phantom places

WOW. O.K., places that I miss that are gone now...

1. the spot of land between DuJardin Elementary and park district land. It had a set of cement stairs leading up to it from my neighborhood, seemingly for no reason, because there was nothing there but a clump of trees. I used to go sit in the trees there and think. It was especially nice on cold, cloudy days in the Fall.

2. the old stone building behind the Dunkin Donuts in Bloomingdale. No kidding, there was forest preserve land behind the Dunkin Donuts on Lake Street and, for some reason, the shell of a stone building that looked like it had burned at one time. My mom and I went for donuts one morning and decided to go exploring back there and we found it together. It was neato. Around the time I got to the sixth grade, someone spraypainted breakdancing slogans all over it (I'm not kidding, I think I remember the word 'boogaloo' on the stone) and then it got ripped down a few years later. It felt very poetic, though, to have found such ruins in my own town.

3. this old farm shed on the corner of Schick and First Street in Bloomingdale. I loved that thing for some reason, and although I was never allowed to even approach it, I had a book full of drawings of plans that I had for making that shed my home. I was weird then, and I'm weird now, people.

4. In my bedroom in the house I grew up in, there was a space between the end of my canopy bed and the wall where I fit by bookcase and a bunch of pillows. Because the dresser was right up against the side of the bookcase, the dresser and the bed formed a door that you could only fit through comfortably if you were a kid (which, of course, I was at the time). I loved it in there!

5. the Golden Bear restaurant. Corner of Fairfield and Lake in Bloomingdale. Mainly because they used to serve sherbet cups with their kid's meals and the stuff blew my little mind, I LOVED it. I've since tasted sherbet and it's not as good as it was then.