Do you remember the Harrison Shop? How about the Del Mar Restaurant? Or The Fryer? McCann’s Drug Store with the soda fountain? Faye’s candy store or Wallaces’ Food Shop (aka Molly’s candy store)? Petersen’s turtle sundaes and cinnamon ice cream with apple pie? Sledding in Taylor Park in the winter and flying kites in the summer? Johnnies and Connies and the Merrimac Inn?
Russell’s BBQ and the Paddle Wheel? Playing “kick the can” and “baby off the roof” in the alley? Lorimer’s Pool Hall? Going to the Lake Theatre to see The Wizard of Oz for 35 cents? The girls’ green suits in gym class at OPRF High School? The “forts” at Lincoln School?
Sledding down the Congress Expressway embankments during the 1967 snowstorm? The scissors-grinder with his bell-ringing push cart? Skitching? The sock hop dances at Ridgeland Common? The teeny grey-blue towels after swimming class at OPRF that “smelled like molasses”?
If you do, you probably grew up in Oak Park. Bruce Stopka grew up here, near the corner of Ridgeland and Jackson. He lives in Elmwood Park now, but he has so many memories and kept bringing them up when he and his daughter drove through the village that she eventually challenged him to do something about it.
So he started a Facebook page, “Growing Up In Oak Park, IL,” at the end of January. A little over two months later, it already has 4,458 members.
Under “Category,” he describes it as “Just for Fun – Totally Random.” The site is “Open: All content is public” and it targets “Anyone who grew up in Oak Park, IL.” Stopka, 48, is listed as the creator, officer and administrator, but he doesn’t do much administrating.
“I just let it go,” he explains about his management style. And go it does. Current and former DOOPers post photos, which inevitably set off long strings of comments that lead to wondering whatever happened to teachers and classmates, some of whom then weigh in and rediscover each other.
“I like remembering,” Stopka says. “I just got the ball rolling.” He doesn’t spend a lot of time on the site, maybe 15 minutes a day to see what’s being discussed.
“I get a kick out of reading the posts, how funny people are,” he says. Some contact him privately to thank him or ask questions.
“I had a wonderful time growing up in Oak Park,” he says, “my formative years.” Because he lived on busy Ridgeland, he spent a lot of time on the 700 block of South Elmwood, which had “22 or 23 kids all within a year in age.” He attended OPRF for two years, then two at Fenwick, graduating in 1979.
“I loved both,” he says.
Stopka, who works in direct sales for RCN Cable, which services Chicago and Skokie, has another idea he hopes to introduce to his native village – a local currency called “Berkshares.” The idea, which originated in Berkshire, Mass., uses paper money that, ideally, is accepted by local merchants. Shoppers buy $100 worth of the currency for $90 and use them when they shop. He’s been talking the idea up around town and hopes it will catch on. It provides an incentive for residents to shop local. Berkshares, he notes, is a non-profit enterprise.
But all of that is incidental to his memory enterprise. “It’s nice,” he says of the Growing Up site. “You don’t feel like a freak about remembering all the time. You realize you’re not alone.”
Not by a long shot. Not when he reads the posted comments:
“Ah, to go back in time and be able to shop there!”
“We were always scrounging the neighborhood for bottles to bring to Molly’s for the deposit of 2 cents to buy candy.”
“You know you’re from Oak Park if you know what Ludacris, Ernest Hemingway and Ray Kroc have in common.”
“Grilled cheese and ice cream after speech tournaments. Good lactose times!”
“You guys look like the Little Rascals … O.P. style of course; too cute!”
“Lincoln playground, always remember the one lady with the red babushka that monitored us. What was her name?”
“No doubt about it, the Paddle Wheel was no Maxime’s. But we weren’t rich, so we loved it!”
“The Lake is one of my favorite places. Now has 7 or 8 screens and all the first-run movies, but it looks the same from the outside. Such an easy walk on a weekend afternoon and such fun inside! It is hard to believe that I am still going there … but I am.”
“Gosh, what memories! I remember most of the faces, but not so much the names.”
It’s more than just nostalgia, Stopka says. People find each other or update someone’s whereabouts. Reading between the lines, you can find allusions to personal struggles, and there’s some good-hearted ‘fessing up after many decades. Comments often hit a familiar chord: “You don’t know how lucky you are until you’re away.”
But the latter doesn’t apply to Stopka.
“I always had the sneaking suspicion I was growing up in a pretty great place.”