Riding the L

I spent much of my time at Loyola trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with the rest of my life. There is no way someone can figure anything out at college in between the sleeping and the drinking and the sex and the sleeping and the drinking and the sex and the occasional studying.

When I started school, my intention was to be a “pre-law” student. I had no idea what that meant, specifically. There wasn’t much planning for me when it came to higher education. I was the first one in my family to go to college, so I was sent out into the “real world” without a map, without directions. I had applied to a few other colleges—Purdue University, Northern Illinois University, the University of Arizona—all of which sent me the big fat acceptance letter.
I ultimately chose Loyola because it was located two blocks from my grandmother’s apartment in Roger’s Park on the North side of Chicago. I thought it would be cool to be living so close to her. I figured when I got sick of the dining hall food, I could simply walk two blocks to my grandmother’s apartment and get a home cooked meal. My grandmother was a fantastic cook. Her meals were never a surprise and always came in courses: Chopped liver, chopped turnips or chopped avocado; Matzo Ball soup with big chunks of carrots and celery; gefilte fish; latkes; challah bread with honey and soft butter; kasha and varnishkes; sweet and sour chicken and beef brisket; canned corn; homemade pickles and pickled peppers. She would cook elaborate meals like this whether she was preparing a meal for one person or twenty. The time I spent alone with her was an added bonus to my college experience. My grandmother taught me how to play poker, she taught me how to say cut and go to sleep in Yiddish and she taught me how important laughter was in life. We always laughed together.

Picking Loyola also meant I was somewhat familiar with the area, at least from a Point A to Point B perspective. Roger’s Park was recognizable to me because I had been visiting my grandmother there all of my life. I knew how to get from my parent’s house to my grandmother’s subsidized high-rise apartment. I knew the storefronts on Devon Avenue; Brown’s Chicken, The Bagel Restaurant, the Cover Girl clothing store (my other grandmother worked there as a bra fitter), and Weinstein Brothers Memorial Chapel. I also knew the Thillens Stadium field which was about ten minutes west of campus. I knew the field, not from actually playing baseball there, but from driving by it countless times over the years. The Stadium was marked by an impressive landmark—a giant baseball. As a child, I was convinced that people lived in the big baseball. I’m not sure how that thought was born, but I remember being devastated when I learned that it was simply a sign.

I had a great deal of familiarity with the particular part of the city where Loyola was located. I wasn’t, however, versed on public transportation. Growing up in the suburbs, public transportation was defined as riding your bike on the street or asking your parents for a ride to the mall. I needed to learn how to ride the “L”—Chicago’s subway system—which at the time consisted of A and B trains that were designated by colored lines. The Loyola stop was on the Red Line and was an AB train, which meant both A and B trains stopped there. The Red Line could take you from as far north as Evanston, an affluent suburb where Northwestern University is located to as far south as 95th Street, a lower income section of the city. Whenever we had to get around the city, my friends and I never took the bus. We preferred taking the L because it was fast and it was fun. You were sure to see a half-naked, completely drunk, homeless man sleeping on the train. You were sure to see the man who was tragically burned in an apartment fire, walking up and down the cars asking for handouts. Legend had it that he made over $100,000 a year begging for change. Riding the L, you were sure to sit on someone’s bodily fluid, sure to smell someone’s sour odor, and if the timing was right, sure to be solicited by some street hustler looking to cheat an unsuspecting passenger. These were things and people you’d never see in the suburbs.

It was all so disgusting and exciting all at once.