Chicago: Hoyne

In January of 1989 we bought our first "property" (we were so pleased!)– a condo on Hoyne in Rogers Park. The neighborhood was "changing" and we hoped it would change according to our benefit. It didn't. But nonetheless we had a wonderful seven and a half years there.

There are six buildings on that block built at the same time with slight different exterior design. The neighborhood was Jewish at that time. These are very large apartment with certain sophistication. On the floor of the dining room there is a call button for the lady of the house to call for the maid who would have her own room and bath in the back of the apartment.

The curtain in the living room window (shown in the picture above) was the first thing John sewed. That fabric is now in our house in Floresta. The bamboo behind the couch is still with us. We bought it in Corpus Christi in 1985 and it is still with us.

Our good friend Richard helped us with the kitchen remodeling.

Eight years later we bought a house on Claremont. This must be the "packing party". John was smoking then, and I was a gin-and-tonic man– martini came much later (there is a sweet story to it).

John was the president of the condo association "Chateau Le Mans". He organized the beautification project way before Maggie Daley started her pet program in Chicago.

Here, from left to right, are: Martha, Peter, I, Andrew, Carol, and Daniel.

Martha and Peter bought the condo next door to us but soon moved to Evanston. Andrew and his mom Carol lived in the garden apartment and both worked at St. Francis Hospital at that time.

Daniel was from Ethiopia, divorced and had a daughter attending St. Scholastica across Ridge Avenue just half a block away.

Mary Lou (the lady in red jacket) was a chain smoker living above us and she had many cats. Her apartment smelled terrible.

Next door to her was Simone and her daughter Paige who was about our age. Paige didn't work and was very sensitive to a lot of things, just like her mother.

One winter day after we came home from work Max was not in the house. Soon there was a phone call from Paige. I left Max in the backyard in the morning when I let him out to pee and forgot to let him back in. They took Max for the day and, really, saved his life.

Simone inherited Nancy's couch but couldn't stand it. "Those peacocks are staring at me!" she complained about the fabric of the couch. So we took the couch and solved her problem. The peacock couch followed us to Claremont and Savona.

One summer weekend John and I took a drive to Gelena. We told Carol about it and a few months later she told us she was retiring from her night shift nurse job at St. Francis and she was going to move to Gelena. It was a military town and the base closed down not long ago and the properties were very cheap. She figured she could afford to retire there. She was gone.