When I was about to enter high school, my parents decided we should move from the South Side Brainerd neighborhood of Chicago to the southern suburbs, where they felt the schools were better than Calumet High School, where I was scheduled to attend in the fall. The suburbs were a mixed blessing. Granted, the schools were better, but I don't think any of us really adapted. My sister soon moved to the 40th floor of a downtown Chicago high rise, where she met her future husband George. My mother (seen in the photograph on the left with our dog Irma, in front of our Country Club Hills split level) returned to the workforce and worked for her friend Julie at the Country Club Hills library. She also volunteered at the Tinley Park Mental Hospital, where one day she met an old family friend who had been placed there by his wife (husbands beware!).
My father (seen in the photograph on the right, sitting in his favorite chair) moved his dental office to Alsip, Illinois, and was so successful there that he was able to work half days while waiting for me to finish college (at which time he and my mother planned to retire to Florida). My favorite part of that era was putting the bike in the back of the car, driving to the parking lot at the Adler Planetarium, and riding along Chicago's lakeshore and through the adjoining neighborhoods. However, on the whole, I think it was definitely for the best when my parents decided to retire to Stuart, Florida in 1976 (where they were very happy), and I myself moved to my first bachelor pad, across the street from both the elevated train car barn and the Daisy Hill Meat Packing Plant (in Forest Park, Illinois, which is just west of Chicago and a short "L" ride from downtown Chicago). And I must tell you, I still get a case of the cold sweats whenever I leave the city limits these days and enter suburbia - any suburbia. Perhaps intensive analysis is called for. Preferably intense but free analysis.
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