Last One Out of The Park Turn Off The Light

     
   In the winter of  2010 I took an early morning walk across the land that once upon a time was heavily populated by kids nearly every day regardless of the season. A place to go sledding or ice-skating in winter, or to play baseball, maybe spend hours fishing or a little time cooling off in a concrete wading pool that was only about a foot deep during the summer.

    Simple pleasures during simpler times. Somewhere to escape and do something interesting away from our bedrooms and backyards and away from the watchful eyes of our parents. A better place to come of age never existed anywhere in the world for many of us who grew up within walking or bike riding distance of Schiller Park!

     But the years back then were short lived and in the wink of an eye we all got old. We left the park behind just as we said goodbye to nearly all of our childhood joys; most, if not all of the friends we had back then, as well as our old ball gloves, fishing poles, sleds, ice skates and bicycles. I was fifty-seven years old when I took that walk, and when I climbed the snow covered hill that was taller when I was ten years old it was more tiring than I remembered. As I gazed across the park below a feeling of melancholy sadness overwhelmed my other emotions.

    I guess I had hoped to feel something different, but the reality of all that was missing took center stage in the theater of my mind. I could see houses on the streets that rimmed the park where some of the best friends I ever had lived before we all had to say goodbye for one reason or another. Some of them dead now and me feeling not far behind. Standing alone atop the hill, cold and shivering and trying to imagine it full of kids and flexible flyers. Walking back down was less of a challenge for my tired old legs but I was thinking how much easier it would be if I were lying down on my old wooden sled. Imagine something like that; an old man like me guiding it past the trees until it came to a stop in deep snow and then trying to stand up to pull it home!

    But I didn't go right home, instead I walked to the pond and stood on the bridge to imagine another scene below. All I saw was a frozen lake; no fifty-gallon drums with wood burning inside to warm the hands and knees of ice skaters and no ice skaters. Only gentle sheets of snow blowing across it and covering a red and white sign placed by the city parks and recreation department that read "ICE UNSAFE FOR SKATING".

   That sign is posted year round and for about a month or more during any given year it is wrong, just another sign of the times we live in now. No longer can common sense or good judgement be expected. No longer can we allow or expect kids or even adults to step on the ice to see if it moves or cracks and if it does make the right decision. If I were a younger and steadier man with a pair of ice skates slung around my neck, and not so out of practice I probably would have broken the law that morning. Were that the case it might have actually been fun explaining my indiscretion to a judge!

     But after snapping a few pictures I decided to walk back home, feeling half frozen and worn, past the home of one of my dearest childhood friends and old park buddy Danny Sauer who lived in a double on the northwest corner of Reinhard Avenue and Jaeger Street and wishing he was still alive to share more memories. Dan passed away just a year earlier (2009) and some days I still can't believe it anymore than I want to accept it. Those days, when we were all still here, younger and fuller of energy, and needing no other reason to visit the park than because it was there.

    As I passed that corner I saw another old guy walking toward the park and I wondered if I might have known him years ago also, and if he was going there for the same reason I did. When we made eye contact I thought about asking him but I remembered the times and ways of people today and how random or unexpected greetings can easily be misinterpreted. So I said nothing and continued on, thinking perhaps he too may have wondered if we might have had memories in common.  I hope we did and that he's still out there somewhere because I don't want to be the last one out of the park.

     Let someone else turn off the light!