Grandpa's House

Grandpa in front of his new house

When I was around eight years old my grandparents bought an empty lot in Tinley Park directly across from Saint George Grammar School. It was bought with the intent of building a new house for them. Grandma and Grandpa had a house in Chicago, but the siren song of the suburbs was too much for them. Their Tinley Park grandchildren were very excited about this vacant lot and the purchase. We took it over as our own. We built a little shack on it, picked pears from the tree growing on it, and played in the overgrown weeds. I would brag to my school friends about Grandma and Grandpa's lot. "It's a whole quarter acre." I'd boast, not knowing exactly what the hell an acre was. "It's private and only my family and those we invite can play over there." 

And then one day a bulldozer arrived, and construction began on the new house. My grandmother didn't want another cookie cutter suburban ranch house, even though that's what they were building. No, to make it stand out she insisted that it be built on an angle to the street. So the house was built that way, giving Grandma a nice view of the school playground and a couple of hundred screaming kids. Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Mary were finally able to move into that house in 1961. They moved from the old neighborhood, Back of the Yards, and a house built in the late 1800s, into mid-century modern. I still remember Grandma baking her big, yeasty loaves of bread in that kitchen. Grandpa would fall asleep in his recliner watching baseball with a can of Meister Brau next to him. Aunt Mary always seemed to be vacuuming and when Grandpa was up and around, he would open the front door and spit a big wad of Plow Boy chewing tobacco out the door. I spent a lot of time over there in that house. One of my cousins moved in with them when he graduated high school. He gave me even more of a reason to visit Grandma and Grandpa. I'd go over there and cousin Tim and I would smoke pot in his bedroom. Those were the good old days.