WOW!!!
I just got an email from an old high school boyfriend (he’s not that old…he couldn’t be, he’s my age. But he’s an old BOYFRIEND…meaning not a recent boyfriend…whatever) and he told me that if I wanted to see Bensenville, the town we went to high school in, I had better get back soon because O’hare is buying it all up in preparation to build a new runway and highway. So, I looked it up to see exactly what he was talking about and I found that they’re not only wiping out Bensenville, they’re wiping out Elk Grove Village, the town I lived in until the summer before 8th grade when we moved to Bensenville. What a mess.
How would you like to find out that the place you grew up was to be totally wiped out by progress? Maybe it wouldn’t matter if you hated the place anyway…but both places hold a lot of memories for me and I can’t believe that they’re gonna take them BOTH out. The house in Elk Grove was a brand new house when we moved in, it had no grass, just a baby tree on the parkway which is a huge tree now.
Elk Grove was pretty much a corn field when we moved there. It was owned by an old man named Busse who sold out parcels of land to Centex one piece at a time and every time he did that they built another subdivision. We lived in one of the first and now there’s nothing left of the corn field. We used to play in that corn field as kids but now it’s all condos and industrial parks.
That town was pretty much owned by one person so I don’t know if anyone bitched when they turned it from a farm to a suburb of Chicago…but people sure are bitching now. They’re wiping out hundreds if not thousands of homes, schools, a business district, an industrial park and millions of memories.
That damn airport has been a pain in the ass for as long as I can remember. We lived under the landing pattern, or take off pattern, I don’t know which it was. But every time a plane took off the teachers had to stop talking for a minute because you couldn’t hear them anyway. I guess they’re putting a stop to that…they’ll just doze the school. I’m sure some other school a tad further out will get to have the classes interrupted by the sound of jets now.
Every time I go home I drive through the old neighborhoods to see how they’ve changed. I guess next time it’ll be tough to do that without being run over by an airplane. The last time we did that I was with my father and we saw the peonies that he and I planted in 1971. Neither one of us could believe that they were still there. But they were. Just as pretty as they were over 30 years ago, almost 40 now, when we planted them. We planted them along side the driveway and had expected that someone would have run over them by now but I don’t think either one of us could have foreseen the extent of the destruction that this expansion will cause.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if the town just went downhill from old age…but it never occurred to me that it would become part of that damn airport. As it is, Ohare is many times larger than any suburb around it…now it’s just gobbling more and more of them up. I don’t know what was there before the airport, probably more corn. But now there are people living and working all around that damned thing and they’re all going to have to leave. There’s no way that anyone can stop it now.
There are those who are trying, though. You know there are some hold-outs who won’t sell they’re homes to the City of Chicago. They sit on their porch and look out on deserted streets that once were full of kids riding bikes and life going on all around them. Now they just look out at boarded up houses. This is a news video about one such guy who still lives on one of the deserted streets:
http://cbs2chicago.com/local/local_story_229231554.html
That must just blow.
It doesn’t look like our house in Bensenville will be razed…but it certainly won’t be as desirable as it once was with an airport a few blocks away. I could be wrong, they could be planning to take that house as well, I can’t quite make it out on the map. But one thing is for sure…if I ever want ride by the places where I grew up, I better do it soon or I’ll be looking at it from an airplane window.
I just got an email from an old high school boyfriend (he’s not that old…he couldn’t be, he’s my age. But he’s an old BOYFRIEND…meaning not a recent boyfriend…whatever) and he told me that if I wanted to see Bensenville, the town we went to high school in, I had better get back soon because O’hare is buying it all up in preparation to build a new runway and highway. So, I looked it up to see exactly what he was talking about and I found that they’re not only wiping out Bensenville, they’re wiping out Elk Grove Village, the town I lived in until the summer before 8th grade when we moved to Bensenville. What a mess.
How would you like to find out that the place you grew up was to be totally wiped out by progress? Maybe it wouldn’t matter if you hated the place anyway…but both places hold a lot of memories for me and I can’t believe that they’re gonna take them BOTH out. The house in Elk Grove was a brand new house when we moved in, it had no grass, just a baby tree on the parkway which is a huge tree now.
Elk Grove was pretty much a corn field when we moved there. It was owned by an old man named Busse who sold out parcels of land to Centex one piece at a time and every time he did that they built another subdivision. We lived in one of the first and now there’s nothing left of the corn field. We used to play in that corn field as kids but now it’s all condos and industrial parks.
That town was pretty much owned by one person so I don’t know if anyone bitched when they turned it from a farm to a suburb of Chicago…but people sure are bitching now. They’re wiping out hundreds if not thousands of homes, schools, a business district, an industrial park and millions of memories.
That damn airport has been a pain in the ass for as long as I can remember. We lived under the landing pattern, or take off pattern, I don’t know which it was. But every time a plane took off the teachers had to stop talking for a minute because you couldn’t hear them anyway. I guess they’re putting a stop to that…they’ll just doze the school. I’m sure some other school a tad further out will get to have the classes interrupted by the sound of jets now.
Every time I go home I drive through the old neighborhoods to see how they’ve changed. I guess next time it’ll be tough to do that without being run over by an airplane. The last time we did that I was with my father and we saw the peonies that he and I planted in 1971. Neither one of us could believe that they were still there. But they were. Just as pretty as they were over 30 years ago, almost 40 now, when we planted them. We planted them along side the driveway and had expected that someone would have run over them by now but I don’t think either one of us could have foreseen the extent of the destruction that this expansion will cause.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if the town just went downhill from old age…but it never occurred to me that it would become part of that damn airport. As it is, Ohare is many times larger than any suburb around it…now it’s just gobbling more and more of them up. I don’t know what was there before the airport, probably more corn. But now there are people living and working all around that damned thing and they’re all going to have to leave. There’s no way that anyone can stop it now.
There are those who are trying, though. You know there are some hold-outs who won’t sell they’re homes to the City of Chicago. They sit on their porch and look out on deserted streets that once were full of kids riding bikes and life going on all around them. Now they just look out at boarded up houses. This is a news video about one such guy who still lives on one of the deserted streets:
http://cbs2chicago.com/local/local_story_229231554.html
That must just blow.
It doesn’t look like our house in Bensenville will be razed…but it certainly won’t be as desirable as it once was with an airport a few blocks away. I could be wrong, they could be planning to take that house as well, I can’t quite make it out on the map. But one thing is for sure…if I ever want ride by the places where I grew up, I better do it soon or I’ll be looking at it from an airplane window.
posted by Meg Kelso | 10:07 AM
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