All-Ages Show

My father still lives in the house where I grew up. We moved there in 1965 just before I started first grade and it feels like I’m entering a time warp whenever I turn down that street. At this point I think my dad has been living on Drake Avenue longer than any other resident. When I visited the neighborhood during our recent trip to Chicago I noticed that a lot of young families now have homes on the block, and it is definitely a much more diverse crowd than the one I knew. We thought we were at the forefront of diversity and tolerance in the late 1960s when the Messinas, an Italian Catholic family moved in. For decades this north side neighborhood had been an enclave for first and second generation Jews.

Until I was six we lived in a two-bedroom apartment less than a mile away. My brother, sister, and I shared a single bedroom, our twin beds lined up against the wall. I remember seeing our new house on Drake for the first time and thinking we were like the Clampetts in “The Beverly Hillbillies” (one of my favorite shows at the time) making the transition from a humble little shack to a luxurious mansion.

I know the dangers of idealized nostalgia, that disease where everything in the past seems somehow better than what we have today. It’s a slippery slope. Name any time period that you’re feeling especially nostalgic about and it won’t be hard to come up with examples of horrors that were par for the course back then—you know, those happy, golden days of cross burnings and lynchings and politicians that were so powerful they didn’t even try to cover up their large-scale corruption. But one nostalgic cliché I can’t shake lately is how different life was for kids back in my days on Drake Avenue. Dare I utter the words? Was life much simpler then?

Even though our move to Drake involved only a ten-minute trek from our apartment, we said good-bye to our friends in our old building as if we were moving across twelve time zones to another continent. Indeed, even though I had spent almost every waking moment with these kids from birth on, I’m not sure we ever saw them again once we switched streets and moved to the Big House. It was just as well. Their parents’ disdain of John F. Kennedy and apparent relief when he was assassinated two years earlier put a permanent pall in the relations between our two families.

The week that we moved, I remember our doorbell ringing and the kids from the new block asking me and my sister, total strangers, if we could come out and play. The first member of this welcome wagon to appear was Sandy Kaiser, a girl my age who lived two houses down from us. Sandy introduced us to her older siblings, June and Joel, and we soon made contact with every other kid on the block. What amazes me about this, besides the innocence of youth that just assumes everyone within a one-block radius will want to be your friend (why can’t I be that confident as an adult?) is that the close friendships we began with these neighbors in 1965 were not in any way limited by age, gender, or even common interests.

Among the decaying artifacts I salvaged a few weeks ago in Chicago were these black-and-white Polaroids, taken by my sister with her white plastic Swinger™ camera. I labeled all of these photos myself back in the 60s, as if I had a premonition of the enormous chunks of my childhood that would soon be lost to my selective memory banks. But I do remember how we spent weekends and summers back then without a plan in the world. We would simply go outside and start walking down the street ringing doorbells looking for someone to play with. It didn’t matter to me whether I ended up with 4-year-old Marc Cohen or 14-year-old Barbara Epstein, we were perfectly content to spend time with anyone who happened to be around. What further amazes me, considering how different it is today, is that I barely remember ever telling my parents that I was going out. Most of the time my parents had no idea where we were, they just trusted that we’d be back for dinner or bedtime.

As a parent today, I know where my child is during her every waking moment. The idea that Leah would be wandering around our neighborhood on her own all day long is unthinkable. And yet when I was half her age I’d disappear for the whole day without a thought. Was the world so much safer back then or were we being a bit reckless? My dad often mentions today that he can’t believe he allowed us to walk to school on our own every morning during those years. Oh, if he only knew how far we wandered and some of the stuff that we’d see like the guy who used to regularly expose himself to passing children from his living room window. We were horrified by this but it never occurred to us to tell our parents, we’d just run past the flasher’s window and then report back to our friends if we’d had a “sighting.”

Soon after we moved in, we organized a “Drake Kid Club” complete with official rules, mascot, meetings, and snacks. We had our own weekly newspaper and not one but two original songs. The first one was very simple:

I’m a Drake Kid,
You’re a Drake Kid
We are Drake Kids all,
And when we get together
We give our Drake Kid Call
(At this point in the song we’d emit a blood-curdling scream which was our way to call the other members outside when we were too lazy to ring their doorbells.)
D-R-A-K-E
D-R-A-K-E
Draaaaaaake, Drake!
Draaaaaaake, YAY!!!

By the late 60s we had a more sophisticated song (I think my sister Sue wrote it) with a driving rock beat but I can barely remember this later version. Can any former Drake Kids help me? I don’t have a single memory of my brother Bruce in our group. He was five years older than me but that shouldn’t have mattered because of our all-ages policy.

Again, looking back, for me that was the best part of the Drake Kid Club. There are so many ways we ghettoize ourselves in our lives, hanging out with people who are the same age as us and have the same background and beliefs. It was truly a gift to grow up in this multi-age setting and befriend people with very different ways of looking at the world. It was diversity at its best, even if Frank Messina was the only non-Jew in our midst. This photo shows a cross-section of the Drake Kids, and when I look at it today I can easily remember the warmth we all felt for each other. That’s Barbara Epstein standing behind me on the left. She was in my brother’s class and I thought she was the coolest “woman” on the planet, I had such a crush on her. She looked like the models in my sister's “Seventeen” magazines and always wore the hippest clothes. That’s Alan Cohen in the middle. He must have already been in high school and we used to constantly jump all over him, treating him like our very own amusement park ride. That’s Sandy riding on his shoulders. Even though we were among the youngest members of the club, Sandy and I were forces to be reckoned with. We earned the matching nicknames, B.O.W., which stood for “Boss of the World.” So different from how I saw myself during my teen years when I became much more shy and timid. Marc Cohen, Alan’s baby brother, is on the right. He was our youngest member and sadly, died in a car accident around the age of 20.

Other members of our club came and went. Debby Zimmerman lived on the block for a while with her ultra-orthodox family. I remember gazing in awe at her father’s Hebrew typewriter with its carriage that moved from right to left. Rabbi Chaim Zimmerman was one of the leading rabbis and Talmudic scholars in the country but we didn't have a clue. I was a little scared of Debby's older siblings, Avrumi, Bayla, and Yehudis, who seemed to come from another world. Debby hung out with us a lot but was not allowed inside our house, I assume to avoid any temptation to sample our non-kosher fare. I heard that the Zimmermans moved to a religious neighborhood in Brooklyn and then to Israel.

While the heyday of the Drake Kid Club was the mid- to late-60s (I have a strong memory of being out late and staring up at the sky with these kids on the warm night in July 1969 when the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon), the group lasted in some form until I started high school in 1972. I then lost touch with all of our former neighbors until, thanks to my blog, I heard from Sandy and June Kaiser last February, both now living in Phoenix. They shared memories about things that happened on Drake that I had long forgotten, helping me to reclaim some of the missing pieces of my childhood.

Since those childhood days, I don’t think I’ve ever felt that ease of camaraderie with people of different ages and stripes…until I started this blog. Blogging for me has created a virtual neighborhood that offers the same kind of diverse connections that I experienced 40 years ago on Drake Avenue. Wandering around to various blogs, sending and receiving comments, it almost feels like we’re walking down the street, ringing each other’s doorbells, and asking, “Can you come out and play?” I’ve developed friendships with people ranging from their early 20s up through their late 70s, and have gotten to know and respect people with beliefs vastly different from my own. People constantly warn against the dangers of the Internet, and it is definitely a place where you need to protect yourself from psychos and pathological liars, but I’ve found that the blogging world comes as close as possible to the curiosity-driven innocence of my youth.

Comments

[Your Wife]

That was such a beautiful post. The only possible ill side effect is that I will now never refer to you as anything but Boss of the World -- a nickname which fits again today just as perfectly as I'm sure it did then! But you sure can write, Boss of the World -- and thank God for that photojournalist, Susie the Swinger.

[Pearl]

Danny, you are a true archivist: you capture time and history so well, as one would catch fireflies in a jar...and then you let them out into the world.

It's a pleasure to read about your world time and time again, the world that was lost, and is regained via your words.

Thank you.

Have a great Fourth of July with family and friends.

P.S. I'd like to become an honorary member of the Drake Club. I can be the club's official poet, okay?

[Rhea]

I know what you mean -- we can idealize the past. But I, too, am a sucker for reminiscing. I enjoyed your post.

[Forever The Drake Kids; June and Sandy]

Danny,
We loved your blog. You caputured the years of our childhood in your blog so well--it gave us the chills reading it. The picture of you and Sandy at the top is priceless.

For all the readers of your blog, Drake Avenue was the place to be! The Miller household was the "favorite" house on the block. Amongst many other things, it had an endless candy bowl on the kitchen counter for all the kids. We marveled at every new electronic gadget that Danny's dad brought home (eg.clap your hands twice and the lights go on)and can still remember trick or treating every year with Danny's mom Judy. She was everything and more that Danny has written about.

Danny, thanks for all the memories. And to Susie and Kendall, Sandy too is still BOW. I guess personalities don't change that much!

[Heather]

I love the old photos, BOW -- what I wouldn't give for some black and white polaroid film! -- and as usual, your writing brings me away from my desk and into another place.

[Zap]

Long-time reader, first-time poster....

That was just awesome. I was talking with my husband the other day about how information overkill has destroyed whatever innocence was left in our society. What a charming analogy you've made between blogging and your childhood neighborhood. Maybe I don't feel quite as jaded as I did a couple of days ago!

[Karen]

ANOTHER NOVEL!!!

[Alan]

It was strange seeing my own photo taken so many years ago with all the kids. There was an 11 year age difference between myself and my kid brother Marc, who sadly did die in a car accident, killed by a drunk driver. In some ways, I was a pseudo older brother for all the kids. I believe it was because they had so readily accepted my brother into their group, and my brother and I had been close back then. The memories the blog brings back are pleasant ones for me. I remember all of the kids in the photo's, I would like to thank Danny Miller for the blog, and for the memories.

[Danny]

Wow, how great to hear from some of the charter members of the Drake Kid Club! Thanks, June and Sandy. That bottomless candy bowl got us a lot of friends! Alan, thank you for commenting, what a surprise, I'm sure we haven't seen each other since Nixon's first term! I was so sorry to hear about Marc.

Still waiting for those lyrics. Sue??

[Emily]

Okay, at least now I get to live on your blog "block," since I missed out on the wonder years. Seems like your house is still "the place to be."

BTW, I cringe when I think of all the things we did when I was a kid, most of which were done when my parents had absolutely no idea where we were nor what we were doing (we were often miles away from home on our bikes). It's amazing we all lived to see adulthood.

[Elaine Soloway]

Wonderful post Danny. I often feel that the street I live on now has the same blessings as your Drake.
Also, the most amazing response to my book of 1940s Chicago has been the outpouring of e-mails from people who lived in my old Humboldt Park neighborhood. Not just Jews like me, but the Catholic boys from St. Marks, all of their buddies, my grammar school classmates, and dozens of people who grew up somewhere on the block. Despite my sometimes dark memories, all of my correspondents stress "the good old days." Evidentally nostalgia trumps everything else.
Love,

[jackie]

that was a great post...skipping thru our childhood or just the past seems to be going around..im doing a salute to the 60's...
i can remember going out to breakfast and maybe coming home for lunch and then going back out and not coming back again till it started to get dark...never a care...never thought about anyone getting hurt...parents never worried about me...if that happened today...well, it wouldnt happen today..although here in west, the kids do get dropped off at swimming pool and stay there all day long..but what i really find...odd? is that with the exception of Kinky friedman...I dont know any Jewish people...It just hit me while reading your post..raised in military by broad minded parents who taught me not to judge anyone..and could care less what religion or race you are...well, im not crazy about evangelical bible thumpers..ha

[cruisin-mom]

Danny, such a wonderful post. I love posting about my childhood memories as well, but certainly cannot do it with quite the heart and soul that you do...I can almost taste and feel Drake Avenue. Thanks for sharing those memories.

[Dr. Judy]

I know a Frank Messina from Chicago. He's now a Family Practice doc in SW Indiana, probably in his late 30's. Same Frank??

[Mindy]

Loved the post! Your description of the guy in the window brought back a memory of a guy a friend of mine and I saw at Polliwog Park. He exposed himself to us and we ran as fast as we could, never telling our parents for fear they wouldn't let us go to the park any more.

[margalit]

What a lovely look into your childhood, Danny. I'm a bit older than you are, and I had such a similar childhood in my neighborhood in the west Valley. We ran just as free, rang each other's doorbells, had no boundries, and lived a carefree existance alone in our suburban utopia. It was a great way to grow up.

My kids are lucky to have that kind of freedom now. Or sort of. They do wander all around town, hang out at each other's houses, take public transportation to the Y and to other neighborhoods. We are lucky to live in a place that isn't too restricted by playdates and scheduled afterschool activities. But there is no such thing as just hanging out all summer. Camp takes all the kids out of town for the summer, and the streets are quiet and empty. It makes me sad and I long for the days when kids just hung out and played in the street.

Your post brought that all back. Lovely.

[Marisa]

Thanks for such a wonderful post! I really enjoyed reading it.

[DRAKE STREET KID]

I was thrilled to come across this article,
As a Drake Street KID i can tell you that is was a simpler time!
I always wanted to know what happened to the Millers! and Kaisers etc.

please get in touch

debby

[Buddy Arche]

My family grew up on Drake Avenue, but we were evicted by the new owners of our two-flat who claimed to own the building in partnership. That was in 1948, so I can't relate to your memories. Thanks for the note. I was born at 4932 and moved to 4948 at age 18 months.