Good Neighbors
Glen Ellyn is a beautiful town. I would never do anything to hurt it.
What I think makes all the difference between a congested city and a beautiful town where people are happy to live next door with their neighbors, are the homes. My earliest memory of how living in a home can work out, or not, was in California. I was six years old. My dad was in the U.S. Air Force. He was a carpenter by trade but as an airman he maintained equipment and facilities on air bases. We were not wealthy, but we had a house Dad had acquired as a shell and finished the interior. We had a lawn front and back and flowers, which my mother loved tending.
At some point Dad deployed. One of numerous times. He was overseas and we could not accompany him. The government irregularly sent checks to Mom. Dad was not a high-ranking enlisted man, and although my mother tried to shield us from the details we could not help seeing that she struggled when grocery shopping. She would pick up a delicious-looking ham, turn it longingly in her hands, then put it back for a package of baloney.
One day Mom told my brother and I that we needed to move. She could not afford payments on the house and had to put it up for rent. We moved into the stiflingly small attic of a widowed woman Mom had met on base. It was built-out; but still an attic. We ate at the downstairs…
