By Wendy M. Fendrick ~ Stoughton Press Staff Writer
Photos by Kathryn Vaughn ~ Stoughton Press Staff Writer
The Stoughton Press - Holiday / Winter 2010 edition  www.stoughtonpress.com

“Go out in the alley and fight!” my mother told me and my seven siblings. The dilemma was I was five years old and my family lived in a northwest suburb of Chicago where there were no alleys.

“You wouldn’t want to meet up with him in a dark alley!” another common phrase from my childhood.

What technically is an alley?  Webster defines alley as a narrow street or passage behind or between buildings.  Alright.  So far that’s not scary. Then, I moved into the city of Chicago.

Back then, the childhood alley of my four kids at Belmont and Central, was low-key and uneventful. We played in the alley. We used the alley as a short cut. It was our alley.

Then I got divorced. The kids and I became a Habitat for Humanity family and moved four blocks from the lake. The building we renovated was great. What was once a 69 room hotel became an 18 unit condo.  Our apartment was terrific.  The location… not so great.  The fact that our alley was the route for the el tracks made for an even more unsafe area.

This was that scary alley I didn’t want to “meet up with him in.” This was that alley I could “take my fights out to.”  But I never did.  Others did, though, and I will never forget it.

Once my two youngest daughters, who were in high school at the time, were on their way to ride the el train.  I received a phone call right after they left with an important message, so I chased after the girls using the short cut through our alley.  I had barely bolted out the back door, when I came upon a fierce fight.  A guy and a gal were battling another girl.  There was yelling, screaming and a broken bottle involved in the skirmish.  It was a nightmare.  Although I am fairly fast on my feet, I felt like I was in slow motion that night. As I ran past the trio, I could hear the thump of the man’s boots as he kicked the woman, who by this time was on the ground.

I made it to the street where I immediately located a policeman who radioed for back up and then sped to the scene of the altercation.  After I caught up with my daughters, I went back to see what happened.  The three people had been taken into custody.  Another eye witness told me that the fight started over a t-shirt.  A t-shirt!  The blood stains on the side of the el platform took forever to fade away.

That was thirteen years ago.  I’ve discovered you can take the girl out of the alley, but you just can’t take the alley out of the girl.  When I moved to Stoughton, I just had to check out this small town’s alleys.  What I discovered is wonderful.  Alleys that were the back yards to thriving businesses.  Alleys that had been cleaned by a local home church group.  Alleys that could safely be used to store kid’s bicycles.  These alleys do have some things in common with their Chi-Town counterparts; dumpsters, fire escapes and stairs painted grey.  But the fire escape landings have lawn chairs, picnic tables and potted plants, the dumpsters are tidy and the Hibachi grills reveal that folks here use these areas as living space.  

Now, that’s right up my alley!

I encourage you to check out Stoughton’s alleys.  You will be pleasantly surprised at what you’ll discover!