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Wyndham Chicago, The Chicago Apple Store, Northwest Indiana Not Cosmopolitan?

April 27, 2008 on 8:31 am | In Parenting, The News, Hot Air, iRecommend | 1 Comment

Fresh back from Chicago, I have much on my mind.  I learned a lot of things on the trip, even though I cut it short a day to come back to be home with the family.  They Wyndham Chicago on St. Clair is a great hotel.  The room I was in was big.  The bed was comfy.  The food in the restaurant downstairs on the second floor, very good.  The courtesy of the concierge desk was very good, too.  Russell, Anthony and Kaitlin all were very professional, prompt and helpful.  Thanks guys.

I did make it over to The Apple Store on Michigan Avenue.  Way cool.  Glass steps up to the second floor.  A theater upstairs where they hold court for classes.  Dallas has a great Apple Store, Chicago’s is just in a different league.  But of course, it’s on the Magnificent Mile.

There is a Hershey Store across diagonally from Water Tower Place.  What a cool store.  They feature the world’s largest chocolate bar.  Essentially, the one you’d buy in a store, but this one is about 1.5 feet long and about 10 inches across and about .5 inches thick.  It runs $30 but looked like it would have been worth every single bite.

And so, as I sat one morning in the restaurant at The Wyndham Chicago, I could not help but overhear two more senior gents than I talking about the area.  One, like me, was a native of the area to the south east of Chicago.  As you know, I was born in Gary and my grandparents are/were from Hobart.  While downtown Chicago, (and I know I’ve said time and again, if the DISD job had opened up in Chicago, I would be 100 times happier) is quite metropolitan, the man was saying that Northwest Indiana isn’t.  And the more I thought about it, he’s right.  Now is that all bad?

Grandpa Claxton quit school in Northern Alabama in the eighth grade so he could help support his family.  When my dad was seven in 1952, Grandpa loaded up the family and drove up highway 31 to Hobart, IN to take a job working in the steel mills that John Cougar Melencamp so poignantly refers to in Minutes to Memories.  Some of the Claxton clan also went north, some stayed south.

And so, Grandpa worked hard for the next 35-40 years and raised his family.  The house they raised my three aunts and dad in would fit inside the first floor of my house, and there would be room left over on the first floor, let alone the second.  How they managed four kids in two bed rooms and one of themselves is still a mystery to me, but they did it.  Dad joined the air force in 1968 and me, mom and dad left for a 20-year ride on the road and in the air.

Hobart still is in many ways like it was when I was a kid.  The Rocket, a Sonic-style drive in (which I’m told actually had good food as opposed to that stale, pre-packaged blah Cliff ‘Hot Head, Arrogant, Richard Cranium’ Hudson is so proud of) is still there off Route 6 and Wisconsin, though it’s long been something else.

My point here is that the man was right and I’d never really thought about it in that way until he said it.  As I’ve written or certainly thought since I’ve taken my recent position, is that I missed many opportunities being stuck in Montgomery, AL during the early years of my career.  Maybe being there made it easier to become the governor’s press secretary by age 30, but I also missed out on a heap of opportunities for refinement, for seeing and being more on the cutting edge.

And so I wonder, (bringing this home) how to more positively influence what my kids are exposed to here in Dallas.  They certainly will have greater opportunities than I had for cosmopolitan exposure.  I mean, how much of that do you get in Northern Michigan at the former K.I. Sawyer AFB?  That experience afforded me a greater appreciation for the environment.  We spent every day we had the opportunity to do so, playing in the woods, building forts, riding trails, digging as far as we could muster.

And then it frustrates me incredibly to see, particularly my boys, wanting to spend much if not all of their days inside sitting at their computers and game consoles.  I had two of them wash my car last weekend and all I heard was how they normally just sit in the back while mom drives thru a car wash.  They’re 14 and 15.  Heck, when I was that age, I would wash my mom’s station wagon and dad’s Rabbit weekly, dreaming about being able to drive them.  Dreaming of getting an old ‘57 Chevy and fixing it up when I got old enough.  My boys wouldn’t know one if they saw it.

And so maybe the whole answer here isn’t just living in a big city.  It really goes back to spending time with your kids.  Exposing them to the things that will /could change their lives forever.   TVs and games and computers and DSs can be great electronic babysitters, but the rest of the world passes by while they’re tuned in, and they don’t even realize it.