October 18, 1996 : My 30th birthday. We celebrated at the Corner Pocket in Chicago. Kim rounded up about 20 of my friends for the bash. Absent from these party photos is Peet, who had moved to New York City the prior year. There aren’t too many photos from this event, so this slideshow also includes shots from the next year as well.
1997
1997 marked the 20th anniversary of my friendship with Peet. Peet came into town from New York City and this was our chance to do some reflecting. We put together a “Greatest Bits” video with all of our old video clips included. But in between the segments we recorded new clips of us visiting some of our old stomping grounds. This scrapbook documents some of those places.
Now we are really going back in time on this one. There is a photo of me pointing to an area that used to be a creek. In 1977, Evil Knievel was huge and we all tried to act like him on our bicycles. This is where I tried to jump over the creek on my bike. I had absolutely no leverage, so my front tire never cleared the edge. I flew over my handlebars and cut my lip as well as lost a tooth.
There is a shot of the garage of my first home in Illinois. Going back here was really depressing. What a dump this neighborhood became. I lived here from 1974 through 1978. Peet lived right across the street from me. Peet’s brother was about two years younger than I was. Since every kid needed someone to pick on, I used Peet’s brother Greg for this purpose. Greg used to get Peet to help him out and then Peet would go after me. Since Peet was 5 foot tall and 200 pounds at age 11, I was able to outrun him. Eventually Peet found out I had an easy way to get on John Landecker’s WLS program and we became friends out of this.
Peet and I went to a school district that was testing a cutting edge vacation plan. Instead of going to school for 9 months and then getting off for 3 months during the summer, this district had us on a track system. We would go 9 weeks in session and then get off for 3 weeks. Then we would go 9 weeks and then get off for 3, and so forth. They had us divided up in 4 groups so basically the school was in session all year and you were not guaranteed to be off on vacation at the same time as your friends. Whoever came up with this incredibly STUPID idea should be tried for insanity.
We also returned to the old stomping grounds of the Barn and Castaldo Park.
Life was never the same for me after this point. Just days after these shots were taken, I found out that I was going to be a dad.
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