A small-town feeling from a big-city home

Six years old. In a crew cut so severe it was known as a "baldysour," a striped T-shirt, too-stiff Wrangler blue jeans with thecuffs rolled up. Sitting at a miniature desk-and-chair combo, thesurface of the desk resonating with that kindergarten smell thatcomes from soaking up Elmer's Glue and Borden milk and Crayolacrayons.

We're having a lesson in addresses and phone numbers. Theteacher asks me whether my parents are from Chicago.

"No," I say. "They're from Burnside!"

She thinks this is hilarious. I think it's the right answer.

Only when I was older did I understand that Burnside wasChicago, that it was a neighborhood on the South Side of the city.

I thought it was a place of its own, with a big wooden sign thatsaid, "Welcome to Burnside" when you entered its boundaries. Myparents were from Burnside and the parents of a lot of my friendswere from Burnside and they told all kinds of stories about Burnside,and in my mind it was a small town where everybody knew everybodyelse.

In a way, I was right.

To outsiders, you say you're from Chicago. To fellowChicagoans, you say you're from Bridgeport or Mount Greenwood orRoseland or Wrigleyville or South Deering or Edgewater.

If you were Catholic, you ID'd yourself not just by neighborhoodbut by parish.

"Where's he from, anyway?"

"Ah, he's a Tommymore guy."

I was 10 before I figured out that "Tommymore" wasn't a realtown, it was Chicagoese shorthand for the parish of St. Thomas More.

In the early 1960s when I was a tyke, my family left Chicagoproper for Dolton, a blue-collar, lower-middle-class suburb that'salways had more of a city feel than a suburban touch. Bungalowsdominate. From the little hill on Sibley Boulevard over the traintracks, you can seek the skyline to the north, reminding you that theBig Town is hovering nearby.

That's where I grew up.

Virtually every memory I have is set against a Chicago areabackdrop. Buying my first 45 r.p.m. single - "Bend Me, Shape Me" bythe American Breed - at the Ben Franklin in Ivanhoe. Playing inSaturday morning grammar school basketball tournaments in the gyms atLeo and Mendel and Brother Rice. Picnics at Wampum Lake. Walkingthrough that giant heart at the Museum of Science and Industry.Watching Dick "Don't Call Me Richie" Allen hit a home run into thecenterfield bleachers at Comiskey Park, the tremendous drive landingnot too far from where Harry Caray was broadcasting.

The chocolate smell that wafts across the Loop when the breezeis right.

Getting a textbook on Chicago history in sixth grade - atextbook with a picture of those amazing new Marina City corncobtowers on the cover. Watching a couple of whiz-kid anchors namedBill Kurtis and Walter Jacobson deliver the news from a real workingnewsroom, not a fancy set. A high school prom at the Condesa Del Marin Alsip. Waiting in line to see "Star Wars" at the River OaksTheater in Calumet City. Watching Eddie Money jamming with theAtlanta Rhythm Section onstage at ChicagoFest, the rough uncle toTaste of Chicago. Waiting for the Illinois Central train to bring mydad home so he could hand me his copy of the Daily News and I couldread what John P. Carmichael had to say about the White Sox.

I've been to 100 weddings and 100 funerals in the Chicago area.I've fallen in love with Chicago women, and I've gotten into barroomfights with Chicago men. My best friends and my worst enemies livehere.

I'm old enough now to feel a sense of history, a connection, tothis town. I don't have children of my own, but last year my niecegraduated from the same grammar school I attended, St. Jude theApostle. She had some of the same teachers I'd had, nearly 25 yearsago.

This is a very public job, and even though we've dropped fromfour newspapers to two since I was a kid, it's still a hard-corenewspaper town; millions of people read a Chicago paper every day.Not a week goes by when I don't hear from someone who knew me fromgrade school, from high school, from Little League or Babe Ruth orthe Sullivan League or the jobs I've had in Schaumburg and CalumetCity and Dolton and Chicago.

There's nowhere else in the world where I'd have that sense ofcommunity.

The lure of opportunities elsewhere is sometimes tempting. Afew years ago, I was in Los Angeles talking with someone who wastrying to persuade me to move out there, and he actually said, "But Iguess you've got a pretty good gig in Chicago, right?"

I laughed. "I don't have a gig in Chicago, I have a life inChicago."

It's home.