[Oe List ...] Memories of Uptown

[LAURELCG at aol.com]

I remember staying up all night loading rented trucks to go from 5th City  
to Uptown. Others stayed up all night in Uptown, unloading the trucks. I'm 
not  sure this is true, but it seems some people who had been staying in the  
Kemper building were moving back to 5th City. So, in my memory, there's the 
 absurdity of loading and unloading everyone's board-and-brick  bookshelves 
and books going both ways. Many of the books in everyone's boxes  were the 
same titles.
 
Kindle was 35 years too late.
 
I was on the Emerging Generation team with Alice Baumbach, Wayne Nelson and 
 Catherine Whitney until after Summer '73, when I went with the children to 
 Geneva Crossroads camp. I don't remember E.G. structures in Kemper, so  I 
think the move must have been June, after school was out and before  we went 
to camp. Does that sound right?
 
Living in Kemper in those days was quite an experience. Fred and  I had a 
small room on 5th floor with three glass walls. The fourth wall,  with a 
window, looked out to Lawrence. Our corner bed was a futon  that I made from 
foam rubber, that went on top of desks. We used the  desk drawers that faced 
outward as storage, as well as a file cabinet  and metal book shelf  with the 
middle shelves replaced with a closet  rod.
 
Patrick and Barry slept in a dorm situation down the hall. Suzanne and  
Scott were assigned to Milwaukee and Madison.
 
In fall, '73 I was assigned to the kitchen/housekeeping team with Judy  
Radke and Maxine Manning, who was our prior. The kitchen, with no  walk-in 
refrigerator, was woefully inadequate to feed the number of people we  had 
(500?) three times a day, not to mention the quarterly prior gatherings. We  
designed, and I made, ruffly aprons which we donned like armor over our order  
blue polyester, but they didn't work to keep Maxine and  Judy from getting 
hepatitis, leaving me alone to cope with meal  planning, ordering the food and 
keeping the 50 cents-per-meal budget. Or  was it per day? Whatever it was, 
we really needed the in-kind food I  begged at the produce truck docks once 
a week. I confess  I sometimes dreamed of getting hepatitis myself.
 
Fred Buss gave a hilarious lecture to all residents on basic  sanitation to 
avoid contracting the disease. Whose idea was it to have the  kitchen team 
also clean the bathrooms?
 
One morning I eavesdropped on the conversation of two homeless men taking  
shelter in the Lawrence entry. We used the hallway between that door and the 
 back elevator for storage, and I went there to get something that was on 
the  menu. 
 
"It was cold last night."
 
"You can't sleep on the streets of Chicago any month of the year without  
getting cold."
 
Fred McGuire was on the development team, gone most of the  time. That was 
the grumpiest year of my life. I acted out in numerous ways. If I  was 
unkind to anyone reading this, I'm truly sorry. But the grits  were not my fault. 
 
Jann McGuire
 
 
In a message dated 12/5/2013 8:23:47 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
jlepps at pc.jaring.my writes:

Yes, it  would be good to hear early memories of moving into 4750 and  
Uptown.

I was working with Phil Townley at the time, and  accompanied him to a 
council meeting which was to provide permission for us to  make the move. They 
asked all sorts of questions about who we were, and I was  furiously 
scribbling answers for Phil to give. He thoroughly ignored  everything I wrote 
(wisely, it turned out). We got the permission and moved  in. 

One feature of the early days was security: someone was posted in  the 
Guild Hall at night and had to check the door to the back alley every  hour. The 
noises of a near-empty building at night made for nerve-wracking  times. It 
wasn't ghosts that were scary -- one felt almost able to handle  them, It 
was what was outside that created the unease. 

The rooms were  office spaces, and some had walls; the rest had file 
cabinets as dividers with  curtains hung from the ceiling. Privacy was hard to 
come by. But work space  was ample on the first floor, and for the first time, 
many of us had actual  desks and file cabinets! 

It would be good to hear stories from others  who made the move.

John  Epps

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