Once upon a time my wife-to-be lived in an apartment on Melrose, down the block from the Nettelhorst School.
The two things I most remember about that apartment are both romance-related. First, on Feb. 14, possessing both the key to her place and more creativity than money, I let myself into her apartment while she was at work and cleaned it, thoroughly, as a Valentine’s Day present.
Second, on the south side of the sidewalk was a hole shaped like a heart. Not a perfect Valentine’s heart. A lopsided heart, one lobe somewhat bigger than the other. The discrepancy made it extra endearing.
Whether you see what is coming next can be considered a test of how romantic you are. Take those two facts — 1) a young courting couple and 2) a heart-shaped depression in the sidewalk. What happens next?
Of course the heart becomes part of the pair’s personal romantic mythology. One of us — I can’t remember who, probably me — notices it.
I say “probably me” because, in most relationships, the less attractive half tends to try harder. And as a stocky, large-headed, potato-nosed, endomorphic struggling writer improbably dating a lithe, strawberry blond stone beauty attorney sprinting up the big law ladder, try I did.
One Valentine’s Day she got in the car for our date, holding a card and a small box containing four chocolates. She handed me the gift. I glanced nervously toward the back seat. Waiting there was a red laundry basket filled with presents. A bottle of wine. Flowers. A balloon. Candy. I’d seen the basket, first, in some bazaar in the basement of Field’s and decided to just fill it. Kinda pathetic, really.
So I noticed this heart, stopped, and stood on it. She stopped. We kissed. Doing so quickly becomes a private tradition. We spent the better part of a decade in the neighborhood, first when she lived on Melrose, then when we lived together a bit south on Pine Grove. So we’d often stop on our sidewalk heart and kiss.
Being a wisenheimer in all things, including love, I couldn’t resist turning that sweet ritual into a sort of trap. I would silently pause on the heart while she walked on, preoccupied. Victory! Eventually she’d realize I’d gone missing, and turn to see me standing alone on the heart. Whatsamatter honey? Don’t you love me anymore? Walking past our heart ...
All this came tumbling back when the Chicago rat hole exploded across international news, immediately becoming an honored Chicago tradition along with the Picasso, deep-dish pizza and ivy at Wrigley Field.
The story kept growing, getting crazier. People assembled a shrine, as if Mickey Mouse had died there. A couple proposed. Another got married there.
I kept mum. I try not to pile on. The thing is still echoing around the world. Last week I opened an email from a Canadian friend with the promising subject line: “Sounds like an amusing Steinberg column to me.”
The email contained no message, just a link. I’m always looking for column ideas, and clicked with a flicker of hope. The link led to a Toronto Star story with the typically dull, direct, wordy, written-for-search-engines-not-for-readers headline, “A rat-shaped hole in a sidewalk in Chicago has gone viral. Does Toronto have its own version?”
I sighed, replying:
“Do you have any idea how many pages of newsprint we’ve expended on that thing?”
That is not a criticism. Sometimes people mistakenly believe newspaper coverage is allotted based on importance — were that the case, half the stories would be about global warming, and we’d never cover another baseball game. We write about what’s interesting to readers, whether significant or merely quirky. The rat hole is quirky, big-time.
Why? The splat factor. That poor rodent — actually not a rat at all, but a squirrel — flattened as if Wile E. Coyote ran over it with a steamroller.
The candle-in-the-darkness factor. The news is so bad, generally, between fascism ascendant at home and slaughter abroad, not to forget the planet baking to a cinder. Who doesn’t want some comic relief?
Or to find some special meaning in a hole in the sidewalk? Our heart on Melrose is long gone — paved over at some point — and I’m glad it transpired before social media began whirling random situations into globe-spanning crazes. I’m glad it was something shared just between us. And now, belatedly, with you.
