During my late high school career, or perhaps it was early in my college career, I often ran my favorite seven-mile loop from 1719 Patricia Lane in St. Charles, IL, along 7th Avenue north to Route 64, west across downtown past a set of windows where I could check my running form, across the Fox River to 3rd Street, south toward Geneva onto Anderson Boulevard, then east on Geneva’s State Street, over the Fox River again, climbing the hill just past Route 38 to East Side Drive, back to Division Street and home again. Usually counterclockwise. But not always.

We all need a “go-to” route when we want to run without thinking about the course, and that was my go-to. It had hills, interesting, wide streets, and a fair amount of shade on summer days. When I ran at night, that same route was largely illuminated by streetlights. On summer nights, I’d see dozens of moths circling those lamps, and hear nighthawks calling above the trees. There were plenty of those back in the day, because the factories in town all had gravel roofs, perfect breeding spots for camouflaging nighthawk eggs.

Occasionally, I’d run the route clockwise, and one summer afternoon, I wore a bright orange St. Charles Cross Country shirt as I ran through downtown Geneva heading into the sun. The Geneva Theater still operated in those days, and a pack of bored townies lined the window shelf as I ran past. One of them shoved their feet in front of me as I passed, but I jumped over them, gave a glance back and flipped a bird in response to the asshole move. Within seconds, I heard a large scuffle behind me, and was amused to turn find an overweight guy with a scruffy beard starting to run after me. I chuckled and picked up the pace, and he lasted about twenty yards.

I kept running west for three blocks, thinking the incident was over. Then a yellow Renault pulled in front of me at the entrance to the Jewel grocery store parking lot, and out hopped a pair of other guys, clearly looking to start a fight. I wasn’t afraid to fight back then. I’d been in quite a few fights during my middle school years, and once during a high school intramural basketball game I jumped up and punched a guy smack in the eye after he threw me down during a game.

But I wasn’t in a fighting mood at that particular moment, so I faked like I was running right to avoid them, at which point they both leaned that direction to catch me, and cut back between then and their car. That seemed to inflame their transplanted anger.

Knowing that I’d better lose them quickly, I ran down a curved set of abandoned railroad tracks behind the strip mall. The footing wasn’t great because the railroad ties were half-covered in sand and weeds, but I made headway going north and expected to be done with the thugs.

I reached the next east-west street and saw a friend of mine, Spencer King, coming my direction on his scooter. “Hey,” I waved to him. “Can you give me a ride?” I asked.

King of Himself

Now, Spencer’s interests in life were always first and foremost about Spencer. I knew him from high school, and that’s just how he was. “Where are you going?” he asked. At that point, I saw the yellow Renault racing toward us. They’d found me. I pointed and said, “Those guys are after me.”

Spencer turned around as the Renault skidded to a stop. A guy jumped out the passenger door, raised his arm back, and heaved a knife in our direction. It skidded past us on the street and disappeared in the weeds. Spencer looked at me, gunned his scooter motor, and took off without me.

I ran a few steps across the street and headed up the sidewalk. The Renault driver stood there looking at me with evil in his eyes. I kept running until I found an alley and turned north. I was approaching the next east-west street when I spotted a man in front of his open garage door. I ran inside, told him, “Someone’s trying to catch me. Can I hide in here?” To my surprise, he asked no questions, pulled the garage door down, and apparently drove away in the car he’d been idling outside the garage.

I was out of breath and my chest was heaving, but years of training in distance running taught me how to keep an even rate. A car drove past. I could hear the tires crunching on the gravel. Peeking out the window, I could see the yellow Renault with two guys inside looking into the yard. I dropped my head down and crouched low inside the garage. Pigeons cooed above me. I looked up and saw a coop with several birds in it.

After ten minutes of hiding there, the sweat on my body dried up even though it was warm outside. I didn’t want to make noise by opening the garage door, so I snuck out the side door, went out the chain link fence gate, and ran the backstreets all the way north to St. Charles.

Knife Fight

I’d never had a knife thrown at me before, but back in sixth grade, I’d gotten into a series of fights that led to a challenge by a local tough from a bad neighborhood on south Route 222 before Willow Street. I’d accepted the invite to fight the guy in the deep end of the empty Meadia Heights swimming pool as it was empty during the fall, and bragged about my date with destiny at our neighborhood pickup basketball game. Instantly, an older kid named Davie Arnold grabbed me by the shirt and said, “You’re not going. I’ll go in your place.”

Davie was the kind of crazy kid who played basketball in his socks, so I didn’t want to mess with him. He went and fought the tough kid at the pool, and came back with his shirt all covered in blood. “Oh my God!” we exclaimed. He walked over to me, grabbed me by the shirt again and said, “He pulled a knife on me. I knocked it away and beat his face in. This is his blood,” he told me. “And you’re done fighting.”

And pretty much, I quit fighting after that. I was eleven years old. So by seventeen years old, I’d avoided two possible knifing incidents in life.

But years later, in 1985, when I’d just gotten married, we moved into a house on Anderson Boulevard, right on the route where I most loved to run. About three days after we moved in, I was pulling our Subaru into the garage when a feeling of deja vu overcame me. Suddenly, I realized that our garage was the same one in which I’d hidden the day I’d been chased by the thugs in the yellow Renault ten years earlier.

We lived in that house for ten years before moving to Batavia in 1996. I ran my favorite loop many more times before leaving that home behind. There was one more odd and funny aspect to that location. I painted this self-portrait watercolor, featured in this article, which shows two manhole covers surrounded by tarsnakes, forming an illustration of two large female breasts. It symbolizes that a young man’s obsession with sex can be a knife to the heart for those weak with lust. We’ve all had to run past that now and then. I tried, not always with success.