Table of Contents Views and Mechanics Publisher's Note Review of Down to a Sunless Sea Review of Words of a Feather Creative Nonfiction Burning Men By Gerard Sarnat Integration By David Caplan Hands Across the Sea By Jennifer Mazik Poetry I Can't Wait Until the Resurrection By David Halliday Dashing With You By Mick Joyce Island of Hong By Mick Joyce Fiction The Price of Shoes By Sandra M. McDow Jeux d'Esprit By Julio Peralta-Paulino Feed Me, Pet Me By Stephen Dorneman The Lovely Peasant By G. David Schwartz About the Contributors © 2008, River Walk Journal and respective authors and artists. All rights reserved. Do not use or reproduce without permission. River Walk Journal, Inc. Board of Directors Chairman - Elizabeth Ross Vice Chairman - Joseph Koch Secretary/Treasurer - Geri Stock-Ross Editorial Director - Patti Kurtz, DA Literacy Director - Kenneth Weiss, Ed.D Policy Director - PA State Rep. Jess Stairs Advisory Board Chairman - Patti Kurtz, DA Asst. Chairman - Dan Lachenman, PhD Samuel Hazo Christopher Leland Edwin Yoder Joseph Bathanti Journal Staff Publisher - Elizabeth Ross Editor-In-Chief - Joseph Koch Senior Editor - Patti Kurtz Editor - Elizabeth Murray Copyeditor - Kathy Skaggs Publicity Director (PA) - Geri Stock-Ross For information about submissions, visit http://www.riverwalkjournal.org/subs.html. Questions about promotions, subscribers' services, and advertising should be sent to publisher@riverwalkjournal.org. River Walk Journal, Inc. is a non-profit corporation run entirely by volunteers. For information about volunteer opportunities and internships, visit VolunteerMatch.

Integration By David Caplan Come, let’s return to my old neighborhood. I went to Avalon Park School, at 80th and Kenwood on Chicago’s South Side. In that part of Chatham the trees formed a giant canopy above the streets. The dark brick bungalows varied in style and the sidewalk was uneven, tilted in places by great roots underneath. At 83rd and Kenwood you crossed into Marynook, the late-’50s suburban-style development where we lived. In Marynook the houses were modern and the sidewalks level. The trees were slender and young, and it was hard to imagine them ever growing big enough to block out the sky. Curved streets fed into Kenwood Avenue, the main north-south artery through Marynook. The streets had the same names as those venerable ones in Hyde Park, a few miles to the north: Kimbark, Kenwood, Woodlawn, Dorchester, University. On school days Kenwood overflowed with kids; the Woodstock generation was marching off to school. Our address was 8654 S. University. Although we lived on the perimeter of the district, nearly a mile from school, the walk never seemed long when I was with Gail. Even in first grade I knew she was beautiful, and she was so lighthearted that the things that troubled me no longer mattered once I confessed them to her. One day Gail told me we couldn’t walk together the following year, but she didn’t say why. At first I thought the reason was that she was a girl and I was a boy. Then one summer morning my mother noticed a moving truck in front of Gail’s house. As if sensing the possibility of danger, my mother ordered me to stay in the house, and she went over to Gail’s to find out what was going on. When she returned and told me Gail’s family was moving, I was full of questions. Why were they moving? Why hadn’t Gail told me? Why hadn’t she said goodbye? They were moving because of integration, my mother said. It was a word I had learned the year before, when a black girl joined our kindergarten class. After school that day my mother had asked if there was any trouble and I said there wasn’t. The school was integrated now, she said. For a long time I watched the men go back and forth between the house and the cavernous truck. I was hoping to see Gail, but my mother said she was already gone. That was how it happened. No for-sale sign ever appeared on the lawn, and the neighbors didn’t know until the day a moving truck arrived. With rumors of blockbusting swirling around and speculation about the inflated prices sellers were getting, neighborhood meetings were held. My mother came home from a meeting reassured. People said they were going to remain in their homes. But my father wasn’t convinced. A lifelong Chicagoan, he had seen the way neighborhoods change. Years later, one Marynook resident, Sid S., recalled a neighborhood meeting at the church down by school. Sid told me a guy got up and was talking like FDR, saying there was nothing to fear but fear itself. “And that SOB moved out in the middle of the night,” Sid said. My father was fond of recalling the day in 1957 when he first saw the sign on 87th Street advertising the new development. Marynook was going to be built by Joseph Merrion, one of the developers who had built part of Jeffery Manor, the great post-war development a couple miles away. My father would say that he had always regretted not buying in Jeffery Manor when he was first starting out and the houses were going for next to nothing. This time he didn’t hesitate. Although he had gone bankrupt in the camera business, he was still able to qualify for home ownership. With $500 down and a 4 1/4% GI loan, a piece of the American dream could still be his. At the time my father bought the house, we were living on the ground floor of my grandparents’ two-flat at 88th and Blackstone. “Let’s go look at the new house,” my father would say after dinner. I was four years old, and our visits to the site are among my earliest memories. At first there was nothing to see, but then one day it was there—the shape of a house had arisen from a sea of mud. My parents, my sister, and I stood before it like pioneers on the prairie. The summer after fourth grade, there was a summer language arts program at Dixon School, which was in a black neighborhood west of Cottage Grove. I had always been told not to ride my bike in that direction—across Cottage Grove was beyond the perimeter of my world. My classmate Jennifer, who lived down the street, was going, and her mother had offered to drive me too. I asked my mother if it was safe to go, and she said it was. I imagined that Dixon would somehow be cast in dark shadows, but the school’s light façade shone in the sun on the first day of summer school. Our classroom had the familiar details—manila-colored penmanship guides above the blackboard and rows of wooden desks on black iron stems bolted to the floor. The kids, all black except for Jennifer and me, had attentive faces. It was the first time I had ever been in an honors class. One morning Gwendolyn Brooks read poetry to our class and then squeezed her adult frame into the desk behind me and helped us with our own poems. I was beginning to realize that blacks could be teachers, honor students, famous poets. Sometimes I thought about what my father said, that someday the whole South Side was going to be black. It seemed possible that black people could operate a world of their own perfectly well. Fifth grade. For-sale signs were displayed openly now, and there was always talk about where people were moving, as if they were leaving the old country for the new world. My fifth-grade class picture shows an even mix of black and white students. We were young, and there was no racial strife. Everyone got along. My sister entered high school that year. When Marynook was built, the homebuyers understood that it would be districted for Bowen High School, which was primarily white and considered one of the better high schools in the city. But Bowen was severely overcrowded, and not long after construction was completed, Marynook was districted for Hirsch High School, which was mostly black and did not have Bowen’s academic reputation. Protests were made to the Board of Education, and Superintendent Benjamin Willis finally agreed to meet with a representative from Marynook. After the meeting, news of Willis’s response spread throughout the neighborhood. My mother was stunned when she received the call—Willis could not be persuaded to allow students from Marynook the option of attending Bowen. Perhaps the superintendent was in too much trouble already for juggling school boundaries and placing the famous “Willis wagon” mobile classrooms outside overcrowded schools such as Bowen so they could accommodate more students. The white families in Marynook arrived at various solutions to the high-school problem. One family used the address of a relative in the Bowen district. A few families chose University High at the University of Chicago or Lindbloom, a technical school that accepted students from any neighborhood. But for most of the white families in Marynook, the answer was simply to move. Chicago Vocational School, at 87th and Jeffery, also accepted students from any neighborhood. Formerly all male, CVS was now co-ed, and for my sister the imposing, industrial-style school was a solution. The sons of the Eastern European steelworkers on the Southeast Side were educated at CVS. Dick Butkus of the Bears went there. The school’s strengths were shop classes and football. College preparation wasn’t emphasized; my sister took secretarial and art courses. She says she was the only Jewish girl in the school, and there was one Jewish boy. With her dark coloring, everyone assumed she was Italian or Hispanic, and she didn’t tell them otherwise. She was frustrated when she saw the Jewish kids from Bowen, which was just blocks from CVS, hanging out at the shops on 87th Street after school. We started looking to move that year. Our neighbors across the street, the M.’s, had moved to a development in the southern suburbs called Homewood Terrace that seemed ideal. It was similar to Marynook, but far removed from the city and its problems. We waited too long and Homewood Terrace was sold out, but a new development, Homewood Terrace II, was being planned. On a summer day the salesman drove us in his new Oldsmobile to the site of HTII. When he rolled up the windows the car filled with humid air, but the salesman said it would cool off in a minute. My father and the salesman discussed whether air conditioning in cars would someday be common, as it had become in houses, or would remain a luxury. At the site we stood and looked out at the rough ground, on which nothing had yet been built, and I remembered first seeing our house in Marynook when I was four years old. My father talked to the salesman for a long time about floor plans, schools, and public transportation. The salesman said these lots would sell out quickly as well, and he asked for a deposit. There wasn’t a choice that was as affordable as our three-bedroom ranch house in Marynook. My parents finally settled on a colonial model, and a numbered lot was reserved for us. We were to return in a week or two to finalize the deal. The next Sunday we drove out to the development office, and my father asked for the deposit back. In the car on the way home his voice dropped down low and he said, “I just can’t swing it.” He went on to explain that the M.’s both made good salaries as teachers. They were a two-car family, and out here you needed two cars. Mother didn’t drive and would have no way of getting around. Homewood just wasn’t right for us. We continued to look. On Sundays we went on drives to various suburbs, both north and south. But I knew my father wasn’t serious when he talked to salespeople about floor plans, schools, and public transportation. When he was serious he had gone in and bought our house and, as he always took pride in noting, it was the fourth one built in Marynook. By the time I was in seventh grade, Superintendent Willis was gone and the Board of Education reversed its position—kids from Marynook could now go to either Hirsch or Bowen. The decision came too late for most of the white residents of Marynook, but for me it was a relief because I no longer had to worry about where I would go to high school. Toward the end of seventh grade a friend of mine moved to Highland Park, a distant and affluent suburb on the North Shore. Steve’s family was part of a group in Marynook I had always thought of as the professional people. The fathers were affiliated, as my mother said, with places like the University of Chicago and Michael Reese Hospital. Steve’s father taught materials science at the Illinois Institute of Technology and had worked on the space program. The following year I went on the Illinois Central and Northwestern trains by myself to visit Steve. When I saw his family’s custom-designed home and the secluded beauty of the North Shore, I realized that the professional people were not meant to remain in Marynook. They were liberal, and as a group they hadn’t been the quickest to leave. But anything for possible for them. They would not remain loyal to our enclave in the city forever. Eighth grade passed slowly. The breeze drifted in through the classroom windows, and occasionally there was the sound of a car going down Kenwood Avenue. The war we had first learned about in fifth grade was still going on. Like sports scores, body counts were announced on the evening news. But in the spring of 1967 it was peaceful as ever in Chatham. Groovin', a song by a white group called the Young Rascals, was a big crossover hit that year, in the top ten on both WLS, the white radio station, and on WVON, the black station. Out on the playground, some of the black girls in my class danced to a forty-five of it they played on a scratchy portable record player. When our teacher said record players were forbidden on school grounds, the girls weren’t deterred—singing the song themselves, they continued to dance. The girls choreographed a routine to Groovin’ for our graduation ceremony. In graduation rehearsals the school gym teacher, a diminutive woman with a drill sergeant demeanor, kept barking, “Watch it, girls, watch it.” Her admonitions made the boys snicker and the girls restrain their movements just a slight bit. I was asked to give the student speech at graduation. When I stepped up to the lectern and said “Parents, teachers, and friends,” I felt something was missing—I was thinking of all the kids I had known who weren’t there. Later in the program the girls danced beautifully and without restraint, and I kept expecting the gym teacher to call out her warnings but she didn’t, and the number lent our graduation a soulful air. On a June evening Jennifer had a graduation party in her backyard. Our two families and one other were the only original homeowners left on University Avenue. I felt good as I walked over to Jennifer’s house, almost grown up. At the party were the remnants of a group of Jewish kids I had known my whole life: Jennifer, Jonathan, and Liz. Craig, a Japanese kid whose father was a dentist, was there, as were Nancy, who wasn’t Jewish, and Bruce, a black kid who had moved to Marynook a few years before. Jennifer’s father was in charge of the food and the treasure hunt. Like Jonathan’s father, Mr. B. was a lawyer who had gone to law school at the University of Chicago. He looked like Darren on Bewitched and had a witty manner I liked. Mrs. B. had taken Jennifer and me to see Richard III at the U of C’s Mandel Hall that year. And she had driven the two of us to the campus to take the exam for University High. Jennifer was considering going there, and I was taking the exam in case something happened with Bowen. Exhilarated by the cold spring air, Jennifer and I chased each other around hysterically while we were waiting for her mother to pick us up after the exam. Sometimes I thought about what it would be like to be married to Jennifer and have Mr. and Mrs. B. as my second parents. I went away to overnight camp in July, and when I came home I learned Jennifer had moved. Like Gail years before, she had kept moving a secret. The block felt strange without the B.’s. They had always been there, four doors away. One Sunday afternoon we drove north to visit my father’s old friend Larry Cohen, whom my father knew from his camera store days, when Larry, a portrait photographer, would come in to buy supplies. In the early ’50s, the neighborhood they were in, around 67th and Stony Island, was changing, and Larry had moved his studio to the North Side. Paralyzed by debt and failing nerves, my father had remained until he couldn’t go on any longer. Larry and my father were a lot alike. They were both kibitzers from the old school, not meant for college and the professions, but with abilities of their own. They were masters with a camera who knew how to take over a wedding and weren’t above clowning to get people to smile. Around the time my father bought our house in Marynook, Larry bought a spacious split-level in a new Skokie development called Timber Ridge. “He was smart,” my father would always say. Then he would surmise what Larry’s house was worth now. I was with Larry’s daughter in her room listening to records, but I caught fragments of the conversation in the living room. My father was talking to Larry about moving, and I could hear a change in his tone. This was a serious conversation. Larry told my father everything was right here—schools, transportation, Jewish people. As for the price, Larry said all the homes weren’t expensive. There were townhouses just a few blocks away. In the car on the way home my father said he had made up his mind that we were going to move to Skokie. After so many years it was hard to believe. On that afternoon Larry Cohen did what no salesman had ever been able to do—he told my father there was a place where we belonged. The problem was selling our house. A number of Marynook homeowners had moved away without first selling, but that wasn’t an option for us. My father said he had to at least break even to be able to afford to move. He went to Travis Realty at 87th and Cottage Grove and was told there were many houses for sale in our neighborhood and hundreds more for sale all over the South Side. Travis wasn’t interested in listing our house. I went with my father to a small real estate agency in Skokie. The owner was a heavyset man who was confident and unhurried like Jackie Gleason in The Hustler. My father told him he wanted to buy something affordable in Skokie, but first he had to sell his home. He asked if they would accept a listing on the South Side. “Why not?” the owner said. One of his agents drove out to the South Side and pounded a sign into our lawn. The agency would send prospective buyers, but showing the property would be up to us. My sister and I would straighten the magazines on the coffee table and plump up the sagging cushions of the sofa before people came to look. The prospective buyers, all of whom were black, were polite but uninterested. I found it hard to meet their eyes. The reason we were moving was painfully obvious. I felt that they saw us as desperate whites whom time had left behind. Our house seemed stuck in the ’50s, with its blond furniture, worn gray carpet, and floor-model RCA television that always needed new tubes. The visitors passed through the rooms and then left. My mother, my sister, and I were powerless to retain them. My father was home the Sunday Mr. Dillard parked his long white Cadillac coupe in front and strode into our house with his big optimistic presence. In an inspired moment, my father said to Mr. Dillard’s shy young daughter, “Come on, honey, I’m going to show you where your room is.” He led her down the hallway to my room with its faded cowboy wallpaper. “You can have any kind of wallpaper you want,” he said. My father spent a long time talking to Mr. Dillard in the living room. This seemed pointless to me because I believed that no one was going to buy our house. But my father was very excited when the two of them left. “That’s a live one,” he said. He had learned that Mr. Dillard owned a service station, which meant that he might have the means to buy our house. My father didn’t try to sell the house that day. He only asked one thing of Mr. Dillard, that he promise to return with his wife. I think we all felt our lives were in limbo until he brought his wife the following Sunday. Mr. Dillard came to our house several more times. One day he parked his Cadillac in the driveway as if he was getting used to the idea of the house being his. He and my father sat at the dining room table and talked man to man. The reason we were selling was never mentioned, and my father didn’t seem embarrassed. He emphasized the features that he had always liked about the house, such as the large backyard due to the pie shape of the lot. He spoke of the family gatherings we had held in the yard and of the pictures he had made in the basement darkroom he had built. My father acknowledged that it wasn’t the fanciest house in the neighborhood, but even this he turned into a selling point—the price was modest and Mr. Dillard could fix up the house any way he wanted. At the core of my father’s sales pitch there was an element of truth. I believe he successfully conveyed to Mr. Dillard something of what the house meant to him. The day before we moved I took a final bike ride on the gently curving paths of Avalon Park. The park was an old friend with whom I had spent countless hours. When I was a little kid, I had gone to day camp there. In recent years, when I was restless or bored, riding my bike in the park had given me solace. Like other old Chicago parks, it had been modeled after Olmstead designs. I was proud that our park, in our small corner of the world, had some connection to the famous Central Park in New York. On moving day I asked my mother if we should say goodbye to the house, but she was busy with last-minute packing and had no interest in ceremony. Maybe she was afraid to stop and reflect because at that moment the future was too uncertain. When the time came, I got into the car as instructed. A couple right turns took us out of Marynook. We drove west on 87th Street and then headed north on the Dan Ryan Expressway for our new life.