* For those of you who don't know, I'll state it here: Little did anyone know in the early days of January 1979, just how much snow we were about to get that Chicago winter! The blizzard of '79 remains one of the worst on record. Beginning the night of Friday, January 12, and dropping 20 inches of snow over the weekend (on top of a base snowfall of 7-10 inches), the storm paralyzed the city, closed O'Hare for days, and sent the then-mayor's plans for reelection up in smoke. Oddly, I don't remember much about the actual storm—we probably lost some power; I imagine school was closed for some of the following week; and likely the only cars on the roads were the ones with snow tires and chains. My parents probably cursed. I probably loved the excitement. But the story of Devil's Hill remains much bigger to me in my myopic eye of childhood than the blizzard that paralyzed a whole city, which is why I won't be posting any direct memories of the Chicago blizzard on the January 12th anniversary.
I graduated from high school in 1987, and although I had applied to college (one only, I knew what I wanted) and gotten my acceptance, I deferred matriculation for a year. It was for the best. Teen angst and anger were peaking, I was sick of school, and really it would've been a waste for me to go straight through when all I could think of was living on my own in the "real" world. Well, I got a dose of that. A good dose of what I could expect to do with a high school diploma and—let it be said—a bunch of shifty slackers for roommates, whose only ambition was to get wasted and stay that way all day. Except that I was not a slacker; that's something I never have been. And even if I had wanted to party—illegally, mind you, I was still underage for beer let alone the rest of what was out there to be had—well, there wasn't the time or energy for it. After a somewhat lost summer following graduation, I set about getting a job, a checking account, and an apartment, tryin
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