The Summer Project: Milwaukee, not Chicago (1991)

Following each of my first two years of college, I returned to Chicago and spent the summer at home. I worked full-time doing custodial and maintenance work for a small suburban school district, helping clean the schools and prepare them for the next term. When I wasn't working, I hung out with my high school friends, partied on the weekends, watched MTV, played a lot of Nintendo, and both eagerly looked forward to returning to school and wishing the summer wouldn't zip by so quickly.

"You should be drinking more, Joe, instead of
taking pictures of us!"
By the spring of 1991, I was already working at one of Milwaukee's daily newspapers part-time. The  lease for my next apartment would begin June 1, and I wasn't particularly excited about trying to find someone to sublet my spot. The decision was easy: I would stay in Milwaukee for the summer and not go home.

As I think about it, college students get only three summers (maybe four if you were on the five-year plan) they can call college summers. The summer before freshman year is really your last high school summer, as you try to hang on to the last vestiges of your past life while eagerly anticipating what comes next. The summer after graduating college is focused on getting a job and moving on with your life. Although I still hung out with college friends that post-graduation summer (and most of the next year while I worked in Milwaukee -- that's a story for another blog post), there was no school to return to that fall.

Therefore, summer 1991 became an apex. And it was so much fun. I moved into a new apartment in the same complex and was sharing it with a friend from Marquette's newspaper and three subletters who were I peripherally knew. It didn't necessarily become a party apartment, but I had more fun with them than I had with my roommates all of junior year. We did throw a couple parties and generally enjoyed the summer.

My other friend groups were also mostly in Milwaukee that summer, and I never was bored. I wrote about Summerfest already and some of the other things I did in 1991, but here's an expanded summary:

  • A lot of Summerfest, including seeing Jimmy Buffett on a stormy Sunday
  • Watching the Bulls win the NBA title
  • Several trips to the beach
  • Seeing movies, both at the theater and on cable (we got a deal where we got three premium channels for the price of one, back when cable was cheap)
  • Rediscovering Strat-o-Matic Baseball with my roommates
  • Yes, drinking -- I had someone else's ID and it worked about 60 percent of the time
  • Bike rides down to the lake and up one of Milwaukee's bike trails
  • Playing softball with the Sentinel's team two mornings a week (second-shift league, and my boss was cool in that he drove me to games)
  • Plenty of Nintendo

I probably should have been working more -- I had three shifts a week and was stringing but had room for a second part-time job. I'm not sure why I didn't. Maybe I just didn't want to get a job I'd abandon in a few months?

The weird part of that summer was Jeffrey Dahmer's arrest, less than a mile from our apartment. That led to a surreal few weeks as Milwaukee processed what happened. 

I also don't remember going back to Chicago that summer. I'm sure I did, likely taking the train back (I wouldn't have a car until 1993), but I guess it was just a normal visit home. Maybe not remembering is an unconscious delineation that summer created. Before 1991, I was a Chicagoan going to school in Milwaukee. After 1991, I was Wisconsinite originally from Chicago. One summer away was all it took.



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