Using Google maps, I took another trip down Memory Lane in Chicago, to the streets of my childhood. But Memory Lane no longer exists. Not only can you not go home again, but the planet has been destroyed.

I left the computer feeling very sad because the streets I remember are light years more interesting and charming, and involving and appealing than the brick boxes that have replaced them. I can’t imagine what it must be like living there now because it looks so incredibly sterile.

The maps, also, are maddeningly approximate and it is difficult to relate what you see to what used to be. I suppose the developers thought they were doing the city a favor by building “clean cut” units without any personality. Chicago always was a very sprawling place. You might think that something three blocks away would be easy to walk, but it would take you an hour.

Yes, the flop houses are gone, and the seedy bars, and all the mom and pop shops sandwiched between. The day-old bakery, the sparkling neat little optometrist’s shop, the drugstore where I spent my idle hours with the brothers who ran it, whom I had known since I was a tot. Often when I got home from a date, I’d ask to be let off in front of the drug store on the corner. It was closed but Leonard and Roy would be there, waiting for the nightlife to start so they could go up the street to the bars and play their guitars. They would let me in and give me free Cokes and we would talk. They remembered me from littlest childhood when I’d go looking for my father on a Sunday. He would sneak out and go to the cigar store where there was a bookie in the back. But I always checked the drug store too. Sometimes he’d hide. It wasn’t fun to learn that I had missed him because he had been hiding. Daddies aren’t supposed to waht to hide from their children.

My first cousins remember the street somewhat, but only from visiting us. My b.i.l. lived up the street, but he and I don't talk any more. I shared memories with my sis, despite her short term memory loss, but she is now gone. And Penny is gone. My friend, Rose, now 87, would remember, also from visiting. She won't travel so I'll never see her again. But I can phone her.

My eidetic memory -- a blessing and a curse, because it is so vivid. My street, my honky-tonk, grungy, raucous street, the street from which my dreams grew. Greedy builders have destroyed my time.

xx, Teal