It's dog. Eat dog.

I live on a quaint little street in suburban Chicago with a convenience store, camera store, bakery, pub, ice-cream parlor, hair salon, veterinarian, bicycle store and Italian restaurant. (And far more dentists than the national average.)

In the window of one of the dental offices across the street, there used to be a big, neon blue tooth with a white brace. A friend (that's for you, Meckhead) once said the brace resembled a tellefin. Which, I seem to remember, is the leather pouch containing verses from the Torah that some very observant followers of Judaism wore on their foreheads. (I seem to have misplaced my Oxford Encyclopedia of World Religions, so please correct me if I'm wrong. The thing is as big as Order of the Phoneix. It's not easily misplaced.)

I had dinner guests last Friday. "What do you think of the divine tooth?" I asked.

"The what?" they asked.

It was gone.

Despite the loss of the divine tooth, some things have remained constant. Like the hot-dog vendor that parks a half-block away from my apartment every Saturday. There's something so Chicagoan about being able to grab a dog in the midst of one's Saturday errands.