Living (?) in the Suburbs

The dullest place to live in all the world has to be the suburbs. It’s been said that “a bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.” Suburbs are a bore.

I would like to live in a rural area where I could walk on wooded paths and rutted dirt roads. Nothing is so comforting as the solitude of a meadow or the serenity of a lakeshore. I’ve had a taste of country during summers at my parents’ house in Northern Wisconsin.

I’m not all that fond of cities with the noise and crowds and dirt. But cities have this going for them — things happen. Stop almost anywhere in a city and look around. You’ll see a parade of interesting people engaged in strange and interesting activities. I sampled city living during my three years of college in Chicago.

I’ve never experienced small town living. I understand it offers the benefit of community and easy access to the country, but at the price of personal privacy. I’m not sure that’s a trade-off I’d be willing to make.

The suburb where I live is known as a bedroom community. Almost everyone who lives here leaves town every day to work somewhere else. They return only to sleep. My wife and I generally leave town even when we’re only going to the movies or out to eat.

Very few people go out and about in our suburb. It’s not uncommon for me to take a five mile walk and see nobody else on foot. The flower beds are weeded and the lawns are mowed, but everything has an antiseptic feel to it. On very pleasant days in the spring and fall, my wife and I might happen upon another couple or two out strolling during the course of our two-mile loop. But most of the sidewalks and yards are empty. The tendency of our neighbors to stay indoors is highlighted by how well we’ve become acquainted with the few who don’t.

There’s Steve up at the end of the block. He’s a large, friendly man with a strong southern accent who walks a tiny dog about the size of his shoe. There’s Chris, a small, nervous woman three houses down who keeps her yard immaculate and likes to make small talk. And there’s Matt, who’s always wearing sandals, shorts, and a T-shirt and is always in his driveway, futzing with his motorcycle or boat. He rarely rides the motorcycle or takes the boat anywhere, but both are well futzed-with.  Pretty much everybody else stays indoors. Oh … there are two young lads who come out of their holes late at night to break windows and cause other damage, but I regret to say that I’ve never met them.

My suburb makes the occasional half-hearted attempt to be a community, but these events are rather sad. There’s the annual three-day festival in which a sorry carnival sets up in the parking lot of the largest park and attracts every junior-higher in town. Cruisin’ “happens” every Wednesday night during the summer. The same forty people bring their classic cars and park them along Main Street.  Each week has its own theme, so chances are, by the end of summer, every car has won a prize. A few hundred people show up and wander aimlessly back and forth among the Corvettes and GTOs. For the summer concert series in the tiny band shell, we get British Export, a Beatles tribute band that sounds just like the Beatles would have if they were tone-deaf. And every year around Christmas, Santa rides around town on a firetruck, siren wailing.

The liveliest center of life in my suburb is the high school. (Unfortunately, the life of the high school is such that we pulled our daughter out after her freshman year lest she become infected with it.) The Swing Band puts on a concert in the fall that sells out weeks in advance. This past season, the football team won state. The town celebrated with sirens and fireworks. I didn’t go to the festivities, but I could hear them clearly from my house a mile away. I was happy for my town, at least until I discovered that Illinois has a myriad of different divisions of high-school sports, each with its own champion. So being state champion doesn’t mean that you’re the best in the state; just that you beat the teams you happened to play. I’m happy for my town, but I find the honor somewhat unimpressive.

My suburb has a grocery store, two drug stores, several fast-food restaurants, two bars and five or six banks. (Why does a suburb the size of this need a bank every 50 yards?) The “historic” downtown area is occupied by insurance brokers and law offices. The Metra station is in the center of everything and is the main reason most of the people live in the suburb. You can head southeast into the city or northwest into the country. I find it the most interesting spot in town — maybe because it promises life beyond the suburbs.

I’m not sure why we do this to ourselves. Why do we choose boring lives in boring subdivisions? Why is it that I can sit in the rocking chair on my front porch on a sunny weekend afternoon and see nothing of interest whatsoever? I’m not sure.  But I am sure of this — there’s got to be a better way.