Petra and I parked on Halsted and walked through the giant gates where drovers used to register their cattle shipments. It was hard for either of us to imagine the days when tens of thousands of cattle were unloaded every day and the drainage ditches ran with blood and offal.

“My dad used to tell me that during the Depression, when he was growing up here, the yards were the most popular tourist attraction in the city,” I told Petra. “When the World’s Fair was held along the lakefront in 1934, more people lined up here to watch cattle being killed than went to the fair.”

“Ugh! I can’t imagine. All the blood and stuff might make me a vegan, and then Daddy would have six heart attacks and disown me right before keeling over.” She laughed merrily at the notion.

We walked across Exchange Place, past the remains of the International Amphitheatre, to Ashland Avenue. The Beatles had played the Amphitheatre just a few days after the Marquette Park riots. My dad had to help with crowd control. I remembered how upset he and my mother were. The riots had kept him away from home round the clock for a week, and now, because of “hysterical teenagers,” in my mother’s bitter language, he had to go straight back out.

“I begged him to take me with him. I was a bit young for full Bea tlemania but was catching the fever. It was such a relief to have something fun happening on the South Side for a change. He let me and one of my girlfriends sit in the back of his squad car. We got to see the Fab Four pretty close as they went inside.”

Petra rubbed my forehead. “I touched the eyes that saw Ringo!”

Laughing and kidding together, we meandered through the old neighborhood. Saturday is a busy time in any part of town: shopping, laundry, kids’ sports, yard work, car repairs, all bring people into the streets. Ashland Avenue was crammed with women lugging children and groceries. Girls playing hopscotch and double Dutch, the staples of Chicago sidewalks, slowed progress even more.

All down the street, heads turned as we passed. Petra, towering over the crowd, her spiky blond hair shining like a Roman helmet, was startling, a freak show traveling through the neighborhood.

“When I was little, Granny Warshawski already lived over in Gage Park. My dad took me by here once just to show it to me, so I hope I remember which building he grew up in.”

This part of Ashland is still vibrant. Light industry has filled in some of the holes left by the stockyards. People tended their little gardens. The tenements were covered with fresh paint, but underneath the uninsulated siding remained. These wooden row buildings dated back over a century, to when Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle.