We looked, and liked what we saw. It was a two house duplex,
which was ok. We picked out a house we liked. [8834 S. Kildare Ave., 2 houses from the
elementary school.] It was a little different from the other houses.
It had a picture window in the living room and a bay window. It also had two bedrooms, a bath,
and a kitchen big enough for a laundry room, and a dining area.
[I visited it in the summer
of 2004. The present owners are keeping it in fine shape. The daughter of the Caprios,
our next door neighbors with whom we shared a driveway, still lives there.
I don’t remember ever meeting her, but I remember that I couldn’t play with her brothers
without fighting.] |
A Google Map of Hometown in 2000 |
J. E. Merrion was building [small apartment buildings and] duplexes [on curving streets
just outside of Chicago on both sides of the Rock Island Railroad between 87th and 95th
streets,] based on the Greenbelt MD plan. [He didn’t leave any room for a City Hall,
so the residents got together and bought Railroad right-of-way for civic buildings.
The first ones were the firehouse and the American Legion, which at that time was not
political.] All the men got together and formed the American Legion. Of course we joined.
I was in the Ladies’ Auxiliary. |
We thought $9000 was a lot of money, but the deposit was $200.
We thought that we could swing that. Earl had a good job at Gunn’s Beauty Salon.
We borrowed $200 from Mr. Gunn, and he signed the papers for us.
The next time we visited, we found that the streets were not paved yet, there were no
sidewalks, the yards were just mud, but people were moving in. The water, electricity
and gas were in, so we bought our first house. Earl had to park on the highway and walk in.
[I remember that even the semis had trouble getting through the mud.
Mom’s first husband showed up at our apartment in Chicago with a strange contraption of
3 pickup trucks piled on top of each other to help us move. Dad was not happy to see him,
but it helped us move what little we had out of our cramped basement apartment.
I was 4 at the time.] |
| Eventually the streets were paved,
sidewalks were put in,
and the yards were smoothed out. [I remember that it happened pretty fast.]
They were planted with grass, and the front was landscaped. [We had a single tree in the
front yard and one in the back. I would lean on the one in front while doing headstands,
and feel that I was falling into the sky.
I once dug a hole in the back yard behind the garage, and hit bricks within 6".
The area used to be a city dump for the nearby small town of Oak Lawn.
If only I could have reached the Devonian bedrock, which I ended up studying
for my Masters degree!] |
 |
|
| They eventually put in a shopping center which was appreciated,
as the wives were stay-at-home mothers, and now they had a place to shop.
[There were about 20 stores between the National Tea and the A&P. I used to pretend that
the “Loin Steaks” signs in the windows of the A&P said “Lion Steaks”. The barber shop
located where the shopping center bent was owned by a racist who held a few “minstrel shows”
in public halls. Mr. Marion was Catholic, so he started a Catholic Church in a quonset hut
near the public school. The Protestants got together and bought both sides of a duplex on
87th Street, and had 3 nondenominational services every Sunday. When they wanted to expand,
they built on a block across 87th Street in Hometown’s suburb, Chicago. It is now a
Disciples of Christ church.]
|
