I witnessed my childhood home being torn down in 2017. This is akin to being there when a loved one passes away. While viewing my home being reduced to a pile of rubble, I was joined by the new property owner, 29 years old at the time, a personable chap, very gracious. He was there to observe a new beginning as I observed an ending. While the long arm of the orange Hitachi excavator continued its assault, we had a cordial chat on the sidewalk. How much irony can one take? As we exchanged bromides, I sensed the new owner’s optimism, his enthusiasm: what my father must have felt in 1949.
My dad had also been 29 when we moved into our 1100 square feet of hope. I’m not sure where he scrounged up the down payment, but it probably required little scrounging. He had no family money. His mother didn’t even own a home. And my mother’s parents were renters, barely scraping by. My dad once told me that in 1949 he could have bought the next-door lot for $1,100.00. That’s less than $15,000 dollars in 2024. Therein lies the answer. Clarendon Hills was affordable. America was affordable, at least for white people. It is less so today. (Not just Clarendon Hills.)
The house where I grew up was a fraction the size of the new one that arose from my boyhood ruins. That might be the then and now difference. Capitalism, materialism, economics, whatever you want to call it, has intensified by the same increase as house size. The CH lifestyle has grown with the times. The town is every bit a desirable as it was in 1949 but the price of admission has increased.
To see My childhood home being torn down, click the link below.