When growth perked up: Life on the east end...

Another scrap of Oak Park (IL) history . . .

Tale of two houses...

In 1971, the house at 300 South Humphrey, a block from the city’s West Side, went for $19,500. It was one of seven empties in the immediate vicinity. Black flight from undesirable neighborhoods had precipitated white flight.

Five years later in a recovering market, the house went for 36-five. The block had been cul-de-sac’d two ways, including at Austin, where the village had blocked the east-west street, Randolph.

You woke up one morning, and there it was: access denied to vehicular traffic. The other cul-de-sac was at the other end of the block, at the alley before Washington, where the village installed a blocking turnaround at a small price to owners. On a summer night, you could sit on your porch and watch a car go by every half hour if that. Nice.

Couples strolled, some from Austin a few steps away. But on one dreadful occasion, some joyriding white teen-agers tried to run a black kid off the sidewalk. I ran out yelling, and they got away, but eventually we made contact, and at least one distraught mother had her say with her wayward son.

This wayward-son bit took a less violent turn for us later, on the 200 North Harvey block, where one sunny day my just-purchased case of beer was grabbed off the top of our vehicle, where I had plopped it while carrying groceries into the house. A carful of lads careened away. Another lad came by, said hop in, and we gave chase until I got the plate number. Thanks to which, I got through to the father, whose son showed up later at our door, apologizing profusely. The moral was clear: When unloading groceries, take the beer in first.

Later on Harvey, I personally chased black kids from Austin who had tried to commandeer a bicycle ridden by neighbor Josh, age seven, on a busy summer night, with T-ball in full swing on the Beye School field across the street. They headed east. I, a jogger in those days, pursued. At one crucial moment, one stopped, turned, and hefted a rock. I kept chugging, and after one frozen moment, he didn’t throw but turned and continued running. It was all but written on his forehead: “This is not something I want to do.”

The cops had been called, and at Taylor, two blocks east, they had stopped several black teen-agers. I can still see the black cop, looking at me as I approached in full chase (hopeless by now, as my quarry had gone into gear), pointing at his catch: Are these the ones?

No, no. The cop was doing his best, but in truth the ones he had nabbed looked as if on their way to a chess game rather than running from an irate neighbor. Back at the front porch, I watched Josh solemnly giving answers to the officer questioning him, while the T-ball crowd across the street engaged, blithely enough, in bursts of cheering at the game.

That play field offered its own moments, like the day five or six white teens kept hitting baseballs to each other, half of which landed on the street. It gave them the pleasurable feeling of going for the fences, but some bounced off a parked car, and most offered a sharp challenge to pedestrians.

I called police, extorting a promise not to identify me, and a black officer came to counsel the hardballers. They took his advice and desisted. “You called him, didn’t you?” they said to me cutting the grass, while packing up to leave. I denied it, but later an egg was splashed against a bedroom window, which I considered rather moderate retribution.

Some weeks later a bunch of black kids playing softball were filling the air with blue language. I walked across the street and spoke to them about it. One started to get indignant, but another shushed him. Others made cracks about my skinny legs as I walked away, likening me to a Biafran refugee. Again, moderate, even understandable retribution.

Yet later I picked up one of the many balls that had accumulated from neighborly Doctor Jim and teammates’ practices, shagged by and given to our Jim, aged 10 or so. I gave it to the black kids, requiring an at-bat in return. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if I’d powdered it, sending it to the warning track? Sure. But I topped it several times, then handed the bat back and slunk away on my skinny legs.