Not Where I Was Born, but Where I’m From
I was born in 1979 in Daytona Beach, Florida. We moved to Illinois when I was 5 or so, and when asked where I grew up, I always say just west of Chicago in a little town called Forest Park.
Forest Park is also, somehow, a village. The Village of Forest Park. Calling it that always hit my ears a little odd, because my brain’s default image of a “village” is pretty much the same as the first definition Google coughs up, from Oxford Languages:
vil-lage
noun
a group of houses and associated buildings, larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town, situated in a rural area.
Yes, exactly. To me, a village is a place you end up after walking a path through a forest for hours. It has a handful of villagers, a blacksmith, and a tavern, and when you pop out the other end of it you’re back in the woods. Good luck!
Forest Park screws up being a village, by that definition, in every regard. First, it is the furthest thing from rural. It is abutted on every side by other alleged “villages”, each stuffed from end to end with houses, apartment buildings, drive-thrus, and big box retail stores, and you can pass from one village into another by crossing a street and never notice the transition.
Second, it’s way too big, with way too many “villagers”. And thus, way too many taverns.
Third, no blacksmith. At least… there wasn’t one when I lived there. Forest Park has gotten considerably more hipster-ish since I left, so I actually shouldn’t assume anything, but I think the point stands that Forest Park does not historically have a blacksmith.
Candy plays on oddly significant role in my memories there. My mother’s first job when we moved there was as a waitress at a restaurant on Madison Street called La Maison de Bonbon. The house of candy, literally, but it was also an ice cream parlor, and a restaurant that served all the typical staple dishes with French names that American restaurants are known for. I enjoyed many a Monte Cristo sandwich and spinach soufflé there while waiting for my mom to get off work. LaMason’s, as employees referred to it back in the day, is long gone. Shanahan’s opened in that spot over 30 years ago now.
A blue-and-white sign partially visible in the picture above says “Home of original FRENCH CREMES”, which were little cubes of creamy chocolate fudge I used to help my mom cut up and package in the basement, after which I’d be rewarded by getting to eat some of the odd-shaped trimmed off bits of fudge. I guess the French cremes were so fondly missed that it compelled Shanahan’s to re-open La Maison de Bonbon as a tiny candy kiosk attached to the restaurant proper.
Forest Park was also the home of the Ferrara Pan candy factory, home of Lemonheads, and my walk home from school via the Circle Ave. bridge often took me through an invisible but extremely potent cloud of fruity ambiance.
And then there was Rosalie’s candy shop, but that’s another story.
Forest Park is bisected by the 290 Eisenhower Expressway (familiarly, the “Ike”). The Blue Line “L” tracks run between the eastbound and westbound lanes of the Ike until the line ends at DesPlaines Ave. at a spot which was, until almost exactly a century ago, the site of a popular amusement park that drew visitors by the thousands.
A little north of 290 is Madison St, the historic main thoroughfare. Take any of these straight east towards Chicago and you will, eventually, end up in the heart of the Loop. Madison St. will dead end at Millennium Park, and 290 will briefly become Ida B. Wells Drive before ending at Buckingham Fountain, recognizable to anyone who’s ever caught the beginning of Married…with Children.
The Blue Line (which prior to 1993 was called the Congress) also goes into the loop, but uses the gravitational pull of the Sears Tower (okay fine…the Willis tower) to pick up speed before being flung back out northwest to O’Hare International Airport.
Later in life, but before 9/11 screwed everything up, I used to enjoy walking the few blocks to the Blue Line and riding it all the way to O’Hare, where only a metal detector stood in the way of entry despite my having absolutely no business there. I would buy a Cinnabon and a coffee and just hang out in a terminal watching planes come and go.
As a very young child growing up in Forest Park, I thought we actually lived in Chicago. I knew that we lived in “Chicagoland”. I knew that when aunts and uncles from Florida came to visit us, they said they were “going to Chicago” (technically true, that’s where the airport was). Of course eventually I came to understand that Forest Park wasn’t part of Chicago, but a tiny town just outside it. So I was aware of our proximity, but nothing smacked it into perspective like the realization that on a very clear day I could see the Sears Tower (at the time still the tallest building in the world) from the top of the Harlem Ave. bridge.
I didn’t know that I was looking at a building that was nine miles away, nor would the scale of that really have meant anything to me. I just new that I could see it. If I could see it, why couldn’t I just go there whenever I wanted to? It’s right there, as if I could just point my bike at it and start pedaling. So why was going “downtown” a maybe twice-yearly event? (One to go see a Sox game, and again at Christmas to look at the Macy’s store windows.)
Do you remember how it felt being little and going on a car trip with an adult? Not a crazy-long trip, like from Chicago to Disney World, or even Chicago to Wisconsin Dells. Just some place far enough away that going there has to be a special occasion…say, your great-grandmother’s house a couple hours away. You’d get strapped into the car in a familiar place, the car starts and a grown-up would silently and confidently jiggle the steering wheel for awhile, without ever looking at a map or asking for directions, while you watch a smear of identical treetops and lamp posts go by through the window. And suddenly, somehow, you find yourself outside Nana’s house. And you’re thinking, I know this place is far from home because we only ever come here on Christmas Eve, but somehow Mom just got us here like it was McDonalds.
Home > a miracle occurs > Nana’s house.
