Pictures of home

by Douglas Bukowski

"The photographs that were stored on a shelf in the bedroom closet where Douglas Bukowski grew up form the basis for this memoir, Pictures of Home. The pictures are a source and a measure. They show a family on the South Side of Chicago, where the children of immigrants fought to keep out the descendants of slaves. They show a boy from Hardscrabble who forever lived in the shadow of a fellow Irishman named Richard J. Daley. Each was born within a mile of the other; each received the baptismal name of Joseph; each drew a city paycheck as firefighter or mayor; and each died on the same date in December." "The pictures tell about a husband and wife, their children, and the inevitability of change. While the house they lived in remained much the same from 1939 to 2000, the surrounding neighborhood did not. The streets were transformed, the children grew up, and the man died a slow death to which two daughters and a son bore witness even as they sought to fight it. The mother stays in the h