Strangers can make you cry

It's raining. Mumble muble muble.
It's a hard rain.
I don't like a hard rain. Mumble mumble...

This from a conversation overheard on the train. Only a voice steeped in weariness and nicotine could convey the essence of a hard rain- a thing to be endured. Somehow the Bob Dylan song never fully got the point across. It's all in the voice.

Don't Be Afraid- It's Just the Neighborhood

May is the season for slasher flick weather, rainy hot nights that make the hairs on the back of my neck do the electric slide. I rounded the corner by the train station armed with a new umbrella. I held the umbrella in front of me like a lion tamer, sheilding my torso from rain that falls impossibly sideways in this town, in a maneuver known well to Chicago residents. All I could see from this vantage was a patch of sidewalk at my feet. But when a long shadow slid across my path I hesitated. Looking up I sort of gawked in surprise at my companion on an otherwise empty street. He muttered something like, "Don't be afraid- it's just the neighborhood."

Oh yeah? And what about the flannel- loving chauvinists who inhabit said neighborhood? I wanted to yell. Instead I hurried home, concentrating on the lesser hazards to be found on my block. As in the countless kids who make the sidewalks their Indie 500 on scooters with flashing tail lights and wobbly miniature bikes that never saw a training wheel. There's the icecream truck that only plays Christmas music, the liquor store bouncer who sits in the doorway, a fat chijaujuas atop each knee. The sweet- faced liquor store maven at the other end of the block looks like my friend's mom.

The ancient textile outlet boasts magnificent pine wood floors that sigh underfoot. A Polish matron sits at a card table, dispensing hand- written receipts for cuts of cloth. Dollar store merchants wire strollers and christening gowns to their awnings, as if urging people to procreate. Musty Italian restaurants share ramshackle blocks with offbeat rehabs and hand- painted storefronts. We recently acquired a soul food coffee house, and there have always been panaderias with thin metal trays and tongs and ornate cases stocked with cakes.

Women stand on their front steps, babies resting on one hip and bored men, finding nothing better berfore them, follow the women with sad eyes.

"Can I walk you?" asked a short rotund man. A little girl squatted on a tricycle at his feet. It was my first summer in Pilsen. I stared at him in confusion. "To the bus stop? Can I walk you?" he asked. All summer hang- dog packs of men offered me beers from their front stoops, offered to "walk me" God knows where. High school kids cruised by slowly in their cars or walked hand- in-hand with girlfriends swaying in very high heels

It's just the neighborhood but now people have bigger concerns, deportations to avoid, legislation to fight and immigration reforms to uphold. It's a sort of cultrual staring contest we're in, waiting to see who will blink first. I don't really understand the intricacies in policy that make immigration such a contentious issue. All the reasons I've heard politicians state as causes for concern are just plain classist and/ or racist.