Editor’s Note: This is the ninth entry in a Dispatch series titled “Where I’m From.” Every Saturday, a writer shares a meditation on his or her hometown—a bustling metropolis, distant desert outpost, quiet suburb, or somewhere in between—and what makes it unique. The goal? Highlight voices—and good writing—from every corner of these United States.
On Sunday nights when The Ed Sullivan Show was airing, my parents often gave me the job of jumping up from the couch to adjust our television’s volume every time a plane took off or landed at O’Hare International Airport, which was located about 6.5 miles due south of our duplex in Des Plaines, Illinois. They didn’t want my sister and me to miss a syllable of puppet Topo Gigio’s schtick, and they cherished Ed’s cavalcade of veteran Borscht Belt standup comics and musical acts like Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé.
Other than the daily soundtrack of the jets flying so low over our house that I could almost count the rivets on their silver bellies, much of my 1960s childhood in this suburb just northwest of Chicago unfolded amid a sea of interchangeable, brand-new, beige aluminum-sided housing stock that matched the demographic and economic homogeneity of the community.
