“The old neighborhood.”
I drove through some areas once familiar to me today, again while delivering flowers for my second job.
And I felt a bit of nostalgia. Not for the way it used to be, or whatever it is that old timers yearn for when they talk about “back in my day.”
But I felt my age, and had time to think about things that used to be.
I was in the left left (there are two left) turn lane on Lake Street turning onto Grand Avenue toward Bensenville, which I did for years in high school toward a convenient store where I learned to slice deli meat and make a proper sandwich.
My father and stepmother franchised the place. I worked for a buck above minimum wage, around $7.25 / hour if I remember right. I have a lot of memories there.
There was this grease spot on the way that’s not “Three Brothers” but a taqueria. Same menu on the inside (I saw from the street, anyway), same floor plan, etc. And it makes sense, because it reflects the market. Even back then, this spot had horchata with gyros and burgers, and I don’t see that a lot around here.
And at the corner of Grand and York Road there used to be a gas station that was recently demolished. A steel frame is being erected in its place. Don’t know for what.
The convenience store where I worked is now a floor-to-ceiling food and liquor. I felt a tiny bit of disappointment at what it turned into. The feeling was immediate but not strong, and I don’t have a good reason to feel that way.
I thought of this Atmosphere song, “Always Coming Back Home to You,” where Slug says “I’ve gotten love, I’ve gotten drunk, I’ve gotten beat up in that parking lot.”
I mean, I learned valuable life skills there. For one, that I didn’t want to work in a fucking convenient store as an adult. Working there made me realize I’d rather work outside than in, and I started a landscaping company after a customer / contractor offered me $6 / hour to use a string trimmer.
I learned how to make a sandwich so the tomato doesn’t melt the cheese, or make the bread soggy. Clean fucking sandwich, I’m telling you.
It wasn’t so much that it was a liquor store, I don’t think, (“Complain about the liquor store, but what you drinkin’ liquor for?”) but that it wasn’t what it used to be.
We did a good little deli business there. As a convenient store it was whatever but our sandwiches were on point. I took pride in my work.
The Jimenez grocer down York is gone too, demolished to make way (I assume) for expansion at the airport. Went there for groceries, and occasionally tacos on lunch while working.
And what I came to, driving around delivering flowers, was that almost everything and everyone used to be something or someone else. Nothing stays the same.
I see how people are hurt when their neighborhoods turn to shit, and in Chicago, it’s happened all over the place. And the causes, or what to do about it or whatever, that’s another discussion. I’m not ready for that. But that connection you feel with your block, or wherever it is you came up, it’s irrational but it’s real.
I’m not disappointed that where I used to work is now a liquor store, or that the grocery store is getting paved over for a runway.
But the collective experiences for me were reminders — of being young, of growing, of the finite nature of life, of market forces, of change.

