Did I say I was living in a house without furniture? Well I really was, almost. There was a bed I would occasionally sleep in and the before mentioned bed side table. Rounding out this palatial suite was a dresser that held a very small black and white T.V. That was it. It was all a guy needed who was working 18-20 hours a day, six and sometimes seven days a week. Sure, this was a large three bedroom house in an upper middle class Chicago suburb. But it certainly wasn’t a typical one. The nuclear family that had lived here, my nuclear family, had begun the late 20th century convention of empty nesting. Only our version just happened to be in reverse. At 19 I stayed home and my parents left. My brother was long gone. He was older and left the nest several years earlier to start his career as a newspaperman. The parents, after lifetimes of snow, sleet and struggling to finish and furnish Mr. Blanding's dream house, all of a sudden it seemed decided to pick up and move to the sunny climes of the California desert. So here I was, left in a big suburban house with only three pieces of furniture all in one room.
But what the hell did I need with a couch, dining table and all that other stuff people would normally have around a house? I certainly wasn’t going to dust it. And who the hell was I going to entertain. Did I mention I worked 18-20 hours a day? Whoever came over could sit on the stairs or the floor. Besides, the few friends who bothered to keep in touch that year knew there was no furniture in the house and came prepared for the non-traditional decorating plan. They also knew when I’d probably be at home. If I wasn’t at work, I was probably going to be sleeping on the one piece of furniture in the house where I could do that. So they would just pop by, usually after midnight. There was no calling first…that would have been a waste of time. If it wasn’t 5:00 a.m and it was my Chef was on the other end calling, I probably wouldn’t answer the phone anyway. Besides, this was way before answering machines or cell phones. Hell this way before anything. How did we live being so out of touch?
The only difficult part about their adventure of just showing up at my door was to wake me up. The doorbell was good. Banging on the door was better, but that would piss off the neighbors and nobody wanted to bring that kind of attention down on a probable illegal activity. (There was probably some surreptitiously obtained cheap wine and marijuana involved) So they used the doorbell like an alarm. I’d be awakened by the persistent ringing of the melodious chime like doorbell my mother was so proud of. The day my dad installed it she bent down to me and whispered with an enormous grin on her face “Isn’t that elegant”. And now my friends were using this elegant Big Ben imitation to annoy the crap out of me so I’d let them in.
Now in Skokie, as in any mid-American suburb in the seventies, there wasn’t a whole lot to do for the typical young adult other than drink illegally, smoke illegal substances or just hang out with your friends. (yes if your thinking it sounds a lot like“That 70’s Show” then your correct…it was). After all we were nearly a quarter century away from any Starbucks, Lifetime Gyms or multiplex theaters. Cable T.V. was still glimmer in some exec’s business plan and the guys I hung with didn’t have the money to party downtown on Rush Street yet. Besides the disco inferno was still just a small brush fire and none of us had discovered the fertile hunting grounds of polyester clad women under a shimmering rotating ball. So when it was party time, we’d grab a bag of weed from our favorite dealer (usually an old high school pal who it seemed discovered shortly after graduation the glory of marijuana and the tax free money that came along with it) and pay a visit to “our” liquor store on Howard St. This tiny store sat on the northern border of Chicago, Evanston was a dry town and there weren’t very many liquor stores in the heavily Jewish suburb of Skokie. We’d been buying our fizzy fruit wine and budget beer there since one of us could grow facial hair. In the summer the party would usually end up at the beach, until the cops cruised by, or in colder weather someone’s apartment or better yet…the empty house where someone’s parents happened to be gone. That was me!!
One late night, a kind of girlfriend showed up at my door with a bag of groceries and actually made me dinner. After several breaks for ...well you know, we finally ate about 3:00 a.m. That was a rare treat. Not the sex, but the food. Most of the people I hung with expected me to cook for them. On one of those rare evenings when I wasn’t at work mopping the kitchen floor or peeling a pot full of vegetables, I happened to be home at the rare time of 9:00 p.m. and in bed with the same kind of girlfriend who cooked when the chimes started sounding. Since I was already being very nicely entertained and in no mood for the guys, cheap wine or their funny cigarettes, I ignored it. Only this time the ringing wasn't as persistent and came with polite sounding knocks instead of the typical raucous bangs of the young adult male with a buzz on.
Suspiciously I got out of bed and padded barefoot across the hall to my old bedroom that faced the street. The blinds were open. (The blinds were always open giving the house that abandoned look I guess the neighbors must have really hated me for) Looking down on the driveway I saw the police car. The bell started its four tone track again and my heart leaped into my throat. ITS THE COPS!
