Gregory Street

I grew up in a beautiful old Victorian home built by a doctor in the late 1800s. We loved its big rooms its long curving staircase and the way there wasn’t a 90* angle in the whole place and we were also spooked by it. We were convinced it was haunted, sometimes you could just get a creepy feeling or sometimes you would have to spin around and see if someone was behind you. My parents bought it as their first home for $10,000 and commenced to fixing it. They hauled piles and piles of junk out of it filling the curb entirely in front of the house at least 5 feet high. The neighborhood buzzed through the garbage salvaging old tables and scrap metal. Then my parents painted every room and spackled and sanded floors and remodeled the two kitchens and two bathrooms and cleaned top to bottom and then we had the run of the house.

The exterior was next, blowing insulation into the siding, painting the entire framework changing it from black to a dark olive green. My father tore down the old porch and replaced it with a big wrap around with pillars and spindles and the second story door opened out onto a balcony with a porch swing again. We built a rock garden in the front with boulders that returned form a vacation with us. We planted an Apple tree in the front yard, we put up a fence in the back yard and a sand box and a tree house. We installed a raised vegetable garden; we landscaped the sides of the house with wildflowers.

Mr. Lawson owned and lived in the house next door. He was a widower whose father had built the old brick he lived in as well as the four houses next to it. He was a little scary in that he yelled at us for stepping on his tiger lilies or picking his pears sometimes and he had crazy white hair flying every direction, but little did I know he kept the neighborhood. Mr. Lawson owned most of the houses on the block except ours and a few others. He rented them out to single divorcees, families and old ladies, quiet and reserved people.

Mr. Lawson died and they held an auction at his house. I was told among the beautiful furniture that came out of this house were two original Picassos. I don't know if that was true, I was only 10 or 11. A developer turned all of Mr. Lawson’s houses into apartments and rented to anyone and everyone. The struggling neighborhood fell into oblivion and we sold our house to the same developer making our getaway. Let me say here despite th beautiful homes, it never was the best neighborhood. There was always someone fighting in the front yard of the big yellow house on the corner, there were gangs just blocks away and a girl once got stabbed in the stomach at the local park - but people were trying to make something of it back then.

Today I opened the paper to read about a city’s 8th homicide. At 2:00 in the afternoon yesterday, a shooting victim was dumped out of a car into the gutter in front of my old house. The neighborhood was outraged and protested. I see they are still trying to make something of it.

I said of where I grew up "There is a story in ever crack in the sidewalk" and today one of those stories made the front page.

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Cease Fire Illinois