I often thought about how unfair it was that I should receive better opportunities for education and for life simply because I lived on one side of the cemetery and had white skin, while someone else on the other side with dark skin did not have those same chances. That year changed me in important ways, and college, my study of history, and especially having black teammates on the track team, made those changes permanent.

In the past twenty years, talking to my African-American next-door neighbor in Nashville, I became more aware of the fear of being pulled over for “Driving While Black.” I, of course, never had to endure that particular humiliation, but I once had a similar experience. In the 1980s, I got a gig singing at a North-Side club near Wrigley Field. It was a gay bar that welcomed people of all sexual preferences. I left the place at about 2:00 am, and, as I was walking the few blocks to my car, I noticed that I was being slowly trailed by a police car. When I reached my beat-up vehicle, the police turned on their flashers and got out of their squad. They made me open my guitar case and looked through it, apparently searching for drugs. They examined my license and asked what I was doing in that neighborhood, so far from my home, at that hour. They looked in my car with flashlights. They let me go eventually, but followed me for several blocks until I pulled onto Lake Shore Drive. I’m sure that if I had so much as a broken tail-light, they would have ticketed me or worse. As I drove home, I was shaking my head, trying to figure out what had just happened, when it hit me: they assumed, that since I was coming out of a gay bar, I must be homosexual. I had been harassed for being gay. I laughed at the time, because nothing bad happened, and it made for a good story. Later, though, I was struck by the unfairness of being judged by an officer’s false assumption. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live with that unfairness every day as black people do.

After my last blog entry, my friend Barbara commented that she and her daughter (both white), attended a Black Lives Matter protest in their small, conservative town in Illinois wearing shirts that read, “I am listening.” The next day, some of her friends politely questioned her about her participation in what they probably viewed as an almost subversive activity. That story reminded me of an anecdote from the 1840s. Transcendentalist author Henry David Thoreau was in jail, having been arrested for refusing to pay taxes levied to finance the Mexican-American War. Thoreau—correctly—believed that the war was being waged to take land from Mexico in order to add new slave states to the Union and thus expand slavery. He declined to support such an endeavor and broke the law as a protest. His friend Ralph Waldo Emerson came to see him in jail, asking, with amusement in his voice, “Henry, what are you doing in here?” to which Thoreau replied, “I think the real question is ‘What are you doing out there?’” This situation is not a “Black Thing” or a “White Thing.” It is “Our Thing.”

That Thoreau story makes me feel a bit guilty for not doing more, but Kathleen and I are not the activist, protesting sorts. The Covid pandemic has also stifled any impulse we may have had to join marches in recent days. It may be a character flaw, but I have always preferred a quiet form of protest, relying on words and stories to change opinions. This has been my modus operandi while on stage as a folk-singer, in my classroom, or now, in this blog. Still, I have always admired the courage and determination of American protesters throughout history. Whether the cause was Black Lives Matter, an end to the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, unionizing workers in the 1930s, the right to vote for women, or the anti-slavery battles of the early 1800s, those people who fought and died for freedom in the streets of our nation were genuine heroes. They deserve our respect every bit as much as those who fought overseas in our wars.

In fact, one of the first protests in our history occurred in Boston, Massachusetts and helped spark the Revolutionary War. Tensions had been building in that city for months as the British soldiers increased in numbers and occupied the city with occasional brutal repression. Protests against that oppression and what were regarded as unfair taxes grew angrier. In March, 1770, fighting between people in the streets and the soldiers erupted and led to the British firing into the crowd, wounding six and killing five people. Many historians point to that event as the true start of the Revolution, which eventually gave us our freedom and started our democratic-republic.

Protests have been a crucial part of our nation since its inception. We are a great nation today, in large part, because of those people who were brave enough to stand up for their rights. It is also important to remember that the first man killed that March day in Boston and, thus, in the Revolution, was an African-American man named Crispus Attucks.