Can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time re-written every line? If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we? Could we?” — from The Way We Were, written by Marilyn and Alan Bergman and Marvin Hamlisch.

This week I’m going to wax on about my old neighborhood and the part it played in my comic book centric universe. I just don’t start out that way.

Last Thursday afternoon, I woke up to the story about the murders outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington DC, where the American Jewish Committee was hosting a reception for young diplomats. Two young staffers were slain and a thirty-year-old Chicagoan was arrested subsequently. Given his statements at the scene and in the mandatory manifesto he published the night before, there’s little wiggle room for this guy to beat the rap.

I was told the accused shooter was a resident of the Albany Park neighborhood. He lived just a few blocks from where I grew up. I enjoy irony and synchronicity, so my ears perked up: when I was living in the area it was an overwhelmingly Jewish neighborhood. And, so, my memories took the safe path to nostalgia.

Albany Park was where my sister, nearly seven years older than me, was coerced into babysitting me when my mother went off to the grocery store around the corner. Having better things to do, she would read me her comic books as a means to entertain herself and, inadvertently, foster my love for the medium and my lust for reading. Continue reading “Brainiac On Banjo: Albany Park Memories” →