A little background for you, my dad grew up in Chicago Heights, IL. For those of you who don't know, it's a South Side suburb. Since I am living 3 hours away from Chicago, I thought it would be cool to go with him and see all the places important to his formative years (schools, churches, White Castles, etc). :)
So my dad flew in from Kansas City and went with Megan to the John Deere Harvester Works in East Moline. If you ever find yourself out here, take a tour of the Harvester Works! It's so cool to see how huge $300,000+ combines are made! So they loved seeing that.
Then I got off work and Megan and I drove my dad all around Davenport for a quick tour. Upon arriving home, we watched a little TV. My favorite part was my dad making some joke about the President and then turning on the TV and guess who was speaking? Haha.
So Saturday morning, we drop the dog off at the kennel and start driving to Chicago. My favorite part of that morning was stopping in Princeton, IL and getting breakfast at McDonalds (yes, the McDonalds that is separated from the Wal-Mart by a cornfield, that McDonalds). Megan was frustrated because they didn't have a menu before you actually got to the speaker and took a little longer to order than ordinary small-town folk. Then the Cokes we ordered had some Coke on the outside of the cup. Megan mentioned this to the lady working the drive-thru window and the lady responded, "Yeah, the cups are sweating a little, you know." Since when does sweat turn brown?
Anyway, we got to Chicago and headed straight for Chicago Heights. Dad took us to his high school, Bloom High, which is even older than my 102 year old Jordan High. We went into the gym and found out that Bryant Young of the 49ers came from his high school! Here's a picture.
We also went to the church and were able to get in because of people doing family history research. Dad told us about his first project after getting baptized when he 12. He went around and raised money for the flag pole in front of the church. That flag pole is still there. Also still there? Some furry, padded chairs and golden plate room dividers, here are more pictures.
We at lunch at White Castle with its famous sliders. They were pretty good. They were 48.8 cents each if you bought 10. I'd pay 48.8 cents for each one, but I think 61 cents (the normal price) is a bit high. I enjoyed them and their fries were good. I think my favorite part was the older lady behind the counter with the thick Chicago accent. I heard my dad's accent come back while at White Castle (never heard it before!)
We saw the houses that Dad lived in and he lost all street cred from living on the South Side. He lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, but I'd rather he be from a nice neighborhood than what we experienced driving from Chicago Heights toward Midway Airport. If you ever find yourself in Chicago, I'd recommend never going to or through Phoenix, IL (just a little north). What I learned is that you can tell who owns the houses in a certain neighborhood by the grass. Yellow, dead grass? Government housing! Yellow/Green grass with a few weeds? Rental Properties. Green grass that's been mowed within the past 10 days? Owner occupied.
We drove past a Costco and had to stop! Dang Quad Cities doesn't have a 7-11 or a Costco, so we enjoyed going to Chicago. We were lucky enough to find this Costco because it sells the Ice Cream bars dipped in chocolate and almonds. Megan loves them. The Costcos in Mililani, HI and Chicago, IL sell these wonderful bars. Here's a good representation of how happy Megan was:
We checked into the hotel and took the shuttle to the MTS (train/subway) station. We rode it downtown and walked to the townhouse of my dad's classmate. Her daughter was selling snowcones for a fundraiser. Megan and I really enjoy urban living, but it was totally foreign to my dad. He lives in a town of 16,000 and is surrounded by fields.
Another of dad's classmate talked about Chicago's desire to host the 2016 Olympics. Being from a city, I don't want a corrupt city like Chicago getting such a special privilege. However, my city originated the whole corruption for Olympics scheme, so I couldn't say anything. :)
For the rest of this trip, my planning was inspired by the music video and lyrics of Kanye West's "Homecoming." Watch it if you've never heard it before. I love it. So we went downtown and saw the big bean in Millennium Park along with a billion other people! We went the road the train to Chinatown and walked around. It's not very big, but it smells/looks like Taiwan. I enjoyed the clumps of what used to be cardboard boxes that had gotten rained on and decomposed.
While this Chinatown feels authentic, it seems like everyone there speak English and has lived in the US for at least 2 generations. No one cared that I spoke Chinese (I probably speak it better than some of the kids there!), but it's the best Chinatown in the US that I've been to.
Next, we rode the train back downtown and started walking to Navy Pier. We walked a while and I wondered why we hadn't hit the lake yet. As I crossed the bridge over the Chicago River, I figured out that we were heading south and not east!!! Dang I felt dumb. Fortunately, as we turned around I saw a bus with the words "To Navy Pier" on it. Haha, not so bad. We hopped on and gave our feet a rest.
Once we got to Navy Pier, I was so proud that I hadn't ruined the surprise for Megan--fireworks. Navy Pier has fireworks every Wednesday and Saturday during the summer. I was hoping that we'd be standing around and they'd start and Megan would be totally surprised, but this dude selling tickets for a yacht yelled, "Fireworks Cruise! Last cruise of the night!" Oh well, Megan was still happy and we enjoyed the fireworks. One word to future visitors of Navy Pier: go to the end of the pier to get a better view. We enjoyed them, but getting closer is better!
A couple pictures:
All in all, I really enjoyed Chicago. This was one of my favorite vacations and could see us living in Chicago someday (not right out of school, but if the opportunity presented itself). Too bad Illinois is corrupt and has high taxes (12.5% sales tax on prepared food!) and all that, but I think its a great town with a lot of soul.
Well, that's it. A long post. I have some great news for a future post plus details of yet another trip we just took, but all that will have to wait.
Thanks for reading!
