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One spring morning in 1960, with four kids and three more to come in the hopper, my parents pulled the trigger on writing a gargantuan check for $6,500 to buy a home.
An investment in their future—and their kids’ future.
They made the big move out of a small downtown Chicago apartment and bought a very modest starter home in La Grange, Illinois.
It’s a spectacular family suburban town with every home about a baseball field away from great schools, churches, and a ton of young kids and families.
My fifth birthday party at our kitchen table with my Mom, the Grandmas and Aunt Mimi. Check out the kids' rosaries hanging on the wall.
It wasn't easy, and it was risky. But my mom and dad made it work.
As my dad said with a big Irish smile, “That house? It was the best dough we ever spent that we never had.”
Right across the street, that's where the fantastic Piggy O’Brien lived, with a farm of other fabulous O’Brien kids and parents.
Every summer, Piggy scarfed down about ten thousand Spam and liver sausage sandwiches on white bread—and drank at least a rubber swimming pool of cherry Kool-Aid in our kitchen.
Piggy's house now. A whole lot fancier than I remember.
Piggy's house now has central air conditioning. That wasn't invented when we were kids, at least on Kensington Avenue.
We had another name for “air conditioning” in the dinky bedroom I shared with my little brother on a wickedly hot, sticky August night.
It was called “cold showers.”
Piggy's house just went on sale.
$585,000.
That's at least a hundred times more than Mr. and Mrs. Piggy paid.
I'll bet the ranch a great young family, just like ours and just like Piggy's, is going to move into that home on that full-of-love, tree-blanketed street.
Their kids will go to one of the schools and churches right around the corner.
They'll still get candy at Hank's (now My Grandpa’s Store), which has turned over owners about as many times as the Sox have lost the pennant.
Their dad will probably walk to the train station—and he'll work downtown in a big, tall building. He'll take the train home dreaming about seeing his flowering, beautiful, promising family.
It's a lot of money.
But I'm sure it'll be the best $585,000 they'll ever spend that they never had.
Yours,
Jimmy Dunne
Please consider purchasing the book “Jimmy Dunne Says,” published by Post Hill Press. You can buy the book at stores around the country, or online including: Amazon’s addressgoeshere.
Jimmy Dunne is modern-day Renaissance Man; a hit songwriter of 28 million hit records, writer and producer of hit television series’, award-winning book author, an entrepreneur—and his town’s “Citizen of the Year.” You can reach him at j@jimmydunne.com.
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Right down the block from the Annex? Great times in a great town. #Families
Loved gearing about your childhood memories. Have similar memories of growing up on South Kensington Ave. So lucky to gave these memories.