Thank you one and all ! @Nancy Hart - looks like another day of singing Kalamazoo ! So, its a nice small town, hoped it would be - if I had my life over I'd travel to the places I have heard of, as I love American place names like Chattanooga - what a great name ! My aunt married a US soldier and lived there, he became a patrol officer
Frank, My folks moved from Chicago to the Chain O' Lakes back in the 40's.They bought a Resort on Grass Lake and that is where i grew up and went to Antioch High School . that old resort is still standing too but is no longer a Resort. i have many memories growing up there and fishing on almost every lake there. I also lived in Round Lake throughout my first marriage and worked in Libertyville. All those towns have all changed now .. seems like all of Chicago has moved out into the suburbs and i can recognize the names of the roads that use to be country roads, are gone now ,all the beautiful country side has turned into suburbs of Chicago ..After 34 yrs of living in Northern Illinois , i had remarried and moved away.. but i still visit my son and his family who still live within the area.. And i agree. you cannot retire and live in Illinois. that is why we when we retired in Tenn.. we had lived in Maine which is about the same kind of taxes as Ill. very high!!. its only for the rich and famous now to retire there.
Its sad when you go back to a place and its changed so much Still - we have our good memories of a life back then
@Louise Williams 'Tis then a small world after all, is it not? I mentioned Chain 'O Lakes just off the top of my head, you mentioned you rarely post here, and there we are reminiscing! The towns you mentioned, Antioch, Libertyville, as well as the lakes, immediately sprang back in my memory. My Maternal Grandma, who lived in Chicago in the Bohemian neighborhood around 26th. St. and Central Park, vacationed after retirement, with her husband Joe, not my grandfather, but loved as though he were, usually at Fox Lake, occasionally Channel Lake. My folks usually drove them up, as Joe did not drive, and I remember a funny incident once at perhaps age 11 or 12, where we had taken them to a resort owned by a guy called "Dutch". My dad & I, standing out on the beach, struck up a conversation with a man strolling there. I stood aside, listening..... I heard the man say, "You know, that guy Dutch has a blind pig"! Spoken with such reverance, as to make me ask my dad later, alone, why in the world did a blind pig have such importance? My dad explained it meant he was selling liquor illegally. It may have been the same place, not sure, that had several slot machines in the basement. I might add, I grew up in Berwyn, born and raised, and by the time I reached 30, my life as well as the old stomping grounds, had changed a lot, never to again be the same. Frank
haha Frank i do like talking about the old days.. ,...Berwyn is outside of Chicago? if i recall correctly.. I do not know anything about illegal liquor but I do know slots were prevelent (sp) and illegal in those days ....,.. my dad had 2 slots in a closet in the kitchen area. if you wanted to play the slots that is where you had to go and be sure to close the door..my dad let me and my brother play them sometimes too, my dad also rented out wooden boats and they had 21 rooms upstairs to rent . and it was a restaurant too, . us kids had to help do dishes. no automatic dishwasher in those days and i had to clean the rented rooms and help my mom in the kitchen, and my brother had to bail the water out of the 20 wooden row boats if it had rained and he had to cut the grass too, no riding lawn mowers in those days and there was also a large picnic grounds,...some people came to camp there too,, i also heard this from my dad that before my folks had bought that resort , that it was known that Al Capone had also been to the resort several times... and to other resorts and taverns around the chain too, Have you ever heard of Blarney Island? just curious... i know Fox Lake pretty well too,
LoL , it was , you could only get there by boat, was a tavern and you could eat there too, was pretty neat and on the ceiling people could sign there tnames there too, was a fun place to go to...
@Louise Williams I do declare! I was pretty small yet when my grandparents became too aged to continue those summer stints up there, so recall only lake names, little else. Berwyn was the 2nd. suburb west of Chicago, along it's central main thorofare, Cermak Rd. Cicero was stuck between Chicago and Berwyn, both were about the same size towns. Al Capone operated a large speakeasy on Cicero Avenue, just south of Cermak Rd. He lived in an apartment 1/2 mile from the house I grew up in! Of course, before my time. He was imprisoned when I was born. My Dad told the story about how he and his wife-to-be, my Mother, were dating, Al Capone came in to the pub where my folks to be were dining, a place in Stickney called "Red Arrow Lounge", surrounded by bodyguard thugs, he tossed hundred-dollar bills on the bar, proclaiming, "Everyone drinks on Big Al!" That would have been in the late '20s, I think. Fancy us talking about similar experiences in familiar places, yet from so many years ago..... Frank
Joe... Frank. thanks for that story about Al Capone.. loved it.. its really nice to remember the days of old but my memory of anything right now is slowly dissolving away. especially since we have retired. My short term memory is not good..now what day is it? lol. did i take my pills this morning? lol really bad, short term memory. oh well , i know im not the only one.. all i can do is laugh about it.. I enjoyed our chat..