Street scenes Oak Park, 2005. Birds die. Frank Lloyd Wright houses? . . .

Day care mothers have it out . . .

“You need to get more manners,” irate mother dropping kid off at Hephzibah Home tells mother behind her in line who had honked once too often. The complainer should take care in these days of rage. The other might pull a rod and puncture her. Besides, she was being redundant. She needed to forget “to get.” “You need more manners” would have done it.

Bird patrol... Four of God’s winged creatures had bad luck on an early autumn morning trying to fly through the library’s big windows, ending lifeless on the ground below. A stroller spied them at 7:30 a.m., then went his way, returning at 8:30 to find the bodies gone.

He discussed the matter with the clean-up man, even then busily sweeping, who denied their existence, making it a question of whom or what the stroller was to believe, the clean-up man or his own two eyes. He had not long to mull this: another stroller happened by and claimed that she had counted 13 such bodies over a recent period.

Which led the concerned citizen to suggest a sign declaring this a no-fly zone, “Abandon hope, all ye birds who try to enter here.” [Instead, library authorities painted bird outlines on the windows, which worked.]

Gulp... This same Book Nook on Lake, with the big glass wall overhanging the park, as if to swallow it, swallows books and videos when you slip them into its user-friendly maw. We know that, but do we know that if it’s a book or video gotten from some other library, fed inadvertently to this one, that book or video is forwarded to that other library? Your tax dollars at work.

Showing the way... Mid-morning of a blustery January day, the stroller is approached at Oak Park & Lake by a young couple from another country asking, in careful English, where Frank Lloyd Wright houses can be found. They wear leather mid-length jackets and are of olive complexion, black hair, unassuming demeanor, are prosperous-looking but flaunt nothing. They apparently had just got off the Green Line train a block away, probably from the Loop.

A block that way, says the stroller, pointing north, then four or five blocks left until the park, then right, and there you have your Wright houses. Smiles and thank yous, and off they go. Nice.

Call me... It’s sooooo 2004 to complain [in 2005] about cell phone conversations in public. But we can talk about it, can’t we? Such as the Caribou customer whose phone rings loudly in a crowded shop. He answers, other customers overhear that he is in Oak Park (they knew that} and is buying a hot chocolate (the counter man knew it but not the guy at a window table, slightly out of earshot).

Call me some more... Another time, another store: Man enters discussing his affairs loudly and clearly. One of the two customers shoots him a look involuntarily -- can he be speaking to me? Man smiles and says “Hi,” friendly, not defiant, continues conversation. No sense of impropriety or need for privacy or, for that matter, concern about dominating the scene with his palaver.

Speaks of man who “merged” a failing pet store on Madison “Avenue” [sic] in Forest Park, and to a woman who will either go to jail or make restitution, thanks to legal action he instituted. Certain details he won’t go into, saying he’s in “the UPS store,” cruelly leaving accidental listeners uninformed.

Minutes later, he winds up: he and the other, apparently a sibling, will meet at “Mother’s.”

“That will be fun,” he says, and signs off.

Skeptical about human condition... The train passenger on his phone: So-and-so “tried to call me this morning, said he was sorry and sounded as if he was going to come through. Don’t know if I believe him.”

Unhappy with selection... Busy woman enters coffee shop in midst of phone conversation, heads turn. She looks over the pastries, announces, “Nothing healthy,” settles for carrot oat bran muffins with her coffee.

Being called... The village of Oak Park called at 9:43 am asking how I was doing that day. It was a young female voice -- “This is the village of Oak Park.” When I suggested in slightly raised volume -- nothing like when I tell the dog across the street to shut up -- that it not ask me that and get on with its business, she hung up.

Woman at window... A little past 8:30 on a weekday morning at Bank One [now Chase], a bent-over woman standing in line dropped her cane. A man behind her picked it up for her, they hatted. As they waited, she opened and shut several small purses, checking on the money in each.

She volunteered that she was 90. Born “down south, Mississippi,” had come to Chicago at 23. “On the IC?” he asked, meaning Illinois Central Railroad, standard for migrants. She smiled. Yes.

On this day she hoped she would not have to pay another fare, referring to the two-hour free-transfer time on a CTA card. She had come on the L and would return that way, getting off at Cicero, where she would catch a bus, her little purses emptied, their contents deposited -- if she could just find it all.

Each little purse a sort of miniature carpet bag, snapped at the top. Each with bills folded inside. But she couldn’t find all the money and rummaged for it, muttering as she did so, blaming herself for misplacing things as she grew older. Maybe she had left it on the L, she wondered. She stepped aside from the teller’s window, letting the next customer go before her.

Finally, “I’ve got it,” she said. The missing money, in one of the little purses. She moved back to the window, only a step away, to resume her business.