Dear Dad: Your Chicago has changed!

If you could come back to life for just a day,  I would love to tell you about today’s Chicago, the way we travel, shop and communicate.  You died in 1959 at the early age of 54 when I was only 14. If you could come back to us and your Chicago for just one day, here is what I would love to tell you.

Back then you only knew propeller driven airplanes out of Midway Airport

To reach others, your Bell System dial telephone was connected to the wall by a wire. You put a three cent stamp on a letter.

At work you typed that letter in duplicate using a typewriter and a sheet of carbon paper. You added and subtracted on a mechanical adding machine.

You shopped at bakeries and dime stores on Devon Avenue. There was Crawfords and Abrams, Hobbymodels and Hillman’s.

Closer to home there was Pete’s grocery store, a butcher shop, and Sanders drugstore on Pratt. Helga’s delicatessen was just a block north on Western .

If you drove a bit farther to Lincoln Village or Wieboldt’s at Lincoln and Belmont, gas was only about $.16 a gallon. a fill-up could be as low as $2!

Your first car was a 1928 used Chevrolet, you are last was a used 1954 model. Your mother called them “machines”. And you rode the old red street cars and later the Green Hornet, which ended on June 21, 1958.

As a young man, you built an awesome crystal set on which your father could hear Cubs games wearing headphones.

Later your family depended on the radio for news with Gabriel Heatter, his catchphrase “there is good news tonight!”

When I was very young you introduced me to shortwave radio where I heard worldwide broadcasts from London, Paris or South America. Since then we had CB and amateur radio become popular.

The music on the radio was all about the big band era and later the 50s doo-wop. Since then we have had the Beatles , rap music and great Broadway shows including Jesus Christ Superstar and the Phantom of the Opera.

Starting about 1949 you watched only four channels on television , first in black and white and later in color. You loved watching Clint Youle the weatherman and Walt’s workshop.

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As a family we all watched I Love Lucy and Dragnet. There was Lawrence Welk and Victor Borge, Ed  Sullivan, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar and Arthur Godfrey. Today we have hundreds of channels and thousands of choices

In 1959, Dwight D Eisenhower was your president and the 42 story Prudential building was the tallest building in Chicago.

There was Midway Airport, nicknamed the “busiest square mile in the world”. We watched airplanes from a $.10 observation platform.   O’Hare International Airport, originally named “Orchard Field”, came much later, served by the new Kennedy expressway beginning in 1960..

Large events and trade shows were limited to outdoors or places like the Coliseum, Navy pier or the international amphitheater. You enjoyed the GM Powerama, The Chicago Railroad fair, and annual auto shows.

Fast food like Henry’s and McDonald’s were just getting started. Pizza delivery did not become popular until the 1960s.

But now, Let me tell you how much has changed!!

When surprised, your favorite saying was “for the love of Mike “. You might use it often today as you hear how the world has become so very different.

There have been 7 presidents since you left us. After Eisenhower there was John F Kennedy assassinated in 1963, Richard Nixon resigned in 1974. Then there was Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, two George Bush’s, Barack Obama our first black president, then Trump, and Joe Biden.

We have been to war in Vietnam and Afghanistan. We have problems with Iran , Syria and North Korea China. England now has a king.

Back home, you will not recognize your Chicago.

In 1967 we had a incredible blizzard and the iconic Riverview amusement park was torn down replaced by huge amusement parks. We now have several Great America‘s, Disneyland, and the huge Walt Disney World at 39 square miles in size.

Meigs field was purposely destroyed by Mayor Daley on March 30, 2003.

You were the chief electrical engineer for the Prudential building. You never lived to see the John Hancock and the Willis Tower almost twice as tall.

We now have a River walk and the Pedway, a vast series of underground passageways connecting 50 office buildings, hotels, shopping centers, the Metra IC train station, and more.

Marshall Field is no longer, reopened as Macy’s and disappointing many. The library at Michigan and Randolph is now a cultural Center dnd was replaced by the Harold Washington Library at the south end of the loop. Mayor Daley built a huge convention center on the lakefront called McCormick Place, only for it to burn down and replaced by a still larger convention complex.

Your favorite restaurant the Ivanhoe on Clark burned down as did Allgauer’s at Touhy and Lincoln.

Comiskey Park was demolished. Dinkel’s bakery is closed after decades. The Medinah Temple is now a casino.The Nortown theater on Western and even the beautiful Granada Theatre were sadly demolished. You would not recognize the old neighborhoods or major intersections. There have been so many changes.

No longer could you by a $.10 cup of coffee across the street from your office at 333 N. Michigan in 1959. Now people buy their coffee at Starbucks, a huge chain, $6 a cup for a fancy blend. In 1959 you could buy a 1 pound bag of coffee costing $.49 at the store.

Food is incredibly more expensive than you ever knew. A dozen eggs in 1959 was $.37, today they were as much is $9 for a dozen, more if they are labeled (organic).. Back in your day a pound of bacon was $.37. A head of lettuce for $.10, Tuna was 3 cans for $.89. In 1953, 3 cans of Campbell’s tomato soup was only $.32. A can Campbell’s chunky soup today is approaching $4!

You bought your 1954 Cadillac for about $900. Today a 2023 Cadillac can cost as much as $150,000 over six times what you paid for your bungalow on Talman (now almost 100 years old).

Gas is now all self-service and sells for between $3.25 and $5 depending on where you live. For a while it was even $9 in California. Putting air in your tires is no longer free. And there are no more of those wonderful free gas station maps. And many of us may never even need to buy gasoline as electric cars with powerful lithium batteries are the latest on the road.

You likely will be overwhelmed today’s congested network of expressways and tollways, way more than just the Edens Expressway you remember.

The CTA tracks still date back to the 1890’s, and the old cars you rode to work each morning are long gone, replaced by new and efficient cars.

You can now take the elevated all the way out to either the huge O’Hare International Airport or Midway that you used on your last and fateful business trip.

Today we can fly from New York to London in 6 hours. And some planes can be as large as an Airbus A380 double decker that holding as many 800 people.

You loved planning an annual motor vacation each July in your Chevrolet. You took us to Mammoth cave, Pikes Peak, Atlantic City, Deadwood South Dakota, Estes Park Colorado, and many many other places. We stayed at motor hotels and tourist homes.

Most automobile vacations have now given way to today’s recreational vehicle  (RV) lifestyle and camping. The teardrop travel trailer gave way to the Volkswagen microbus camper and now fancy travel trailers and fifth wheel trailers up to 40 feet long with slides. Luxurious motor homes cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and over 1 million, over 40 times the cost of your house back in 1953.

Many companies are no longer in Chicago or out of business including Brach Candy, Mars Chocolate and the Schwinn bicycle company where our family worked for decades. Today most bicycles are made in China, many of them electric. And then there is a thing on two wheels called a Segway.

You loved trains and often would take me to the station to watch the Milwaukee Road Hiawatha speed toward Chicago.

Most all the railroads no longer carry passengers, having given way to a government supported Amtrak passenger service. Cross country trains are modern and comfortable

Since you left us there has been so many new products invented. Xerox invented a copy machine replacing carbon paper! In 1963 a touchtone button phone replaced the dial on your phone.

The Bell System and Western Electric who supplied all our phones, invented the telephone answering machine and a picture phone is long gone, replaced by dozens of phone companies. In 1968, you no longer called the Chicago fire department at FI 7 1313 or the police at PO 5 1313. Simply call 911.

And the post office replaced Chicago mailing zone 45 with a ZIP Code 60645.

No longer do you go to a Commonwealth Edison office at California and Addison to pick up your supply of light bulbs when you pay your bill. Today LED (light emitting diode) bulbs have almost replaced incandescent light bulbs.

No need to talk to a bank teller. In 1967 the 1^st ATM (automatic teller machine) was invented and can now be found everywhere. You really don’t need cash much anymore because most everybody carries either a plastic debit or credit card.

You would be so surprised at the way we shop today. Most all the stores on took Devon Avenue are long gone, once predominately Jewish, now Pakistani and Indian. There is no more General Camera, Hobbymodels, Woolworths or Neisners. Your old Nortown post office is now a fruit market. FedEx and UPS will ship your packages anywhere in the world, often overnight but at a price that can be in the hundreds of dollars.

No longer do we go to our neighborhood Hines lumberyard on a Saturday morning, but now we shop in an enormous at a “big box” Home Depot or Lowe’s.

How do I describe the huge “big-box” stores like Best Buy, Sam’s Club or Costco? Dime stores morphed into huge discount stores like Kmart. The mom and pop bookstore gave way to huge bookseller chains like Borders, Waldenbooks, Crown Books and Barnes and Noble. Sadly most have not survived.  

Grocery stores are now huge, nothing like the Jewel , National Tea or the A&P that you well remember. Spiegel’s, the Fair Store, Montgomery wards and Sears Roebuck are history!

The historic Maxwell Street shopping street is gone. Today we have shopping malls have hundreds of stores, but some of the older ones are following out of favor. The biggest is in Minnesota, the Mall of America with over 520 stores in 5.6 million square feet.

And how do I explain Walmart a huge superstore that has replaced most all the stores that you used to patronize? They sell everything from groceries to car tires, electronics, drugs, liquor, flowers, hardware, housewares, clothing and more.

They have put many drug stores, mom-and-pop grocery stores, neighborhood hardware stores, bakeries, butcher shops, shoe stores and clothing stores out of business.

back in your day the milkman and the Iceman came to our house each week.

Today, if you want to stay home, groceries and fast food can now be delivered right to your door in as little as an hour.

Amazon, without a physical store, is a company that will sell you just about anything and deliver it next day or even the same day. They have huge warehouses all over the country, a fleet of airplanes and thousands of delivery vans. Their sales exceed $232 billion dollars.

Dad, I have saved the best for last, explaining all the new technology, I’m not sure where to begin.

We sent a man to the moon and back. Hundreds of satellites orbit the earth delivering weather data and communications.

Now comes the hardest part to explain. It will probably take the rest of our day together to describe all the new technology and products that have come along after you passed away.

Ampex invented the 1^st videotape recording machine to rival movie film. You now can have a microwave oven or an air fryer in your kitchen. A heart pacemaker device inserted under your skin saves thousands of lives. An MRI machine “magnetic resonance imaging” can see inside your body better than an x-ray. 8-track and audiocassettes replaced the 45 and 78 RPM record, videocassettes, then DVD’s came on the scene where you could record it TV show or watch a movie. Games can be played on your TV set.

 And many products will have been part of what we call “the computer age.” You were aware of the first and huge  ENIAC computer developed in 1945. It was called a “giant brain” and filled an entire room. It had 18,000 vacuum tubes, 15,000 relays and some 5 million solder joints.. It weighed more than 30 tons and cost the equivalent of $6 million in today’s dollars.

 that was followed by huge IBM computers with punch cards and floppy disks the size of an extra large pizza, but stored only 10 MB of data. Today we store terabytes for pennies .

We have desktop or laptop personal computers thousand times more powerful than ENIAC and now take the place of your typewriter, your adding machine adding machine, encyclopedias, gas station maps andeven your television set. Computers can process huge amounts of data very quickly. The information can be numbers, words, pictures, movies, or sounds.

You type on a keyboard, but unlike a typewriter you will see your words on a television-like monitor. (There are no more picture tubes because television screens are as thin as a book, or thinner). You will also see and create pictures.

Everything you see on the screen can be controlled or moved around with a silly thing called a “ mouse” And amazingly, your personal computer connects to every other computer in the world over airwaves in a free service called the Internet. You are instantly connected to millions of other computers all over the world.

You can find anything you want to know by using a powerful search engine called Google. All those encyclopedias on your shelf are now unnecessary.

Today you can buy your own personal computer as powerful as ENIAC for less than $50 , so small that they will fit in your shirt pocket or on inside your wristwatch just like Dick Tracy. You can buy your own “computer” in many different forms, a desktop, tablet, a laptop, or as a calculator. Even your television set now has a computer built in offering amazing features. All these computer products are sold in department stores, big-box stores, electronics stores, and even Walgreens.

No longer do you go to the corner to buy a newspaper. Today newspapers are digital and appear on your computer or television screen. And you can buy almost anything through your computer and have it delivered as soon as the same day.

And the personal computer has shrunk into a portable wireless telephone called a cell phone which everyone carries everywhere. Most people no longer have a telephone in their house connected by a wire to the wall.. With a cell phone you can call anyone in the world, and anywhere you may be. The cell phone sends radio signals to cell phone towers.

A cell phone does way more than just making phone calls. You can have it give you driving directions to anywhere. You can order a pizza or groceries. You can watch television or what we call today videos. You can have Uber or Lyft pick you up and take you anywhere, services that have almost replaced taxicabs. You can get weather alerts. And we don’t use the 211 long distance operator to make a long-distance phone call anymore because you simply pay one monthly cell phone fee for all your calls anywhere in the country.

Movie theaters now have multiple screens and there is no more film. Movies are provided to theaters in a digital form.Not long after you died, people could own a video recorder/player in their house renting movies from Blockbuster or recording your own.

You would not have to go to a movie theater anymore unless you wanted to. Blockbuster disappeared from the scene replaced by discs that would be mailed to you by Netflix. And now Netflix is most well replaced by digital streaming on demand on your television set. You can watch any movie any time either for free or for a rental price.

Instead of watching just a couple channels on television, we now have access to thousands of channels through cable TV, movies on demand, streaming services, satellite television, with funny sounding providers like Pluto, Roku, YouTube. I can watch live cameras around the world or even Christmas Eve mass from the Vatican live .

You might be surprised that we no longer put film in our cameras. Gone is the Kodak cameras and your 8 mm movie camera. We now take digital pictures and store the image on a microprocessor, another word for computer. And you don’t even need a camera because there is great one built into every cell phone. You download the digital pictures to your computer, print them out, or send them electronically to friends and family.

For decades you used a drafting board and a T-square. Today we use computer software called CAD which stands for computer assisted drafting. Everything now is done on a screen.

Please know that you are terribly missed. You were a great father, husband, friend to many and a talented licensed electrical engineer. Had you lived longer, you probably would’ve guided me into electrical engineering.

Sadly, you never met my daughters or grandchildren. And because most all of our family are no longer living, I am reminded that life is so very fragile and fleeting. Family is so important. You left me with one sheet of onion skin paper outlining our family history as you knew it. Today we have incredibly large family trees, databases and records on websites like Ancestry and FamilySearch.org. Thanks to these resources our family now numbers in the thousands.

Thanks Dad for your guidance and instilling great values. Thank you for teaching me about so many different things. You left us way too soon but are thought of every day.

Happy Father’s Day!