Something changed at Roosevelt and State after the deluge last Friday. Even before the second rainfall of the evening, after a huge branch of a big tree blew over, it was apparent. The tree was one of four that has punctuated a small garden strip in near my alley for the last 15 years, and it was also the one that always flowered like there was no tomorrow.

There was a lot of nervous laughter while I chatted with neighbors I saw on the little path adjacent to the trees when I got home and went out to check out the damage. It wasn’t because of the tree-down in and of itself, I don’t think. It was because nature had done a number on us. However short a time it lasted, it was definitely a period during which we had lost control. The branch was merely a symbol.

For the first time at Roosevelt and State, we weren’t just watching scenes on TV from small towns that underwent a storm and survived full of damage and despair. We had experienced one of our own. And although it wasn’t the first violent storm we ever experienced — there’s usually at least one a year — it was the first one that caused permanent damage to the local landscape.

This storm was more than downed umbrellas, overturned dinner tents, blown over plants and flying cushions. This one meant business. This one made us feel vulnerable and exposed. Ergo, the nervous laughter, the small talk about the tree branches that were down elsewhere — at Dearborn Park (ironically just a few hours after the park district had conducted a long overdue trimming), for instance and all along Harrison Street to the west.

The trees near Roosevelt and State were planted when our community of 36 single family homes was new and fresh. And although I still have fantasies that the builder will be back any second to do this or that to finish our little community of homes, not truly believing that we are teenaged and mature as far as South Loop housing complexes go, the growing size of the trees — their widening trunks and increasingly branches — was always there to remind me that the builder really is gone and won’t be back.

Now the trees will remind us of another milestone, of a storm that wizened us, alerted us, made us feel a bit smaller in the wide world and the greater scheme of it all.

When the trees were first planted, there were five, plus a row of pine trees plunked in the middle that was supposed to obscure the view of our alley from passersby. I remember well the year (although I don’t remember exactly which one) that we gave up on the pines — they were browner than a toasted bagel by then — and no one cared anymore who looked into our alley.

If anything, it was safer to allow a nice wide open vista for all to see, just in case anyone might be up to something. The openness actually provided security; it didn’t reduce it.

We pulled out the pines over coffee and doughnuts one Saturday morning, rented a tiller and planted a garden in their place. The garden has always done better or worse, depending on the year, the gardeners taking responsibility and the weather.

One of the other five trees died soon after, and we cut it down at some point, leaving four remaining — two of which have now sustained permanent damage last week. And delineating a new chapter for us. A chapter that has come and gone in a flash, leaving behind something more than a little extra street trash blowing into the yards from the swirling wind.

While I can report that things are quite back to normal at Roosevelt and State — the neighborly peacefulness, the strolling and barbecuing, the sitting on the decks and sipping and chatting — and the doggies doing, I still feel the change.

Yes, there was normalcy on Saturday and Sunday, both pretty, sunny, calm nice days and evenings. But a scrim of abnormality will always be in our collective memory.

The howl of the wind, I suspect, will always be somewhere in the back of all of our minds. That it could come again. And probably will.

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By Bonnie McGrath from South Loop
Posted: 06/25/2010 2:40 PM

This post is actually my "hard copy" column, which appears on the editorial page of the Chicago Journal. As is the case with most editorial pages, not too much room for pix. Had I written on this topic for my CJ blog--South Loop Observer--it would have included a picture. It's just one of those things....

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By Rich from West Loop
Posted: 06/25/2010 2:07 PM

How about a picture?