Benny Jay: A Couple of Old Goats from Gary

It was Milo's idea to get together with Monroe -- I merely set it up.

I've known Milo since forever and I've known of Monroe for at least as long. When I moved to Chicago back in 1981, Milo and his wife, Sharon, lived in the downstairs flat. Monroe was writing for the Tribune.

They both come from Gary, Indiana, which to me was nothing more than a stinky stop on the train going east to Washington, D.C. In fact, pretty much everything I know about Gary, I learned from Milo. He told me all about it, while we sat on the front porch watching the people walk by. He'd be smoking cigarette after cigarette and telling me story after story. He had dozens of stories about Gary's quirky characters and the oddball things they did. I loved listening to Milo's stories about Gary -- though I didn't care for the cigarette smoke. I'd tell you a few of them, but I'll leave that to him. He tells his stories better than I can.

Anyway, Milo wants to meet Monroe, and Monroe's game. So we get together at this restaurant in Lincoln Park. I order chicken -- 'cause that chicken is good. I'm trying to eat slow, to make it last longer. But it's hard to do cause it's so tasty -- all juicy inside. Man, I love that chicken.

Milo's explaining how he went to Horace Mann High School back in the mid 1960s. The school board integrated it when he was a freshmen -- he's not sure why -- and all these black kids came in. There were daily fights 'cause, you know, what else are black and white kids gonna do but fight?

And Monroe says the idea of fighting white people never crossed his mind -- even though he came out of Gary at roughly the same time -- mainly because there were no white people to fight. He went to Roosevelt High School, which was on the black side of town -- across the railroad tracks, the racial line of demarcation. (I guess the Gary school board wasn't about to send white folks into Roosevelt High.) Monroe says he never even saw white people -- at least up front and personal -- until he went off to college.

Somehow or other they start talking about the Patterson sisters. Turns out both of these old goats lusted after them. "The prettiest girls in Gary," says Milo.

"They were fine," says Monroe.

They also discover they both knew another pretty girl -- named Hirsch. I think they lusted after her as well. They also knew Dr. Yokum. They didn't lust after him -- but his brother is a character in "School Boy," one of Milo's finest novels.

"How can you know the same people if you live on opposite ends of town?" I ask.

"Gary's a small town, Benny," says Milo.

Right there and then the whole notion of blacks fighting whites just because, you know, that's what they do, never seemed so strange.

It reminds me of a street party I attended a few years ago at Cabrini Green. A bunch of old gang bangers from rival gangs got together. They called it Old School Monday -- 'cause it took place on a Monday night.

"Twenty years ago we'd be trying to kill each other," they said, as they hoisted beers and listened to Marvin Gaye blasting over the loudspeakers.

The notion seemed so bizarre they wondered why they ever let it happen.