Summer 2024: Day 26

I wanted this trip to Chicago to be inspiring and creative -- to get me to write after a long stretch in which I haven't felt like writing. To facilitate this, I went on a little bit of a nostalgia tour today.

I started by driving to the old, old neighborhood -- before we moved to Oriole Park in 1977. I cruised past the old house, which didn't look too different but I swear we had a bigger front yard than what's there. I also drove past my first grade school around the corner. My mom didn't want me walking across a busy street to get to the Catholic school, so I attended the nearby Lutheran school instead for kindergarten and first grade. The building, which was used for a charter school before the church was sold to another denomination, wasn't too big to begin with and looked as small as I remembered it (and was also painted gray). 

After circling the perimeter of Riis Park, I headed back north to my old stomping grounds. After passing our apartment on Irving Park and New England, I parked at the HIP -- Harlem-Irving Plaza, the mall of choice in my youth. I've been here since the '80s several times, so nothing was shocking, but I did feel pangs of nostalgia, recalling long-gone stores and their locations in the mall. 

My next destination was Oriole Park (I didn't drive by my old house). I thought about sitting on the sledding hill and writing from there, but it was too sunny and an adult woman was riding her bike down the hill, it was a little weird. I found a shady park bench and wrote for more than an hour. It felt great, and the nostalgia was flooding. I could see from the bench the baseball diamond I had my best game and struck out with the bases loaded.  

Eventually I departed and headed to another used video game store, this one on Touhy, then to White Castle to get my slider fix for this trip. I lounged in the sun and caught a quick nap for a while, then took it easy for the rest of the night, which has included -- yay! -- writing.