I only knew two things about the residents of Chicago's south suburbs when I moved here for work in the fall: Folks aren't as stuck up as they are in the northern 'burbs, but they are unfortunately Sox fans.
But I dutifully moved for my new position, taking a spot in a great apartment positioned dish-rattlingly close to the Metra tracks. And I would nod at the fellow residents of my apartment building and smile, sometimes hold a door if I was pretty sure I wasn't letting in a burglar. Mostly I knew them by whether or not they made noise after 10 p.m. or by seeing the names marked on the detergent bottles in the laundry room.
The last two days dumped 16 inches of snow on Tinley Park, my own little corner of the Southland. With drifting, blowing and I'm sure those freakin' Metra trains are to blame somehow, drifts in my apartment building's lot reached seven feet in spots.
As I was updating my Facebook status to say that the snow-shoveling was the universe's way of punishing every homeowner who has chuckled condescendingly at apartment dwellers or said, "When you settle down more, you'll of course want to own," I got a knock on my door. It was the inner door that goes to the shared stairwell and not to outside. It was a stranger. He said to help.
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