I was born in the neighborhood of Chicago, & lived there for my first few years.
I don’t remember it undoubtedly well, except the end, which was rather traumatic; My mother got mugged on the street a single afternoon, & soon after my father packed up our house & moved us away from the city, however she told me that she wanted a better life for her family, & the best locale for us was in the same small city where she had grown up.
I will consistently be grateful that Dad did that for us. It helped my Dad emotionally reuse from her attack, & it opened my eyeah to how amazing small city life in Illinois can be, outside of Chicago, the entirety of the state of Illinois is the genre of locale where you don’t have to lock your doors at night; This remote Illinois city was undoubtedly small, although I could travel anywhere I wanted on my bike with no fear! Back then cannabis had not yet been legalized in Illinois, so my dad grew her own plants in the garage. She didn’t hide her cannabis use from me, instead choosing to explain that the laws of Illinois were wrong, because cannabis was a gift from God. Many years later the Illinois state government changed the laws, which made my father undoubtedly blissful. She never once visited a legal Illinois cannabis dispensary, she kept on growing her own plants until the afternoon she died. Now that I am about to become a father I am considering moving back to that same small Illinois town.