WALKING ROUTE 66

I Am the Summer Santa Claus

And I didn’t even know it.

David Freeze was traveling from Santa Monica to Chicago along Route 66. I learned about David when I was doing my research for my trip. He was riding his bike and publishing his daily diary in his Hometown Newspaper Salisbury Post.

When I realized that David will be arriving in Chicago about the same time as I was planning to start my walk, I emailed him to see if we can rendezvous, and he agreed.

Every summer for the past few years, David had been riding his bike cross-country for a month or so, and post his chronicles on Salisbury Post. Then he turned them into a book.

I met him at the Buckingham Fountain at 10 AM. We walked over to Do It Right Donuts. He met a lady on his way into Chicago who commutes to work on her bike every morning. How cool!

She told him he MUST go there if he will be in downtown. It’s a hole in the wall place. The apple fritter I had was excellent, not the best I ever had, but still.

He gave me some good pointers on what to expect. We have become friends and kept in touch. Two years ago, he called me to get some pointers, because he was planning on running across the State of North Carolina instead of his usual cross-country bike tour.

I had arrived in Chicago a few days earlier and was staying with my cousin in Glendale Heights, west of Chicago. The plan was to stay with him while I walked across the city. It would take me three days to reach the western outskirts of Chicago before it would become impractical for him to bring me home and drop me off in the morning.

I remember two incidents from my first day that I want to share with you, along with some street scenes and gorgeous street art.

Around 3 pm, I was casually chugging along on the sidewalk of Ogden Ave on the infamous South Side of Chicago, when I saw her.

A black old lady, with a pink backpack, belonging to her granddaughter, I presumed, heading in my direction with the baby girl in the tow. As she got closer, she smiled widely exposing some of her brown and some missing teeth. She stepped right in front of me, playing with my beard as she exclaimed, “oooh, you’re so cute. You’re like a Summer Santa Claus,” and went on her merry way as if nothing was unusual.

Yes, the same Ogden Ave about which my friend Carol and others warned me. So much for xenophobia. (That’s my original blog post)

A couple of hours later, I stopped at the steak ‘n egger to rest and get a bite to eat.

I sat at the counter watching the food being prepared and talking to the waitress who was happy to have a customer.

As we talked, I learned that she was going to college because she wanted to make something of herself. She said when people hear that I am from Cicero — a Chicago suburb — they say, “Oh that’s a bad place. All they think of is Al Capone. He’s been dead for years, and there is no crime here.”

She asked if she can sign my t-shirt, and suggested that I should collect signatures on my shirts as souvenirs. Thanks, Leslie, for your lovely message and being the first one to sign my shirt.

I called the restaurant this morning (7/20/2020). She doesn’t work there anymore. I hope she graduated from college and made something of herself.

I invite you to tag along if you’re up to it. I am tagging a few friends who I think will be interested. If you are tagged but don’t want to read my stories daily, just let me know in the comments, and I will not tag you moving forward. If you are reading this and aren’t tagged but would like to come along, let me know, so I can tag you.

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As always, thank you for reading and responding.

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Rasheed Hooda is a published author, and a regular contributor and editor for ILLUMINATION, a writers’ community on Medium, where writers support each other.

He is a self-proclaimed weirdo who lives a Freedom Lifestyle and writes about related topics — Travel (a top writer), Personal Growth, Freedom, and entrepreneurship. (Get the Newsletter)

More about me:

An interview by Dr. M Yildiz for ILLUMINATION

Testimonial by other writers.