My sister Susan recently asked me if I had any photographs of her and her late husband George's first home, an old farmhouse located in the little town of Elburn, Illinois. After George got a job as a salesman with Wesco, the industrial supply branch of Westinghouse Electric, they bought a house in Elburn, about 10 miles west of Geneva, Illinois, which itself is about 30 miles west of downtown Chicago. The photo on the left not only features that house, but also my mother Mary and father Nelson posing in front of it. At that time, Elburn was a small farm town, and the next door neighbors kept chickens and a rooster, which to Susan's delight crowed every morning at dawn. Elburn also had a slaughterhouse, and when the wind was right, it made the neighborhood quite fragrant. Susan was very proud of that house, and was so obsessed with keeping it clean that she made my father fry bacon for breakfast in the unheated utility room, which was quite nippy during the winter. She would also tend to vacuum up crumbs under the dining room table while my father was still sitting there. He would simply kick at it, and tell her to go away. Very little fazed him. George's father Elmer also visited Susan and George there, and told them that the house was "really far out." And I don't think he was using that old 1960s expression, either. As I understand it, the town is now just another suburb of Chicago, and the farmland between Elburn and Geneva is now nothing but suburban tract homes. Progress.
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