Foreign Car Garage, 54th and Kimbark

The foreign car garage used to be a totally normal car garage a hundred years ago when it was built—so I’ve deduced, anyway, looking at old maps and pictures from the fifties. But as time went on and everything around it changed, it had to justify its age somehow, so it became the Foreign Car Garage. If you approach it from its secret alleyway, there’s a sign labeling it as such. Inside, there’s a bunch of old, luxury Italian sports cars and, I’d like to think, a little lemon-yellow Citroën from the sixties. The man who works there used to be a bike racer in Europe, but now he works as a history teacher at Kenwood Academy. He’s getting older now, so he only works part-time and spends the rest of his time in the garage, tinkering with the cars. He has an old record player on a workbench in the corner where he plays Frank Sinatra and Gilbert and Sullivan. The daughter of the man who owned the garage before him still lives in one of the apartments in front. I like to imagine that sometimes her kids come and hang out with the old man after school and play among the old rusting parts. There’s one Model-T still there from the twenties that they especially love.

Hollow tree, 51st and Woodlawn

Somebody left a note in this tree once, explaining where a treasure could be found. It’s on some little island in Lake Michigan, up near the top. The man who left it had been a gangster bootlegging with Al Capone and the other famous Chicago criminals. Among other things, he ran a speakeasy on 55th Street, near where Jimmy’s is now. (It closed up after Prohibition ended, and then the buildings were all torn down during urban renewal to make space for the St. Thomas parking lot.) He wanted to leave his big pile of money for his wife to find, should something happen to him. Something did happen to him (he was killed in a shootout somewhere on the North Side), but there was a big storm and the tree fell down and the note got washed away, so his wife couldn’t find anything. Somebody dug up the treasure recently while digging a grave, but it turned out to be not very much money after all, when adjusted for inflation.

Witch house, 52nd and Kenwood

I call this house the witch house because of the red picket fence. There’s a cat who lives in the front yard and looks out at the passing street—which is never very busy, maybe because the street curves, so that the area feels cut off from the rest of the neighborhood. Or maybe because of the witch. There’s an old kitchen in the back with a lot of herbs hanging from the ceiling and a pantry full of salami and dried fruit. It’s not very well lit because the main light continually flickers. At one point, maybe she used kerosene. The kitchen is dim, anyway, and there are flowers in the window, which the cat sometimes picks at, and dark wooden chairs. In the living room, there’s an old wood stove (or a fireplace, maybe) and an old rocking chair where the witch sits and knits. She probably knits all kinds of spells into her Icelandic sweaters. 

Bee house, 58th and Kenwood

This used to be some sort of school or orphanage, I’m thinking. I’m not sure who lives there now, though somebody must, of course, in order to take care of the garden and tend the bees. It used to be a group of little girls doing this work in little pinafores and bows. They marched down the stairs to promenade around the garden and go watch the horses race down the Midway, back when there were stables nearby. I’ve seen pictures of the horses before, but not the little girls—which is not to say they never existed. They probably had a stern matron who taught them or took care of them in the big red house on the corner near the school. I like to think they always kept bees, and that the bees and the house have held on stubbornly as the school expanded in ugly glass bulges. But Dewey and his experiment have died, and all the little girls are gone. In May, the rain falls in sheets down the red brick walls onto the tulips.

School/Church, 60th and Dorchester

I call this building the church, though in all honesty, it was probably a school. There’s no steeple, in any case, and it’s not gothic and glorious, like most of the other nearby churches. Nor is it a neoclassical temple, like one of the churches in Woodlawn. People used to come to this church long before the other ones were built, and it’s a wonder it hasn’t been torn down yet. The university probably bought it at some point, but even they aren’t sure. Sometimes students or people from the neighborhood will sneak inside—there’s a back window you can crawl through using the fire escape from the building next door—and feel adventurous. There’s a number of empty beer cans on the floor from these adventures and the remains of what seems to be a seance: candle nubs, a broken circle in chalk and some pieces of black lace that seem to have broken off on the door. None of the dead responded. The pews are mostly broken, but the altar is shockingly intact, apart from some water damage. Everyone who’s come in over the years, including the assessor who came through the front door and boarded it up, decided it wasn’t worth vandalizing or carting off—yet, anyway.

Artist house, 51st and Blackstone

I imagine that an artist lives in this house. She might like the play of light filtering through the art deco stained glass windows; it probably inspires interesting watercolor paintings, which she sells at various art fairs around the North Side during the summer and in a gift shop in West Town. She went to art school in Michigan, and now she’s moved to Chicago. Originally, she lived with a high school friend who went to UChicago and stayed in Hyde Park, but now she just likes the city. On certain Saturday nights, there must be hordes of interesting people walking through the arch to the back courtyard. The artist probably has a firepit set up back there, where she and her interesting friends sit around sipping some strange and mysterious alcohol like hard kombucha and talk about religion. Maybe one of the artist’s friends is a potter, so her apartment is full of jewel-colored pots. Maybe there’s a way to get onto the roof, and maybe the artist and her boyfriend sometimes sneak out there to look at the stars and the lake and the lights of the city in the distance. In the summer, they catch fireflies. 

Grassy mound, 54th and Greenwood

This is a dragon. Someday, it will wake up.

Hollow tree, 51st and Woodlawn

Somebody left a note in this tree once, explaining where a treasure could be found. It’s on some little island in Lake Michigan, up near the top. The man who left it had been a gangster bootlegging with Al Capone and the other famous Chicago criminals. Among other things, he ran a speakeasy on 55th Street, near where Jimmy’s is now. (It closed up after Prohibition ended, and then the buildings were all torn down during urban renewal to make space for the St. Thomas parking lot.) He wanted to leave his big pile of money for his wife to find, should something happen to him. Something did happen to him (he was killed in a shootout somewhere on the North Side), but there was a big storm and the tree fell down and the note got washed away, so his wife couldn’t find anything. Somebody dug up the treasure recently while digging a grave, but it turned out to be not very much money after all, when adjusted for inflation.

Witch house, 52nd and Kenwood

I call this house the witch house because of the red picket fence. There’s a cat who lives in the front yard and looks out at the passing street—which is never very busy, maybe because the street curves, so that the area feels cut off from the rest of the neighborhood. Or maybe because of the witch. There’s an old kitchen in the back with a lot of herbs hanging from the ceiling and a pantry full of salami and dried fruit. It’s not very well lit because the main light continually flickers. At one point, maybe she used kerosene. The kitchen is dim, anyway, and there are flowers in the window, which the cat sometimes picks at, and dark wooden chairs. In the living room, there’s an old wood stove (or a fireplace, maybe) and an old rocking chair where the witch sits and knits. She probably knits all kinds of spells into her Icelandic sweaters. 

Bee house, 58th and Kenwood

This used to be some sort of school or orphanage, I’m thinking. I’m not sure who lives there now, though somebody must, of course, in order to take care of the garden and tend the bees. It used to be a group of little girls doing this work in little pinafores and bows. They marched down the stairs to promenade around the garden and go watch the horses race down the Midway, back when there were stables nearby. I’ve seen pictures of the horses before, but not the little girls—which is not to say they never existed. They probably had a stern matron who taught them or took care of them in the big red house on the corner near the school. I like to think they always kept bees, and that the bees and the house have held on stubbornly as the school expanded in ugly glass bulges. But Dewey and his experiment have died, and all the little girls are gone. In May, the rain falls in sheets down the red brick walls onto the tulips.