I get a lot of readers, but I don't always hear a lot of feedback on this little ol' history blog, so e-mails like this just make my day:
I really love the website that you have created, I’m a product of uptown, I lived there from the late 1950’s until 1970 and the moved back for 2 years in 1975. Your website has brought back many memories, I went to school at Stewart, then transferred to Brenamen on Clarendon & Montrose and from there I was sent to Catholic school at St. Thomas of Canterbury on Kenmore and Lawrence. I had my first paper route delivering the American on Winthrop from Lawrence to Argyle in 1962. We use to go to the Lakeside theater on Saturdays and see three movies for a quarter, and the Uptown theater was the coolest, you get lost in that place and it was so fabulous inside, I remember a section that was hard to find that was all enclosed in glass and was located in between the upper balcony and the lower balcony all the seats were blue velour with polished brass it was definitely made for the elite. I spent many days at the Robert R. McCormick Boys Club on Sheridan and Gunnison what a great place for a boy to stay out of trouble. I can’t think of many places in uptown that I didn’t see as me and my brother wandered the streets all summer. Well I could go on forever about the great life I had there, so keep up the good work and if you ever have any questions about uptown I would love to share. -- R.C.
Thanks for reading, R.C.!
And what's your favorite memory of Uptown? Write me at blog(a)compassrose.com and I'll feature it here!
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1 comments:
R.C. sounds a lot like me and my brother. We grew up in the 50's on Lakeside Pl. right off Sheridan Rd., attended Stewart, and went to the Lakeside theater (it was only 50 yds. away from our bldg and we could see the marquee from our window.) Also went to the Pantheon, the filthy Deluxe, the Riviera, and of course the Uptown.
Our mother was a waitress at the Aragon Ballroom as well as a part-time counter clerk at Gary's drug store on Lawrence & Kenmore. We went to Montrose beach a lot, the Clarendon field house, the Margate field house, and played arcade games at the Uptown Bowl (where they still used real pinboys).
I wonder if R.C. remembers the teachers at Stewart: Ms Zeitler, Mrs. McCracken, Mrs. Flanagan, Miss Schlimmer, our gym teacher Mr. Conway, the prune-faced principal Sigrid C. Nelson, or that horrible Mrs. Fournier. There was that retarded guy named Ritchie who hung around near the school pushing a cart full of junk, spitting at people and babbling incoherently.
Me and my brother Tom swam at the McCormick boys club once in a while, ate at Johnnie's Hot Dogs and the Kresge's on Broadway, played a lot of baseball at Margate Park, and got most of our clothes from Goldblatts. I remember so many days in class staring out the window at a big white building with the name "McJunkin Building" carved in black letters on the front, all the time thinking what a strange name McJunkin was. I guess I could go on indefinitely, but I have to go.
G. Larner
G.L.
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