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  After arriving on Madison Street, Billy and Frankie locked their bikes to a couple of signposts and walked into Kresge’s five-and-dime to buy the pièce de résistance for Billy’s like-new bicycle: handlebar streamers. They left the store around four thirty, and Billy pushed the streamers into the handlebar holes. Now it looked really cool.

  Billy crouched to unlock the chain he’d threaded through the wheels and around a light pole. He was twirling through the numbers of his combination lock, when a nearby black teen started chatting with him. The instant Billy pulled apart the lock, the older boy punched him in the face, leaped on the bike, and took off. Shocked more than injured, Billy picked himself up, hand to his sore jaw, and watched in dismay as the pride of his summer disappeared into the Madison Street crowds.

  Sobbing when he got home, Billy told Mom what had happened. She called the police, who said they’d send over an officer to take a report. We all tried to comfort Billy for his loss, assuring him it wasn’t his fault, that the police would catch the thief.

  Detectives came to our house that evening. Dressed in rumpled trousers and open jackets over shirts, ties loosened at the neck, they showed their badges at the door and introduced themselves. Mom and Dad led them into the living room, where they questioned Billy and jotted down the details of the crime. Flipping his notebook closed, one said, “Even if we caught the culprit, they’d let him go. The house of corrections is too crowded as it is.” They bade us goodbye.

  “Well, that certainly was eye-opening,” Mom said, after closing the door behind them. “I guess we’re on our own.”

  As far as I knew, we’d always been on our own. More relevant to our situation at the time than the cop’s cynical analysis of crime and punishment was what I discovered decades later in Mom’s diary.

  Mom recorded the basic facts of the battery and bike-theft incident, but made no comment about it. Instead, she wrote this: “Boy, did I have the ironing tonight! Ironed into the wee hours.” She continued with a long list of completed chores. Instead of reflecting on her son’s safety—whether an assault and robbery in broad daylight might be a signal to move—she focused on her own accomplishments. My father also knew about the attack, but I don’t recall either of my parents talking about relocating. But they had decided, even before the assault, to take Billy out of dicey Marconi School and enroll him in a Lutheran grade school a few miles north.

  The mugging didn’t change Billy’s friendship with Junior. He, more than Paul or I, was growing up with black kids; he wasn’t ruled by the negative stereotypes that whites had created for blacks. He saw the good and the bad—from personal experience.

  But stories like Billy’s, an overriding fear of what would happen next, and the continuing decline of their property values prompted other white families to desert the community as if outrunning a wildfire. All of my neighborhood friends either had already moved or were planning to move. Unlike Dad’s generation, when West Side neighbors and Bethel Church members maintained close ties with each other’s families for decades, the winds of racial change now blew us permanently apart.

  CHAPTER 25: Not Unhappy

  Bethel Church Sunday School Christmas Pageant: Linda, right; Billy, back row, 2nd from left, 1965.

  1964

  In February of 1964, just before I turned fifteen, and eight months after the first black family had moved onto our street, our neighbor to the east, Mrs. Day, sold her house for $16,000. She had bought it for $20,000. Mom and I went outside to introduce ourselves to the new owners, an African American family. They were hauling their belongings into the turreted, grand greystone, the most beautiful house on the block. It didn’t occur to me to reflect on the irony that the people we wanted to keep out of the neighborhood owned this magnificent home. Mom strode up and extended her hand to the husband and wife. “Hello, my name is Mrs. Gartz. I’m your neighbor.” She gestured with her head toward our house and then toward me. “This is my daughter, Linda.”

  “Hello. Nice to meet you,” I said.

  “Mr. Lewis,” said the tall, thin man in a gentle voice, just a whisper of a smile across his face, “and my wife, Mrs. Lewis. Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” he said, nodding to Mom.

  “A pleasure to meet you both,” said Mrs. Lewis.

  “And you, miss,” he said, turning to me. This here’s my son, Vance,” he said, reaching his arm out toward his boy, who was carrying a packed box toward the house. Vance looked a bit older than Billy, tall and lean like his father, with short-cropped hair and milk-chocolate eyes. He put the box on the sidewalk, brushed his hands on his pants, and extended one to mom.

  “Hello, ma’am,” Vance said to my mother.

  “Hi, Vance,” I said, with a quick touch and wave off my forehead. “I’m Linda.”

  “Hi,” said Vance, glancing down, then up with a shy smile.

  “We’re sure glad to be in this nice house. Looks like you take real good care of your property, ma’am,” said Mr. Lewis.

  “Oh, yes,” said Mom. “A house is so much work. Well, better be going inside and let you get on with your moving. Just wanted to say hello—and welcome. See you later.”

  We said goodbyes all around. We didn’t stop to stare at the possessions being unloaded on the sidewalk, but what I did see looked like the same kind of basic furniture we had. Their couch was covered in clear plastic, just like Grandma Gartz’s.

  “Isn’t that Mr. Lewis nice?” Mom said to me, after we were back in the kitchen. “All these colored men are so polite. They always say ‘ma’am’ to me. Even Vance called me ma’am. I’ve never had a white boy address me like that.”

  “I’ll bet Billy and Vance will be friends.”

  “You know, I’m not the least bit unhappy in this changing neighborhood,” Mom said, as she emptied coffee grounds into the trash and rinsed out the coffeemaker. She turned to look at me, placing the pot upside down into the dish drainer. “I like Junior and his sisters,” she said, gesturing with her left hand to the house that the first black family had bought. “Guess what those girls did the other day? I was loaded down with groceries, walking back from the A&P. They saw me coming down the block and ran up to me and asked if they could help carry something. Then they each took a bag. Wasn’t that kind of them?”

  “That’s really nice!” I couldn’t think of any one of our previous white neighbors, except Barbara, making such an offer. I liked Junior’s sisters, too. They laughed a lot and always smiled when we saw each other, but I didn’t get to know them. My life was seven miles north; my school, friends, and activities far away.

  Focused on homework, school and friendship, I wasn’t paying much attention to the steady attrition of neighborhood icons disappearing right along with our white neighbors. Our favorite local movie theater, the Marbro, where Dad had watched films since the 1930s, closed permanently on October 17, 1963.

  Whites were quickly becoming the minority in West Garfield Park, but by this time, my parents seemed unfazed by the reversal. They got along better with the new black residents than they had with our previous crabby white neighbors. The “squeamish” feelings Mom had expressed in her diary when Junior’s family had moved in were long forgotten.

  Despite good relations with our African American neighbors, West Garfield Park had become decidedly less safe. Blacks and whites were less likely to venture out after dark, and local stores responded. Kresge’s five-and-dime and the pharmacist both now shuttered their doors earlier than in the past. No wonder neighbors were surprised to find that Mom ventured out well past the time stores had closed. In her diary, she wrote:

  March 29, 1964

  Lately the streets around here are as deserted as in a western movie before a gun battle. I am not afraid, but I’m cautious. I always look behind me and carry a little can of tear gas in my pocket with my finger on the trigger.

  Looking back and reading her words, I’m now aware that the new community, the new people, even the dangerous night—excited her.

  CHAPTER
26: Saturday Night Burger

  Linda and Bill, early date, summer 1965.

  1965

  In March of 1965, we attended the farewell dinner for Bethel Church’s pastor, Oscar Kaitschuk. Bethel had been an integral part of Dad’s fifty years in West Garfield Park. At his last service, Pastor Kaitschuk, in his usual white vestment with a colorful stole hanging around his neck and draping down both sides in front, stood facing a smattering of congregants. Palms facing forward, he started to give his last benediction. “May the Lord bless you and … ” Tears streaming down his face, he choked, bowed his head, and sobbed. When Dad was a boy, Pastor Kaitschuk’s father had been Bethel’s minister, presiding over up to four Sunday services accompanied by five robust choirs. Now I sang with a senior choir of three to five other diehards, lifting our puny voices in the cavernous church to no more than twenty or thirty parishioners remaining in the pews, most from my grandparents’ generation.

  Taking a cue from my parents, I wasn’t concerned any longer about the racial change in our community. I was absorbed with typical teen anxieties. At sixteen, I was still clueless about how to attract the attention of boys I liked, marveling at the girls who bubbled in effortless banter and laughter with boys in LHN’s hallways before school or during lunch.

  Peggy and I were still inseparable friends, growing in our understanding of the high-school social scene, but Peggy was still in the lead. In late May of our junior year, she called me. “Hey, Gartz. John Stock’s parents are out of town. He’s having an open party next Sunday—on Memorial Day. We have to go!” An open party meant anyone could come.

  “Oh, man! I really don’t want to bump into Bob. I mean, I’m glad to have a date for the prom, but that’s all it is—a prom date.”

  “Come on, Gartz! It’ll be a blast! He might not even show up, and who knows who else will be there. You’ll miss all the fun.”

  I sighed deeply. “You’re right. I should go.” Peggy always knew the place to be and tugged me into the social scene.

  On Sunday evening, May 30, Dad drove me to pick up Peggy, then on to the party in Park Ridge, a well-heeled northwest suburb. It would be too late to get back to the West Side afterward, so an overnight was planned at Peggy’s. She and I both had wriggled into tight white Levi’s and slipped into soft moccasins, cutting-edge cool in 1965. Peggy topped her outfit with a faded-blue madras short-sleeved shirt. I wore a sleeveless yellow shell. Dad drove us. “Thanks, Daddy,” I said, kissing him on the cheek, before bouncing out of the car.

  “Have fun,” he called after me, and I turned to see that bittersweet smile of a father watching his little girl grow up.

  We followed the rockin’ beat of the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie,” the titillating lyrics we thought we heard in the slurred words drawing us into a subversive mood. Peg led the way down dark basement stairs into a room heated by a writhing crowd of teens. Some of LHN’s coolest kids were doing the “Jerk,” convulsing their torsos, hands overhead, looking down, then to the side, then at their partner. It was the latest dance, but I had no idea how to get my body to mimic the motions. I was totally out of it. No one’s going to ask me to dance, I thought.

  A keg of beer was probably somewhere, but it didn’t occur to me to look for it. Within seconds, some guy I’d never seen before asked Peggy to dance. She threw a happy smile at me over her shoulder. I was left alone, standing against the wall. Watching as usual.

  The next dance, that same guy headed my way. Tall, lean, and smiling with a confident stride, he had light-brown hair cut Beatles’ length, and he dressed (you guessed it) in white Levi’s and a madras shirt. His mouth was at my ear, shouting, “Wanna dance?” What a relief!

  “Sure.” I caught his gentle hazel eyes and smiled broadly. “My name’s Linda!” I yelled through cupped palms.

  “Bill.”

  We danced to the driving beat of the Rolling Stones’ new hit, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” I tried doing the Jerk, but I felt more spasmodic than cool. Then Johnny Mathis’s tender lyrics flowed from the speakers. Romantic, evoking love’s uncertainty, “Chances Are” slowed down the pulsing night. Bill drew me toward him. I raised my arms around his neck, and we smiled at each other before he tucked his head onto my shoulder, and we swayed in mellow harmony. I liked the way he cupped the small of my back with his hands, the way we fit each other’s bodies together. I think I’ll stick with this guy through the night, kept running through my mind.

  In between songs, we chatted. A friend of his, a senior at Luther North, had brought him to the party. I told him about my family and my fun-loving father. He said that he’d been working since thirteen at a real-estate office and saved his money to pay for flying lessons and scuba equipment. He’d earned his pilot’s license and dove in local quarries.

  Bill was finishing his sophomore year at Northwestern University, but it didn’t occur to me to be impressed that a college guy was spending the whole evening with me. I could tell he liked me—just as I liked him. I didn’t have to try to figure out, like I did around other boys, What’s the magic to fit in? We talked easily, naturally, then danced, then talked more. He never left my side. About eleven thirty, Bill drove Peggy and me back to her house. Before we exited, he asked, “Can I have your number?”

  I pulled a scrap of paper from my purse and jotted down my home phone. “Here you go,” I said, smiling as I handed it to him. “And thanks for the ride home.” I had never given an unknown boy my number before. I felt I had passed an important threshold.

  As soon as we left the car, Peggy pumped me for details. “Gartz! A college guy? That is so cool! What’s he like?”

  “Well, he’s really funny, and … just nice. He goes to Northwestern, but he lives with his parents. He was really easy to talk to. And get this: he has a pilot’s license and scuba dives.”

  “Wow! That’s crazy. So do you think he’ll call you?”

  I thought a moment. “I think so.”

  The next day was Memorial Day. I had to study for finals, but I couldn’t concentrate on German verb conjugations or master the eye-numbing periodic table of elements. Instead, every few minutes or so, I’d stare at the pink Princess phone, sitting silent on the glass-doored cabinet of knickknacks I had painted pink with green trim to match my wallpaper.

  Tuesday night, two days after I met Bill, the phone rang at 7:10 p.m. I leaped up from my desk, not shrewd enough to let it ring so as not to seem eager.

  “Hi, Linda. It’s Bill.”

  “Hi, Bill. Fun party, wasn’t it?”

  “The best.”

  We talked for about half an hour before he said, “I’d like to take you downtown this Saturday to see My Fair Lady. I hope you’re free.” Starring Audrey Hepburn, the musical was one of the most popular of the year. I’d seen it just a few weeks prior with my parents, but I didn’t know how to tell Bill that without sounding picky, so I figured I’d just see it again.

  “Sure. That sounds great.”

  “I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said.

  Going downtown was a big deal, so I dressed for the warm June night in a pale sea-green sleeveless chiffon shift and tan-shaded nylon stockings, cinched into place at midthigh with garter clips hanging from a girdle. Always a skinny kid, I sure didn’t need a girdle, but I’d never heard of a garter belt. White two-inch heels completed the ensemble. I tossed lipstick, blush, a comb, and some cash into my white purse, then checked myself out in the mirror. I wasn’t nervous because we’d clicked so well at the party.

  When Bill arrived, my parents joined me to greet him at the door. There was no way I was going anywhere without initial parental scrutiny, so Bill sat down for a conversation with Mom, Dad, and me in our living room, where my parents had set four chairs in a semicircle.

  Bill looked more like seventeen than the nearly twenty-year-old he was, so it didn’t register with my parents that I was going out with a guy almost four years my senior. He wore a suit jacket and narrow tie, “downtown Chicago” attire in 196
5. He looked awfully cute, with his longish hair and lean body. I recalled our easy banter at the party and knew there’d be no problem.

  My parents asked him the usual questions: where he lived, what he studied (chemistry), about his family. Leaning forward casually in his chair, his hair just brushing the top of his eyebrows, he spoke with comfortable confidence. His dad was a lawyer, his mom a housewife. Bill lived with them and his two brothers on Chicago’s northwest side in a building his dad had constructed to house the family’s living space on the second floor and his law practice on the first. They were landlords, too, but rented office space, not rooms.

  My parents nodded and smiled throughout the conversation, Mom making punctuating responses of approval (“Oh! That’s nice!”). Dad listened intently, as he always did to others, tilted his head or raised his eyebrows in concurrence, and said just the right thing to keep the conversation casual. It was obvious they liked what they saw and heard: down-to-earth and smart, Bill came from an educated, middle-class family, with good values of hard work and ambition.

  When we were ready to leave, Mom insisted I take a sweater and gave me extra cash—“mad money,” she called it—so I could take a cab home or make a phone call if things didn’t go well. As we exited, Mom just had to humiliate me. “Don’t forget,” she said to Bill, “Cinderella turns into a pumpkin at midnight.”

  “Of course,” said Bill, smiling.

  “Okay, Mom, we’ve got it.” I rolled my eyes. We were home by midnight.

  On our next date, Bill picked me up in his turquoise Pontiac. I slid over to sit close to him on the bench seat. The car was powerful, with massive fins poking out the back, and Bill drove it fast—showing off as he sped within inches of parked cars. In the back seat were his good buddy, Dennis, and a pretty girl, Susan, whom Dennis was taking out for the first time.

  After dinner and a movie in downtown Chicago, we headed home around eleven o’clock in the summer heat and dark. With the windows open, as we listened to Dick Biondi’s raspy DJ voice introducing British Invasion hits on the radio, Dennis called out, “Hey, I’m hungry. How about getting something to eat?”