The End of the Line

We were quite privileged as kids in the 1950s, though I didn’t realize it until much later. Wilmette was created to appeal to a slice of the population who wanted to live in a bucolic suburb not too far from the city, where most of them worked. For much of its history, it was also a dry village. It was safe, the schools were good, and almost everyone was well-off. We spent our days going down to the Wilmette beach, checking out the boats tied up in the harbor, or hanging out by the CTA train station at Fourth and Linden, a block from our house. When I was about eight, I would ride those trains, alone, for 25 cents, to and from Evanston, where I often went for dental appointments to fix my buck teeth. Coming home, after passing Isabella Street, the engineer would call out, “Last stop, Wilmette, end of the line.”But for me, Wilmette was never the end of the line. It was only the beginning. Read more