I Remember Alleys

My Uncle Joe was the first person I knew who moved out to the suburbs. I must have been pretty young because, when he told us that they didn't have any alleys in his Oak Lawn neighborhood, I was incredulous. How can there not be alleys? Where does everybody keep their garbage cans? Where do the kids hang out?

Our house was on a double lot on the corner of 51st and Whipple, and it wasn't one of your traditional bungalows. Our store faced 51st Street, and our living quarters were behind the store. The corner lot was mostly yard, with a garage in the back by the alley, but the garage didn't open into the alley, it opened into Whipple Street on the side. My dad had fashioned a home made driveway that crossed the sidewalk and the grass strip between the sidewalk and the street. There was no curb to speak of, so my dad hadn't bothered to get a permit to level it off, he just had somebody dump a load of gravel right over the grass. There was a rental hall across the street where they used to have weddings and stuff, but there was no parking lot, people just parked on the street wherever they could find room. The entrance to our garage was frequently blocked by wedding guests, but the cops wouldn't ticket them because it wasn't an officially licensed driveway. Sometimes my dad would block it off with barrels or saw horses, but people would sometimes move the obstacles and park there anyway. One night we came home from a wedding at a different hall to find our driveway blocked. The offending car was not locked, so my dad reached in and put it into neutral, and I helped him push the car out into Whipple Street, just as the car's owner came out of the hall and got all upset about it. My dad was kind of upset himself and, as they had both been drinking, it might have gotten physical if the guy's wife hadn't come out and told him to get in the car and take her home.

There are a few alleys in Cheboygan, but I don't think anybody uses them for anything. They are unpaved and really narrow, left over from the days when there were more horses in town than cars. Occasionally I read in the paper where a homeowner asks the city to vacate the alley because he has a use for it and they don't. Maybe that's what happened to most of our alleys in days gone by. Garages generally open out into the street with a short driveway. In the winter there is no parking on any city street from 2:00 AM to 7:00 AM, so people have to park in their garages or driveways overnight. This law is allegedly to keep the street clear for snowplowing, but the plow crews seldom start that early in the morning and, if they do, they just break a track down the middle of the street so people can get out and go to work. It might be days before they get around to plowing the edges.

I was going to ask you guys about this days ago, but I keep forgetting. I think it was back in the 70s when I was driving north on Highway 83, probably taking my wife and daughter to see Brookfield Zoo while we were visiting my parents in Palos Park. Well maybe it wasn't 83, but it was out in the country somewhere west of Chicago. Anyway, we came upon a cluster of multi story buildings that looked brand new, right in the middle of a cornfield. I don't remember if there was a wall or fence around it, but I know that the cornfield ended abruptly where the buildings began. It was like the compound had dropped out of the sky preassembled. My parents had never see nor head of this, but my mother later saw an article in the paper about it and sent it to me. It was a self contained community that had been built from scratch, with housing, employment, stores, entertainment, and everything else you might need so that you would never need to leave the neighborhood if you didn't want to. Some people were against it because they said its main purpose was to get away from the Blacks in Chicago. The proponents denied any racial motivation, but admitted that they were trying to provide an urban lifestyle without all the typical urban problems like crime and traffic congestion, and that it was easier to build from scratch than to try to rehabilitate the Chicago Loop. Do either of you guys know what ever became of that project?