From the forthcoming book "Rush Street, Chicago's Street of Dreams" by David Floodstrand.

"I had seen it many times before at my young age of 7 years old, Rush street. As the sun set in the fall meets winter gray, and the big yellow school bus awaited, you could hear the call from the driver and a few young voices who chimed in "Booker's Bus….Booker's Busssss". Booker was our school bus driver, and a kinder more patient man you would be hard pressed to find, especially considering the propensity for mischief of his young charges. Always dressed in a tweed overcoat, and a brown cap pulled down over his forehead, Booker was a kindly, proud looking black man with a pencil thin mustache, who was the very definition of a gentleman. Eventually all the children would find their way, and we would be off and into the fading light, the pale street lights glowing a soft white, almost yellow glow. Down Astor Street to Goethe and beyond, stop by stop the children left the bus.

Booker loved music and not just any music, he particularly loved jazz, and that became our soundtrack as the city and neon lit up and the early evenings magic moonlight came to a rise. Booker liked to keep the radio tuned to a radio station broadcast from the deep south side of Chicago, and the jazz flowed out of the speakers like a big shiny zephyr train, the steam shooting out of the sides like smoke out of a big angry bulls nose. As we made our way down Rush Street the neon green, red, and blue came to life as we passed by. The art deco doors of Adolph's awaited, as the red and green neon of The Singapore restaurant flickered on. The lights had a different quality back then, an otherworldly glow that reflected off the puddles in the street, and bounced up into your eyes like a second sunrise.

Being so young, I had no idea what went on behind those doors up and down that magical street, but I could imagine. I had seen plenty of movies with sophisticated ladies wearing the long fur coats and mink stoles like those ladies getting out of the fancy cars and taxi cabs up and down the street. It seemed I saw automobiles that one rarely saw anywhere but that street or a Hollywood movie. Big chrome bumpers wrapped around a long black Cadillac, with huge fins racing towards the rear. Now those were cars, rounded shoulders and sleek lines, crème colored, powder blue, and mustard colors sped through the night then pulled up tight to the curb as a young man in a gray jacket cut to the waist and a black bow tie jumped to the curb with a waiting umbrella and a welcoming smile.

I loved looking out that window as the world swirled by in front of me. I saw so many things that interested me, yet I wouldn’t know the answers to my many questions until many years later. “Who was Mr. Kelly?” I thought, and why was everything twist this and twist that? I was particularly drawn to a window with a white sheet drawn over it from the inside. From the back of the club a single spotlight shined toward the window. The silhouette of a naked lady who was dancing on a stage in between the spotlight and the window, Le Bistro was etched into my young mind forever. I can almost see her tassels swaying back and forth to the raw sound of the alto saxophone wailing through the radio, Charlie Parker and his band swinging hard.

I heard people from all over Chicago and all over the world came to this part of town for the night life and to “relax on the axis of wheel of life, to get the feel of life, from jazz and cocktails” to quote the great Billy Strayhorn. My early days peering out the school bus window to the spectacle before me was simply a prelude of what was to come years later, when I would become intimately more familiar with the street, its people and all the things that made it tick.

Booker patiently made his way down the glittering street as the cacophony of sound sometimes drowned out the jazz music with youthful shouts and laughter. I discovered many things on that bus, I discovered new things every day, like my first frosty window, frosty like a peacock's feather with diamonds, mixed in a cold sweep and tossed upon the glass with an icy brush. It was always a delight, and especially at night when Booker would turn up the jazz. As the dim white globes of the street lamps sailed along the inner drive of Lincoln Park, the soft sparkle of the frost seemed to disappear in an instant, back to whence it came, and back into my dreams where it would lay dormant for years, only to have the breath of life bring it back to my adult memory like a dream waiting in the wings.

They must not have paid Booker Taylor that much, because he had more than one job to do at the school. After he delivered us to school in the morning, we would see him at lunch time helping in the kitchen, and sometimes serving food to the kids from behind the line, always a warm smile at the ready. We were indeed a handful, but that rarely seemed to bother old Booker, who had a heart of gold and the patience of a saint. It wasn't until years later that I found out Booker started his day at 5 am in the morning, before the sunrise, to get ready to pick all us kids up from all over the city and deposit us at The Bateman School, then he would help in the kitchen during the day, and take us all home in the afternoon and into the night. He would drop us off all over the Gold Coast and Rush Street, to Old Town, Lincoln Park, to Rogers Park on the far north side, and then start the process a new the next morning. I didn't have to know where he was from, or what he did before. Booker was the first man I ever met that showed me that all you need to know about a man is how he treats people, and he proved that every day." black tie cocktail dress