This is going to get a bit personal I guess, but whatever.
I was born and lived the majority of my life in Colorful Colorado, and it truly is a majestic place. If you’ve never been there I recommend hiking the Boulder Flatirons, driving through Glenwood Canyon, going to Hogshead in Denver for some good beer, seeing the Aspen trees change color during the fall on the Colorado Monument, and doing something snow related. Ideally two somethings snow related.
Right before I started highschool, we moved to a suburb of Chicago. It was (and is) a totally different place. The people were different, the activities were different, the music was different. The style was different. The hotdogs were mind-boggling.
It didn’t happen right away — in fact it took a very long time, but eventually Chicago felt like more than home to me.
Over 100 years ago, my great grandfather worked as a conductor on the L, the Chicago railway system. The very first sections of the L opened in 1892. My grandfather told me a story once of him and his siblings riding the train for free when his dad was a ticket-checker.
My grandfather went on to fight in WWII, get married, and spend the majority of his life less than an hour away from the say train station his father worked on. My grandfather worked at Borden — an Ohio company that had pretty serious roots in Chicago — and a couple of other locations as an engineer. He never went to school, but he comes from the School of hard Knocks. He could fix anything.
Then some time later, my dad was born. Also about an hour away from the train station. At one point he worked across the street from the second McDonald’s. He lived and worked in Chicago until he went to college. Later he came back to Chicago one day and met to mom.
My mother’s parents weren’t from Chicago originally, but moved there shortly after my mother was born. She worked across the street from the original Portillo’s hotdog house. A staple visit every time I’m in the area. (That and probably the best pizza in the world hands down.)
My mother’s mother comes from Ohio, but after they moved she was a nurse until she retired. Some of her stories from the psych ward still send shivers down my spine.
My uncle (unrelated in blood, but very seriously related) also lived around Chicago for a very long time. His father was Chief of the Chicago Fire Department at one point. He was, in my uncle’s words, “A brave man who smoked some of the worst-smelling pipe tobacco. I still smell it sometimes.” One story in particular sticks in my brain about my great uncle (great uncle?):
“It was a story about bravery [in the book],” my uncle said. “When he was on the force they had a call downtown at an apartment building. And you know how much space is between those apartment buildings. [Makes joking gesture about two feet wide.] Not much space, definitely not enough for a truck. It was a four-story building and the fire was on the fourth floor. They were trying to get people out of the third. But they ladder they brought wasn’t tall enough.” What do you do when the ladder isn’t tall enough? You make it taller. “My dad and another man put the ladder on their shoulders. They had the other firefighters and the rescues walk up and down. He had to take pills for the rest of his life because of that.”
It’s something that the fire department still practices today, thanks to them. Just in case.
My mother’s father was also from Ohio. After they moved he taught highschool English during the Civil Rights movement. Something I’m rather proud of. He later would go on to teach classes and take classes at the University of Chicago for many years. His next wife also taught there.
My parents, after getting married and moving to Boulder, they had a couple kids.
Initially, moving from Colorado to Illinois wasn’t a fun move. I missed my friends and my local hangouts. But after a while, and especially after going back to Colorado for college, I realized that the city is as much a part of me as my family. I think it’s in my blood. Family is an enigma. Family history double so.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Thanks for reading. Let’s go get pizza.
