Former railroad crossing
Burley Avenue between 86th and 87th Streets
Chicago, IL 60617
(South Chicago)
You reach the crossing, the gates are up, black and white like a zebra, you look to your left. The train yard, an engine pulling gondolas full of coke. You pause, you stop. Just beyond you the engine slams to a halt, suddenly, and a tremor shudders through the cards, shakes coke loose. A man throws a switch, waves, the engine starts up slowly. In the background, steel mills, blue sky above.
Martinez-Serros’ story, “The Birthday Present”
Martinez-Serros’ story “The Birthday Present” depicts this crossing on Burley Ave. A young boy, described in the second person as walking south on Burley, looks east into the South Works.
In Martinez-Serros’ most well-known story, “Distillation,” from his collection The Last Laugh and Other Stories (1988), the narrator describes the importance of Burley as a connection between the Bush neighborhood and the neighborhoods to the south: “For one block Burley Avenue was a corridor—the only one for some distance around—that allowed movement north and south.”
The narrator also describes the railroad tracks that once crossed Burley here: “We rattled over the railroad crossing at Burley Avenue, a busy, noisy pass, and this made me stiffen and press my palms against my ears.”
This once-busy crossing carried the tracks of the Elgin, Joliet, and Eastern Railway (the “EJ&E”) and led directly into U.S. Steel’s South Works to the east. (See the former tavern building at 8358 S. Burley for a detailed description of the South Works). According to Chicago community historian Mike Medina, during the 1930s this crossing “would have been a very busy line that certainly would have been noisy.”
