I hated it. Or anyway, I thought so at the time.

I was 14. We’d moved from Hyde Park — the South Side Chicago neighborhood lovingly recreated in To Love Mercy — to Park Forest, a barren mud flat full of tract houses 35 miles south of civilized society, i.e. Chicago.

My parents were part of the “white flight” from Hyde Park in the early ’50s. Most Hyde Park Jews fled north but we fled south, partly because my dad’s office was south of the Loop and he didn’t want to commute through Loop traffic each day, and partly because he could get more home for the money in “PF.”

I don’t know about my sister Judy but I’d have voted NO. All my friends had fled to Winnetka, Wilmette, Highland Park. But Judy and I weren’t consulted.

Anyway, there I was, a member of the first class to go all the way through a full four years at then-new Rich Twp. High School. I was lost and adrift in a sea of strangers. White strangers (more about that below).

I didn’t appreciate it at the time, but those others were mostly strangers too. Park Forest was a social phenomenon, a place where Phil Klutznick’s American Community Builders threw up 500 houses at a time, pretty much along the Henry Ford philosophy that you could have any color you wanted as long as it was black. You could choose from about half a dozen basic house configurations. Park Forest was case-studied in The Organization Man, a famous pop-sociology book of the time. But this midwestern Levittown had terrific schools, and it was cheap cheap cheap. Postwar families with kids flocked to “PF” from across the nation.

Even though those others were strangers too, they appeared more comfortable than I felt. Jocks, and the cheerleaders who adored them, ruled the school; even the teachers kowtowed to them. The rest of us were worms.

And boy, was it white. Among some 25,000 PF residents, not a single black.

In due course, I made friends — nerds like me. I slacked through classes. Some time around junior year though, I started getting a bit excited. I had a sensational American History teacher, Roy Larson, who went on to become principal. I had a goofy English teacher, name forgotten, who saw that I could write and kept pestering me to read Maugham. Then in senior year, I had two redoubtable instructors — Willis McNally for English and Will Hemeyer for Western Civ — who
actually were teaching college courses in high-school guise.

Flash forward.

Those nerds who were my buddies? They’re still my buddies and they aren’t nerds (nor, as Dave Rosenthal is at pains to point out, were they ever, except perhaps in my mind). We get together nearly every time I visit Chicago, and we’ll be together again Sunday night, Oct. 8, at the Mill Rose Brewery in Barrington — Rosenthal and his wife Anne, Dave and Jan Ensminger, the long-lost Dave McIntyre, and me. Last time we did this, we were joined by the fourth musketeer or fifth horseman or whatever, Bill Roth, who flew in from Carmel CA just to have dinner with us. Bill won’t be there this time, sorry to say, but any other Richites within earshot can stop by anyway and join us for a drink after 6 o’clock.

In high school, you could tell your closest friends what was on your mind without censorship or self-consciousness; they are the people who stay friends forever. I love these guys. I feel closer to them than almost anyone I know.

And the rest of those Richites? A lot are within earshot. When we were puzzling out the marketing To Love Mercy, I got the bright idea to send an e-mail to everyone from high school who might remember me. This, it turned out, was both brilliant (lots of book sales) and warming. I’ve re-established email contact with such dear people as Marion Levenson (Ross), Mike Dotten, Joyce Rotman (Brengle) and Lynne Rotman (Ansfield), Steve Radin (who’s cooking up a Vegas Class of ‘58 reunion), Charlie (then Chuck) Albright (who I’m hoping to meet for dinner when I appear at Borders in Columbus OH Oct. 22), Elaine Jacobson (Collins), Joe Livingston, Janet Hills (Wilkinson) and Bob Glomb (who both showed up at my Park Forest Library appearance last April), and undoubtedly others whom I’m forgetting and whose forgiveness I beg.

Park Forest evolved. In the late ’50s, while I still lived there, a black family tried to move in and a cross was burned on a lawn. I’ll say it again: a cross was burned on a lawn — not in Mississippi, but 35 miles south of the Chicago Loop. Then things went the way they always seem to, at least in the Chicago area: The neighborhood “changed.” Cheap housing and great schools a 10-minute drive from the new Ford stamping plant in Chicago Heights: Why wouldn’t African-Americans want to move in? As of the 2000 census, “PF” was 39.41% black.

And I have come full circle. On Friday, Oct. 6, I will be addressing two assemblies (the first at 11 a.m., the second at 1:15 p.m.) at my high school (now known as Rich East). My host is Traci Toth-Skievaski, Language Arts curriculum coordinator.

What am I going to tell these kids? This stuff, maybe.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Much to report:

• Leonard Lopate is TOMORROW. Tune in WNYC-AM (820 AM) or WNYC-FM (93.9 FM) at 1 p.m. Friday, Sept. 29, when I’m interviewed on this popular arts-and-culture show. If you aren’t in the New York tri-state metropolitan area, tune in at www.WNYC.org.

• ABC Channel 7 Chicago (WLS-TV) is SUNDAY. In the Chicago area, turn on your TV at 11 a.m. for “Chicagoing” with Bill Campbell. I am the first of three authors to be interviewed.

• Also Sunday, I’m on a panel of first-time authors at the CityLit Stage of the Baltimore Book Fair (4 p.m.). Earlier in the day, I’ll be at the Maryland Writers Assn. table signing copies of To Love Mercy. (How I get from Chicago to Baltimore in the blink of an eye is my secret.)

• Then it’s back to Chicago yet again. The first appearance will be Thursday, Oct. 5, 7 p.m., at the Roden Branch, Chicago Public Library, 6083 N. Northwest Hwy. Next day it’s that Rich East High School extravaganza; the school is (still) at Sauk Trail and Shabbona Drive,Park Forest IL. There’ll be further appearances in Naperville, Arlington Heights and Woodstock, but I’ll post again before they occur.

• Finally, this past Tuesday I spoke about the making and marketing of To Love Mercy to an audience of my fellow Washington Independent Writers (WIW) members. I made a low-quality tape of the event and sent a copy to the WIW office. If you’d like to hear it, contact me or WIW Executive Director Donald Graul, (202) 775-5150/info@washwriter.org.