My Friend Matt

             MY FRIEND MATT

                                  BY:  STEVEN  FORTUNA

                                       When I was a young kid growing up on the west side of Chicago, we lived in a very close- knit neighborhood. Not necessarily in the sense that we all got along in harmony but more because everyone knew everyone else. It was a neighborhood full of three flat apartment buildings and bungalows. The apartments were all small and usually crowded. The average family size back in the 1970’s was six or seven, while the average apartment only had four rooms. So, that math dictated that most of your time was spent outside, despite the seasonal weather fluctuations.

 By being outside most of the time, you were always visible and everyone’s business was in plain sight. Long before the internet was invented, information traveled at the speed of light around the neighborhood via talking. Most nights the moms would gather on the front steps to keep an eye on the kids playing in the street and to catch each other up on the latest news. The dads tended to hang out on the back porches to keep a distance from the daily gossip and it provided them space to enjoy a drink or a smoke, while listening to the ball game on the radio.

Kids naturally paired off by age or school grade and hung out on rotating corners in the evenings. The older teenagers usually spent most of their time drinking and smoking pot, so they picked the corners where they would get the least resistance. The slightly younger teen boys would gather wherever the teenage girls had decided to hang out each night, in the hope of having some interaction. Younger kids didn’t roam too far from their front doors. They would play in the streets until they got tired or gave up waiting for the ice cream man to come.

Each day most of the boys my age would meet up near the church or the school yard with the primary intention of playing a game of baseball, basketball or football, depending on how many kids showed up.

The younger boys would steer clear of the older kids for fear of getting picked on verbally or physically. The exception was always if you had an older brother. The older kids usually didn’t mess around too much with the younger siblings of their hang out buddies. Which just put more pressure on those of us without big brothers, as we were seen as fair game.

I still vividly remember one summer afternoon, when I was hanging out with a couple of friends in our usual spot on the church steps.  We were just minding our own business, when this new kid that none of us had ever seen before approached us. He was older and considerably bigger than us. For no reason he walked over and one by one knocked us each to the ground. I remember that he put his foot on my chest and held me down. The reason I remember this is not because it hurt, but because he was wearing fancy pointed dress shoes that I had never seen before, so I was both intimidated and interested.

He said something to put the fear of God into us and then walked away. It reminded me a little of like when the bad outlaw makes an appearance in an old Western. He was new in town and he wanted to mark some territory for himself. With none of us having any older brothers to step up to our defense, we quietly assessed the situation and decided it might be better for us not to hang out there for a while. We got lucky this time, as there were no girls around to see the big kid pushing us around, but we couldn’t chance being so fortunate again in the future.

After making some discreet inquiries over the next few days, we found out that the kid and his family had just moved into the third- floor apartment a half a block away from the church. He was several grades ahead of us in school. That was good news in that the grade differential meant it was unlikely for us to bump into him too often, but hanging out around the neighborhood or the playground would be its own challenge.  

In a neighborhood full of kids, playground teams were usually formed on the basis of school year or age. Fifth graders played with fifth graders. Fourteen-year old’s played with fourteen-year old’s and so on. Teams were usually formed based on the pick system. Two captains would be announced, and they would take turns filling out their teams by making alternative “picks” of the assembled kids. I was lucky to be pretty good at all sports and would always be picked first in the schoolyard draft. I never gave it much thought back then, but it must have sucked getting picked last or not at all. It had to be a little demoralizing to have the girls see that you weren’t picked to play.

Of course, sometimes the age groups got mixed just because of necessity. That meant they were a player short of making even teams. When that happened, no-one cared about your athletic skills. They just needed someone to play right field.

In September when school started back up, the playground would be empty all day except for recess. But every inch would be taken after school and on weekends, when kids from every grade would be out jockeying for some playing space. I recall one afternoon when we were trying to play a game of two-handed touch football and we were a player short. We looked around the playground and saw one kid standing off by himself. He was new to our school and not in our grade, so no-one really knew who he was. But he met our simple requirement of being a warm body, so we called him over to play with us and fill out the team. 

My initial impression of him was that he was a little small and fairly skinny. He didn’t exhibit any athletic skills worth noting for future team picking reference, but he was a decent kid. He played with us for a while and then drifted off by himself, when the game ended.

 Over the next few weeks, we would often see this kid hanging around by himself by the playground and would let him play with us when we were short players. It was obvious that being new to the school and neighborhood, he hadn’t caught on with a group to hang out with yet. It must be hard to be the new kid having to try to mix in with groups of kids that have known each other their whole lives. Hanging around the playground and hoping to be asked to join in some games seemed to be his game plan to make his way.   

On the weekends, we would play sports all day. We’d usually all meet about mid -morning and play until dinner time. We would only take a break somewhere during the day to walk over to the local store to grab a soda. It was during one of these breaks that we finally got to know something about this kid. We had been playing together on the playground for a few weeks now and no-one even knew his name.

He told us his name was Matt and that his family had just moved in that summer. We were the same age, but for some reason he was one grade lower in school. That’s why no-one in our group knew much about him. Over the next few weeks, Matt and I started to hang out a little. Nothing pre-planned, but if I was outside and saw him on the street somewhere, I would invite him to join me and my friends, while we walked around and talked or tried to get a game of something going. Because everyone lived in small quarters with sizeable families, there was no playing inside activity at all. I’d had lifelong friends of which I had never stepped a foot into their house. You knocked on their door and they would come outside to hangout.

Then one day when we were hanging out, Matt had a need to run home for a minute. Surprisingly he invited me to follow him up to his apartment to get something. You can imagine my surprise, when I walked into his house and sitting on the couch was the big bad outlaw that had roughed us up a few weeks ago on the church steps. It was his older brother.  I froze in anticipation of getting bullied around again. While his image was cemented in my mind, it soon became apparent that he didn’t recognize or remember me at all. Phew! It felt so good to be anonymous. Matt got what he came for and we left. For some reason, his brother never bothered me again when we crossed paths in the neighborhood.

After a little while, Matt started to become popular at school. He had the combination of being a kid that was easy for the boys to get along with and being the new boy with blond hair and blue eyes for the girls. We went through this exercise every time a new boy moved into the neighborhood. There was a mystery around the new kid that intrigued all of the girls that were bored and tired of the regular neighborhood guys. All the girls liked him, and they called him Matty.

As the school year went on, Matt started to hang out more with kids from his own grade, which was natural. We would still mix on the playground playing sports after class and on the weekends. That next summer we wound up on the same Little League Team..

 Matt and I would take the city bus to and from our games. Parents were allowed to attend, but it was very rare to see any of them at a game. Most dads worked long days and did not have the time. Moms were too busy taking care of the other kids in the family and didn’t have access to a car. For some reason I don’t remember much about the bus rides to the games, but I fondly recall the bus rides home.

The baseball fields where we played were located across the street from a hamburger stand. This was a big deal at that time, well before every corner got obliterated with fast food restaurants. Outside of hot dog stands, getting food to go was still a novelty that was building its way around the country. It was a big treat to grab a burger or fries for the forty -minute bus ride home. The outcome of the game didn’t matter as much as the post- game snack. We would ride the bus home throwing fries at each other, while laughing most of the way.

 I remember that for years my mom had a picture in the house of me and Matt standing arm in arm in our Cubs uniforms. It sticks out in my memory because we weren’t a house with a bunch of photos everywhere. So, it was a little unique that this one was always around. Years later I would search the house for that picture, but it must have gotten lost or misplaced in a drawer when my mom moved.

Once we graduated from elementary school I saw less and less of Matt, as we went to different high schools and started to lose touch. I went to a Catholic high school that was located outside of our neighborhood and Matt went to the local public high school along. I think my parents, besides being devout Catholics, saw that the neighborhood was changing and made the financial sacrifice to send me to the school that they thought would provide a better education. This unintentionally created a chasm between me and all of my old friends. Attending school together provided plenty of opportunities to stay connected by taking classes, hanging to eat lunch or just walking back and forth every day. Out- of -sight led to an out -of- mind relationship with Matt and my other friends, as seeing each other relied more on randomly bumping into each other than any planned get togethers.

Things had started to change in our neighborhood. The abundance of apartment buildings had always allowed for families that rented to move in and out of the neighborhood on a regular basis. The biggest impact of the changes was felt by the neighborhood kids. While adults had the option of mingling with the newly arriving neighbors, the interaction was thrust upon the kids. Suddenly the classrooms and playgrounds became a lab experiment on mixing kids with different backgrounds and life experiences. Street gangs started to become more common. Eventually long -time residents started moving out as more and more violence began occurring in our once idyllic neighborhood.

It was during this time that tragedy struck. One night while Matt’s father waited in his car by the elevated train to pick up his mom coming home from work, he was shot and killed. Even in our toughening neighborhood, this was a shock. Guns were now making their way into our daily lives. I couldn’t imagine the impact this could have on anyone, yet alone someone my age. Looking back, I wish I could have been a better friend to Matt at that time.

Soon the neighborhood kids started dropping out of school. The local high school was run by two fractioning gangs and if you weren’t in one of them, daily life was hell. I would hear horror stories from my friends about how kids were getting beat up on a regular basis. There was no way you could focus on getting a decent education, while looking over your shoulder every minute of every day. Soon just about every one of my friends attending the neighborhood public school dropped out for self -preservation purposes.

The guys began meeting up each night on the street corners to hang out drink and smoke. This soon led them to start experimenting with whatever street drugs were making their way around. They’d hang out all night and then sleep all day and then repeat. Our lives were going in different directions, but I would stop by to check in with my old friends from time to time. I remember how all the guys including Matt were usually high, when I saw them. Soon it became apparent that we had less and less in common and it got harder to stop by to hang out. It was like I wasn’t part of the group anymore.

Every time I drove past the hang out corners, I’d wave to my old friends and started to notice that there was less of them hanging around each time. The word on the street was that after a year of watching their sons hang out on the corner all night, some of their dads laid down the law and told them, “Get a job or join the service”.

One by one my friends began choosing to enlist in the Army, Navy and Marines. Whenever I inquired about one of our friends that I hadn’t seen for a while, the likely answer or assumption was that they must have enlisted. There was no fan- fare. No good- bye parties. Just on the corner one day and on a bus to boot camp somewhere the next. I never got a chance to say good- bye or good luck to any of the guys.

In the following years, I stayed in the neighborhood and attended a local commuter college. I never ran into any of my old friends again. Most of their families had moved from the neighborhood and in the days before cell phones, email or social media, once someone moved away you lost all connectivity to them.

I never saw Matt again. I remembered how he looked the last time I talked with him on the corner. He looked a little out of it. Once he disappeared from the neighborhood, I hoped that going to the army or going to California or wherever he went would be a positive step in redirecting his life. 

                                           EPILOGUE

In December 1978, police uncovered the first of 29 bodies buried on suburban businessman John Wayne Gacy's property -- 26 in the crawl space under his home in unincorporated Norwood Park Township and three more outside the house. He confessed to four more murders of victims found in waterways south of Chicago.

He was one of the worst serial killers of all time. In all, he confessed to killing 33 boys over the years. He would prey on young boys by offering them jobs at his construction business. He had them come to his home to sign employment papers and would use chloroform to disable them. I don’t want to discuss the rest.

Since his crime spree had gone undetected for years, many of his victims were unknown and could not be identified. The police reached out to the public for help. They asked families to send in dental records of kids thought to be runaways. Because Matt’s disappearance from the neighborhood was so clandestine and no-one had confirmed that he had joined the service, his sister eventually sent in his dental records and he was confirmed as one of the victims. I don’t know where their lives intersected but I assume it was the promise of a job.

Whenever I hear the killer’s name mentioned on radio or television, I get a chill down my back and a sickness swells in my stomach. To not stay depressed for the rest of the day, I try to think about eating burgers on those bus rides home, when I laughed and threw French fries at my friend Matt.