Mourning

Recently an assignment required that I get some shots of automobile dealerships in the Chicago area. I had to get a smattering of everything from an auto mall to a multi-line dealer to as wide a variety of manufacturer logos as possible to the cheesiest-looking, shadiest-looking used car dealership I could find.

The only place where I know my way around to such a plethora of sights is the area where I grew up, in the south suburbs. It was raining when I left the house, so there wasn't much promise for the day. The rain fell hard when I entered the tollway, and was still falling when I stopped at the Hinsdale Oasis for a tinkle and a Sausage McMuffin with Egg value meal. The rain hadn't let up when I went back out to my car, nor in the entire drive down to Matteson.

I couldn't shoot, so I decided to use the time to scout locations on the off chance that the rain would let up, and then I wouldn't waste more time looking for locations when I could be shooting them instead. I found the auto mall right where i had left it last, and it was chock full of cars. I drove around it, stopping at points and looking out my windows at various compositions in my head, trying to imagine how it would look under a blue sky and sunshine.

I needed to call a co-worker, the producer who had sent me on this little jaunt, so in the interest of safety, I pulled in to the parking lot of Lincoln Mall in Matteson. The first thing I noticed was that the Lincoln Mall cinema had been torn down some time ago, as the spot where the building had stood was now a patch of asphalt integrated into the former cinema parking lot. I had seen innumerable films there in my adolescence, the most memorable of them "Killer Clowns From Outer Space." And now it's gone.

I drove on toward the building that encompassed the mall itself, and toward what I always considered the main entrance, that door between the old anchor retailers, Wieboldt's department store and Montgomery Ward, that door closest to the video game arcade that once had racing bumper cars at the rear of the space. Wieboldt's had closed many, many years ago, and the space it had occupied stood empty forever. And now? Montgomery Ward was gone, too. Not just the recently defunct chain, but THE BUILDING! GONE! Half of Lincoln Mall has been torn down. HALF!! All that is left now is Sears, of all things -- now in the former Wieboldt's space, and the Carson, Pirie, Scott store, still there since the mall opened in the early 1970s.

I felt a hole forming in my chest. This was one of my haunts; "stomping grounds," as my father would say. Sure, it had come on hard times recently, with anchor stores going away or going under, but still! I felt as if a good friend had died, and I was the last to hear about it.

After the shock wore off, I called my co-worker and told him of my plan...if it ever stopped raining. And I continued to scout.

The example I had in my head for the "shady" used car dealer is actually in the town where I grew up. Back in the late years of the 19th century, the economic center of Bloom Township was incorporated as the city of Chicago Heights, honoring that burgeoning metropolis a mere 25 miles away to the north by taking that city's name as part of her own. Only 14 years later, residents in the southern reaches of Chicago Heights -- by then known affectionately (or not) as "da Heights" -- unsatisfied with their city, organized successfully and seceded, forming their own village and, reaching deep into the heaviest brains available to name their new town, came up with South Chicago Heights, a name that, perhaps, doomed the village to forever remain a footnote to its namesake. In the collective mind of most residents in the area, South Chicago Heights has always easily folded into Chicago Heights, so for what it's worth, I grew up in "da Heights."

I had as typical a childhood, as typical an adolescence and as typical a coming of age as just about any kid. I never had any burning itch to leave "South Heights," as it is known -- or "Soddeights," as it is pronounced in the local tongue -- but to get anywhere in the career I had chosen, I knew I would have to leave. I went back there after my time in the service, lived there, technically, while I attended Southern Illinois University, and moved back in after graduation and for two more years afterward until someone within my chosen field decided to hire me, at which time I moved away, back to Southern Illinois.

That was almost 14 years ago. In that time I moved again, to south Georgia, and I returned "home," living now in Chicago. I changed jobs four times. I married. And my father sold the house in South Heights. Rare has been the occasion for me to return, as I no longer have any immediate family living there, and when the occasion does arise, it's usually a drive through on the way to somewhere else. On this day, I had time to kill.

I headed east on the street with three names. U.S. Route 30 is known -- in Illinois, at least -- as The Lincoln Highway. It's certainly so in Chicago Heights. It is also 14th Street. I cut across a corner of Park Forest to get to 26th Street, the border between Chicago Heights and South Chicago Heights, and turned south to swing past my old grade school, and then south on Chicago Road. So many buildings and houses that exist in my childhood memory are now gone or so sadly in disrepair they might as well be torn down. Fortunately for my heart, the old Farrago former homestead still stands, humble but proud. I headed north again and did a loop around the high school, a majestic building erected during the Great Depression, with the main entrance guarded by impressive concrete statues designed by the man who designed the Jefferson nickel, and entering its 25th year on the National Register of Historic Places.

South and east again, still through the rain, to Marnell's Drive-in, home of one of Chicagoland's greatest Italian roast beef sandwiches...or so I thought. Either the recipe has changed, or my memory has. I was sadly disappointed.

From Marnell's I headed to where my father's old barber shop was, now operated only one day a week by the woman he sold it to, and, I'm certain, no longer providing the service to the neighborhood that my father did. I sat in the main attraction the building has to offer, an old-school tavern to which the barber shop is merely an adjoining room, and chatted with the owner of the building and tavern, my father's former landlord. I ordered a beer and was not allowed to pay for it, thanks to a friend of my father's, one of many of his friends...most of his friends...who keep the place alive. This friend used to own a business on Chicago Road, a business I walked past every day on my way to junior high. He lamented all the businesses, all the great buildings that have disappeared to municipal apathy and abandonment.

And that's when it sank in. I had long harbored the thought, long denied it, and hoped it would go away. But the old man's words brought it home: Chicago Heights is dying. The relentless rain outside seemed to amplify the moment. My eyes had seen it on my drive around town. My eyes had been seeing it since my return from the military, but my heart refused to believe it. A population's children grow up and move away, and a community stagnates. Only the poor stay, as they don't have much choice. Fewer taxes are collected, school referenda are defeated by the tax-paying empty-nesters, teachers leave or are let go, and the children remaining swirl around the drain. Factories close. Businesses close. Veteran workers retire, and there are no younger workers to replace them. A town that was once an industrial dynamo, an exclamation point on the boom that made Chicago, is now gasping in the dust of its own storied past.

Along Lincoln Highway in the west end stand the shells and empty lots where once stood a row of three or four auto dealers and a locally owned department store, all now either shut down or moved away. The building that was forever in my memory a K-Mart closed, then reopened as a Cub Foods, then closed and reopened as a thrift store, then closed and is now gone, a flat, empty, open lot. Beside it stands an empty shell, once a Handy Andy hardware center, then a Builder's Square, then the nothing it's been for years. It's the same in places all over town. Buildings boarded up or missing all together, the once dazzling smile of a young beauty, now faded and marred by rotted or missing teeth.

The rain finally stopped, my beer glass was dry. It was just past noon, and I had work to do. I said good-bye to my dad's friends and hopped in the car to the first location, a place that, in my mind, passed as a "shady" used car lot. I headed west, back toward the auto mall, as the sun began to peek through the clouds, and I was steeped in the feeling that I had just left a funeral. I had met friends. I had reminisced. I was sad, and I sensed the duty to move on.

Maybe it is closure. My mother passed away just as my career called me. In my absence, my father progressed from "senior" to "elderly," sold the home I grew up in, sold the home he had gutted and rebuilt by himself, and has now moved in with my sister.

I'll be drawn back to "da Heights," the hollow shell of the memories of my youth, but I'm certain it'll be more as one is drawn to the grave of a deceased loved one.

To pay respects.

To remember.

To mourn.