Long ago, and seemingly far away, there was Prince Castle …
It sat on Harlem Avenue, north of Lake Street. Prince Castle comes to mind this week because the McDonald’s that replaced Prince Castle/Cock Robin is itself about to be replaced by a newer, less tacky McDonald’s. Ah, progress.
Who needs progress, though, when there are misty, water-colored memories to be mined?
Forty-five years ago, I was a kid and my summers were Taylor Avenue-centric. If I left the block, it was to play fast-pitch on the tennis courts at Barrie and to pool nickels for a Green River at the counter of Reback’s Drug Store at Harrison and Lyman.
Prince Castle was, say, a mile and a half away. But it sure seemed farther on those two or maybe three summer nights when my dad would inexplicably, wondrously call out, “We’re going to Prince Castle.”
It took a lot to break up the after-supper wiffle ball game on our street. Usually it was the glum declaration of the batter, “I can’t see the ball,” that would convince us nighttime had finally overtaken us. A few times a summer we’d give up baseball for the wafting perfume of the mosquito spraying truck. We’d drop our bats and hop on our bikes for the delirious pleasure of getting lost in the DDT fog. We’d trail that truck for blocks getting that slight sheen of chemistry in action.
A game could also end when some portion of the team was called home to greet aunts. We always felt sorry for those kids because, back then, aunts weren’t much fun. The rest of us would sit sullenly on the curb, then, waiting for lightning bugs or the dreaded shouting up and down the block of parents calling kids home. One would never go home to go to the bathroom after 7:30 p.m. for fear of an early call-in. Real men held it-or found some bushes.
Prince Castle, though, was another matter altogether. My brother and I would head home with anticipation, leaving the rest of our buddies morose, reduced to attempted conversation.
There wasn’t extra money in the Haley household. No one I knew ate out in those days. There was no place in Oak Park to eat out so far as I knew. So for Frank Haley to pile us all into the Chevy wagon and go clear across town for restaurant food was a summer highlight up there with our two twilight doubleheaders at Comiskey each year. (Though for the Sox games my Mom always packed our food. Mmm, baseball and peanut butter and jelly!)
When we got to Prince Castle, we all got the same thing. Simpler than seven different combinations, and I’m sure my Dad knew just how far his spare $3 would go. So it was triple-decker sherbet cones all around. Orange, strawberry and lime, as I recall. Square scoops. Two kids were always chosen to go inside and help carry. That was an honor and a treat. Got to watch the ladies and their square scoops in action. Real pros.
Eventually choices widened. The McDonald’s opened at Madison and Taylor when I was about 10. Once in a great while my dad would give us $10 and we’d head there to buy enough hamburgers-and those exotic cheeseburgers-to feed the family.
But it is Prince Castle I remember. Riding backwards in the third row of the station wagon, lime sherbet melting over my fingers, my brothers and sisters united in a moment, my folks in the front seat unleashed from the stresses of each day. And if we were lucky, we’d get back home before the last kid had been called in, and we’d sit on the curb and lick our sweet and salty fingers and make plans for more wiffle ball first thing the next morning.
