That morning we approached school from Stony Island Avenue, a great broad street solidly in the heart of Chicago’s black belt area of the city. While the Avenue was alive and thriving in large sections, the area closest to the school was decrepit with boarded windows and doors. A few bars still showed signs of life, but every building had steel gates that were swung closed and locked in the early morning hour as we passed. These are common in many cities, but we had never seen them in our neighborhoods.
We turned down 64th Street and we could see a huge beige brick school looming regally in the distance. At first, some of the kids on the bus who had only seen Mount Saint Mary’s in pictures or once for their placement test, mistook this for our school. But, we went right past the beautiful building, which was a large public grade school. Just beyond the grade school we could see a complex of old brick buildings facing us that appeared to be much older than the school we had just passed. This was Mount Saint Mary.
Ahead and on our right, we saw an immense dark Quonset hut that resembled some of the bowling alleys that peppered Chicago. This was the cafeteria. Next, there was a sturdy brown brick and grey stone gothic structure that was the school administration, gymnasium and classroom building. To the left of these buildings was a very large apartment building that was a monastery that housed the priests and brothers. Further to the left was a row of occupied apartment buildings.
Across the street from the school facing west was a smaller school building with “St. Joseph's College” chiseled in stone above the door. We later found out that this building dated back to when the Mount Saint Mary priests who ran Saint Mary’s had operated a small college, trade school and high school at the site. The entire operation was consolidated into the High School when a new building was constructed about 50 years before our class set foot in the place. “Saint Joseph’s College” was now our library.
The school was indeed framed by things urban and resided right smack dab in the center of a community that was in urban decay. A few blocks to the South was the headquarters for the Blackstone Rangers, the most powerful gang in Chicago during the 60's. A block to the North was a declining business hub. To the East was a checkerboard of empty lots and old buildings that eventually led to Jackson Park and the lake. To the West was the raised bluff of the IC train tracks and beyond that a residential neighborhood of homes and churches.
There was a courtyard between the Administration Building and the Cafeteria where we congregated that morning before class. I looked around to scope out the kind of kids I'd be going to school with for the next few years. "Tough" seemed to be the best way to describe their overall demeanor. While many of the kids dressed in Levis, CPO jackets and other clothes that were popular, some of the kids seemed to come from another decade or a set from an old time Bowery Boy movie. They wore clothes their fathers may have worn in the 1930’s or 1940’s. Baggy tan pants, blue collar work shirts, strange looking hats of every kind, steel toed work shoes, cardigan sweaters--all kinds of clothes that many kids that age would not be caught dead in. These guys were definitely not out there to make a fashion statement on the only day in the school year when we didn't have to wear dress pants and a dress shirt.
Copyright Sporting Chance Press
This story is taken from The Brown and White.
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