Bookstore Stories (1) On Turning Away Hate
by Robert M. Katzman © November 7, 2018
In 1991, I owned a small foreign-language world-travel bookstore on the north side of Chicago in the Lakeview area, near Clark and Belmont streets. It was the center of Chicago’s gay/lesbian community, and was also and still is known as Boy’s Town. The store’s name was Le Grand Tour, and before that, Europa.
1964: A Runaway’s Renaissance
by Robert M. Katzman © September 9, 2018
Fifty-four years ago on June 8th, 1964 I ran away from a dangerous violently abusive home. I was fourteen and two weeks away from graduating Caldwell grammar school on the South Side, about a dozen miles south of State and Madison, Chicago’s Downtown.
My story is filled with Ghosts, but it is worth writing down, if only to soothe the Ghosts’ anxiety.
After all, aren’t I part of a world-wide Tribe so often called: The People of The Book?
Who am I to resist that Celestial Design?
It is now long past “What will become of this wild child?”
Now near seventy, I must write, “This is what really happened.”
Joy’s Diamond Ring: Romance and Racketeers
By Robert M. Katzman © Sunday, July 11, 2010 (updated 2/8/2021)
First published by Bob Katzman at 10:47 pm on Sunday, July 11, 2010
Not your usual love story.
A fifty-year saga about a Chicago West Side tribal immigrant’s tale, encompassing: Friendship, Jewelry, Gangsters and the real meaning of lifetime friendship, no matter what.
A puzzle with so many pieces, all steadily adding up to Joy’s diamond ring.
On December 31, 1977, New Year’s Eve, I invited my long-time love, Joyce Esther Bishop, then 27, to dinner at a famous old Chicago steakhouse. Specifically, The Kinzie Steakhouse, but which is now far better known today as Harry Caray’s Steakhouse, after the now deceased and legendary Chicago radio announcer for the Chicago White Sox baseball team, famously remembered for yelling: “HOLY COW!!” after every home run hit by the home team.
Aside from Joy’s full-time day job working in the city, she also worked at my original Hyde Park store, Bob’s Newsstand, every weekend. She was either selling newspapers, stuffing the Sunday newspaper’s weekend components inside each paper or keeping an eye on all the numerous part-time employees and/or the endless stream of customers.
This was back in the days when Chicago still had four separate daily newspapers and was the last remaining American city to be so blessed. Now there are only two Chicago newspapers left, both post-bankruptcy, and in their present (2010) shrunken and sensationalized formats, they would have seemed other worldly to either of us in 1977.
The then fiercely competitive conservative Chicago Daily Tribune and the more liberal Democratic Chicago Sun-Times, were rich and mighty Midwestern icons of journalism, seemingly able to last forever, just thirty-two years ago. What happened?
Joy was certain that I loved her, since I told her so every single day (and still do). I was also convinced that she loved me too, in the unmistakable ways women get that idea across to the objects of their affection.
I planted a tree today.
The grayish-bluesy sky was gloomy, threatening to rain, and I was standing in my garden thinking:
“Good”.
 Some days drag themselves like there are elephants hanging onto each hour. I had no plans, no list of anything to do, no calls to make. I thought,
“Bob, plant a tree”.
By Robert M. Katzman © July 18, 2018:
“I’m Fourteen. I Need a Job”
At Midnight, June 8th, 1964, I escaped an insane home on the South Side of Chicago where beatings with thick leather belts, belt buckles, rubber hoses and clenched fists were an everyday event. I left running with only the clothes on my back, in freezing rain, two weeks before graduating eighth grade at Caldwell School.
Met up at some point with my father who took me to live with him in a one-room studio with a small kitchen and bathroom in Hyde Park, across the street from the Museum of Science and Industry. I was going to need the industry part. He wasn’t working. This is what happened next when I was essentially on my own.
Letter to my (new) cousin, married to my blood cousin, who is justifably distraught over where our country is torn now, and how his own family suffered so much pain long ago because of their skin color. Funny, never met him, but I feel like I know him, and what is eating at him. I really care:
Bernie, whatever you call yourself, you’re good enough for me. And there are milions and millions and millions of “me” who aren’t ignorant, or hateful or under the illusion that one kind of person is somehow magically more valuable than another kind of person. What you wrote on Facebook is passionate and well-written–not that you need my opinion–I hope you get enough positive reinforcement to dilute the pain I read in your words.