Bits And Pieces

A Backwards Glance

     If I wanted to shop in a five-and-ten, I traveled to Des Plaines.  Supermarkets were small stores, according to our present day standards.  There were vacant lots by the score which sold for less than a thousand dollars.  Now this was the Arlington Heights I remember when we moved here over 17 years ago.

     The population sign read less than 10,000, and I never made a trip to the center of town without running into several of my neighbors.  People stopped to chat on street corners, and Arlington Heights was a quiet town which was just beginning to burst its breeches.

     Stately elms, minus disease, shaded a weather-beaten station.  People smiled at you and spoke, and everyone lived within walking distance of town.

       Pop had gone on ahead from California to find a house for us due to his excellent transfer opportunity to the company headquarters but right at the beginning November holiday in 1947.  At that time all the Chicago papers were discouragingly slim in ads for houses which might be rented or even bought, but one mentioned an Arlington Heights location so he decided to take a look.  The house to be bought had a small kitchen, a postage stamp dining room,  but it held possibilities for expansion to an unfinished second floor and was close to trains, schools and shopping.

     "I wondered who'd buy this house." declared a neighbor in one of the three houses on our block.  "You know it has been vacant for so long and with houses so hard to find and all."

     No, the house I didn't like and it was the first and last time Pop would buy anything over a thousand dollars without wife's guiding hand.

     But the majority of the people were so friendly and I liked the small town atmosphere--its shady, narrow streets and "out in the country" feeling.

     The library nestled up a steep flight of stairs in the old Town Hall which was whisked away when the Jewel-Osco was built.  The A&P store seemed huge when it was constructed, for my eyes had grown used to small markets. 

     The shop owners were eager to talk, and they soon learner all about your family while you inquired about their children.  Everyone traded locally, and merchants weren't that grim faced or unhappy over the new shopping areas which have sprung up to pull business away in the last few years.

    I wrote a local "shoppers column" for a spell and also interviewed new people as they moved into the houses around town--(imagine trying to keep up with the newcomers to town these days?)

     There were fewer stop signs and street lights, more parking spaces and no parking meters.

     Doctors and dentists were few.  Dogs played with other dogs and went for daily romps through all the vacant fields.  Our springer had a Spring habit of bringing home baby rabits for the children to raise.

     There were one high school and one junior high school, one Castholic and one Lutheran grade school, and taxes were--well, they were easy on the pocketbook.

     The commuter trains were of the old-fashioned variety, pulled by steam engine; some old coaches were even equipped with gas lights.

     Specialists had to be consulted in Chicago then, and the nearest hospitals were Elgin or Evanston.  There were no medical labs nearby for tests either.

     Yes, a big city is fine.  There are conveniences galore--better education and health facilities, but somehow I miss that small town that suddenly grew.

Written November 4, 1965

     This again reflects on Mom's past experiences and she fills in a few more  details of the move to Arlington Heights.  She took a train from California with a dog and two children--one barely one and the other just over 6.  All belongings being moved over land from the company town of Plaster City.  Even the car would be transported by train, but later.  They did love Arlington Heights and stayed there for the next thirty years.