THE END OF AN ERA, UNHERALDED

I have always loved to drive. When I was a teenager living in the suburbs with my parents, I would often take long solitary drives to nowhere in particular. Without exception these took place in the evening, often on a Thursday or Friday night, and when I say I had no destination in mind I mean I would get in the car, head in some random direction, and continue as long as I had some idea of where I was. Often I would take Lake Cook Road east towards Lake Michigan, or sometimes I'd hop on the Kennedy and drive downtown, exit at say Irving Park Road, cut over to Southport, drive past the Music Box Theater and all the shops and bars along that street, then head back along Belmont to the highway, and home. Today, with gas at 4-something per gallon and the causes célèbres of climate change and energy independence this seems quite irresponsible. Even at the time I felt somewhat sheepish about spending an hour or more just driving aimlessly instead of chasing skirts or passing the time at friends' houses. But often driving felt essential, felt like escape from the banalities of my hometown, even if only to experience the novel banalities of another.

Sometimes my late-night wanderings had a destination. There once was a little coffee shop in Rogers Park at 1439 West Jarvis called Don's Coffee Club, owned by a slightly gruff Swedish guy named Don. How can I describe Don's Coffee Club to you? Would it help if I described it as the anti-Starbucks, as inimical to that corporation's gleaming, homogeneous outposts as matter is to antimatter? Don's was dimly lit even on a bright summer afternoon; at night, when I was usually there, it was so dark you could barely read a book. The walls came together at oblique angles and the white stucco ceiling was dingy and discolored; the entire space seemed so outré to me at the time, coming as I did from a town where every nice home was new and clean and sparkling. My family and I didn't live in one of those homes; we lived in a cramped ranch with a sunken living room and crabbed, untidy bedrooms. The fact that some of my friends lived in houses so vast they had to use intercom systems to know whether other family members were home constantly amazed me. It also struck in me a defensive chord, knowing how much more modest were my family's means, and sparked a bit of plebian self-righteousness as well. Perhaps because of this Don's felt right to me, this place that was older and grubbier even than my family's shabby little house and yet was filled with cozy, high-backed upholstered chairs and low, iron and glass art deco coffee tables. Dark though it was I read a whole host of books in those chairs: Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut; Catch-22 by Joseph Heller; A History of God by Karen Armstrong; and most of Dostoevsky's masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov, which to this day remains the most important book I've ever read. (As an aside, my senior English teacher Dale Griffith told us in class before beginning The Brothers Karamazov that "no one can claim to be an educated adult without having read this book." At the time I thought that claim presumptuous and a bit absurd. After finishing the book I thought it profoundly wise.)

Getting to Don's was something of an adventure. At the time (and even today, in some areas) Rogers Park could be a dicey neighborhood. As a practical matter, any precinct in Chicago is more diverse than my hometown, and compared with the torpor and complacency of the suburbs the city seems to pulsate with energy. The shop was tucked right into a residential neighborhood just off Sheridan, surrounded by apartment buildings, and only distinguishable by its glass storefront and dilapidated shopfront door. You couldn't get a soy latte or an Americano at Don's; he served regular and decaf coffee, hot or iced - maybe cafe au lait and cappucino, but nothing more exotic than that. You could also get a donut or bagel, and I believe sometimes soup was also available. Nothing was served "half-caf" or "ristretto" or with any fanfare or pretense. Sometimes it was Don who helped you, sometimes a mousey but cheerful Loyola coed. You sat as long as you wished and nobody said a word to you unless you wanted them to. The shop didn't close on the weekends until 3 am. On more than one occasion I closed it down.

When developing a pattern of behavior, propinquity is crucial: if something is too distant, too remote, it won't become part of the common currency of your life. So it was for me with Don's. Rogers Park is a long, long way to drive from Barrington in order to get a cup of coffee and read a book - 31.45 miles, by Mapquest's reckoning. I went away to college and when I returned Don's, like so many fixtures of my adolescent life, had lost its romantic allure. I rented apartments further south and frequented other coffee shops. Years passed and I had literally almost forgotten that Don's existed until a few weeks ago while driving up Sheridan Road to Evanston to see my sister at college. Something flashed in my mind at the chiasm of adolescence and academia, some nostalgic trigger, and when I saw Jarvis I thought instantly and longingly of Don's. Longingly, because as soon as I remembered the place I recalled having read that Don had sold the shop not long after I left for college, and that the new owner had forsaken it soon after. The present tenant is a theater company called The Side Project. Change has come not just to 1439 West Jarvis, but to the entire street: an Italian restaurant, a bagel sandwich shop, and an upscale cafe have moved into the block just across the intersection from where Don's shabby little emporium used to be. Gentrification has arrived, which for a neighborhood of Rogers Park's charm is nothing to be wondered at.

Maudlin sentimentality is not my object. All things come into our consciousness and later pass from it, as do we ultimately pass from consciousness ourselves. No, what I miss is not so much a place, or a picture of what once was that exists in my head. What I miss is the feeling of potentiality, of unfettered possibility that swarmed in my mind and body at the time I was a customer at Don's. Everything extraordinary still lay ahead of me; college, career, casual love affairs, commitment, a family, a home of my own - all lay before me in a splendid but ill-defined tableau, and nothing disappointed because nothing had firm contours, no paths were closed off. Surely I knew that a career as, say, a professional athlete was not in the cards, but that never held appeal for me so the deprivation dealt no sting. But beyond that, any and all good things were surely at my disposal. At seventeen, no dream is small, and no sentiment modest. There's a reason punk rock concerts allow minors, or at least always should: the force of feeling at that age is only reflected adequately in the efforts of the greatest auteurs of that genre. In a way, punk is a superfluous stimulant for a teenager; I remember getting worked up listening to Handel. Jump forward a decade, and now, even in my moments of greatest sadness or elation, I know I feel only half as strongly as ever I did at seventeen.

As I was saying, I love to drive. Lately I have taken to the same sorts of long, solo drives to nowhere that I indulged in years ago. I set out with no destination in mind, no itinerary, only the knowledge that what I am doing feels important to me, important enough to squander fuel that now costs $4.50 a gallon. I look into the windows of other cars as they pass me, much as I did in my teenaged years. I wonder at my fellow motorists, what they might be like as people, whether they entice or bore me, and in a flash they are gone. At some point I turn the car around and head for home. When I reach Lincoln Park I find yet again that nothing has changed, that I have learned nothing new. But there's another road to nowhere tomorrow. And somewhere, I hope, another Don's.