Since it is Halloween I thought I would tell you about a terror I faced as a youngster when I was growing up.
Around Wrigley Field there was a very strange, one block street called Alta Vista. It actually was only strange and scary to a kid. As it was then and still is considered today, it is a very special, historical block in the city of Chicago.
Back when you are a grade schooler, however, Historic doesn't enter an equation when the foreboding block scares the crap out of you.
Alta Vista had a cobblestone street with brick home after brick home abutted right next to each other without even a space for a gnat to fly between. The block was old century, and I mean old 19 th century and that meant many terrifying things for a kid.
Many homes had statues of lions or gargoyles, or other ominous beings on the concrete pads that book ended the front steps of the homes. These creatures guarded the homes at night on the dimly lit street. In the shadows, they all seemed to move ever so slightly when you looked away from them. Often it seemed they had changed pose completely as you walked past. The street lights, and I only recall three in the entire block, were the old style that bent over in a tendril of dim light. I remember the lights seemed to move closer to the ground when you looked at them. No doubt ready to scoop up a poor kid who got too close to their steely clutches.
All the old homes on the historic register had dim diffused lights inside so there was little illumination coming through the draped windows adding to the protection afforded the beasts to go unnoticed until it was too late.
There were high iron fences with looming spires that almost seemed to a youngster to be moving and beckoning one to come close enough so that the fence could grab you and squeeze the life out of you in an iron heartbeat.
The house's oak doors all had beasts of prey with door knockers in their mouths just waiting for a kid to touch them so they could bite your hand off or worse yet, grab you and pull you into their snarling mouths.
There was no parking on the street so on any given night, all was silent and foreign and frightening to a youngster as shadows danced and played with our young minds.
On Halloween, none of us would go trick or treating on the block unless there were a dozen or so of us willing to all go together. I guess we figured we had a chance to survive if there were a great number of us. After all, even monsters and ghouls and things that go bump in the night can't catch and eat an entire gaggle of trick or treaters.
I remember one year, while all of us were already pre-spooked by the block, that a man opened the door in zombie makeup.
A couple of the younger kids found this as going past the breaking point and throwing their entire bags of candy at the monster, ran down the block screaming for their parents.
I recall exactly how the block held a fear in our hearts that ended up making the block our induction into manhood.
When someone on a still, dark night could walk the entire block by themselves, they were considered men. I was eleven before I found the nerve to test the demons that lived and lurked along that gauntlet of terror.
I remember walking as close to the middle of the block as possible, giving myself at least a few steps lead if one of the statues came to life as I passed. It was a night of a full moon with random clouds that covered then released the moon's light all the more playing with the shadows and my young mind. I will never forget the relief I felt as I finished the block and I heard my friends cheer my safe passage. Many of them had yet to make the sojourn themselves and I was full of myself as I gave them tips on how to keep the monsters at bay.
That was a half century ago and although I have never been back to that old street in the old neighborhood, I do know this.
I made the trek once. I don't have to do it again. You never know, I might just have been lucky that night and maybe those monsters want revenge for missing me the first time. Maybe, just maybe.
Freelance writer, columnist, author and writing coach, ex-Chicagoan Mike Fak presently resides in Central Illinois. More information about Mike's services are available at his home website www.mikefak.com
Mike currently writes primarily humor columns for searchwarp bi-weekly and is the managing editor of www.lincolndailynews.com
Mike now offers a 26,000 word e-book on making money as a freelance writer for only $10.00 at this page. http://www.mikefak.com/id45.html
Isn't this about the time you started drinking, could that have been some of your problem. I always have my girl friend walk with me when I walk by your house. I figure "THEY" would rather take her than me. I'm not blue eyed and BLONDE.
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