City Limits

So if you walk out of the front door of our building and head north along the lake, past the cemetery, five or six city blocks or so, this is the first thing you see as you enter the city of Evanston, IL. Normally I take Max walking through Rogers Park here on the Chicago side but sometimes I'm in the mood for beautiful white sand beaches, huge old houses with yards, Starbucks coffee and North Face fleece. It's actually astonishing how noticeably things change when you walk over the city limits, at least along the lake. Our beaches in Chicago are a bit rocky and run down but anyone can come to the beach in Chicago and I like that, you have to pay in Evanston. And don't get me wrong, I like the feeling you get from hundreds of people stacked together in apartments, all the people you meet. And I much prefer the little coffee joints that don't always have normal hours but always have charm. All I'm saying is that sometimes you need a change or a little break from the noise and so you walk north.

The other day in Evanston, I walked past an elementary school where they had the morning announcements over a speaker not only in the school but out through the neighborhood. You could hear tiny voices saying "...one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" and then Ms. Williams congratulated the 3rd grade for their high math scores, and announced that there would be pizza and carrot sticks for lunch. It sure was cute. This was all before I watched a friendly police officer (certainly one exists, but I have yet to meet one of those in Chicago) stop traffic so that a mother and her two kids in their car could safely exit an alley onto the main road. And then he walked over to play with Max and talk to him, in a voice you only use with a dog, about becoming a police dog. Of course this is Evanston, home of the ice cream sunday and the "Happy Birthday" song. Believe it.

Still most of the time, I prefer my walks in Chicago, where "rough-around-the-edges" means never dull. And where, today, a garbage man leaped out of his truck with arms outstretched and a huge smile on his face and said "Well, what do we have here?"

"Female, married, age 29 of English and Irish descent."

"No...I meant-"

"Oh, Max. He's a lab/poodle mix. A mutt really."

And even though he probably didn't want to talk to me anymore, he kindly took the time to discuss the differences between poodles and labs. Both good, both smart, but poodles are particularly fast learners and are loyal if not a little high-hat. Labs, on the other hand, tend to be hyper and have gas but shower people with affection.

The man pointed out that I was probably glad to have a mix of both.