Monday, July 16, 2012

My Home Town

Once, but that was long ago in a galaxy far, far away:



Now you don't stop too long on a street corner, even if you are the ward committeman and granted a bit of slack. You don't expect to live past twenty-one. Everyone's got a gun, even though Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. It is only the law-abiding who don't have a gun, and they don't go to that part of the city.

Street By Street

It was bad when I grew up there. I used to joke that if you left the IIT campus where I was getting my college education across Wabash Avenue to the east or 35th Street to the south, you had a half-life measured in minutes during the day and seconds at night.

3 comments:

FlyingBarrister said...

If liberals had sense, they'd try to pass a mandate for all citizens without a criminal record over age 18 to own a gun. Kennesaw, GA was the first in the nation to do that about 30 years ago. But liberals could never abandon their ivory tower delusions and do such a practical thing.

In case you have not seen it, a picture of a young woman on the beach with an auto rifle in Israel has made its way around. She is presumed to be of age for service in the IDF.

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/routine-emergencies/hot-israeli-chick-with-gun-occupies-internet-1.433693

FlyingBarrister said...

Keep us informed about your treatment and how you are doing.

Are you going to MD Anderson?

If you need some reading material to lift you up during treatment, I recommend Eric Blehms' recent book :Fearless." It is a bio of Adam Brown, a SEAL DEVGRU operator killed in AFG in March 2010. He grew up well in AR, was an honor student in high school, and got off track in college with a harlot. He became a crackhead and betrayed his friends and family by stealing from them for drug money. He had a criminal record, and few favors left in the world. But his friend's father was a Navy officer in recruiting, and he managed to get Brown into the Navy with waiver. Brown became a SEAL and was injured a number of times, and lost an eye. He learned to shoot left handed with his left eye and made it into DEVGU, and eventually died on a long hard mission in Taliban country.

drjim said...

I grew up in Joliet, and between girlfriends and jobs, I spent a LOT of time in Chicago.
It used to be there were specific places and neighborhoods you didn't go. Now it's the whole city.
A buddy of mine went to IIT, and he told me that for cheap "fun", they'd sit on the front porch of the dorm, drink beer, and watch the homies steal stuff out of parked cars.