This little dog tag whirls me back to all things Evanston: its elm-lined streets, its blue and gray busses that took us downtown to Woolworths and the Varsity movie theater, its North-Branch library, its beach at the end of Milburn, its arched and venerable Dyche Stadium we tried to sneak into on Saturdays for Northwestern football games.
But this little dog tag also tells tales of its own.
“DA. 8-8341” recalls our phone number, quaint by today’s standards with its initial letters and lack of an area code. “I belong to R. L. Ricketts” reminds me of my dear father—bon vivant, raconteur and restaurateur extraordinaire. “2819 Colfax” stirs memories of our extravagantly large and beautiful yellow brick home—farther west than we’d ever lived, farther from Lake Michigan, farther from my Catholic grade school friends.
But there were benefits living this far away. One was nearby.
Lincolnwood School hosted a day camp during the summer I was eleven. Mornings, I walked to its playground filled with children—mostly those from nearby public schools. Going there introduced me to kids who were funny and nice and fascinating to me. It was there I got the idea to reinvent myself as Pat. I thought the name was sophisticated, hip like the dancers on “American Bandstand.” Kenny and Arlene, Bob and Justine, and Pat Molitere. I told my mother, “I’m going to be Pat from now on. If you call for Trisha, I won’t be coming.” But Mother was not one to be cowed by my fifth-grade bravado. At home I remained Trisha.
Nonetheless, it was there, as Pat, that I met Bob—tall, blonde and extremely athletic, as extravagantly impressive as our yellow brick home. One day, as I watched him squeeze yellow mustard onto his fingers and lick it off, I was smitten. What made him more intriguing was he went to Haven, the cool junior high down the way. No uniforms, no priests or nuns, nothing but sovereignty over his own mind, body and spirit, which made him even more fascinating.
Because that summer of ‘59, dog tags were all the rage, not so much for K-9s who ran loose in our neighborhoods, but for kids who wore them around their necks, Bob and I agreed to get ours. I walked to the Ma-and-Pa hardware store on Central and had mine inscribed with Pat, my official new name. One afternoon in the playground, we exchanged them. I wore Bob’s and he wore mine for the rest of the summer.
I think I grew two inches during those months—intoxicated with the knowledge that I was going steady with the Adonis and enamored with my new “Pat” self. However, as Bob and I went back to our separate worlds in the fall, the pump and thrill of summertime faded with the schoolyear’s return. I reverted to Trisha and stowed the dog tag in my jewelry box. Looking at it now reminds me how painfully tender that summer was.