THROWBACK TO THE 60'S - THE OLD TOWN SCHOOL
I grew up on Chicago’s north side, near Montrose Harbor, until seventh grade. My family was pretty bohemian with many friends then in the art and theater community – we were close with the family of the founder of Second City. We moved to Highland Park in 1960 where I lived for five years. When I graduated, my parents divorced and I ended up living in various apartments in Chicago and Evanston until moving to Austin in 1984.
My family never quite fit in there in Highland Park. Particularly my mother, I think, lost an important and meaningful sense of community. She never quite bonded with anyone in HP. It was much the same for me, although I did have some wonderful fellow bohemian friends during high school.
As an antidote to the out-of-placeness I felt in HP were weekly pilgrimages I took every Saturday to Chicago. For the four years of high school, 1962-65), I attended the Old Town School of Folk Music. It was quite a trek, especially in Winter. We took the Northwestern train from Highland Park to the Davis Street station in Evanston. Then we took the Evanston “el” to Howard Street. Then the Engelwood train to Fullerton, where we transferred to the Ravenswood train getting off at Sedgwick and walking a few blocks to the original location of the Old Town School on North Avenue. Whenever we had to wait for a connection, often at Davis Street station in Evanston, where the station had, as I recall, an old stove for heat, we would take out our instruments, play, and sing joyfully.
Each Saturday morning students at the Old Town School participated in a small group lesson in whatever instrument and level we were at - like “Beginning Dobro” or “Intermediate Banjo”! Then at lunchtime, we'd go out on our own to various funky restaurants in the Old Town neighborhood - at that time Old Town was not very commercialized, the Chicago equivalent of early Greenwich Village in New York.
In the afternoon often great folk musicians would come and play for all the students - I heard so many. I don't recall them all exactly. I know I heard Hobart Smith, Fleming Brown, Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, Bill Monroe, Michael Bloomfield, George and Gerry Armstrong, Win Stracke, Reverend Gary Davis, Frank Hamilton, Ray Tate, Sleepy John Estes, Big Joe Williams, Stu Ramsey, and many others. Finally, there'd be a group sing, in which all the students, at whichever level they were at, would play and sing together. After the group class, we'd hang around, especially us young blues and bluegrass guys, each collaborating yet trying a bit to outdo the other.
It was and is still my best image of what a school can be. A joyous community excitedly learning skills, thrilling with creativity, mutual encouragement, excitement, and camaraderie. It was at that time definitely a left-wing humanistic and creative school community. We were confident that our commitment to beauty and authenticity went hand-in-hand with movements for a more compassionate, just society.
That movement is still here in this world, although more challenged. I hope we can bring more of that spirit and energy of "We Shall Overcome" to the world today. Perhaps we should sing together more often. May we find a common and captivating music. May our voices and words articulate and popularize what we need to be and do to be united in love and peace.
