Author Archives: Michael H. Brownstein

In 1991 Morry asked me and my wife if he could park his car in our yard. It wintered there among the snow and a variety of stunted brush and weeds. When spring came, the weeds surrounded the car and reached into the engine, choking it. Morry came for his car in May, but it […]

Under the Shedding Cottonwood Tree

My son came down the stairs, way past his bedtime, and told my wife and me he couldn’t sleep because he was worried about his friend Rich. I asked him what was the matter with Rich, and he told me, “Richard can’t go to the store any kind of way he wants to anymore, and […]

“Isn’t it true that an open beer on a cloudy day brings rain?”

There were a lot of parking spaces on the east side of Western where the welfare office is, and there weren’t many people inside. I had come with a friend to get information on a welfare work program. We took number 52 and sat in the back. There was no sign anywhere to show what […]

Suddenly there was a loud noise, the noise of high-pitched voices, perhaps young girls calling each other names, getting ready to fight–the sounds of show-offs. I looked up from my chess board–I was playing a student at the after-school tutoring program where I work–and tried to distinguish one voice from the others. The children looked […]

The pigeons were on the street and the sidewalk in front of the massive church, Saint Jerome’s on Lunt near Clark. Three men stood in front of one man sitting on a wall near the church. They spoke in English, then Spanish, then English. “Watch,” said the sitting man, his legs dangling from the wall […]

There were children everywhere along Sheridan, crowding the stoops and squeezing into whatever shade they could find. The heat couldn’t keep them inside; their apartments were hotter. We could see them from the 151 bus, which was crowded and hot. Every window was open, and one of the passengers standing near the back had pushed […]

When I moved into a house on Touhy in Rogers Park, I was immediately struck by the neighborhood’s clean lawns and the absence of broken glass and graffiti. Then my 13-year-old son and I took a walk to the Howard el station and I got a lesson in hats. My son wore an orange hat […]

It was over 100 degrees in the Farm-in-the-Zoo. The sun was burning onto the stage where I stood and into the open tent where 13-year-old Jahdiel Smith was setting up his dissecting instruments. He pulled out three fetal pigs and waited for me, his 4-H leader, to announce his demonstration. I had to wait for […]

Three men emerged from a burned-out building near the learning center where I work on Calumet near 51st Street. They crossed the street, and two overweight women walked up to them. One woman turned and blocked my view, but I still saw the quick exchange of money for plastic packets of white. Then the women […]

You never know who’s going to get on the 36 Broadway bus. I remember riding it late one night when it stopped at Broadway and Wilson to pick up a lone woman. She had a hard time getting on. Once aboard, obviously drunk, she pulled out a gun and pointed it at the bus’s ceiling. […]

“Bibles. Bibles for sale,” the young, bearded man announced as the Jackson Park B train pulled out of the tunnel south of Roosevelt. “I’ve got Bibles here. Bibles for sale. All sizes, all shapes. Bibles.” A seasoned rider, he paused in the aisle as the train jerked, not even grabbing for a handhold, then repeated, […]