I began seeing my old grade-school classmates recently. Like any other kids, they grew up and did the usual things grown-ups do. I read in the Tribune a few years ago that one of the boys had killed his mother during an argument. Another one grew up to become a jewel thief, but has since straightened out. Several people became drug dealers and petty criminals, but I don’t suppose that’s so uncommon.
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Last year one former classmate, now in his 40s, spent months tracking down hundreds of Bateman alumni. His search culminated in a big reunion last September at the Como Inn (the Marchetti brothers, who own the restaurant, went to Bateman too). After that, smaller groups of us started seeing each other again for dinners and parties. About 20 of us met for dinner recently at the Angus on Western Avenue, a few blocks north of a place that had been a hot spot back when we were in school and was known as a mob front. An alum reminisced, “My mother had to get their liquor license for them because no one connected with the place [was clean enough to] get one.”
Another alumnus, whose father was gunned down years ago, couldn’t make it because of the flu. There was talk that it was his father who had squealed on another alumnus’s father and sent him to the clink, where he died in the mid-60s–in his mid-60s.
“[Hill] loved the life-style,” she told me. “But she took her money and invested it in the carnival business.
“Are you ever going to get it back? I’m upset. Will you get it back? It’s excellent quality, you know.”
