Leaving the 'hood: Adam Langer's sequel to 'Crossing California'

FICTION

THE WASHINGTON STORY

By Adam Langer

Riverhead. $24.95

For six long years in the late 1960s and early 1970s the nexus ofmy world was Devon Avenue in West Rogers Park. My adolescent buddiesand I ran our self-imposed boundaries of that crowded street westfrom Western Avenue to Thillens Stadium at Kedzie. We ate pizza atIl Forno and hot dogs at Wolfy's, snuck into movies at the Nortownand surreptiously "read" our first Playboys in the back of Rosen'sDrugs.

In the Eastern European bakeries and delis, English was broken,not spoken. I was one of the lone goyim in a neighborhood of Jews,but that never stopped me from taking the same …