Quote:
Originally Posted by marty59
Doug, One other thing the Greater Chicagoland area has besides what you mentioned is lots of houses with basements! If the folks ever did any upgrades then the downstairs aquired the old stuff.
I remember the sixties style existing but the basement was stuck in the fifties with the old but still working blonde black and white and maybe a pooltable and a homebuilt bar!!
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Another very good point. Almost all the homes in Chicago have basements and they are indeed the greatest catch all ever. Your typical chicagland basement:
Green 9x9 asbestos vinal floor tile, wood paneled walls, brass cone lights mounted to the walls, acoustic celing tiles with the little holes and the built in bar and sometimes a light up mural. Then the Zenith TV in the corner with books on top of it.
I can't tell you how many estate sales I've hit in which the 1968 Zenith TV was still upstairs, wired up to the outdoor antenna and plugged in.
I had depression era/WWII generation grandparents. They are gone now, but I remember very well how their house was back in the early 90's when I was a kid. They kept everything, the same 1950's furniture, the same avocado green carpeting, Ray Conniff and Ferrante and Teicher albums etc. Not to mention a basement full of just about everything you could imagine. They were your typical chicago area residents. People around here didn't feel the need to change for some reason. They must have liked what they had and life went on. And boom, 50 years later and its still the same thing just another day. Many parts of chicago and a good number of the suburbs still look like 1955, the old brick two flats many with the original businesses and the flashing neon signs. All you need are some 50's cars and you'd have a perfect 1950's movie set.
TV's and vintage things aside, I love the Chicago area and the architecutre and the history that goes along with it. Part of my enthusiasm for estate sales is just visting the homes and reflecting on the past. So much happened here once. It was a huge manufacturing hub, both for the electronics industry and for machines, tools, etc. Detroit built the cars, Chicago did just about everything else. Boths sides of my family were part of it, dating back to when they imigrated to Chicago from Germany. I have no plans to leave here.