I became an enthusiastic member of his gang. The eldest Scotti offered to defend me against the Musiks. The neighboring block on the other side of Kimbark was dominated by the Scotti brothers gang. They were the sons of a tailor down on 55 th and considered themselves bosses of the entire area bounded by Woodlawn and I found out that my tormentors were members of the Musik brothers gang. When my answer was not to his satisfaction, he pushed me back over one of his friends who was kneeling behind me. One of them stood up and asked me what I was looking at. In order to get to the Elementary School, I had to pass Ray School, the public school between 56th and 5 7 t One afternoon, walking home from school, I stopped to watch some Ray School boys playing marbles. My mother asked me, "why no collar?" When I explained, her only comment was, "I had no idea you felt so strongly about them."īut my problem was not restricted to my classmates. The next day I went down to breakfast without a collar. This went on for a time until I found a way to solve the problem: one night I took all my collars, tore them into pieces, -and threw them out my bedroom window into the alley. I felt obliged to hit him, whereupon he would beat me up. Every day one of my classmates, Percy Boynton, would say insulting things about my get-up. She insisted on dressing me in short pants and jacket and a shirt with a Buster Brown collar and a flowing black tie tied in a bow.Īt school, at ten o'clock every morning, we had a break for roughhousing and letting off steam. She smoked, loved to dance, entertained with gusto, had an enormous circle of friends, but she was also a romantic. My mother was ahead of her generation in many things. It was not until 1915 that I became a regular student at the Elementary School. We finally got back to the United States by a Holland-American liner during the battle of the Marne. We arrived in Munich on the morning Germany declared war on Russia and World War I began. Father became worried when Austria mobilized against Russia and decided to take us to a safe country,-Germany. We were mountain climbing in Austria when the Arch-Duke was murdered in Sarayevo. In 1914 Father again took us all to Europe. When we came back to Chicago, we moved to 1220 56 th Street, between Kimbark and Woodlawn. The year 1912 we spent in Europe, where Father was doing research on the Grail Romances. Parmenter wrote Mother a letter describing Father pouring maple syrup on his head while he scratched the breakfast pancakes. Father could become so intent on what he was talking about that he could be absent-minded. Guenzel would have to climb under the car and insert a new one.įather stayed behind in the Blackstone Avenue house with a fellow member of his department, Clarence Parmenter, both of them having opted to teach for the summer quarter. Every ten miles or so the boiler would over-heat and blow the safety valve. The roads north along Sturgeon Bay were merely two ruts with grass growing between them. We drove up with the Guenzels, friends of my parents, in a glorious red Stanley Steamer. Wisconsin, to escape the heat of the Chicago summer. That summer our mother took us to Fish Creek, The next year we moved to a house on what was then Blackstone Avenue between 57 th and 58 th Streets. Pussy was in second grade in the elementary school while I was being a pest around the hotel. Emily Kimborough, in her book about growing up in Chicago, has an amusing description of us staying at the Del Prado Hotel-the Nitze family, their charming daughter Pussy, and their spoiled, objectionable brat of a son. I was three I had a friend who was four and much more grown up. I remember it as being a glorious place with high ceilings, sunny rooms, an enormous veranda with rocking chairs. We moved from Berkeley, California, to the Del Prado Hotel on 59th Street, on the lakeshore side of the Illinois Central Railroad tracks, in the fall of that year. In 1910 my father was asked by President Harper to join the faculty of the University of Chicago as head of the Department of Romance Languages and Nitze, class of 1923, recollections he wrote for that journal in 1985. HPHS President Alice Schlessinger, formerly editor of LAB NOTES, U-High'sJournal, has suggested that Society members might be interested in the recollections of Pan/ H. Autumn/Winter 2002 Volume 23, Number 4, Published by the Hyde Park Historical Society, WINTER 2001-2002 MY SCHOOL DAYS IN HYDE PARK
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |