Welcome

I suppose "Letters from an Exurban Hellscape" is a bit dramatic. It's not always a hellscape. It just feels that way from time to time.

In reality, we live in a nice town about 50 miles from downtown Chicago. It's technically in the Chicago metropolitan area, but it doesn't feel like it.

I grew up in the shadows of Chicago's west side, in a suburb that felt more like a neighborhood of the city than a separate municipality. People in the neighborhood knew the best Italian beef joints, like Johnny's on North Avenue. We knew the best places for Chicago-style thin crust – yes, thin crust – pizza. Cut in squares, as God intended. We read Mike Royko, worshipped the Bears, Bulls, and Blackhawks, and were sharply divided over the Cubs and the White Sox. As God intended. We knew our way around public transportation by the time we were in high school, and spent our summers at the beach or in the bleachers – preferably, Wrigley's.

It wasn't until COVID and our youngest child's graduation from high school that we packed our lives and moved up here. Now we're a good two hours from the Loop, thanks to endless traffic and road construction, and public transportation is worse. It's mostly strip malls, chain stores, and subdivisions up here, but there are some lovely forest preserves and walking trails. So we got that goin' for us. Which is nice.

Anyway, it's different up here. I'm not used to it. I'm not used to people driving 10 miles below the speed limit on a main route and 15 miles over the speed limit through a residential neighborhood. I'm not used to windy streets with no conceivable rationale other than to cause confusion and require the constant use of GPS. I'm not used to every house looking exactly alike. I'm not used to streets lined with trees that are less than 100 years old.

But here I am, and here I'm likely to stay. Until the lottery comes through, anyway.

So, I started this blog in a vain effort to sort it all out. We'll see how that goes.