Before I moved back to Chicago, we decided to rent an apartment to see how the commute to Michigan City would go.  My only request about said apartment was that it had to have radiator heat.  There were two reasons for this.  One, the heat would be included because the building had a common boiler for which the landlord paid the heating bill. Secondly and more importantly was the return to a piece of my childhood and young adult years in apartments all through the north side of the city.  

When I moved to Indiana, I encountered a heating system that was a gas-forced furnace.  To me, it was nothing more than a giant blow dryer that heated the air, and when it got colder, the blow dryer would kick on again, blowing hot air throughout the house.  This did not seem like a step in progress for heating a home.  I missed the radiator heat of those apartments. They were not perfect, but they were cleaner, and heat seemed to be distributed evenly throughout the apartment.  But it was more than just a radiator.  When there were winters in Chicago, the radiator did more than just heat an apartment.  There was snow on the ground from mid-November, often to Saint Patrick’s Day.   You were lucky if you saw the pavement within these dates.   We lived outside, even in winter.  How many times would we return home, remove gloves, socks, and boots, and pile them under and on top of the radiator?   Sometimes, you laid your jacket on the radiator as well.  You could not even see the metal of the radiator as it was packed with cold and wet clothes that would slowly dry in time for you to go back out or head to school.  

There was comfort in that large piece of iron in every room. You parked yourself next to it after a full day outside. Sometimes, your feet would be so cold upon coming home that you sat on your back and placed your feet on the radiator until you could not take the heat anymore. In the middle of the night, you would hear hissing and sometimes the clanking of metal as the boiler heated up and pushed hot water or steam over metal.  This noise was not annoying it served as a comforting reminder that the heat was on.  The alternative would not be good, given how cold it would get in January in the 1970s.  

We put the old black and white TV near one of the radiators.  It was almost as if the radiator was the fireplace of years gone by. People gathered or huddled near the source of heat.   When your socks did dry, they would be cardboard stiff and take the shape of the radiator, creating large ridges where they had settled on the top of the radiator.  It was not uncommon for families to put a pot of water on the radiator to create a poor man’s humidifier. The pan would stay there all winter with white lines where the water had evaporated from.  On occasion, when the gas was shut off, you could put a pan on the radiator to get hot enough to heat up a can of Campbell’s soup.  I missed all of that.  

When my wife called and said she found an apartment on Geneva Terrace that had radiators, I asked what hundred block. She said it was on the  2300 block.  I said that’s across from Lincoln. The grade school I went to.  I had walked by this building a thousand times.  We took the apartment, and I got my radiators. Only two of them were in the studio apartment, but that was enough.  It was a great, cozy apartment, not unlike the ones I grew up in.  It felt like home, and that time had stood still for me. Some 35 years later, I could find myself in this great city again with the hissing and clanking sounds that were like lullabies helping me drift off to sleep. There is no place like home.  

Comments from Readers on my last piece.

Seriously Mike, how about the “Lakin Riley Act?” Or Men playing in women’s sports. Anyone who still thinks Kamala should have become President is nuts!

Mike, love your stories, but you lost me at, “I was also a Kamala supporter.” The woman might be brilliant, but she can’t make understandable thoughts come out of her mouth.

Today they’re suggesting many ofJoe Biden’s signatures were auto stamped?

He was missing in action & you wanted that again?

This current “auto correction” will be hard - but necessary!

They had us feeling terrible about “America” not Proud - as we should be!

Hope you enjoy this beautiful day. But, Kamala as President of the Untied States, that’s laughable!

Signed. MB.