Hyde Park feels, in some ways, more like home to me than anywhere else in the world. So many years have passed since I last visited Santa Cruz, CA, the city in which I spent my formative years, that it has become more of a mythic fairyland than a hometown. I tiptoe around my memories of that place so as not to destroy them. Corvallis, OR, where my parents live now and where I spent my Junior and Senior years of high school, never has really felt like home. My parents and brother are there so it is home in a certain sense, and I have enjoyed good times there, but I never spent enough time in Corvallis to feel any sense of ownership or belonging; I was always the newcomer. Hyde Park, on the other hand, is real and it is mine. For going on nine years now, Hyde Park has been a constant in my life. A place I know and that I have felt a part of as I have grown and changed and transitioned from adolescence to, an admittedly tenuous, adulthood. I have fallen in and out of love in Hyde Park, seen friends married there, and dealt with death there. I no longer live in Hyde Park, and there are reasons for that, but when I go back it feels like home. Walking or driving down 55th street now that I live elsewhere in the city produces all of the sense of nostalgia, vague awkwardness, slight regret and, as a proper UofC alum, gnawing bitterness that ought to go with a hometown visit. It seems fitting, therefore, to inaugurate my loosely Chicago-related blog with a post about my home within home. There's no way that I could sum up Hyde Park nor my experience of it in one post, so this will be the first of several posts in which I hope to delve into some of the places and memories I associate most strongly with the neighborhood.
Let us begin at the beginning. I learned Chicago-ness in and around Hyde Park and, more specifically, in and around the University of Chicago. UofC taught me that sense of defiant defeatism that clings to the homecity of the Cubs and the 2007 Superbowl Bears. UofC's slightly wounded sense of, "we're just as good as the Ivy Leagues no matter what anyone thinks dammit!" is, I think, rather analogous to the city's general, "we don't care what everyone else thinks, we're crazy about the Bears and we'll pack Cubs games" attitude. Hyde Park and UofC are also the places around which I learned about seasons. As someone born and bred in the mild West, where a day below 50 degrees Fahrenheit is a day on which to wear one's winter coat, my delicate hide was brutally shocked by its first winter in Chicago. "People aren't meant to live like this" I often grumbled as I stumbled to class on the blocks of ice that I had formerly called my feet. But I soon learned that the brutality of Winter and the cruelty of the icy joke that masquerades as Spring around these parts provokes a certain glee once the first signs of real Spring and Summer appear. This giddy, nearly insane, euphoria simply cannot be understood by anyone who hasn't fought though the winter here. Those first, brave, daffodils dotting the campus walks and pushing up in yards seem like heaven-sent drops of mercy bestowed by a suddenly forgiving god after the punishment of below-freezing days in March. I still believe that Hyde Park boasts more and prettier daffodils than any other part of the city, which may just be my skewed perspective from the fact that they were the first daffodils to which I really paid attention. Spring is not the only season I discovered in Hyde Park; there are few places in the city that rival the splendor of UofC's campus in the fall when all of the somber gray of the buildings briefly diminishes behind explosions of crimson and orange leaves. Stoicism, overly-enthusiastic appreciation of summer, the conviction that ketchup has no place on a hot dog, and an eastward-dependent sense of direction are all aspects of living in this city that I cultivated, or that were cultivated in me, along the shaded (and sometimes shady) streets of Hyde Park and under the grim shadows of UofC's gargoyles.
The University of Chicago. Of course a University so immersed in theory would have a vague and open-to-interpretation mascot: we were known as the Maroons. Maroon is a dark, reddish-brown color--maybe a little darker than the color of blood. Maroons also were renegade African slaves living in the hills of Haiti and other parts of the West Indies. In addition, a maroon is someone who has been deserted on an island as punishment. Usually left with a musket, a little water and some ammunition, the unfortunate maroon has to fend for him or herself far away from civilization and from the comforts of home and family. This latter definition of "maroon" is the one I think of most when I think of UofC's unusual mascot. When I become a sour-faced, unpleasant old lady, who will collect beer bottles as pets due to my allergy to cats, I think that I will be able to trace the seeds of my misanthropy and misery back to the years I spent at the University of Chicago. That cold, 
gothic, monument to self-importance and sadism perches over the Midway like some gloomy bird of prey, or perhaps like an intellectual version of an ogre from a fairy tale: it lures young, bright minds into its lair, then breaks their bones and crushes their spirits and grinds it all up to make its bread. As a Lost fan, and for the purposes of self-indulgently belaboring the maroon metaphor, I might compare Hyde Park to the mysterious Island in which we young students found ourselves abandoned and the University would be like the smoke monster that makes short work of many of us, and sucks the souls out of the rest. I say all of this, of course, with no disrespect intended to my Alma Mater. After all, the University is the reason that I ended up in Chicago. It has shaped my entire adult life and adult mind, and not just by turning me into a bitter and socially awkward misanthrope, but also in very genuinely positive ways. I wouldn't trade my UofC education for any other and really, all rumors aside, fun was in no short supply. No single story can sum up the University and its relationship to Hyde Park, nor is there any one moment I can think of that really defines how the University shaped my life, but I think that a very abridged version of my First Year experience might help illustrate the way I, and at least a few others, feel about the place.
During my first year at UofC, I lived in a cinder block edifice that surely had previously housed dangerous criminals if one were to judge by its labyrinthine interior and its grimly functional exterior "design." "Squat" is really the only word that can sum up the overall look of the building, well, that and maybe also "ugly." The prison theme continued in Woodward's cafeteria, which may not have been the worst food one could eat, but which most certainly was not good. Indeed, Poor Mr. or Ms. Woodward (I can't be bothered to look up which it was) must have been a rather unloved donor to have his or her name attached to such an unlovely building.
Questionable food, terrifying basement, and depression-inducing "architecture" aside, we band of 18 and 19 year-old misfits marched into our first year with as much boldness as we could muster, and probably more than was warranted. During those first weeks we made our awkward alliances, and began to form our little community. Not yet sure who our real friends would turn out to be, we would march down 57th street in groups of no less than 15 to try out some restaurant or other or to go down to Point and walk around. In those days, dear reader, a "facebook" to us was a compact, bound pamphlet, printed on actual paper, and containing black and white photos of everyone in the entering class with the student's name, hometown, and dorm printed underneath each photo. Ah, how we would huddle together in the cold, angular bosom of Mother Woodward and discuss whose picture was the hottest. Based upon the results of our highly empirical study of the relative hotness of our classmates, we would then determine with whom we hoped we would share a class or perhaps a table in the cafeteria. Everyone was new and everyone reached out with the same tentative yet eager sense of anticipation as we adjusted to our new lives and tried to find our niches.
The quarter moved forward and we faced our classes and all other aspects of First Year life with varying degrees of aplomb. Ah, the sweet sounds of panic when those first papers and exams came back bearing Bs and even Cs, much to the shock of the cocksure. Oh, the gentle squeak of chalk as students worked together on their calc problem sets late into the night and the cries of despair that accompanied o-chem problem sets. Oh, how the dulcet tones of First Year gossip rustled through the halls after every instance in which the somewhat less dulcet tones of undergraduate horniness finding happy relief had rocked those same halls. "Who had gotten sexiled by his or her roommate the night before?" we might whisper, "Who had tiptoed out of whose room? Who was hot, but turned out to be kind of a dick?" These were the questions that occasionally (okay, often) were as important to us as "What exactly is Rousseau's State of Nature? Ayn Rand...thoughts?" and "What does the jungle really stand for in Heart of Darkness?" And, let us not forget the gentle sounds of inexperienced drinkers unburdening their troubled stomachs upon the unfortunate carpets. Nor let us be so remiss as to neglect to mention the nuanced panoply of odors that hovered around said carpets at any given time. It may speak to the uniqueness of UofC, or it may speak only to the nerdiness of myself and the people with whom I associated, that as often as we gossiped about sex and drugs and all of the normal things a First Year college student might gossip about, I remember equally often sitting up in the lounge with other students debating topics such as the true nature of altruism until 5am or so.
And then, there was the ping pong. How many long afternoons and late nights did I spend playing ping pong in the Woodward lounge? The answer to that question is something like, "how many afternoons and nights are there in a school year?": other students might be late to class because they had gone to a party the night before, I would be late because I had played ping pong all night. Heated rivalries were forged around that ping pong table, new games,
some cruel and unusual, were invented and new enemies were made every time someone trying to read on the couch got hit with a ping pong ball by accident. Other games were part of life at Woodward as well, such as the incredibly awesome Marvel vs. Streetfighter arcade game on the ground floor and the poker games that may or may not have funded the educations of some of my fellow students.
Despite any complaints we might have had about good old Woodward, and we had many, we actually loved that dorm. Its halls were wide and perfect for sitting and having loud, silly arguments until someone trying to sleep or to study told us to shut up. It's lounges were worn and odiferous, but large, and there was a tunnel from the main building to the cafeteria so that one didn't have to walk outside across the courtyard in the winter. We could go out the back door to play ultimate frisbee and touch football in the spring and fall, and out the front door to play broomball in the winter. In our own way, we blossomed in those halls. We forged community there and developed deep bonds that helped us to weather all of the pain and anxiety the UofC threw at us in those early days and months of our college education.
gothic, monument to self-importance and sadism perches over the Midway like some gloomy bird of prey, or perhaps like an intellectual version of an ogre from a fairy tale: it lures young, bright minds into its lair, then breaks their bones and crushes their spirits and grinds it all up to make its bread. As a Lost fan, and for the purposes of self-indulgently belaboring the maroon metaphor, I might compare Hyde Park to the mysterious Island in which we young students found ourselves abandoned and the University would be like the smoke monster that makes short work of many of us, and sucks the souls out of the rest. I say all of this, of course, with no disrespect intended to my Alma Mater. After all, the University is the reason that I ended up in Chicago. It has shaped my entire adult life and adult mind, and not just by turning me into a bitter and socially awkward misanthrope, but also in very genuinely positive ways. I wouldn't trade my UofC education for any other and really, all rumors aside, fun was in no short supply. No single story can sum up the University and its relationship to Hyde Park, nor is there any one moment I can think of that really defines how the University shaped my life, but I think that a very abridged version of my First Year experience might help illustrate the way I, and at least a few others, feel about the place.During my first year at UofC, I lived in a cinder block edifice that surely had previously housed dangerous criminals if one were to judge by its labyrinthine interior and its grimly functional exterior "design." "Squat" is really the only word that can sum up the overall look of the building, well, that and maybe also "ugly." The prison theme continued in Woodward's cafeteria, which may not have been the worst food one could eat, but which most certainly was not good. Indeed, Poor Mr. or Ms. Woodward (I can't be bothered to look up which it was) must have been a rather unloved donor to have his or her name attached to such an unlovely building.
Questionable food, terrifying basement, and depression-inducing "architecture" aside, we band of 18 and 19 year-old misfits marched into our first year with as much boldness as we could muster, and probably more than was warranted. During those first weeks we made our awkward alliances, and began to form our little community. Not yet sure who our real friends would turn out to be, we would march down 57th street in groups of no less than 15 to try out some restaurant or other or to go down to Point and walk around. In those days, dear reader, a "facebook" to us was a compact, bound pamphlet, printed on actual paper, and containing black and white photos of everyone in the entering class with the student's name, hometown, and dorm printed underneath each photo. Ah, how we would huddle together in the cold, angular bosom of Mother Woodward and discuss whose picture was the hottest. Based upon the results of our highly empirical study of the relative hotness of our classmates, we would then determine with whom we hoped we would share a class or perhaps a table in the cafeteria. Everyone was new and everyone reached out with the same tentative yet eager sense of anticipation as we adjusted to our new lives and tried to find our niches.
The quarter moved forward and we faced our classes and all other aspects of First Year life with varying degrees of aplomb. Ah, the sweet sounds of panic when those first papers and exams came back bearing Bs and even Cs, much to the shock of the cocksure. Oh, the gentle squeak of chalk as students worked together on their calc problem sets late into the night and the cries of despair that accompanied o-chem problem sets. Oh, how the dulcet tones of First Year gossip rustled through the halls after every instance in which the somewhat less dulcet tones of undergraduate horniness finding happy relief had rocked those same halls. "Who had gotten sexiled by his or her roommate the night before?" we might whisper, "Who had tiptoed out of whose room? Who was hot, but turned out to be kind of a dick?" These were the questions that occasionally (okay, often) were as important to us as "What exactly is Rousseau's State of Nature? Ayn Rand...thoughts?" and "What does the jungle really stand for in Heart of Darkness?" And, let us not forget the gentle sounds of inexperienced drinkers unburdening their troubled stomachs upon the unfortunate carpets. Nor let us be so remiss as to neglect to mention the nuanced panoply of odors that hovered around said carpets at any given time. It may speak to the uniqueness of UofC, or it may speak only to the nerdiness of myself and the people with whom I associated, that as often as we gossiped about sex and drugs and all of the normal things a First Year college student might gossip about, I remember equally often sitting up in the lounge with other students debating topics such as the true nature of altruism until 5am or so.
And then, there was the ping pong. How many long afternoons and late nights did I spend playing ping pong in the Woodward lounge? The answer to that question is something like, "how many afternoons and nights are there in a school year?": other students might be late to class because they had gone to a party the night before, I would be late because I had played ping pong all night. Heated rivalries were forged around that ping pong table, new games,
some cruel and unusual, were invented and new enemies were made every time someone trying to read on the couch got hit with a ping pong ball by accident. Other games were part of life at Woodward as well, such as the incredibly awesome Marvel vs. Streetfighter arcade game on the ground floor and the poker games that may or may not have funded the educations of some of my fellow students.Despite any complaints we might have had about good old Woodward, and we had many, we actually loved that dorm. Its halls were wide and perfect for sitting and having loud, silly arguments until someone trying to sleep or to study told us to shut up. It's lounges were worn and odiferous, but large, and there was a tunnel from the main building to the cafeteria so that one didn't have to walk outside across the courtyard in the winter. We could go out the back door to play ultimate frisbee and touch football in the spring and fall, and out the front door to play broomball in the winter. In our own way, we blossomed in those halls. We forged community there and developed deep bonds that helped us to weather all of the pain and anxiety the UofC threw at us in those early days and months of our college education.
The next year they tore Woodward down.
An excellent beginning!
ReplyDeleteThis made me smile. Nice work.
ReplyDeleteThanks guys!
ReplyDeletehaha. awesome :)
ReplyDeleteWell done!
ReplyDeletegreat post Rachael!
ReplyDelete