Horses In Houses, Garbage in Attics, Rotting Teeth & The Signal of Escape

Life In the Suburb of Streamwood Illinois

I was riding my Schwinn Ghost Rider bicycle around the streets of Streamwood Illinois when a freckled-faced kid rode past me and enthusiastically called out, “There’s a horse up the street,” and then gestured for me to follow him. I’d seen plenty of horses in my six years of life and even rode a few, so the offer wasn’t all that enticing. However, it was summer in the northwest suburbs of Chicago so anything to do was something to do. I peddled after the kid and followed him to a house that was battered and with a front yard mostly made up of dead grass and dirt. 

I was surprised to discover that the horse was in the house with its head sticking out a front window as the owner of the horse fed it apples. Though I was a small boy, and who had dreamt of having a pet horse I kept in my room, this still didn’t feel right to me. Horses are meant to be in open fields and where would the horses poop? I looked around to check with the other kids were hesitant about this. They smiled and petted the horse’s head. Maybe my feeling about this man living with a horse were wrong. Everyone else seemed to be fine with it, maybe I should be too. 

This was an example how a many moments went down for me in Streamwood Illinois. Something would begging to unfold before me, a signal would go off in my head informing me something wasn’t right, my young mind would work to figure out, only to grow confused because the people around me were fine it. 

Jokes are a good example of this. A group of people would be in a circle and one would say, “So, a racial slur, a stereotype and a marginalized individual are on an airplane…”  except that wasn’t the wording. Unfortunately, I heard racial slurs and derogatory statements often as a young boy. I didn’t know what the words meant, but they sounded harsh like a slap to the ear.  When the punchline came and everyone laughed. I’d laugh too. Not because it was funny. I just didn’t want to be the outsider.

The first and only time I expressed confusion over what was being said I got the harsh rebuke of, “What are you fucking stupid?” I didn’t understand why not knowing something resulted in being “fucking stupid,” but I did know I don’t want to be an outsider in Streamwood. I’d seen how outsiders were treated. They were called faggots, and bullied.I didn’t know what that word meant either, but I knew it wasn’t good. It sounded like knuckles hitting flesh.

Amy was a girl who I had a crush on. She wore velour shorts, halter tops and had long straight brown hair and  big eyes like a Margaret Keane painting. She sent another signal to my brain. One that caused my Fruit of the Loom whitie-tighties to protrude. An occurrence I fully couldn’t comprehend but knew it was a feeling that had a pull stronger than gravity.

Amy invited me to her home while her parents were at work. As she unlocked the front door I wondered if I was about to embark on my first makeout session. I grew nervous, that is until we stepped into her living room which had the qualities of a VFW Hall after closing on a Saturday night. Empty beer bottles and overflowing ashtrays were scattered about the room as were pizza boxes. The odor went above and beyond. 

“Don’t mind that smell,” she said casually, “Daddy hasn’t paid the garbage bill, so he’s been putting the bags in the attic.”

The signal was sent to my head. Garbage in the attic doesn’t seem like a good idea, but her Dad did made this choice. Dads don’t make bad decisions. They are wise like Mike Brady on “The Brady Bunch.” Plus, if you can’t pay the bill, what else are you going to do?  It’s like stashing toys under the bed because you want Mom to think you cleaned up. 

Amy and I didn’t find out what happens after the music begins to swell. I don’t even know what we ended up doing in the lingering smell of garbage. I do know that one day Amy and her family suddenly left town and no one knew why. 

Dale was another person who sent the signal to my head, but it wasn’t just one. He was about ten years-old and everyday wore the same clothes that appeared as if they never made it into the wash. More often than not he was smoking a Marlboro Red. “My Mom would rather know I’m smoking than me sneaking around behind her back, so I guess she’s cool with it,” He’d say as his fingers with filthy nails placed the cigarette to his lips. He sucked from on the cigarette long and hard as if he needed it for sustenance.

I attempted to understand the logic of his Mom letting him smoke. She wants to know what he’s up to. She’s accepting and isn’t punishing him for smoking. In fact, she’s actively watching over the situation by purchasing him cigarettes. It was like the other parents I knew who let boys have girls in their room with the door closed. Perhaps this approach to parenting was wiser than other Moms and Dads. By allowing their kids to do as they wished the parents could keep a closer watch on them.

The signal didn’t stop there. There was also that matter of Dale’s teeth. They appeared as if he had just eaten a bag of Oreos and the cookies stuck to every tooth. When he spoke his teeth were all I could focus on while I wondered: Doesn't his teeth hurt? He’s going to be toothless by the age of fifteen. What sort of job are you going to get with teeth like that? Surely nothing at a in food service.

What perplexed me the most is why no one else took alarm over Dale’s teeth. Didn’t his mother take him to the dentist? Didn't his teachers feel alarmed by his overall appearance? This is assuming Dale went to school. I’m not sure that he did.

There were many incidents where the signal fired off in my head. Somewhere I didn’t need to have an internal debate. I knew it was wrong. Like the time the son of the town dentist pulled out a pistol at a keg party. He waved it around and fired the gun into the air. Everyone thought this was cool. I hightailed it out of there. There was also the time a complete stranger and his girlfriend invited my friend Brian and I into his home. He let us drink his beers, and smoke his pot as he played us Frampton Comes Alive! I got so wasted I could barely  move.  Later as the weed cleared from my head I realized that this guy could have been like John Wayne Gacy. The next time he invited me in for beers and records I kept walking and pretended I didn’t hear him.

As I hit my teens it became more and more apparent to me that I didn’t fit  in with my surroundings. I began to hide in my room taking refuge in my books, records TV and the radio. I’d sit in front of my compact stereo system looking for clues in lyrics or flipping through the radio dial getting glimpses of worlds outside my town. Jazz, Country, Ranchero and Classical music stations made me realize that there was more out there than Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin and The Doors. I was particularly fond of the warmth I found in a radio show called, “Blues Before Sunrise,” which was on WBEZ the public radio station. The popping and scratches of mono records signaled to me of other worlds, with low lighting, and warm autumn colored bricked buildings awaited me. 

I began reading the Chicago Tribune regularly. Articles about underground theater, political groups, concerts and festivals signaled of life outside suburbia. Worlds that made my heart and mind pulse with anticipation of what may await me. Mike Royko’s column showed me it was okay to be angry and dissatisfied with the world around you. In fact, you could use your anger  to be funny and pointed. I hassled my mom to get me a typewriter and folding card table to use as a desk. I couldn’t write in the Billy Goat Tavern like Royko did so a card table seemed like the proper substitute for thirteen year-old me. 

One Sunday as I sat on the living room couch in a blanket of the Sunday Tribune I read an article about the Second City theater in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago.  John Belushi, Bill Murray, John Candy and many other of the comedic voices I had looked started there. I had never heard the word improvisation before but realized it was what I had been doing my entire life. In the lunch room for laughs or to get out of tough situations with my brother or bullies. When I learned it was an artform and something you could make a living from a light went off in my head.  

Without ever stepping foot into the place, without ever even being near the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago I knew this is where I belonged. It was a feeling unlike anything I had ever had before. It grew from my gut and pulled at me as if I should get up and walk to Chicago in that very moment. The signal that had for so many years informed me that life wasn’t as it should be was now telling me -  I needed to be in Chicago. Chicago is where I could find freedom. Chicago is where my true self awaited me.