wheaton is about 5 minutes away. I’ve lived where I am at since 1990. Worked 10 minutes from here from 84-94.
I grew up there. Left in 1986. I still have some family there, but they know I don’t do well in that environment, both the overcast cold winters/ hot and humid summers, or the densely packed suburban situation, so I haven’t been back in many years now. It was VERY good to me during the building boom of the Reagan era as I was a carpenter, building many of those expensive homes, taking part in all the development of what used to be farm fields and small forests.
After going to the link you provided listing job openings, I wondered how someone could afford to live there on such low wages. I have a cousin who still lives in the area, so I asked him his thoughts on such. Here’s his reply:
“Illinois has the highest real estate taxes in the country. It’s a fiscal disaster and gets worse every year. The state debt grows exponentially each year to the point where I think they’ll have to declare bankruptcy, whatever that means. Whatever happened to Greece, I don’t remember.? Anyway, Illinois is Greece.”
“I think the under 30 crowd has seen the lunacy of the materialistic, must-have-more-even-at-the-cost-of-crushing-debt mindset. My kids have that’s for sure. None have television, all would rather put that monthly expense into an investment fund and forego spending now for a much larger return later. If you were smart with your money I think you could survive on a warehouse job here. Wouldn’t be easy and you’d only be “surviving”.”
“Downtown Wheaton has become a mess, in my opinion. That means that every attempt has been made to appeal to every interest. Therefore it looks nothing like it did even 20 years ago.
There’s like 30 restaurants, Starbucks, trendy hipster snack bars, stupid curio shops,... To be downtown Wheaton stresses me out as everyone stomps around angrily and in a hurry to get to their destination. It’s like everyone came to this quaint suburban to get away from the city and now it has all the features they were running from. I paint a dark picture but my reference point goes back many years. Someone whose experience begins only 10 years ago would think I’m insane.”
“There’s a train every fifteen minutes through downtown Wheaton so you will always get stuck at the crossing. There’s so many people that it’s hard to park. They’ve built what I call the world’s ugliest building, a five story junkball Apartments building. It is literally a piece of crap. I watched it go up and observed the cheap materials used, it’s hideous. I can’t overstate what an eyesore it is. But you know what? It’s seen as THE place to live. It’s called Wheaton 121. So now if you are a mal-adjusted, unfriendly, urban, psychotic, materialistic, Chicagoan and want to escape - you can join other like-minded people and move to Wheaton!”
“There’s now a homeless shelter where you can get three hots and a cot. During the day you can take up prime seating on the only two beaches on Main Street. Fuck the old ladies that need to rest for a moment, I need to stretch out here and sleep!”
“I’m ranting now.”
“I have a lot of wonderful memories of downtown Wheaton and it’s hard for me to see the changes, as you can tell. But then again the entire world has changed in these same ways.”
The day following that response, he happened to be in downtown Wheaton and started sending me photos of all the remodeled buildings with new businesses that took the place of what once were sort of ‘landmarks’. I can recognize the streets and all, but it seems I don’t know the town I grew up in.
I remember when the Wheaton Center apartment building went up, and how very few people liked it. He sent photos of that “121” building, and I have to agree with him how very ugly it is.
I’m thankful that I was raised there, but I’m even more grateful that I don’t live there anymore. The opportunity to make plenty of money in that area is high, but I much prefer living rural, the trade off being few and much lower paying jobs.
Wheaton area certainly isn’t typical of most the rest of the country, job wise. I speak with my mother, who still lives there, and she really does believe the fake news about what a great recovery the nation is in, and if all a person could see of the nation was just that area, I can see why she thinks that.
Oh well. Yesterday was sort of a trip down memory lane for me, looking at all the photos and the memories they conjured up.
Hope you have a happy new year!